Our World Map

One of the things I wanted to do once we got married was create a personalized map of the world and mark everywhere we go. A big perk of being in the Navy is we are going to move... A LOT. Some may see this as an inconvenience or hassle, but personally I think it's exciting. I wanted a way to display our journey in our home. We ordered a large map of the world online, and Parker built a custom frame. Since the map is going to show our adventures and be personal to us, we thought it would be neat for Parker to build the frame. It makes it more special. :)

We decided to mark the map with small stickers. I know push pins are the convention, but this map is going to have to go through a lot of relocations, so I wanted it to be flat and easy to transport. Call me over-protective, but I also didn't love the idea of the push pins potentially falling onto the floor when we have little Phelplets running around. Thus, the sticker option won out. 

We decided to color code the stickers into four categories: places we've lived, places we've visited, places I've visited, and places Parker has visited. I am fortunate to get to travel a little bit with my job, and there are going to be times in the future where Parker will go places without getting to take the wife, so we want to document those experiences as well. Anyway, here is the key:

Gold Star: places we've lived
Silver Star: places we've visited
Blue Star: places Parker has visited
Pink Star: places I've visited

Parker and I were both fortunate enough to take leadership trips abroad in college. It was exciting to venture over to the right side of the map and place a pink star in Greece for me and blue stars in North Africa (Egypt and Morocco) for Parker.

We are excited to add stars to the map as the years go by. We have obviously talked about the future a lot, and we both agree that if we get the opportunity to live somewhere like Italy or Germany for a few years, we would take it in a heartbeat. We'll see what the future holds!