The Story of 5 Gen

I starting researching a trip to take my grandma, Ruth, on after her 100th birthday.  I wanted her to have something to look forward to after her big celebration.  As I was looking for someplace fun to travel, I saw the contest "Live Anywhere on Airbnb."  Airbnb was giving away $48,000 in credits to stay in Airbnbs and $12,000 to travel anywhere in the world for the next year for you and up to three other people.    With little hope of being chosen out of hundreds of thousands of applicants from around the world, I applied.  Much to my surprise, I got an email that I was a finalist.  That's all it took to get me excited about the opportunity. The first thing I did was call my mom to make sure she wanted to be one of the people I took with me.  She is always up for a trip.  Next, I called my grandma.  She hasn't wanted to travel with us lately, because she was afraid she would slow us down and be a bother.  She may be 100 years old, but she is healthy and doesn't take any medicine.  Less than six months ago, she had carpal tunnel surgery.  She should have had it in her 80s, but she didn't think she would live that much longer and didn't want to waste money on the surgery.  Apparently, she decided at 99, that she is going to live a long time and it was worth the money.  I was shocked about how excited she was for the opportunity to travel.  My mom and aunt were shocked that she wanted to be a part of the contest.   The next step in the process for the contest was to make a video.  It had to be less than two minutes long.  Ours ended up being one minute long, in order to fit the format requirements.  This is my granddaughter's (Blair) part.

We started planning where we wanted to go:  the four states left for Grandma to have visited all 50 states (Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alaska), following her maternal grandpa's family steps immigrating from France to Kansas and her maternal grandma's family from Germany (or Prussia, as her grandma insisted it be called) to Kansas, and so on.   We were excited.  Unfortunately, we didn't get picked to be the 12 people who were given the opportunity to Live Anywhere on Airbnb.  To say we were bummed was an understatement.  I was despondent for two days until I went to my godchild's wedding.  

After the wedding, I decided to try to make my travel dreams a reality. 

Welcome to 5 Gen!  We hope you will join us on our journey!

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