(Photo credit: Love Ashrey Photography)
This week’s family travel goal interview is with Ruth from Have Kiddos Will Travel. Homeschooling allows her family of six the flexibility to take adventures year-round!
Ruth was also interviewed for our childhood family travel memories series. You can find more family travel goal stories here.
A bit about Ruth:
Ruth is a wife and mami of 4 active and globe-trotting kids (ages 12, 10, 6 and 5). She’s always loved a good adventure and truly believes that it’s possible to not only travel with, but actually enjoy exploring with children. Join her on Have Kiddos Will Travel as she shares her family’s adventures and inspires you to get out of the house with your kiddos.
Does your family have any travel goals? If so, what are they?
Our family’s travel goals include maximizing every opportunity to accumulate memories with our children prior to them leaving our home. Travel for us is all inclusive in that we enjoy experiencing our adventures through the eyes of locals. We attempt to explore outside of tourist areas and view the location like the folks living there. We love exploring our own state, local region, taking day trips, camping, service trips, luxury getaways and road trips.
Why did your family choose these travel goals?
Our family motto is people are more important than things. This drives our decision to pass on the accumulation of physical things in order to share experiences together. We love good food and as a result our children have sophisticated palates, which adds to our enjoyment when traveling to other countries. We skip the children’s menus in order to enjoy the local cuisine.
Have you made progress toward your travel goals? How’s it going?
As a homeschooling family, we enjoy a lot of flexibility in our travel schedule. We’ve taken full advantage of this and go with the flow with our travel plans. We merge a combination of big bucket list trips, with last minute getaways driven by where the deals are.
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What excites you most about your family’s travel goals?
Our kids can’t remember what they received as gifts last Christmas, but will randomly say “remember when we were (insert travel destination) and this happened. The memories and experiences that we’ve shared will be a legacy that our kids can pass down to future generations.
What does your family love most about traveling?
We believe that hands-on learning is the best way for our children to gain knowledge and retain information. We’re attempting to maximize the 18 years that we have to influence and expose them to diverse cultures, languages and food. Our family loves having opportunities to live life to the fullest. We’ve been blessed to be able to document our travel adventures with our children, starting when our eldest was 10 weeks old.
What has been your family’s favorite trip so far? Why?
Our family likes to work hard and play hard and thus have taken advantage of kids sail free deals and traveled in luxury suites with Royal Caribbean many times. At their young age(s) our kids are already Diamond Crown and Anchor and thus, I was shocked when they informed me that their favorite family travel destination was our one week mission trip to Constanza, Dominican Republic. We spent that one week fully immersed in the Dominican culture, language and food, while serving the families at an orphanage and day school – program at Kids Alive International. Our kids had the opportunity to live like locals for that week and truly experienced that love has no language barrier.
What trips do you have planned in the short term? Any big trips coming up?
Our family just returned from a bucket list trip to California where we visited Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, drove the Pacific Coast Highway, Disneyland and San Diego. For this summer, we have planned trips to Block Island, Acadia National Park in Maine, Vermont, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Adirondack Mountains of New York. We will round out our 2018 travels with a cruise to Bermuda and a second one to Cuba.
If you had to give other families advice about traveling, what would you say?
Don’t wait until your kids are “old enough” to start traveling. Kids learn how to be globetrotters by experience. Travel with children is not a vacation, it’s a trip, but do it anyway. You won’t regret it and you’ll be better world citizens as a result. Our kids are amazing travelers because it’s what they’re accustomed to.
Tell us about the name of your blog, Have Kiddos Will Travel. What does the name tell us about your family travel approach?
The name was picked in order to combine our love of adventure and good food. It’s a play on words from the phrase “Have Fork Will Travel” as we love to share not only adventures in travel, but also experience countries, regions in towns like locals by enjoying their food and culture.
Tell us more about your blog. Where can people find it, and how can they follow you on social media?
Read more from Ruth at Have Kiddos Will Travel, and be sure to follow their family’s travels on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
If you want to learn more about how your family can create and reach their travel goals, you can subscribe here for my free quick and easy guide, How to Create Your Family’s Travel Bucket List:
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