If you want to travel easy, don’t choose Adventure With Engagement.  No AWE for you.  You choose AIL Adventure In Leisure,  which is a total contradiction to Adventure With Engagement.  Too much leisure will make you sick, fat and lazy.   And AIL does not usually include kids.  It’s an adult-only luxury hotel, spa or cruise ship experience, but not the stuff you use to make family memories.  Not lasting ones, anyway.

True adventure takes some thought and preparation.  It is never rigid or buttoned-up, and almost always has an element of risk.

Don’t go with your gut, which tells you herding your family through Beijing sounds exhausting.  If you leave the kids behind, every day at least once you will say “Oh, I wish so-and-so could have seen that!”   Before you know it, your kids are grown.  You will either have carved out memories or regrets.

Kids slow you down.  That’s a good thing on a World adventure because otherwise you tend to speed up to include everything.  Sure,  you may not walk the entire Great Wall of China, but why would you want to?   Take time for snacks and bio breaks.  Stop and smell the Peking Duck!    Resist the list and the urge to answer questions at cocktail parties by playing the  “did you see game?”  This trip never was about crossing destinations off your list.   Life should always be about  experiencing Adventure With Engagement.  And you can do that by using each other’s eyes.

Kids make friends with everyone.      Tyler, Trenton and Colton rarely let shyness stand in their way.  They spoke the languages understood in every country:  Smiles and Soccer.    And through our children, we met some wonderful loving people that we may not have otherwise met.    Which begs the question:  Why don’t they send children to the international diplomatic tables?  Let ‘em bring a ball.

Talk to you again Friday.  And thanks so much for reading my blog.  I hope it inspires you to find your own Adventure With Engagement!

Dawn