Life is an adventure, and if you were raised in the type of family that thought adventure was getting on a plane at the last minute to just ‘go’, then you’ll already be aware of how adventurous life can get. As you get older, you start pinning places you’d love to visit, writing lists of restaurants with food challenges that’d be awesome to complete and generally plan your life around your wanderlust. And then you have children and that goes away.
No, I’m kidding, it doesn’t go away at all! Instead, you spend a few months adjusting to life with a kid running around and pooping at every given opportunity, and then you start dreaming again. Here’s a little secret for you: you don’t stop being people who dream when you have children. Your dreams change, and they expand, but they don’t go away. The best part is that you can include your children in your adventures. It doesn’t matter if you want to spend your days mapping out the best museums in the country and road tripping to them, or if you want to go the whole hog and spend a year or two country-hopping, travel adventures don’t have to end when your children arrive in the world.
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I get it, you’re shaking your head and thinking I’ve gone nuts to suggest that children and traveling should even be in the same sentence. Here’s the thing; children are just an extra. You can pack an extra bag, bring a set of crayons and keep them entertained between locations. You can choose to book an adventure hike and use one of these awesome backpacks to carry your child, meaning that you can leave the expensive stroller at home and just bring the cheap one along. You could choose to relocate your entire family for a year or so to the other side of the world; enrolling the kids at an international high school to continue their usual education around the world schooling you’re giving them. People honestly don’t realise how hemmed in they are day to day, and as long as you’ve got a good employer and a strong internet connection, you can work pretty much from anywhere – there are always jobs to be had.
Wherever you go, your kids are going to drive you around the bend, so why not extend that and get out into the world? If the 9-5 life is for you, that’s fantastic and you can own that wholeheartedly. If you are a parent that craves more than that, why aren’t you grabbing it? Embracing it? Life is for living, and that doesn’t mean staying in and being a prisoner of routine. You also don’t have to be trapped because you’ve got children in the house – they’re the biggest adventure that life is going to throw at you. Pack up the lovey and make sure that the diaper bag is well-stocked for those unexpected poonamis, because you’ve got a world of adventures to spend your time on and make memories in.