Let’s talk about challenges, pivots and not giving up on your values! If you have been around for a minute, or you have spent any length of time diving through this blog, this post may be VERY confusing! “Weren’t they just in Europe for like a month or something? Didn’t I just read a blog post about them traveling internationally with their kids and then it kind of just disappeared?”

Don’t worry, you are not losing it! Yes! In February I posted about a month-long trip to Portugal and Spain with our kids. You can read more about that planned trip here. There’s also a few travel hacks I had in the works for that trip on that blog post too!

Now the part you may have missed.

I had a significant health scare about 4 days before we were supposed to leave and our trip had to be postponed. I spent about a week in the hospital. All accommodations, flights, trains and excursions got notified and suitcases were unpacked in their homes. Talk about a challenge!

So after a few weeks of recuperation, my husband and I started talking again (Read: Dreaming.)
You see, about 2 years ago, the end of diapers in our house as well as the end of pandemic related travel bans were both in sight. My husband and I started really talking about dreams, priorities and values. And one of the biggest values in our hearts was traveling! Specifically traveling internationally with our kids, as frequently as we could manage.

Traveling Internationally with Kids is Something that is Very Important to Both of Us.

Now I want to take a hot second for a tangent. When I say travel I do NOT mean vacation. Experiencing cultures, countries, people and food is something that I absolutely love doing. I also love to add countries to the list of “Places I have been to”! I want to stumble through language and currency barriers, I want to speak to locals and I want to eat their food. AND I want my kids to do it too!

It’s these dreams and these values and all the things we do around here and at Sunrise Silo Acres and around our farm that are the reason I started this little side hustle of Aiden Laurette Photography 8 years ago.

There are things I want to happen in my life and they can’t just happen if I work a regular job. Or even if I have regular plans about work and time and money or I listen to what everyone else says. Maybe your big ideas is to also travel internationally with your kids. Or maybe your idea is to start your own business, or maybe you want to paint all the wonders of the world. So I am just here telling you about the dreams and the plans and thoughts I have so you can feel just the teensiest bit less crazy about your own big crazy ideas!

Ok so back to this dream we have about traveling internationally with kids.

It aligns with some major values in our life and we know that we want to travel internationally with our kids. We also have this major challenge. We are only in year 2 of this big crazy dream and this year’s trip appears to have been kiboshed.

Time to pivot! So we looked into pushing our trip later in the year. There wasn’t any time frame with 3-4 weeks available for travel any time the rest of the year. We also know that Southern Portugal and Spain get insanely hot in the summertime and we’d prefer to travel at a cooler time of year. With that, we decided our best option was to push Portugal and Spain one full year. We are now planning to go in March of 2024 instead.

That still leaves us with year 2 of our crazy “travel internationally with kids every year” plan falling short.

ENTER OUR NEW PLAN!!

We are off to Ireland for 11 days next month!

This time we will be renting a car and we are staying in a few different locations. Drogheda (Outside of Dublin), Belfast, Doolin (a small village near the Cliffs of Moher) and Cobh. My favourite part about this trip is that our 9 year old planned most of it. We asked her to research 5 things in Ireland that she thought were cool and tell us why we should visit them. When she was done with her little report, we got to say “ok- let’s book it”. It was so fun to watch her eye bug out and experience her joy!

I will definitely be using a bit more blog real estate in the coming weeks to tell you more about our plans! But I think this is it for now!!

If you have made it this far, Thank you! If you are here for wedding and newborn photography related content, you may have realized by now that’s not all you’re going to get around here!
I am a photographer, a mom, an entrepreneur, a yogi, a farm wife and a dreamer. There is also about a million other things thrown in there and I want to share them with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!