Our life
My husband Brett and I, and our 3 kids (Ronan, 8, and our twins Iain and Riley, 5) live in a wonderful house in a great community in Portland Oregon. We moved here from Vancouver, Canada in 2013 to be closer to Brett’s older daughters, Ashley and Meghan. In many ways, we have a charmed life; three fun, healthy kids (plus my two awesome stepdaughters), a great marriage, a perfect storybook house in a great neighborhood where we count our neighbors as some of our best friends and we can walk to almost anywhere we want from our house. The perfect blend of urban living and a strong community that we always wanted.
But… it’s hasn’t been all picnics and rainbows. Up until recently, Brett travelled almost every week from Monday to Thursday to work in LA. I am a Principal consultant at an engineering firm and lead a team of 60+ engineers. I also have an exhaustive travel schedule and a lot of 50+ hour work weeks. When the kids were very young, we had a live in Au Pair to help with the kids. Last school year, with Ronan in 2nd grade and the twins in pre-K, we decided to save money and handle it all without an au pair or nanny. With Brett gone most of the week, my typical day involved getting up at 5am to get ready for work and handle some emails, get the kids up at 6:30, breakfast, school drop off by 7:30, 45 minute commute to work, return to pick up the kids by 5:30pm, make dinner, help with homework, baths, laundry (that never ends!!!), school lunches for the next day, bedtime routine, etc. There would also be many days where volunteer hours would be needed at the school, things would need to be organized for school parties/events, birthday presents for the many birthday parties, etc. I would finish all of this around 9pm and either fit in some more work or fall into bed exhausted. On weekends, we would try to fit in some exercise and fun but also catch up on groceries, laundry, and other things you need to do to keep the household running.
Time was going faster and faster, the kids were getting bigger and bigger, and we were feeling more and more like we were missing out on what should be the best moments of our lives. Then, two big events happened this summer/fall that made us stop to reflect on our lifestyle. First, we went on vacation to Ireland in June. The kids and I stayed for 5 weeks, Brett could only stay for 2. I’m very lucky that I work for a great company that gave me the flexibility to work remotely in order to extend our time in Ireland. Being together 24/7 and exploring new places together was such a great adventure. We did not make plans and we were never in a hurry. We went at our own pace. My Dad was from Ireland and for the majority of the trip, we rented a cottage near my family’s farm. The cottage was small and cozy, probably 800 ft2 compared to our 4000 ft2 home back in Portland. But it was so perfect. We didn’t need anything more (well… maybe a second bathroom 😊) We enjoyed watching the kids explore and use their creativity and imagination to make up games and make-believe stories. It was then that Brett and I started talking about how we could find ways to spend more quality time with each other and the kids when we return to our normal lives.
Finding Balance
We talked about many options. For a couple of months we considered moving countries….this would give us the same sense of adventure of exploring a new place together as a family, it would also allow us to have a lower cost of living and more time to enjoy life with the kids. I have citizenship in Ireland and Canada (as do the kids) so those two countries would be the obvious choices. Either would be a very big leap from our current lives. Could we leave our friends, the house we love so much, our neighborhood, my job, the kid’s schools, …?
Before having kids, I remember hearing a lot about the struggles of having a successful career and kids. Magazine articles that explained why you can have it all, or why you can’t have it all. I thought the struggle was more about time management. How do you get it all done and not go crazy? My real struggle is letting go of some of my ambition and passion I have for my career. I love what I do. I love my job and the people I work with. I work hard and like to do everything well. I am very interested in learning more, applying new ideas…It is very hard to force myself to just do what I need to do, or not take on that next new exciting project. I am also one of very few senior women in my field and I take that role very seriously – I like to encourage and mentor other women to reach leadership positions and breakdown gender biases that have impacted (and are still impacting) our careers. So…could I imagine taking some of my energy and focus off my career but still enjoy it and feel fulfilled? How would I do that?
I had a lot of time in that cottage in Ireland to think about these things. I came back to Portland knowing that we needed to make a change but still no clarity on what that change should be. Brett wasn’t sure either but he was sure that he didn’t want to continue traveling away from his family every week to live in a hotel in LA. He was looking for a local job but there didn’t seem to be any prospects; it’s hard to walk away from a high-paying job without at least some leads on what you might do next. For him, actually for me too, it felt like being trapped. A bit like the hamster on the wheel…we were running like mad but never getting anywhere. We always felt like we had to keep running.
