FAQ

So you’re traveling around the world?

Yep!

We’re pausing our jobs, renting our house and traveling around the world for 6 months with our two boys. We are skipping around the equator hoping to soak up the vitamin D we so sorely lack in Seattle.

That sounds cool. Why?

Even though our kids are young, we are already feeling pulled in a million different directions with careers, church, sports, after school activities, etc. They are all good things but it feels hectic sometimes. How can we re-set? What if we stepped away and focused on investing in time as a family at this special time of life?

It seems a little dramatic that the solution is to upend your life for 6 months.

To us, the bigger questions are: how will this time re-center us on our mission as a family? What will the experience teach our kids? And in what positive ways will the experience live on in our hearts, if not in our memories? We are the architects of our family life and we’re hoping to use this time to grow closer to each other in ways that’s not possible when you have regular routine.

I’ve read that travel has a softening influence on the heart and a widening influence on the brain. We believe that! We want to increase their courage, sense of wonder, and love for people everywhere. I can’t help but feel that is what we all need more of. 

That sure is a lot of time together…

Uh huh! We are more than a little curious how it’s going to work with us being together 24/7. However, time together is actually a key impetus to this endeavor. Brent calculated how much quality time he gets to spend with the boys each week and he figured it would take over 4 years of our current schedule to have the same amount of quality time we will get on our trip! We are so thankful we can do this now when the boys love being with us and still think we’re pretty cool.  

“Travel is glamorous... in retrospect.” While we are stepping away from our regular life, we are not under any illusions that this will be a 6 month vacation. It won’t be all beach days and fruity drinks. There are going to be long plane rides, “weird foods”, tight living arrangements and just general crankiness sometimes. There will be times when everything seems hard. Even the best laid plans go to ruin when traveling, but it will teach the kids to be adaptable. Trying things that make us uncomfortable also means staying open to growth.

Exactly how did you make this happen?

Brent has been with Starbucks for +16 years in total. After you have been with the company for 10 years you are eligible to take a 6 month sabbatical. You don’t draw a salary but you keep your health benefits, stock, and are guaranteed your same job when you return. It’s been a dream for us to take advantage of this opportunity. We could have waited until the kids are older or we are retired, but there are no guarantees that these opportunities will come again. We feel so blessed to be able take this trip while our kids are young and still have a safety net to fall on when we return. 

We also believe that life is more than just what one accumulates or accomplishes. A big part of this trip is to simply LIVE LIKE WE MEAN IT.  To experience the freedom that comes from being loved by Jesus. And to share that love with others through all we do.

OK, show me the $$$…

It’s no joke this is expensive! Our airfare alone was tens of thousands of dollars (which isn’t so crazy if count 4 people going around the world 1.5 times). We are dipping into our savings, our investments and are offsetting some of our expenses by renting our house out. There are many ways of accomplishing a dream like this, including saving and finding cheap locations. You can save a lot of money by traveling much more slowly- spending a month at a time somewhere. We are also spending time in places where the cost of living in relatively inexpensive (looking at you South East Asia and South America).

We bought our airfare through AirTreks, which specializes in around-the-world travel. They’re able to get better deals for people willing to flex on dates, times of travel, and even exact destinations. This is why we occasionally have flights landing departing or landing at 1am- yay! But this was also how we could swing business class seats on some of our longer hauls.

But what about school?

To quote the great Mark Twain “I never let schooling interfere with my education.”

This will be an around-the-clock field trip that teaches them more about the world and themselves than they could ever learn at home.  Caeden is a second grader in a Spanish immersion school on Bainbridge and the teachers could not be more supportive for our adventure. In Cartagena, our family will be in Spanish language school and just being immersed in the local culture and language will be a massive boost. Burke will be starting the kindergarten Spanish immersion program next September so this will be a boon to him as well.

We will be utilizing lots of online math programs and old fashion writing activities based on what we are seeing.  Plus just using the incredible natural and cultural surroundings to provide lessons and opportunities for learning. It’s no surprise that we will also be spending time exploring world history, botany and geography. Curated book and movie lists will help us understand the people of the country we have the privilege of visiting.

What are you bringing?

Not much! Each of us has a carry on backpack and will carry our own stuff. Even Caeden and Burke. Fortunately, their clothes don’t take much space! Toys will be limited to a bag of legos, a few hot wheels and their Kindle fires. I will post soon a list of everything we brought. Whittling everything down to the size of a 40L backpack has tough but I’m excited about the freedom only one bag each brings. Not waiting for luggage will be an energy saver when we have +37 flights.

EDITED to add: While this was a noble idea, asking a 5 and 7 year old to carry anything for a long period of time was overly ambitious. We’ve quickly realized that we will need to pick up a rolling carry-on to help off-set the weight we’re carry on our backs.

Where exactly are you going?

50 places, 4 continents, 11 countries, 6 months!

This was one of the hardest aspects of the trip- where to go! When anywhere in the world is a possibility, how do you choose? Though I’ve (Ruth) lived most of my life in the Seattle area, it doesn’t mean that I am happy about it! I crave the sun so we decided very early on that we wanted to have a year without winter.

Ultimately, we chose places that have always been on our bucket list or we have a connection there. We are in Indonesia as we sponsor a child through Compassion International who lives there. Our support allows him to go to school. He is the same age as Caeden and we have been writing back and forth for the past year. We will have the opportunity to meet him and his family and we couldn’t be more excited! We also have a connection to the school in Cambodia where we'll volunteer to teach english, to friends in Kenya and Brazil, and numerous other connections along each stop.  It's a privilege to have such a great network to tap into for this adventure!

Check out our map and if you have recommendations of what to see or people we should meet up with, please let us know!

PS- we aren’t making it to Sri Lanka, but if you ever find yourself there I have a killer itinerary for you!