First confession: I know nothing about writing a blog. Second confession: Follow through is not my specialty – that’s my husband’s area of expertise. If you want something done, you ask Ron to do it. Or at least you ask him to put it on his to-do list. It will then either get done or he will hound someone else (usually me) just enough to make it happen. It’s an art form really. But this blog is something that I have wanted to start for a while now so I am jumping in and hoping that I can follow through with limited spousal nagging.

What do I want to talk about? I want to talk about all things travel related and more specifically, all things related to traveling with children. I have been traveling since I was a young child. My dad, my travel hero, has been around the world multiple times. He somehow convinced my mother, who had never gone beyond Mexico (and that was likely only because she grew up in New Mexico and Arizona) to quit their jobs and spend three months traveling around the world. Maybe there will be a post on their travel experiences as they have some fascinatingly interesting stories. Anyway, my parents knew the importance of travel and brought us along on their various trips. We weren’t a Disney World family (I didn’t make it to Epcot until I was in my late 30s and even then, I was only there for a conference) and you wouldn’t find us at the beach. But we had our own adventures and made memories that even now, twenty and thirty years later, we still have us cracking up.

One of the many things that attracted me to my husband was the fact that he loved to travel just as much as I did. In fact, when we first got together, we had been to the exact same number of countries. Not that anyone is keeping track, but I am currently ahead by three countries. But I digress… When we had children, there wasn’t a big discussion about whether or not we would travel. It was part of our identity and we just assumed we would take our children with. For better or worse…

Our two girls have had their passports since they were each six months old and took their first international trips well before their first birthdays. Have we learned a lot of lessons along the way? Of course. Have there been lessons we should have learned by now but haven’t (snack bag, I’m looking at you)? Um, yes. Freakouts? Obviously. Amazing family experiences? Most definitely.

We aren’t experts in traveling with kids but we are definitely experienced. And that’s what this blog is about. Hopefully we can impart some of the things we’ve learned and convince other families that traveling, even with young children, doesn’t have to be a daunting experience.