So you want to know more about us? Here is our story.
My name is Jimmy and I’m the sole author behind Off with the Kids. My wife and best friend for life is Charity who is my editor-in-chief. We are happily married with three wonderful children. While we live pretty average lives for an American family, we absolutely love traveling as a family and seeking extraordinary adventures.
Ever since I was little I loved going places. Growing up my family took many car trips around the northeastern US, and I unlike most kids, I never complained “are we there yet?” I actually LOVED the drive. Looking out the window at different cities and farmland was most of what I had to keep me occupied, and it was enough. I’m actually thankful they didn’t have cellphones, tablets, or even portable DVD players back then! It may be for this reason that I fell in-love with geography, and as early as 8 years old and was fascinated in visiting different states.
The first time I flew on an airplane I was 9 years old, and this brought my enthusiasm of traveling to the next level. It was about this age when I realized I wanted to go EVERYWHERE. In my early teens I set a goal to visit all 50 states within my lifetime. Little did I know at this time that I’d accomplish that goal before my 40th birthday! My wife and I completed this goal together which made it that much nicer – and we did it before either one of us had ever stepped foot in Europe! We felt we wanted to complete the USA before starting on the world.
We introduced our children to traveling at a very young age. From cross-country car trips to flying on airplanes, they all started as babies. Sometimes people ask us how we can bring the kids on a 15 hour flight or a drive across the country? The short answer to this is – start young. They never had to “get used to it” because as long as they’ve been alive, they’ve been headed somewhere.
This is the primary reason for the name of this blog, and the reason I chose it – because we are usually always off with the kids somewhere.
As our children are growing, we have expanded our travels from primarily domestic (which they were for many years) to international. Combined we have now visited 41 countries on 4 continents. While we’d love to someday visit every nation of the world, we realize that’s a very lofty goal. But we can dream until maybe someday it becomes a reality. You never know right?
In closing, I’d like to state that I consider myself to be extremely blessed to be able to travel as we do, and I never want to take it for granted. My goal for this blog is to help inspire other families to explore together as a family. Take the path less traveled, explore, experience new things, and find new adventures together – and have fun in the process! Below are some of the places we have explored to date!
