Just the other day I was talking with a friend about our most recent upcoming trip and she commented, “you guys sure do travel a lot”. Which is true, we do travel a lot more than we used to, which I think is a good thing. We experience more and have more family adventures than we used to. What’s wrong with that?

I would have to say some of the extra traveling was thanks to my husband being in use or lose leave every year of our marriage.  But that is only part of it. After my husband returned from Afghanistan we decided that spending time together was an important part of keeping our relationship strong. And even though there will be times that the military will require us to be apart, we would take advantage of every opportunity we could spend together. When our daughter was born, it just emphasized the importance of family time. 

We really take every opportunity we are given to travel together as a family and experience adventures along the way. When my husband TDYs somewhere that it is easy and possible for us to tag along, we do. We take advantage of extending trips to visit family into mini vacations. We do our research and find deals available to us via military discounts and special sales. And my husband and I have cut out giving each other gifts for special holidays like, birthdays and anniversaries, instead putting that money towards an adventure or trip. 

We love that on every adventure we grow closer together as a family. It’s hard not to grow closer when your trying to go to sleep with a toddler who wants to have her arms around mommy and daddy while she sleeps. We love spending the time together and know there will be times we can’t be together, deployments will come. But it is the memories of all our fun together that will get us through to the next adventure. 

Our daughter isn’t even two yet and she has already made 3 trips to Florida, visited Disney twice, cruised up the New England coast and into Canada. She has visited 18 states all before her second birthday. And in the next year we already have two more cruises booked, and are talking about our next trip to Florida. The adventures are only beginning for our family, and we couldn’t be happier!