Author: whoajennie

I am defined by moments that have gotten me where I am today. One of those occurred on a spring day in southern Spain about two years ago and my life has never been the same since. I was frozen with fear and exhaustion after several months of traveling with my best little entourage and our backpacks. After receiving a sweet, encouraging message from an old friend I loaded us all up for one of the most amazing days of happy accidents in all my life and probably my entourage’s too, seeing that they were 5 and 7 at the time. We drove to Ronda Spain, followed by Granada and in less than 12 hours had more adventure and excitement than many years hold for the average person. That day changed me. It defined the second act of my life and led me to today, writing this in the hopes that I can quit living life by the book and start writing my own story. I hope you’ll come along for the ride because I anticipate it being filled with many more days that end in a gypsy cave with music that grabs my soul and shakes it around…or something like that. But that’s a story for another day. Today I am more simply a 37 year old wife and mother that refuses to be defined by the basic expectations of those roles. My entourage is most frequently composed of two very good listeners who are big thinkers and huge feelers. They are elementary in age but wise beyond their years. When we are lucky, their superhero, my quiet, witty, adorable (wait, he says I can’t say that because I’m describing a man, not a puppy so he told me to say average but who are we kidding, he’s pretty cute…) husband is also along for the ride. We homeschool so we can be with our kids as much as possible, give them room to breathe, read all the books they want, practice cursive or checkers, develop skills and passions…and to travel of course. They love to travel as much as we do. They love new places and we don’t have to minimize our experiences because they are young. It’s easy to adapt big experiences to little bodies when we plan ahead and come prepared. That being said, we don’t take them everywhere. Sometimes we do things as a couple or we take trips with other people on our own because part of a healthy marriage is having healthy friendships with each other and others. We moved to Kailua, Hawaii Summer of 2016. 3,600 miles of driving and 2,800 miles of flying after selling and packing up our home in North Carolina, here we are. It’s glorious, beautiful, breezy and I love it. There’s enough here to keep us busy for the next 3 years but we still plan to travel and that’s where you come in. We don’t tend to do things half way and we like adventure. People tell us all the time that we “take so many vacations.” This makes me laugh a little because not every trip is a vacation but hey, I know we have a lot for which to be grateful. Because I know not everyone lives the way that we do, for a myriad of reasons, I’d love to create a place where it feels like we can take you along. I want to build my entourage. Why not? The more the merrier.