01. Big news! You won’t believe what we are doing in 2024

[MUSIC] Life is an adventure and now we're taking you along for the right. We're the Blinks family and you've probably seen our travels on Instagram or TikTok. After traveling to over 30 different countries with our three kids, we've learned a thing or two about how to see the world without losing our sanity. Welcome to Unpacked with the Blinks, a podcast where we'll unpack what you didn't see on social by sharing an in-depth look at what it's really like to travel as a family. From finances to flight hacking, sightseeing to sleep habits and everything in between. We haven't been everywhere, but it's on our list. [MUSIC] I actually think we might be crazy for taking on a project this big. It's a big project. Yes, we're a little crazy, but we've kind of done it before. Yeah, kind of. This is a little different and we are so excited to be here in episode one of our branding podcast Unpacked with the Blinks, where we're going to be sharing a very big announcement with you today. Earlier this year, we did something I never thought was possible. We took a bucket list trip. It was very, very much bucket list, something I've been looking forward to my whole life. Yes, this is something that pushed us completely out of our comfort zone. We spent 12 weeks in Southeast Asia with our three young kids with just a backpack each. It wasn't too much travel, I don't think. Maybe 13 flights or 10 took took some six fairies, some long boat tours, three buses, horse-drawn buggies, a coconut boat, nothing major. No, no, just like your everyday kind of travel, right? I know what you're thinking. You're hearing all this and you're like, this family's nuts, which is what we think about ourselves all the time. I think you need a little bit of crazy to travel the way we travel. And this actually wasn't the first time we've done something crazy like this. Definition of insanity. Yeah. Three times. Yeah, that we keep doing it. Well, there must be something good about it that keeps bringing us back over and over again, because in 2021, we did a backpacking trip through Europe for five weeks. And five weeks obviously wasn't enough, because in 2022, we ended up extending our backpack through Europe to eight weeks. There you go. That's right. And if you watch that trip on Fold and Social Media, you know that it was nothing short of magical. There were so many life-changing experiences on that trip. Some good, some bad, and some of the scariest travel things that we've ever been through. What's not magical about being in a hospital in a remote island? Was IVs hooked up to you? So magical. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was a crazy trip that we went through this summer. But there's too much to talk about, so we're going to have to unpack that in a future episode, so make sure you stay tuned for that one. We're going to break down everything that happened in Southeast Asia, the good, the bad, and the hospital visits, for sure. Yeah. But it was on that trip that we had a mindset shift. I would say about midway through that we really started to think differently about what our future might look like. Yeah. This we have to go back a little bit, I think, to fully understand. When we first were married, 15 years ago in September, we absolutely loved traveling. We really did. So instead of taking that traditional honeymoon, we decided to take every dollar we had at that time after our wedding, which was a little more than we normally do because people gave us some gifts and stuff like that. Yeah. And we decided to take a once in a lifetime travel around Europe. We call it backpacking then because we did backpack. After the first two weeks, we did the typical honeymoon thing. We did Paris for a week, very romantic. Very romantic. We did Venice right on the Realtown Bridge, also very romantic. Very, very bougie. There we did. And then we found a UPS, FedEx, something. And we put all of our unneeded items in that bag and shipped it away and decided to literally put on our backpack and travel for the next four months. That's right. I remember the moment when we missed our return flight because we had booked a honeymoon for two weeks. And so we actually had a return flight to take us back home to the US. And I remember that we were sitting on a rooftop with like a glass of wine and like looking at the planes and like saying, oh, there's our plane, even though we don't know if that was our plane or not. But we were looking at the planes of like, there's our plane. We're not going back. And we actually sent in our resignations for our jobs from an internet cafe. We did. Because it's before the time of iPhones. Actually, I sent mine in before. Yeah. Yours was written in an internet cafe. Which for those of you who are young, you're listening. You don't know what that is. You had to go actually to like a little cafe, a little store storefront and they'd have computers and you would pay by the minute to use their internet. AOL. AOL. We didn't have to use Facebook. We used Facebook. It was Facebook and we were emailing but we didn't have the access on our phones like we do now. So yeah, so that's what we did. And it was a magical trip. That was the start of our love of travel. But it was a big moment when we were in the airport coming home. That's right. When we met that family. That's right. And that's what really I think stuck with us the most. And it's kind of surreal to talk about this story now that we're sitting here with our kids and having traveled so much. So what happened was we met a family. And I think they had about six kids. I can't really