Moving to Portugal was an adventure of a lifetime for our family. But there's one part of living overseas that people don't always think about: What happens when you want to visit family back in the United States?

In this episode of As the Dinesens Turn, Jason is flying solo while Tracy sits this one out. Following some recent family travel, including a trip to Texas for a funeral, Jason talks about one of the realities of living abroad: We haven't seen much of our extended family in person since moving to Portugal.

Why? Because international travel isn't as simple as just hopping on a plane!

Jason breaks down the costs of flying between Portugal and the United States, the grueling travel days that can stretch beyond 24 hours, and the challenges of coordinating travel for a family of four. He also shares how his frequent business travel complicates things, and why those tempting advertisements for incredibly cheap international flights aren't always what they seem.

Living overseas has been an amazing experience, but it comes with trade-offs. And sometimes those trade-offs mean that seeing the people you love becomes a lot more complicated.

Join us for a candid look at another side of our family's adventure in Portugal!

One of the supposed perks of living in Europe is that you can just hop on a cheap flight and spend the weekend in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, or wherever else strikes your fancy.

$25 flights! Weekend getaways! See all of Europe!

Well … sort of.

In this episode of As the Dinesens Turn, Jason and Tracy talk about the reality of travel when you actually live in Europe — especially when you're traveling as a family.

Those cheap flights do exist, but they're not quite as cheap or plentiful as they once were. Add four plane tickets, baggage fees, hotels, transportation, and the logistics of traveling with kids, and that spontaneous European weekend can get expensive very quickly.

Living in northern Portugal adds another wrinkle. Portugal isn't nearly as well connected by train to the rest of Europe as countries such as France or Germany, which means getting somewhere like Barcelona isn't necessarily as simple as hopping on a train.

Then there's the other kind of travel: getting back to the United States. With Jason traveling frequently to the U.S. for work, a lot of the family's travel budget ends up going toward airfare across the Atlantic rather than European vacations.

But maybe there's another way to look at it.

When Porto is less than an hour away, Spain is within driving distance, and the birthplace of Portugal is practically in your backyard, perhaps the Dinesens actually travel more than they think they do.

Jason and Tracy talk about cheap airlines, expensive gasoline, traveling with teenagers, their almost nonexistent history of child-free vacations, and why the European jet-setting lifestyle isn't quite as simple as it looks from the outside.

Plus, with graduation trips coming up, there may finally be some more European exploration on the horizon.

Back-to-school season is here in the United States — but here in Portugal, we still have a few weeks to go!

In this episode of As the Dinesens Turn, we talk about some of the differences we've discovered between schools in Portugal and the U.S. From getting textbooks and school supplies to schedules that don't arrive until the last minute, the Portuguese school year operates very differently from what we were used to.

We also talk about Portugal's new restrictions on phones in schools, national exams, the possibility of repeating a grade, and the different paths students can take once they reach secondary school.

For our family, this school year is an especially big one. Tyler is finishing basic education and will need to decide which secondary-school track he wants to pursue. Meanwhile, Jack is entering his final year of a professional secondary program, complete with internships, certification exams, and decisions about work or university.

It's hard to believe that three and a half years ago, we were dropping two kids who barely spoke Portuguese into public school and wondering how any of this was going to work.

Now we're talking about graduations, university, internships — and even driving school.

Life changes fast.