Inspiration

I've started reading books and blogs about families who have taken time off to travel, kids and all, and they are pretty inspiring.  There are A LOT of them out there, but I thought I'd list some so anyone else who is interested can take a look.  Maybe I can convince some of you guys to come with us :)  This list is not even close to covering everything out there, but it's a start.

Blogs:

Edventure Project  The Millers are a family of 6 (two adults, four kids) who sold their house in 2008 and hit the road.  They biked across Europe and Africa and have been all over the world.  They are homeschooling their kids, which is something I never had any interest in until now.  If we did something like this where we were gone for a year or more, we'd have to figure out two things:  how to educate the kids, and how to make money.  This family has figured out both.  Oh, and the kids are starting to develop their own travel blogs as well!

World School Aventures Traveling Families Blogroll  I'm working my way through this giant list of other families doing what we want to do.  Overwhelming, but fascinating and inspirational, too.  Lots of variety in family structure, from single parents to a family with 6 or 7 kids including one in a wheelchair.  If these guys can do it, we can, too.

Books:

One Year Off by David Elliot Cohen.  I checked this out from the library, and my husband started it before I could, so I've yet to get into it.  It's about a family with three kids and a nanny (not in our economic stratosphere, but still interesting) who travel the world. 

Travel Happy, Budget Low by Susanna Zaraysky.  Lots of good tips for keeping costs down.

How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel by Sarah Franklin.  Collected essays on family travel by a large variety of families.  Funny and touching.

Various Websites:

Lonely Planet  The ultimate in budget world travel.

Meet Plan Go  A resource for travel planning.

We Just Got Back Another resource for family travel planning with lots of good tips on packing, hotels, giveaways, etc.

Families Go  Yet another family travel planning site; this one have lots of vacation giveaways as well.

I also follow a ton of pages on Facebook, including The Great Family Escape, The Family Adventure Project, Almost Fearless, The professional Hobo, and about 20 more.  Once you find one, it leads you to others, and you can see how this takes on a life of its own.

It's easy to spend hours drifting through all these sites and books and never really planning anything, so we're going to let ourselves do that for a little while.  Our next goal is to nail down where we want to go.  We are currently doing research on Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and I'd like to look at some African countries next, though that may be a different trip entirely.  We really have no idea yet how long we'll be gone, or how much money we'll have saved, so that makes planning harder.  It's nebulous right now, but that's OK!