I remember being pregnant with Cyrus, sitting in an old theatre auditorium, rubbing my belly as one of mine and Matt’s favorite musicians, Josh Garrels, sang. I thought about something he said in a documentary that I hoped and prayed would ring true for our family. When broached with the question of traveling with children, he responded, “you can do anything with kids that you could do without. It’s just harder.” 

Four and a half years have passed, drastically changing the dynamics of our little family, and those words still ring true today. By the time Cyrus was one, he had already been on three major trips,  watched embers of a fire glow in the mountains and touched his chunky toes in the salty ocean. River is 10 months old, and we’ve continued to carry the same philosophy. At four months, we bundled him up and hiked through thick white blankets of snow to watch my brother and sister-in-law elope in the Colorado mountains. At six months old, River sat on the shores of the Alabama Gulf, watching his big brother play in the deep blue waves. And last week, he took his first “hike” through the Appalachians, strapped to his daddy’s chest. 

We live on a modest income but have been indisputably blessed with opportunities to travel, and we try to make it a point to say yes whenever given the opportunity. When some friends in our community group invited us to go to the beach with them, I jokingly told them the offer better be genuine because the Bells always say yes. We may be emptying change jars and setting aside cash from side gigs and tax returns, but when you find something that matters to you, you find a way to make it work.

I hope you don’t discount the season of life with young children as one of adventure-less survival.

We are a traveling family, not because we crave hours of fussy kids imprisoned in their carseats or the taste of gas station burritos. We don’t travel because our kids are perfect little passengers and we have superfluous amounts of money burning holes in our pockets. We travel because we believe in time together as a family. Because sometimes it takes loading up the kids at 4 a.m. and foregoing bathroom stops to keep them asleep for just a bit longer in order to experience those bits of magic. Matt once told me if I was a collector of anything, it would be moments. And he is absolutely right. I travel because there is a big, incredible world out there that exists beyond my own front yard. And I want my kids to know that their world doesn’t end with them. There are cultures and landscapes deserving of awareness and appreciation. I also travel because it allows me to see home with fresh eyes and a thankful heart. I love walking through our front door almost as much as I love discovering what’s on the other side. 

The thing about traveling with kids is you have to change your perspective. For the first day of nearly all my vacations with the boys, I’ve had to undergo a shift in mindset to move forward. On our last trip to the beach, I naively envisioned sipping daiquiris in a lawn chair with a magazine in hand. But what I really ended up doing was lounging at the condo while River napped and making sure Cyrus didn’t get engulfed in the waves. Traveling is not the same as it was before kids, no matter how I approach it. And it shouldn’t be. I was fortunate enough to grow up taking summer vacations with my family, and had my parents just seen us as a nuisance keeping them from romantic dinner cruises and sleeping in on Egyptian cotton sheets, I never would have fallen in love with so many places. Instead, my parents raised the bar by planning trips and activities we could all enjoy together. When we were younger, it was Disney World and trips to our grandparents house in the hill country. As we got older, it became visits to national parks and mopeds in the Caribbean. Looking back, I’m sure they gave up a lot of luxuries to accommodate two restless children, but I don’t think they would regret it for one second. We are adults now, with families of our own, and we still take trips together. These experiences have become the thread that weaves the fabric of our family together. 

Last month, on our painstakingly long drive to the Carolina mountains, crouched in the backseat between two antsy boys, I began to question my own sanity. If I’m being honest, I probably had the same doubts six other times throughout our trip, fighting nap schedules and restless kids. Then Cyrus would ask to stay up just five more minutes so he could catch fireflies in mason jars with his uncle against a dusty mountain sky. Or River would finally fall asleep in the ergo as we reached the peak of a gorgeous look-out on the hiking trails. In those moments, I would take a mental picture (or a real one if I had my camera handy) and stow them away for a rainy day. Suddenly, every mile was worth it. 

The thing about traveling with kids is it may not be for everyone, and that’s ok. But I hope you don’t discount the season of life with young children as one of adventure-less survival. One day, our kids will be grown, and all we’ll have left is the memories we made during this season, and I want to make them count.