remember clearly. And we were sharing with them about our backpacking adventures. But they were also sharing with us about how much they had traveled into us. This seemed like unreal. Yeah, they had been. Like why would you teach you? Yeah. The great wallet China and I was like, okay. Yeah, they had been to a lot of bucket list destinations. And we just enjoyed hearing their stories so much. Because at the time I think we didn't really hear a lot about traveling with kids. At that time the narrative was you need to get travel out of your system before you start a family. And that was a big motivator for us on why we decided to do this backpacking trip for our honeymoon. Because we really wanted to see as much as we possibly could. Because we knew that like starting a family was kind of on the horizon for us when we got back. And so we met this family. We just fell in love with them instantly. And I remember thinking though after who we left and we wish them well on their flight home. Okay, that's all great. And what they do is great, but that's a doctor. Yeah. And we're not pulling in doctor money with our bachelor's degrees. Who knows of the future could hold. This is a pipe dream, but probably not in the cards for us, which is kind of weird to say now. Because you always, you know, that's instilled in you at a young age where you think about, you know, you go to school, you go to college, you get a career, and that's sort of your path. And then you, you know, you make what kind of money you're going to make. And you and I at the time were in sales. And that can, you know, come and go, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't like you said. We weren't signing up for. We're here to us. Well, it cleared us that we were going to be able to do so. Yeah. And so we just kind of held on to this pipe dream. And we thought, okay, well, it is possible. There are people who are doing this with their kids and traveling like this. Like we want to travel, right? That adventure type travel. Yeah. But, you know, maybe one day, one day. Yeah. And here we are. Here we are. Here we are sitting there in that one day, right? And so if you're listening to this podcast, and you think, hey, look at this family on Instagram or TikTok, that is a pipe dream. That could not be us. Remember that 15 years ago, we sat with another family thinking it could not be us. And that's right. So anyways, we get back our priorities have totally shifted at this point. We were definitely living a more minimalist lifestyle. I feel like when we got back, definitely. And we were like huge budgeters. Like we were saving every penny we could to allocate to any travel. We weren't necessarily thinking about these big bucket list trips. We were like, what little trips could we take? Could we afford even if it's just going to like the beach or something like that? And then we started our family, which was now that was an adventure. That was a whirlwind is how I would describe it. Because we had our three girls in three and a half years. And we were in the trenches of parenthood. So pretty much our idea of travel at that time was just leaving our house to go to a target. That was a huge accomplishment. That was a big accomplishment. Yeah. We packed up everything we had to go to the target. We unloaded everything we had to go to target. I remember going to the beaches and being like, it's been two hours. We are not at the beach yet. Yeah. What in the world are we doing? And we only live 45 minutes from the beach. So that kind of speaks to how crazy it was. And I think that helps us keep perspective as we share about our travels is because we've been there. Like I said before, we have been in the trenches of parenthood. We know how difficult it can be. We have been in that season where we are not traveling. We feel like we're just surviving. We're budgeting. We really couldn't afford much. Just driving to our local beaches or what we had locally here in our own area. We've been there. So if you are listening and you are in that season of life, know that we've been there. And we can totally relate to what that's like. And it doesn't mean that it's not in the future. That's right. Then baby steps. Literally. That is it. Babies and Toe. But we went from those beach trips to longer road trips. We decided we got the minivan. I remember those days. That's right. That's another story. And so, but you get in the minivan. You pack up everything. You feel like you've got all of it with you. But you're able to leave. Once you leave your state and then go a couple states. And then you realize, oh my gosh, we made it. We can do this. Baby steps. Simple, accessible trips. One after another after another. That's right. And they're difficult. They feel difficult. Traveling with kids. I don't think ever feels 100% easy. Like it felt difficult. but we still felt accomplished. - That's right. - And we started to build our confidence in regards to traveling little bits at a time. It didn't, these big over-the-top trips that you're seeing on social media, that's not how it started. It started small. It started really small. And then we kind of started dabbling and cruising. - Yeah, cruising was our gateway travel. - Oh, yes. - You and I started cruising quite early in our relationship. And our parents were always cruisers. We kind of got introduced to it, realized how easy and inexpensive it really was. And then we said, you know what, that's something we could do with the kids. - It is. - You feel comfort because you can kind of bring your stuff on. You got your room. You don't have to go too far. But over time, you get those destinations