My older sister was born in London, England while my parents were expats working abroad. They returned to the US prior to my arrival, but that decision likely spawned something in me that I’m not sure anyone truly realized until years later.

As I moved through life, I realized I wasn’t made for the status quo which often meant I rebelled against the standard. That rebellion manifested into a desire to see & experience the world in a unique way that I hadn’t in my earlier life. I had the opportunity to study abroad in college, which in hindsight I really wish I had taken advantage of; however, I made the fiscally responsible decision of graduating early vs. going further into debt. That decision left me with a wanderlust that I was eager to explore.

My husband and I met freshman year of college in business 101 class, and after graduation, we were eager to start our lives together. For me, that meant enjoying our time as a couple, climbing the corporate ladder, and (hopefully one day!) traveling the world together. For my husband, he was ready to get married and let the rest unfold from there with grand visions of starting a family as soon as we were ready (edit: as soon as I was ready). My vision of marriage in my early 20’s was that you have kids right after getting married. After years of my husband working to debunk that myth in my brain, we finally pulled the trigger and got hitched!

Prior to getting married, we had the opportunity to travel across the US, including John’s first trip to the West Coast to meet some of my extended family. Our honeymoon marked our first official trip out of the country together to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico where we enjoyed a lot of relaxing & adventure. That was the moment that sparked an initial flame and interest in traveling abroad, and we went on our second trip abroad less than six months later to Ireland where we self-drove around the country, sparking the flame of our wanderlust that led us down the path to where we are today!

I often pick travel destinations based on random flight deals I’ve been able to find or specific experiences we want to check off of our bucket list. Those destinations brought lots of questions and sometimes concern from loved ones close to us, but with each new country, it’s brought so much more to our lives in the form of love, friendships, perspective and a greater sense of belonging & purpose in life.

Our love for experiencing the world around us in a deep & profound way culminated in the decision to grow our family in 2019. Growing up, I always knew adoption would be one of the stars of that story. After lots of reflection, we decided to adopt internationally from South Africa.

Fast forward to the world shutting down in 2020 thanks to COVID... We weren't sure what that would mean for our adoption, but we were blessed to learn about our daughter Lowina later that year.

We were told that we'd likely be able to travel to meet her mid-2021 after processing additional paperwork. The process inched along and days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months without any progress on our paperwork. We grew more & more impatient by the day and decided to pass some of our waiting time with one of our bucket list trips to East Africa. 

About a month before our trip, we surprisingly found out I was pregnant which made an already complex situation even more complex plus complicated our upcoming trip abroad. We decided to not let our pregnancy disrupt our trip and forged ahead through the jungle in Uganda trekking to see chimpanzees and gorillas and to Kenya & Tanzania for days of safari searching for the big five. It was a trip to remember, but the best was yet to come!

Our story is littered with twists & turns so we got another big one a few months later... For years throughout the adoption proess, we were told that we'd need to spend 6-8 weeks abroad to finalize our adoption. We were inching closer to my due date by the day, and one week before we were scheduled to fly to South Africa and meet Lowina, our agency dropped on us that we'd need to be in-country for a minimum of three months. Which meant that not only would we be welcoming Lowina into our family abroad, but also our second daughter Ellie as well!

Our greatest adventure yet was changing by the hour, so we quickly repacked all of our bags to ensure we were prepared to welcome two little girls into our family abroad, and off we went! We are now blessed with two perfect little girls who share the same birth country and have tied our family to South Africa and a love for travel & adventure for the rest of our lives!