The Days: explorers, travelers, farmers and friends. We love to live life to the fullest in order to grow together as a family on our family travel blog.
A Travel Blog about Life, Family, and so much more…
With the immortal words of Simply Red in mind, “If you don't know me by now…”, let me shine some light on who we really are.
We're the Days! A Boise-based homeschooling family that lives on a small farm, flips homes and RV travels in our spare time, and loves to explore the world around us. We started off as a pair and have spent the last eight years building and learning this whole “family thing.” We knew there would be trials and tribulations as well as successes and great expectations along the way. See what I did there? That's why we banked on what we knew: we can always count on each other.
We started a Family Travel Blog
We never actually set out to create a family travel blog.
In 2009, Chelsea was buried and chained deep in the bowels of an online marketing goblin. Terrifying, I know. This machine was a heartless beast spewing out widgety marketing phlegm for an online home decor brand. Chelsea learned a lot about marketing along the way, but unfortunately also learned how dictator-like leadership can stifle creative efforts and spirits. So Chelsea decided to make a change.
Into the DARK and OUT Again
Meanwhile, I volunteered to explore the more ‘seedy' side of things. After graduating from UCLA – having played football the whole time – I could not imagine life in a cubicle.
So I became a cop.
Solving problems was fun for me, communications was easy, and I found conflict to be a fascinating subject. It sounds strange, but there was a deep drive within me to understand what made people decide that they could or could not get along. I majored in Political Science and emphasized my study in International Politics. Understanding things like ‘realistic power,' detente, MAD (Kissinger's philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction) and Game Theory actually really came in handy when handling 911 calls.
There was also no limit to the strangeness of those calls including one where the actual solution to the problem was me telling the person in need to “flush your toilet, sir.”
With the dependable reliability of my job in place, Chelsea and I agreed to make a change…together. She wanted to pursue her dream of writing. How? She'd start a blog, of course! She'd always kept something of an online journal, and it seemed easy enough to flip the switch and make it a full-time thing with perhaps a bit of ad revenue to help out the family.
She definitely did not think to start a family travel blog right off the bat. Instead, she figured she would write about what she learned as she went. And so, “Someday I'll Learn” was born. Chelsea eventually asked me to write a few posts, and with that, she sucked me in.
The Adventures Begin
The content I loved to write most naturally came from what I loved doing most; travel. I fell in love with traveling around the country with the boys because it gave us amazing opportunities to explore and learn. In school, I loved science and history the most.
After having Olin, Elich, Ahren and Ikah, I knew I wanted to teach them really neat things. They'd learn the stuff I loved about the natural world as well as culture and people. Plate tectonics and sediments, deserts and forests, buffalo and the American Indian. It all mattered. It was all at our fingertips. We just needed to explore.
The “How-To Blog” becomes a “Family Travel Blog”
After the “baby years” were no longer the only thing we had going on, we became mobile. Mobility and exploration brought on its own challenges outside the home. How do we pack for boys? What's the weather like in Colorado in fall? Where can we find kid-friendly hot springs? Those were just a few of the hundreds of questions we would ask ourselves along the way.
The Someday I'll Learn concept expanded almost as fast as our physical horizons!
Aaaaaand…I QUIT!!!
I had answered more than 5000 calls for service when tragedy struck our family. Chelsea's sister, Chanel, was suddenly killed in a car accident. The pain, grief, and void was so great that I needed relief from my law enforcement job so that I could take care of my family. But there was no relief. After making three desperate approaches within my department to find a solution, I realized that my time serving the community needed to be over so I could serve my family.
Do what you LOVE with WHO YOU LOVE
It took maybe thirty seconds after deciding to retire before we decided to hit the road. Suddenly, I didn't have to ask a sergeant if I could have time off! There were no worries about a Lieutenant scheming up some plan to ‘change the world' and beckon me into his grasp on a whim. Chelsea and I set off for Fiji, the Bahamas, Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, Minnesota and…uh…New Mexico.
Let's just say our travel results varied wildly. But we were doing it. And yes, we took the boys along (not to Fiji – that time was for US).
In travel, we found joy. We also learned a lot more about each other, as well as our love for personal space. We require space to just BE as a family as well as space to be as individual people. To think and to breathe as well as to process our feelings. We found ourselves learning to be more patient with each other and learning to care more about each other.
Never forget Home
Through all of this, we always felt a desire to come back to where we started. We loved the open road for everything that it offered, but we loved knowing that there was a place to belong. Home on our little farm. With that realization, we became more than a family travel blog. We became an all-around family learning blog. We share what we learn as we go. All six of us.
Well, the baby will probably share more as he grows older but there's still lots about him in this space.
Here's to the horizon, and to the many lessons left to learn. It's who we are: explorers, farmers, crafters. A family.
May we always be together.
Be sure to follow along with us and check out our INSTAGRAM page where we post daily and answer any questions you might have. Trust me, we had LOTS of questions when we started out, without much help figuring it out. While we're doing our thing on the farm and on the road, we're sharing what we learn for you to learn right alongside. We appreciate you being here.