where you can venture out further, take longer excursions, get a little taste of the culture in the places that you're stopping. And I think that was really good for us. - Yeah, it really gave us the taste of the travel bug that like we wanted to start venturing out. And I think cruising gave us a way to do it where we could still feel confident because we had the support of the cruise ship and the cruise ship excursions and the buffet. So the food was readily available and the childcare because they do offer childcare. - The kids club was pretty nice. We actually started getting some date nights. - That's right. So it was kind of like how we were introduced to traveling again a little bit more. That was kind of like the second step. But then we still yearned for more. - That's right. - You know, we wanted, I think what we were really looking for was that adventure type travel or more like that cultural immersion that we weren't necessarily getting from the traveling when the girls were really little. And so as I started to get older, we started to have more confidence in regards to travel. We started to think, okay, we can do this. We can do this. Let's start planning this big year of trip. - Yeah, and then get all that confidence, get all that excitement and the pandemic hit. - That's right. - Oh, boy. - Yeah. So we kind of know how that goes. But let's just, let's talk about the silver lining. Like not to go into the pandemic and all that, but the silver lining that came out of that year was that we are like perspective changed. I'm sure there's a lot of families. And we started realizing, okay, we have to live for today. Like tomorrow is not guaranteed. Life is precious. You never know like never to million years that we think we would be in the middle of a pandemic. So you just don't know what tomorrow holds. And I think at that time we were so cautious about a lot of things in life. You know, we were just waiting. We were waiting for something and it was like the girls to be older. We were waiting to have more money. We were waiting for things to get easier. We were just constantly waiting for this. - Waiting for kids to be free on flights. - Yes. That's right. Waiting for this sign. - Yeah. - This sign that just was never going to appear. - So give us some, give us some fire. - It really did. - Oh, fire. - And we knew that like 2021, this was our year. We were not going to procrastinate this anymore. We were going to do whatever it takes. Even if that means travel hacking and using points. If it means backpacking, only bringing it back pack because we can save on luggage costs or like baggage fees. That's sort of thing to make it easier and convenient for us. We were going to do whatever it took to make the stuff. - That's a good point though. Like in 2021, we were forced to be home, to be creative, to the things we had time to research. - Remember we started doing a lot of our homeschool stuff on Europe or the next places we wanted to see. The girl started learning languages. We started preparing for these big travel moments, which was really cool too, because it gave us a lot more time to prepare. - It really did. - Then if we were just to jump into it, kind of like we've done in the past. - Yeah, it really did. You know, we needed to prepare a lot because the world was just opening up. Like tourism was just starting back again. You know, the plus side is we had this advantage that things weren't really busy. You know, when we went to Pasatano, if you think of Pasatano when we went and then Pasatano now, when you see on social media, it is the beaches were completely empty in high season. - We bump into people all the time. - Yeah. - That traveled like us. Wasn't that many people that traveled, but people that traveled like us and they're like, "Man, I missed those days." - That it was empty. - Yeah. - It did now on the other side, it did come with its own fair share of difficulties. - That's right. - There were so many documents, so many tests that you had to take. Sometimes things were opening up then they were shutting back down and then they were opening up again. But from that, we learned that we really could do anything. If we could conquer that, we could essentially do anything. And so that was-- - Not even just we, the kids were so-- - The kids. - We realized how resilient they were. We were so scared to take them out of the country then on the long trip and stay out of this, that and the other and they showed us that they could do any of that. - Yeah, you remember that. - As long as we just allowed them and it was natural and it was very, very easy. - Yeah, this has me thinking about how we were so stressed about that long haul flight, the red eye flight. And I remember reading every article, getting every tip, buying all the things and just stressed. Like, I don't know what this is gonna look like. This long haul flight, this red eye flight, they've never done anything like this. I think the longest flight they've taken was three hours and now we were looking at nine hours. And they were fine. They were completely fine. They slept. Like we did learn some tips and tricks along the way, but it ended up being so much easier than we were, than we had thought it would be. And I feel like we worked ourselves up into this tizzy, like anticipating all these things that could go wrong that never actually went wrong. - That's right. Yeah, they actually look forward to that now. At least two of them I know ask all the time, like how long's this flight? You know, and if we say anything less than like five, they're like, I'm like, what does that mean? - Well, I think that they correlated the longer flights of the nicer planes. - Nicer planes. - So they know they're getting the like, better movies. - Better movies. - Yeah. - You know, they're kind of picking up on the disbibes. - We have not introduced them into business costs. Thank goodness. - Not, no, no. - That's for a whole nother stage of it. - Yes, maybe one day, but again, we never anticipated we traveling like the way we are now. So who knows? Maybe in a couple of years, we will be flying business costs. You got to manifest them. - You hear that? - Airlines out there. We have a phone business cost as a family. - That's right. It's fun for us. Okay, so we did that big trip. Life changing, we learned so much. And then we got back more like, okay, what's next, right? So we did our 22 adventures in 2022, which was essentially exactly like it sounds. 