I met Ben in July of 2000 on a climbing trip to the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington State. We spent our first three days of knowing each other literally tied together with the promise to save each other should something crazy happen. We have been saving each other’s lives ever since.

Ben was born and raised in Hong Kong. I was born and raised in Kansas and then Seattle. I will be forever grateful that our paths crossed on that beautiful July day because he is the best person that I have ever met and he is perfect for me. We are a team and I love us. We married each other six years after climbing Rainier and I wore a red dress.

Ben has been a teacher since I met him. Middle school science is his gig. I am a teacher, too, now, (high school humanities) but I took a less direct route into the profession. I have had many, many jobs, including a stint in international marketing for Starbucks and one of my favorite jobs of all time, working as a 1st AD in the independent film industry. Early in my marriage to Ben, the teacher, I thought a lot about my own work-life balance; working to live or living to work. And as the seemingly countless years to retirement stretched out in front of me, I found myself doing a lot of soul searching.

I remember very clearly a conversation that Ben and I had on the ferry heading over to Bainbridge Island to see his folks. I was just a couple of months pregnant with our first son, Sahale, and we were making life plans. I was working on a film that was shooting at night, and I remember being really tired. I was also stressed about money as is the case for most couples who learn that they are pregnant. Freelance film work, while intensely rewarding and fun, requires a lifestyle full of hustle and little to no freedom for planning. When there is work, you take it. It is a feast or famine industry. It was hard to plan for time off and it was equally hard to plan finances; sometimes I had money and a job, and sometimes I didn’t.

So… Ben and I sat talking about how we wanted to spend our time. We talked about traveling and showing our yet-to-be-born kids the world. We talked about adventure and fun. We talked about a plan for how to actualize our dreams. If we were both teachers… I remember us thinking, simultaneously. I was no stranger to teaching and remember loving it when I taught in Concepcion Chile (a story for a different time). We spent about 3-minutes fantasizing about what a great life we could have if we were both teachers, and then, I called the University of Washington, Bothell from the ferry. I spoke to a woman who encouraged me to meet an application deadline in a matter of days. I explained that I was pregnant. She didn’t want to know- pesky laws. The train was speeding, we jumped on and 1.5 years later…

Our first big summer vacation trip was in 2013. Leo was almost 2 and Sahale was 5. Ben’s parents were heading out to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and invited us to join them. They made this foray into the parks super doable because they footed the bill for some pretty sweet accommodations along the way. When they left to head back to Seattle, we were having a blast and weren’t feeling ready to go home. It was then that our lives clicked into place. We realized that we could stay. We had the gear and the time and there was no rush. Since that summer, our trips have continued and grown.

We have our systems dialed. You have to when you spend 5-6 weeks camping in a tent with toddlers and little kids. Over the last 6 years we have explored Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Teton National Park, the Canadian Rockies, Rocky Mountain National Park and so many of the beautiful places that exist in-between. We traveled in our Subaru for all but one of our trips and she served our family well. We drove her all over Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Canada and Colorado and she was the best! Now, she’s retired. The kids just got too big.

This is the very short version of a longer and sweeter story about how Ben and I came to live the life of teachers, working in the same district that our children go to school in, sharing vacation time and making epic family memories. REI has an ad campaign going right now called “18 Summers” as in, you get 18 summers with your kids, if you’re lucky. The message is to cherish this time because the years are few and fast. We understand the privilege that we have to be able to live this life outdoors with our kids, and we are grateful everyday. Below are a couple of photos of us as we’ve grown.

This summer, 2019, we are going to drive to Alaska in our new van, Kevin. It will be the first time any of us has been there and we CANNOT wait! We bought our van in the middle of last year from a cool lady in Oregon. It’s a Ford E-350 with a 7.3L Power Stroke diesel engine- a beast. We took it out for the first time last summer and it was revolutionary. So. Much. Space. We learned a lot on the inaugural trip and this year we are doing lots of not-so-little things to make our trip to Alaska even more comfortable. We’ll document much of the build here in this blog.