Day 336, Athens, Greece
Today Kier joins us for the remainder of the trip. So happy. 
Some views from the mountains by our house.
I started researching round the world flight packages when I was in my 20’s. After we had the girls, we didn’t prioritize to make this trip happen, but instead chose other programming for the girls over travel. When we finally made it happen, Kier was a little older and had other responsibilities she couldn’t walk away from for 15 months. Even without this trip, she’s done lots of traveling. We started traveling more extensively overseas when she was 10. We lived in Guatemala for a few years and she has done many solo trips and some with friends or groups. She has been to most of the South American countries, while the rest of us have not. She lived in Madrid for a year, and did some summers in Bolivia, Peru. It’s not that she was travel-disadvantaged, it’s just that I would have loved to do our family trip with her.
She couldn’t do the entire trip, but with a few weeks of Paris at Christmas, and both of the summers, she did more than half of the trip with us. If I could do it over again, I would have prioritized this trip so we could have done the entire thing with all three girls. Still, I’m so glad we made it happen now.
Since we saw her in Paris at Christmas, a lot has happened. A few years of mysterious health issues were resolved with a Skype diagnosis by my doc sister, that perhaps Kierstin had gall stones or sludge. So many doctors had not been able to narrow this down for her, and sure enough, that was it. She got her gall bladder removed, but had been feeling horrible for a long time.
When we picked her up at the airport, she was thin and weak. Here’s one of the benches she slept on in an airport. To the right, her camera bag and robot bag with a few clothes. 
She was drained from finals and had trouble carrying her camera bag and walking. She was so happy to join us, and we collected our little mess. We took her home and closed the blinds in her room and let her sleep. She slept until supper the next day, and most of the day after that. Her room in Athens were she slept and slept and slept.
Even though I’ve never seen her so weak, she was so excited to finally join us. With lots of sleep, incredible food, and doing her favorite activity (exploring the world), in no time she would be rested up and stuffed full of every yummy carb Greece had to offer.
When she woke up close to dinner time, we took a very short walk to the shore. She was still tired, so we took lots of breaks. The cats were always there to entertain. We ate fresh seafood with a view of the Aegean Sea.
We were all too full to order dessert. The waiter surprised us with a plate of Greek fudgesicles. There are only two desserts that all five of us like: chocolate cake and fudgesicles. When he brought that plate of little innocuous frozen treats, I felt a wave of emotion that usually doesn’t come with a fudgesicle. It took me a minute to unpack why. The meal wasn’t just a welcome to Kier, which has happened many times since she has gone off to live her life. But this time it was to celebrate living out a dream I’ve had, since before any of them were born, to see the world together. And that’s what we were now going to do.
View from our house when we got home.