22 trips in one year. And that was so much fun. - It was a lot of fun. - So many new adventures that we did on that trip. - We had so much fun that we actually ended up doing like 25 or 26. - Yeah. - Something like that. - Yeah, we ended up beating that goal. And as much as all of those trips were different, they were really similar because we backpacked. Now, I know most people when they think of backpacking, they think of our trip that we took for our honeymoon, which is like the traditional backpacking, where you have a backpack, you're staying in hostels, you're like really budgeting, right? - You got a sleeping bag rolled up on the top. - Yeah, that's perfect. - You got your shoes hanging off the side. - That's right. No, that's not quite what we did. We called it backpacking because we did only pack one backpack per person. And if you go back into my feed, you will see exactly what that looked like. It was one packing cube, one pair of shoes, besides the shoes they were wearing, we just packed really, really minimally. And yes, we did budget, but I wouldn't necessarily say we were like true hostile backpackers. We just tried to find the most economical accommodation. - That was because of you. - Yeah. - Because I was all about doing the hostile thing again. I'm like, oh look, this place has five beds. - Yeah, but we did. At one point, we did stay in a hostel. - We did, and they loved it. - They did love it. - We need to do more of that. - We do. That would be fun if we did a series on just like, hostile. - Yeah, 'cause I think they probably come a long way. - Well, I think too, like, we did talk about that though, when we were on the backpacking trip, how much we missed hostels, because there's a sense of community when you're in a hostel that we really loved. And, you know, you didn't feel as lonely. You had all these people who were also in the same mindset as you, they were traveling the way you were traveling, budgeting, and you learned so much from the other travelers. - Yeah. - But anyway. - See, that's a good segue though. - Yeah, because we, after we got back from this backpacking trip, well, I think the big thing for us in the backpacking, you know, yes, we are living out of a backpack, but the other side of it is that we are bouncing around. - Yeah. - That, I think, is what we related to backpacking. We were just sometimes two days in a destination. Sometimes we were two weeks in a destination, but we were going boom, boom, boom. We wanted to pack in as much as we possibly could, and at three months time span, two months time span, five week time span. And we were moving around. And if you've never long-term traveled like that, it is exhausting. It is so tiring, emotionally, mentally, physically, and then add the layer of having your kids on top of that. - Yeah, well, let's add that. Just for those out there that are listening that are like, you put your kids through torment. We listened to the kids. - Yeah. - And when any of them said, I'm tired, we stopped. - Yeah. - We took one day, maybe more, but at least one day, to just stop where we were, and do absolutely nothing, and get out the tablets and just veg. - We did veg quite a bit. - So just letting everybody know that's the display where they're at. - We just dragged them for by their hair. - No, they loved it too. And a lot of times too, it was just like, sometimes it was beach days. Sometimes it was like, like you said, veging, looking at watching Netflix, because that's what we needed. You know, eating cereal, comfort foods, having pizza, things that reminded them of home, we have to work that kind of stuff in, especially when you're doing like that. But even working all of those things in, we knew that this type of travel just wasn't going to be sustainable. It just, we love it. We have no regrets over the way that we traveled like that, but it had us thinking, okay, here are the pros of that kind of travel, here are the cons, and what do we want 2024 to look like? Like, what are we missing? We know we were gaining from that type of travel. But what were we missing from that type of travel? Right? do better as we move into like our plans for travel because we know we're not going to stop traveling. We know that. That's like a given. So what are we going to do in 2024? That's going to be different that we've learned from 2023 and 2022 that we're going to like then segue into 2024. Different different lifestyle, you know, I agree. I don't want to say European, but it's obvious in Europe, but a more laid back lifestyle, a more laid back lifestyle, slower past, safety measures, like in place that the kids can can walk to their school by themselves. We can send, you know, the oldest one to the grocery store if need be. Yeah. An education that is, you know, a little bit more that we're used to here at home, but also that they where they can learn international language, yeah, education setting, this social education setting that aligns with kind of our values and what we try to introduce. I think into our foam school, you know, but all of these things were kind of like it forced us, our travels have done this really beautiful thing where it's forced us to look inward into how we want to parent and the core values that are really important to us as a family and how we want our girls to grow up. So all those things that you touched on, you know, like cost of living is another big deal. Yeah, what a education. Yeah, picture when we came back from Southeast Asia, especially. