5 Things That Make Our Family Uncommon

“Families are the compass that guides us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.”

— Brad Henry

We are Kevin and Colleen, and we are parents in our 50’s living everyday adventures with our 3 daughters – Ellie, Rachel, and Sophie.

Common enough, right? From the outside looking in, sure! But there are many things that make us uncommon, and we love every single one of them.

1. Travel Large

   We have a somewhat uncommonly sized family. With the typical “sweet spot” of travel party size being 4 in the US and 3 in Europe, traveling anywhere as a family of 5, with 3 adults, is uncommon and difficult! We utilize a combination of short stays in hotels and longer stays in Airbnb rentals to minimize costs and maximize experiences.

2. Work to Live

   We have uncommon vocations. After many months of planning, Kevin decided to leave the corporate world in 2021 to make more room in his life for family and travel. He continues to financially support our endeavors through managing our investment portfolios and writing.

   I manage the education process for the younger girls, make sure everyone is fed, and write content for our family travel blog. It has been a dream to leave behind the stress of corporate work and focus on working to live vs. living to work, something that seems to be very uncommon in the US.

3. Education Mindset

   We have an uncommon approach to educating our youngest daughters. Homeschooling allows us an opportunity to provide a very rich and immersive learning experience.
   
   We use a combination of online learning for core subjects like Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts and we seek opportunities to indulge their passions and innate curiosity. This flexibility helps to facilitate our uncommon lifestyle and allows them to retain their knowledge by reinforcing it in multiple ways.

4. Parenting a Young Adult

   We have an uncommon approach to parenting our adult child. Our oldest daughter is in her mid-20’s and still lives at home. It was important to her to graduate from college debt free. So, along the way, her higher education experience has been an uncommon one.
   
   This strategy has kept her at home and safe during a worldwide pandemic and given her extra years to bond with much younger sisters.  As her parents, we benefit in many ways from having an extra responsible adult in our household.

5. Everything Always Works Out!

   Lastly, we have an uncommon philosophy when it comes to everyday life. Our family motto is “everything always works out.” This means we believe in looking for the positive in every situation, no matter how negative it may initially seem.
   
   We want to encourage our girls to try new things because, even in failure, much can be learned. Some of our most challenging moments are looked upon fondly later for the lessons we learned by having an uncommonly positive attitude and powering through.

Whatever the size of your family, we know you may share some of our uncommon ways of living and traveling.  We enjoy meeting you and sharing experiences and strategies for this journey.  We hope you’ll enjoy following along on our Uncommon Family Adventures!