Our Grand Adventure

Making our travel dreams a reality

I dreamed of traveling the world as a little girl. I wanted to be a famous actress, and one day my mom asked me why that mattered so much to me. I remember feeling something stir that I did not yet have words for. I loved performing, but it was more than that. I saw how actors could make a difference. Not just through the stories they told, but through the lives they touched and the ways they showed up in the world beyond the screen. And, I saw them travel.

Something in me came alive when I imagined that life. I had it all worked out in my head. I would go to New York for college, perform on Broadway, and eventually get my big break in movies. Then I would move through the world. Tokyo, Paris, Sydney. The idea of traveling has always brought my heart to life. Even now, as I write this, I can feel that quiet flutter in my chest.

My path took a different direction. I stayed closer to home, and while I continued performing through college, I never had that big break. I did have a moment that felt like stepping into the life I had imagined. I traveled to Japan with the Walt Disney Company to work at Tokyo Disneyland. I had been going to school about 20 minutes from Disneyland in California, performing in shows and parades part-time. When an audition opened for Tokyo, I went for it. Ten hours of cuts and callbacks later, I was chosen. I signed a contract and flew across the world to perform on a bigger stage than I had ever known. In some ways, my dream came true.

When I returned from Tokyo, I started to feel pulled in a different direction. As I got older, I felt I needed to make responsible decisions and performing felt risky when I considered my future, paying my own bills, and being able to rely on a steady income. I became interested in the psychology of people. In understanding how we think and feel. So I followed that path. I set performing aside and leaned into something that felt more steady. I started studying the mind and the body, and I really haven’t stopped since. I still find it all fascinating, and in a way, all of it has led me here.

For a long time, travel felt out of reach. I grew up associating it with extreme wealth, something reserved for other people. I always hoped we would get there one day, but it stayed in the category of someday. James and I have been together for 17 years now, and we’ve lived through a lot of different seasons financially. There were moments that felt expansive, especially with his family’s financial support as we were getting started, but most of our life together has been built slowly. Working, saving, building something stable for our kids. As our family grew, travel started to feel less and less possible.

Part of the reason we moved from California to Texas was to create more space. Financially, yes, but also in the way we were living. We wanted something that felt a little more open. This past holiday season, as we celebrated our fifth Christmas in Texas, something hit me. We have never taken an international trip with our kids. Not once. It stopped me. We’ve talked about it for years, said we would do it, imagined where we would go, and suddenly I could see how easy it would be to keep waiting.

So we decided to stop waiting. Costa Rica had always been on both of our hearts. James has wanted to share it with us, and I’ve always wanted to experience it. The pace of life, the ocean, being outside, immersing ourselves in a new culture. So we took what we had set aside and we booked it. This month, we’re leaving for ten days with our four kids to experience a new country together for the first time, and once we said yes to that, something else started to open.

Around the same time we decided on our Costa Rica trip, life shifted in a different way. When signs led me to start homeschooling our daughter, Lucy, I felt overwhelmed. I worried about stepping away from a practice I loved, about our finances, about whether I could actually do this well. I sat in that for a while, but it didn’t move anything forward, so I stepped in anyway. I leaned into becoming a homeschool mom and we got started on the work. My eyes were opened to a new way of doing things that came with an unexpected sense of aliveness. The pace of our life slowed, I watched Lucy’s curiosity expand, and I saw how quickly she could grow when she had space. I started to enjoy learning alongside her instead of feeling like I had to manage it, and I found myself asking a bigger question. What would it look like to give all of my kids something like this?

That question stayed with me, and eventually it led me to Boundless Life, a world schooling program where families live and learn together in different parts of the world in three month stretches, moving between countries in a rhythm that blends learning with real life. James and I have talked about taking a gap year with our kids for years. It was always something we said we would do but never actually planned. His work kept us grounded and life kept moving. When I brought it to him, it inspired him and lit a fire for him to start making good on the dreams he has shared with me around creating changes in his business. After all, we only have one more year with our oldest before she starts high school.

Everything got clearer after that conversation. We knew she wouldn’t want to leave once high school began, so if we were going to do something like this, it had to be now. A full year felt too big to step into right away, so we started looking at what six months could look like, and the more we explored it, the more it made sense.

And then the accident happened (read more here). There’s something about being reminded how fragile time is. It changes the way you make decisions. It makes the things that matter feel more obvious. It brought us into a different kind of clarity, and from that place, the answer felt simple.

So we said yes. We booked it.

Italy first. Then Spain.

Even writing that feels a little surreal. We’ve reserved our spot, which already feels like a leap, and now we have the next several months to prepare. Visas, work, schooling, logistics for a family of six. It is a lot, and somehow it doesn’t feel heavy. It feels like we’re moving toward something that has been waiting for us.

I’ll share the process here as we figure it out. What works, what doesn’t, and everything in between. From Costa Rica to Italy and beyond.