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, what we could afford as a family day in and day out, you know, having a hard time doing that per week here when we come back. Yeah, it's a big struggle for a lot of families, you know, and so it's something that we are mindful of and you know, but it's one piece of this whole bigger picture of what we want for our lives and what we want for our future and ultimately what we think is best for our kids. And so at the beginning of the year, we started to actively talk about like, what would it look like? What would a possible relocation look like? Yeah, we did talk about this. You threw it out there on a yeah, I did. Yeah, on a tick talk. Okay, only the OGs will know about that. We'll be moving following over a while, but there was a video that was posted last year around this time that might even lend a clue into this podcast episode. But anyways, we're beating around the bush. We're just going to get right to and share our big exciting news and why we're here in this episode to begin with and it's to share that at the beginning of the year of 2024, we are going to be living in Portugal. Yeah, yeah, excited. I know we're so excited. Now, I just want to preface this is not at this time a per minute move. Okay, this is really what we're looking at as a first step in working towards that life that we've been dreaming of, that life that really aligns with our core values and is going to make us happiest. Yeah, you don't really know until you go somewhere, right? And that's kind of what we do well in our other travels. We stay enough in a place that we kind of get an idea of, hey, is this something we could do longer? Right. And that's another reason why we move quickly, right? Right. We stay longer in some of the places that are more our thing. Yeah. And Portugal is one of those. Yeah, we had a hard time leaving Portugal last week. And we spent three weeks last summer. So we didn't share that entire trip because a lot of it was kind of for us. You know, this is kind of the difficult thing when we're sharing our travels to social media. Some of it we want to keep just for us. And because Portugal is such a special place in our heart, we did keep a lot of that trip just for us and our experiences and our memories. But so here's kind of the details of what it's going to look like. We're going to be spending three months. We're actually going to have an apartment like to me that feels like putting down room feels kind of permanent. Yeah, it does feel a little hurt. They're going to ask us to leave at the end of three. Maybe we can extend. And then we will. This is a big, big shocker. I think for a lot of people is that we're going to actually be enrolling the girls in school. As yet, well, they're enrolled. Yes, but they will be attending school, which if you don't know, we have been homeschooling our girls since the beginning. Our girls have been with us at home since preschool. We love homeschooling. We advocate for homeschooling. It really has our girls thrive in homeschool environment. And it is provided us this opportunity to have this really nomadic lifestyle, which we really, really love. And so this is a big step for us. But we feel so at peace with this decision, I think because of what we're choosing to do and how we're choosing to do it. Portugal just has a special place in our heart. Like I said, we spend three weeks. I have family that still lives there. My father is Portuguese. And so we have this connection, but not just me. You and the girls were there. I was so shocked how connected you guys felt to the Portuguese culture. Yeah, really easy to do. And it also checks all the boxes. So what we talked about before, it has the lifestyle, the laid back lifestyle. It has the safety. It's yeah, the seven safest country in the world at this point. Yeah. I think that's the statistic I read right where we jumped on. It was the number seven in the world peace index. So that kind of speaks to that for value that we want it to be safe for them to have this type of childhood where they can live carefree. Yeah, to have the to have the local resources, like I said, to be close to the school, which will be able to walk them to their school. They can eventually maybe walk themselves to school or back to from school. The grocery stores are very close and very inexpensive. It's just all the things we're looking for. We're just hoping that it is everything that we we imagine. So we get a three month trial, if you will. At three months trial to kind of test the waters. We're really excited about the school as well. The school's curriculum is based off of Finland, the Finnish school system, which is world renowned. If you haven't looked into it, Google it. It's amazing. Mind blown. You will love it. And it's a lot of the principles that I incorporate into my home school here at home. And what ultimately, you know, I'd said before in some other videos that