Traveling with my family is my favorite thing
In front of our family home in Pompano Beach, FL. A place where we developed a taste of travel, adventure, and togetherness
Ultimately, the goal in life, whether traveling or not, is to come to a place mentally where you can be totally in the moment and utterly open to experiencing the world around you. It's one thing to achieve that as an individual, but it's even better to achieve it as a family unit.
When traveling, the first few days away from home and routine can come with some discomfort, but something always happens around day 4 or 5 and we fall into the rhythm of it. We escape our comfort zone, spread our wings and hit our stride.
We can find and create moments like that at home, but they are less frequent. At home, we all have our own spaces and our individual lives that only intertwine for a few hours a day. When we are traveling, however, we become one unit and our daily shared experiences grow exponentially.
Since it usually takes a few days to hit our stride, a week vacation never seems like enough. As soon as we get into that magical zone, it's time to head home, back to work and school. Two weeks is better, because the whole second week is usually spent in the sweet spot, but I'm still always left not wanting it to end.
Then one day I asked myself, "why does it have to?" "Why not take an extended period of time and try to live in this magical space for longer?" "Why can't I just keep doing my favorite thing everyday?" The more I thought about it, the closer I came to realizing that it didn't have to end and we could find a way.
When I dropped my 9, 12 and 14 year old kids off for the first day of 4th, 6th and 8th grades in August 2021 and contemplated the fact that I would have a highschooler in one year, the short amount of life left to make it happen hit me hard. I realized that it's now or never and I texted Joey the following, "let's leave work, homeschool the kids, and travel around the world for six months. We can start in January." His first response was simply, "Okay." Later that evening when I presented my case, he followed it up with, "I'm all in." So, here we are, on our six month journey around the world, all in.
You can follow our journey on this blog. We'll be sharing stories, pictures, videos, and some advice as we navigate doing all of this in the time of covid. You can expect some mix of mishaps, adventures, and magical moments along the way. My goals are the following:
1. Document the experience for myself and others.
2. Share entertaining and fun stories with our friends and family.
3. Inspire you to step into the unknown and out of your comfort zone.
Much love,
Wendi
