And Now, An Even Bigger Challenge...

First, in an effort to brighten up my blog a bit, here are some nice spring flowers (from a couple of years ago at my old house, no spring blooming bulbs here in Las Vegas unfortunately).
Hubby is feeling better so we got out for a bit today which was a good thing.  And then I sprang my latest plan on him (which threatens to send him back to his sick bed because he knows what happens when I get an idea in my head...yikes!).  So here it is:
I really, really want to do a "grand tour" type of vacation in the fall.  After some consideration (and copious amounts of time on Orbitz and Travelocity) I think it should go something like this:

• August 15-31: Connecticut to visit the family and check out the family graveyard in Massachusetts (found out about this doing genealogy on my grandmother's side of the family).
• September 1-21: Fly from New York to London.  During this time visit England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (and visit lots of places I found in my genealogy research in each of these countries).
• September 21: Take a cruise from London to Ft Lauderdale passing by Spain and Portugal (since this is a re positioning cruise it will only cost $600 each!).
• October 5: Arrive in Ft Lauderdale.  I fly out the next day to Japan; hubby will go and visit his sister in Florida for a couple of weeks.
• October 6-16: I will visit my friends in Japan.
• October 16: Hubby and I will meet up in Manila; me coming from Japan, hubby from Miami.
• October 17: We fly to Davao, a city in the southern part of the Philippines to visit family and friends.
• November 15: We fly to Manila and visit friends there for a few days.
• November 20: We fly back to Las Vegas.

The grand total for such a trip will be around $30,000 (!!!); about $7500 for the cruise and air tickets and the rest for spending money (hotel, food, plus the money hubby spends on his entire family when we are in the Philippines).  For a couple of flights we can use air miles which will save us money and I was even thinking about doing a house trade while we are in the UK so we would have free lodging there which would also save money (ditto for the time we are in the Philippines).  

Obviously $30,000 is a LOT of money, which I realize, but then again, I think anything can be possible if you want it bad enough and are willing to work for it.  Which means I need to earn about $5000 a month for the next six months in order to pull this off because I told hubby that we wouldn't take money for this trip out of our savings (he is always worried about dipping into our savings).

Now my challenge is to figure out how to earn about $5000 a month for the next five months (and obviously some sort of residual income after that so my earnings don't come to a screeching halt at the end of August).  Holy cow that's a lot of money!!  I'll let you know what I come up with!