Our names are Laura and Bryan, we are the Roots!  Although we have traveled extensively throughout our lives, we are starting fresh and finally creating this long overdue blog/web to keep track of our new life and new adventures.

So a quick summary of the Roots.  We met a few years ago through Martial arts. We and our kids were in the same school, so we all became friends. At that time we were both married to others, but our respective marriages were in the process of ending.  After that we fell in love, decided to live together, and back in June we got married on a secluded cliff beach on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Believe us… nothing has been easy.  In the beginning, our kids were… let’s just say…  ‘Difficult’… like… ‘Satan level difficult’.  It helps that our kids are close in age and they are mostly in the same grade and 2 of our kids are in the same class.  It took a while to have them all on the same page, but now we are happy to say that for the most part they are all getting along.

We all love to travel. As a couple w/ 4 kids we have done some travelling in the past 3 years, but in our previous life’s we did travel a lot as well.

We are not full time travelers like many other bloggers out there, but we are down to earth, we have 4 kids in school and professional responsibilities of our own.  We are just like you out there, we travel as much as our lives let us and we travel on a usually tight budget.

We must point out that we do not use groups or are a part of the “herd”.   So, we don’t have the protection you would have with a large number of people. Yes of course we will hit the major tourist spots, but we will also hit the side roads and search out the local culture.  Fortunately for us, we are not afraid of much.  One thing that helps of course, is that I grew up in a 2^nd world country and he was in the military.  We are all black belts in TaeKwonDo and I mean the 6 of us. Bryan is also a blue belt in JiuJitsu, and I’m a yellow belt in KravMaga.  Needless to say we are going to share with you not just the way we travel but also the security measures that we might need to be safe in dangerous situations.  By no means are we trying to lecture anybody about how to travel… this is the way WE travel and the problems and issues that we have encountered and how we dealt with them, how we organize a trip, and the most cost effective way that we have found to do so.

Now that we are starting this new chapter in our lives, we want to keep a written and graphical record of our adventures. For example, if we travel alone (just Bryan and I) we want our kids to see what are we doing, to have fun at our expense  and keep tabs on us as we go.  Now if we travel with the kids, we want to teach them to write down their experiences and to take pictures of their adventures and to learn how to post on this blog (yes they will have entries as well), also we would love for our extended families to keep tabs on us.  In a way this is an electronic dairy where we can look back and re-live our experiences. Mostly because we are not ‘spring chickens’ anymore (we are both over 45+), and like everybody else at our age we starting to develop a condition called “CRS” (Can’t – Remember – Sht…). But also, if our experiences and discoveries help you on your traveling, that would be a bonus for us! So we hope you find us fun enough to stick around, watch us stumble and learn from the world.

A quick side bar here: as we mentioned before, we are not ‘spring chickens’ anymore, and as such, we have had a few health issues and scares, like: skin cancer, double mastectomy, 2 broken backs, knee problems… a lot of knee problems!!!  So, if we can travel with damage bodies and tons of responsibilities… we are sure we may be able to inspire you to do so as well!

We wish you happiness and good health wherever you are!