I never envisioned homeschooling forever, but I really had high standards in regards to what I wanted their education to look like. And after having meetings with the with the organization and everything, I'm just telling you, I feel so amazed with this decision. It feels just so right for where we are right now in our lives. And I'm just I'm just excited for the girl's experience this. It's exciting. And you know, this this organization that we're talking about is called Boundless Life. Yes. Right? I don't want to keep beating around that bush, but yes. Boundless life. And the reason I say that is because, you know, all the people that we've met in this process, we actually found them. We we were out searching for them, searching for something like that. Yes. And came across this. But anyway, everybody we've met has been so so similar to us. Right. In ways of, you know, they're they're worldly thinking and, you know, all the all the stuff we're talking about here as far as what's available. But Boundless Life is the organization we've chosen to work with. And there are a resource for families that want to live, learn and work abroad. So how does that work? They they have four different locations. Portugal, obviously, they have one in Italy and one in Greece and then one in Bali, Indonesia, which we didn't get a chance to visit when we were there in Bali and Southeast Asia. But they did a six week summer to break out in that area. And I've heard really good things about it. We talked to several families that have gone to that. And anyway, so they provide everything. They do three month cohorts. So we're doing January, February, March. But in the in one of those locations and they have education, as we mentioned. Yes. From ages one to 12, there's they provide full apartments, living, whether, you know, whatever's accommodating for your family. And usually within walking distance from your school or the co-working hub that they have. So most of these families can work abroad. Yeah. Obviously that has to make sense for your family as well. And then they also have community events. So that's one thing that we really were looking for. Right. How do we do all these things and still incorporate ourselves with the community? So they get you involved with not only the local community there in Portugal, but with those families that are doing the cohort with you. And then they have these really fun. Oh, yeah. Classes and excursions for the parents while the kids are in school. If you can make it family events, they're really catering to people who want to live and work remotely. You know, so they're providing you all of these resources so that you could do this like effectively. So you have the co-working hub where you can go and work. They have community events. So you feel connected to your community. They're doing outreach in the local community. So there's that cultural immersion and experience. You know, your kids are going to school and learning different languages and taking field trips and doing a lot of hands-on learning. I think that's what the finish school system is really known for is really this like hands-on multi-age. You know, what we hear in the States kind of think of more like Montessori type learning. And I'm just so excited for them. This is just going to be incredible. But I'm also excited for us. Yeah. Because we talked about it. We love traveling this way. But traveling this way can be pretty lonely. You know, you're bouncing around. You want to make connections. But then you're having to leave a location, you know, every few weeks. And being around a group of people who have the same type of mindset, families that are just like us who love to travel, who prioritize travel, but also want to give their children this like special, unique educational experience. Yeah. Well, also, you know, as my girls get older, I'm really mindful about how important their friendships are and making sure that I'm giving them opportunities to foster those really long-term solid friendships. And I think this is just another way for us to be able to do that because we will be there for a long, you know, three months, which is the long time and be able to create roots in this environment. That's right. Yeah. I'm excited about making friends, hopefully for life because one of the things I told you before that the stuff on me and really Lucille as well is going into a place and meeting people for a few days, sometimes a week, what have you. We make friends very quickly. Yeah. And it's very hard to leave. It is. It is hard. So, you know, it's going to be nice to have some time to get to know people over a period of a few months. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I was telling you about. New Zealand, I both have trouble with that. So when we go places for a few days or a week, we really don't get to hang out with people very long, but we attach to people pretty quickly. So we always make friends. They always make fun of me because my WhatsApp is always full of these names from the places we've been last. That is true. I love about you though. Yeah, for a while, I keep in touch. Then it, you know, it tailors off of, it tapers off as usual, but it's just that we really like, you know, connecting with people. So for me, that loneliness really, really is tough to deal with on those, on those trips where we just bounce around a bit. So this is exciting for me because we get all of the things, right? We get to stay in one location to learn another culture, learn another language. We will be able to travel, you know, a lot of places in Europe that we haven't been or haven't been with