Adventure Buddies

When I was a child, I didn’t travel a lot. In fact, I didn’t really know that Disney existed. Before I met my husband, I had never been to the ocean or on an airplane. I grew up in a small town in Illinois and my parents gave me many wonderful experiences living out in the country. We had a farm and spent our weekends running through the woods and playing in the dirt.

Fast forward 17 years of marriage with four children who are interested in traveling. We decided that this would be the perfect time to travel out west. We knew that it would be possible, but we had lots of planning to do. Eric does most of the planning and I am the one that always goes along with his “ideas”. He tends to be more the adventurous type. We also knew that the 4th grade National Park free access pass would be a fun option for our family and save us a lot of money visiting National Parks.

We decided to surprise the kids at Christmas. We wrapped up four sets of hiking shoes(they didn’t even fit them when we left for our trip) and wrapped up a frame of the United States of America. We basically told them that we would be traveling out west. They were excited in the moment, but really didn’t seem too thrilled when we shared the news. I didn’t even get a chance to snap a pic of all four of them holding the frame. The above picture was the only one I could find right after we opened our gifts.