Then on October 1st, the second major event happened that pushed us towards change. Brett lost his job. After a very successful career, the company was restructuring and Brett was a victim of the restructuring process. Or was he? Even though we now had to figure out how to live on one salary, at least temporarily, all of a sudden he was back in our lives full-time. Since then, Brett has been a stay-at-home dad while looking for another job. Our kids are happier, Brett is happier to be more a part of their lives, and I’m happy for many reasons, mostly getting to see Brett every evening and knowing that our kids now have more attention from us. Evenings are no longer a grind (ok, sometimes they still are), there’s usually time each evening to connect with the kids rather than rushing from one chore to the next.
How could we keep this going?
When I was young, I spent a number of summers in Ireland. When I finished high school, I backpacked around Europe with my friends and had many crazy adventures. I had the travel bug. But then I started university, then grad school, then a great job. In between I moved cities a few times which satisfied my travel bug a bit but never quite enough. In 2003, I went to work in Peru for the better part of a year. During that year I traveled throughout Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. When I came back from that trip I resolved that one day I would like to take a break from work and travel for at least 6 months. Again, life happened and for all my plans to continue travel and to one day take a major world trip, it never seemed to be the right time.
In 2007 I met my amazing husband Brett while working in Alaska. We share exactly the same passion for travel and adventure. Brett loves traveling to new places and traveled extensively when stationed in Europe while in the military. We went to Austria and Italy for our honeymoon. Still, it never seemed like the best time to take a break for a more lengthy world trip. Our careers were doing very well, then we had our first son in 2010. In 2013, our family grew from 3 to 5 with the arrival of the twins. At that point, the only trips we could think of managing were beach vacations. We wanted to go somewhere and relax, nothing more. As a family we have traveled to Mexico, Hawaii, Belize, and California (plus many trips back home to Canada to visit family and friends). But what happened to our dream of world travel? Experiencing new cultures, learning new languages, having new adventures. It’s been almost 15 years since I explored South America!!! It’s been 25 years since Brett was living and traveling through Europe.
Why not now?
With Brett losing his job, and our youngest children now 5, we started talking about the possibility of taking 6 months off to travel. At first, we talked as if it were a far-fetched dream…very unlikely to ever become a reality. But once that seed was planted, it grew. I worked spreadsheets and budgets trying to find ways that we could make it happen. I discussed the possibility with my company to explore how this could work without giving up my job. The far-fetched idea of traveling together for 6-months has become the very real plan of traveling for a year!
This is it!!
So after a lot of discussion and more than a few times where we decided this wasn’t a wise decision for our long-term finances, we took a deep breath and decided to just DO IT!! There will never be exactly the right time to do something like this and it will always be easy to talk ourselves out of it. We will find a way. We are going to travel and experience life and adventure and we’re certain that the experiences and memories we will all share will be worth more than any cost. The motivation for this trip is now even stronger with our 3 kids. It is so important for us to show them the bigger world so they can see many different ways of life and be more aware and accepting of different people. We want them to be accepting and respectful of different cultures, languages, religions, customs, food- and see beauty in these differences. This is one of the most important lessons we can provide to them, and one that is difficult to provide in Portland. Nas says it so much better in his video below.
The plan is to leave in June 2019 and return in the summer of 2020. Now comes the fun part, deciding on an itinerary. At the moment, we are planning on traveling first to NY (Iain really wants to see the Freedom tower), then Toronto (to visit family before leaving), then off to Europe; Spain for a month, Ireland for a month, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, Greece, then head south into Jordan to see one of my bucket list places – Petra. In November we will head to South America and study Spanish in Bolivia for a few weeks then likely head to Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. In the spring we will head to southeast asia with a very rough plan of visiting Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Other than a very rough idea of what countries we would like to visit, we have no idea of where to go in each country.
Travel suggestions?
We would love to hear suggestions on where you would recommend for us to travel, roughly aligned with our itinerary above. Is there a spot in Greece that you think was breathtaking and worth a visit? Are there places in southeast asia where you think our family of five would enjoy experiencing the culture, history, food, etc.? We will be traveling a pretty tight budget so expect that a lot of our destinations will be off the beaten track. Please help us out and share your experiences to help shape our trip.