the kids. We can spend the weekend in Spain. We can take a quick trip over to, you know, somewhere for a, not a Christmas village, but, you know, some kind of market to make it market. Yeah, we can, you know, hit all of those things on our bucket list because travel in Europe is so accessible and so inexpensive. So we're starting to build our travel bucket list for the next three months as well on little side trips. We're going to visit. So we're really excited about that. And I just think the community element is so important. It's something we've been kind of lacking in our travels and we just, we are excited to build roots to build, you know, the roots you can build, I guess, in three months. And to really immerse ourselves in the culture, you know, like you said, learning the language and giving ourselves opportunity to find those little hidden gems that the locals go to that you might not be able to find when you're bouncing around. That's it. Yeah, if you have any insight on special places to go in Europe close to Portugal better, we're open because we haven't seen everything. We have not, we've done a lot, but we haven't seen everything. So does the M's for sure. We want to hear your suggestions on what we should add to our bucket list because that will be really fun to start to like create and curate a fun little adventure while we're there. So that's one part of it. And I'm really thankful for boundless because I'm not sure that we would have made this decision as early as we made it for 2024 without the help of boundless. Like they have taken so much off of our plate. They have helped us facilitate all of this and just are experienced so far. We're not there yet. So we can't really speak to what it's like to be there, which we hope to do and share with you. But right now, as of right now, this process has exceeded my expectations. And I, if it is something that's on your heart, if you're feeling like, hey, I really want to do this. Send us a DM and we'll share more about this balanced experience. Because we kind of go through the whole thing and maybe it might be a good fit for you and your family. If you're thinking, wow, this seems really overwhelming. This idea of relocating somewhere. But I know I want to have this nomadic lifestyle. This might be a good option for you. But I don't know. Maybe there's a lot more families like us on the road. Yeah, for sure. We would love to have you. And I think we might have like a coupon code. Probably. Yeah, we could put it. We'll put it up there. Yeah. But anyway, so that was the first element is having boundless in their assistance. The second thing I think a lot of people ask about is our home. What do we do with our home? And during our Southeast Asia trip was our first time to really experiment renting our home. And the process was okay. We hope to learn, take the things we learned from that experience and really implement them into this next go round. And the reason that's so helpful is it offsets these costs that we have at home. And you know, any additional costs that you kind of incur. You have a little bit that helps cover any costs of while you're abroad as well. Yeah, we can talk about what it looks like to pack up your home for that long period of time. That's probably another topic of discussion. But what I can say is that what we learned in just that one process was that we probably overprepared. We overprepared our home and we put a lot more strain on ourselves by doing so on leaving and coming home. So we do have a little bit of feedback on that. If anybody's interested in learning about that. It's definitely a process I feel like we should share more on socials just the behind the scenes of what it's like to prepare to take a trip like this, what you have to do and things like you said, like overpreparing, packing every single thing up and how you can kind of make it easier on yourself. Because that was a big struggle for us, I think, on the last trip. Yeah. More so coming home. Yeah, more so coming home for sure. That was pretty stressful. But so that's the second part. And then the third element is the legality. So we get asked about the legality all the time because obviously there are rules in regards to moving to another country. Now the good news is with the boundless program and the reason the balance program is only three months is because that fits within the window. So the rule for the EU is you can spend 90 days within a hundred and eighty day period. So you get up to 90 days in order to be consecutive within a hundred and eighty day period. And so the boundless cohort specifically designed to be less than those 90 days so that you don't need any special visas or any special citizenship required. Now for us, because we're talking about this being kind of like testing the waters and seeing if moving abroad is something that's going to work for us, we are actually, well, I say we, I am actually applying for my Portuguese citizenship. And I am lucky to do so because my father's Portuguese and so they have a descendant type law where I have access to be able to do so. So that's kind of answering the big question there on how we're thinking and how we're going to execute a potential long term move. Now again, we don't know if that's actually going to happen. Like we said, we're just kind of figuring it out to see if it's right fit for us, but we're still putting that out there. So we have that option if it's the case is something that we want to do, but that process has been very long. And we, and I think it's a really niche topic. So I don't know we really need to go into that a whole lot. But what we can do is share other resources about visas, about, you know, a lot of countries now are looking for people to move there and they're offering certain incentives. And so we'll work on something for the blog. We have a lot of resources on our blog for all of our travels. If you haven't been to it, it's with the blinks.com. But we'll work on a resource where we outline kind of different visas that you can apply for for digital nomads. Like sometimes you can get visas for up to one year, different relocation opportunities that there are. I know Spain had one Greece has some people who are wanting to like boost their population. So giving incentives, I don't even pay you money to move through these locations. There's even some of the blue zones involved. Yes, that's right. Which is exciting. Yes. You know, but, but we, we will put it all in one place because we do have in our travel travel guides on the blog. You know, would it take sometimes to get to the certain places we go? Like at the bottom, what to know, kind of those type of things. But I think it would be good to have one resource with just sort of everything listed so that people know what what options they have. If they are looking for short term long term or split, you know, that's always an option as well. That's right. The last thing kind of really, I think the biggest is we they get asked about like cost and the big cost really is the flights. So and it can be. It can be. You know, we about two years ago got into travel hacking. If you don't know what that is, is where you utilize credit card points to help offset some of the cost for hotels and flights. Thanks to the point sky. I'll give them a little shadow. Yeah, the points guy. We do love the points guy. And we also have other resources to some other. We'll have a guest on a future podcast that will come on and share all the travel hacking tips. That's right. And so we're really excited to share that with you. But that really helps offset a lot of the cost. Yeah. Because flying with five is pretty expensive. Yeah, even even the short flights in Asia, you know, air Asia where everybody talks about the, you know, really, really cheap flights. When you do it times five, it can really add up. It can really add up. Yeah. So we were able to grab our flights for our trip already. And I think we got a good deal on this. We got a really good deal on those. We use the collective of points on this one, which was cool. So we actually pulled points from Chase from American Express and. At Capitol one, I say and city. So we combined three, which was great. And we've been collecting. So we'll teach you more about that later. But yeah, it was $25 US each of us. That's why I want to. Yeah, each ticket. Yeah, that's incredible. And, you know, we're constantly learning by no means are we experts. So that's why we're going to have some experts in future episodes to come and help us teach you how to do the same thing. Because that's that really is a big part of how we're able to travel as much as we do is utilizing credit card points. So, yeah, so there we go. We shared our big news. We're so excited. But we also want to hear from you because we do. It's so important to us to take you alongside us on this journey. Have you come with us? You see all the good and the bad. You know, we try really hard to share like both sides of our journey. So you know what it's really like to travel with kids. And if it's if you feel like you're yearning for a possible relocation. If you're thinking about it, maybe just in the beginning stages, it just intrigues you. Like set us a DM on Mrs. Blinks or with the blinks or even Scott. Hey, Mr. Blinks on Instagram. Mr. MISTR. Dr. Blinks. Yeah, there's the plug for Instagram. But I was going to say, yeah, we want to hear all those things. But also if don't feel scared to ask us questions that we might not even have the answers to because we want to know, you know, everything to going into this. We thought we did all the research. We think we know everything about it. You may come up with something that's like, Hey, did you think about this? We would love to hear that too. Yeah. And really would. So or if it's somebody that wants to come on the podcast and chat about it, if you're, you know, really, if you're an expert, an expert on a category. Let us know as well. Yeah, we definitely want to hear from you. And it gives us more ideas on resources that we can provide for you to ultimately, which is our goal to empower you to travel more with your kids. So I'm really excited, though, for next week. Because next week's episode, Scott and I are going to be answering our most asked questions. Our number one question we get on social media, no doubt about it. I probably see this question at least 10 times on each TikTok video that I share. Are you having more kids? No, I don't get that question that much, actually. OK. We go like, you guys are old. You're over it, which we're not having more kids. They answer that. No, the question is, how do we afford to travel as much as we do? So we have a whole episode, a really in-depth episode, all about finances. And so make sure you tune in next Wednesday for that. When that one goes live, so excited. This is going to be Scott's time to shine. To shine. Yes, you're time to shine because the magic happens. This is where the magic-- I come up with the crazy ideas, like I'm like, hmm, this sounds crazy. And then Scott executes those ideas. That's right. Or helps me, at least from the budgetary side of it. You really love that. What can we do? What can we afford? How do we make certain things work better? When is the time to go home? Yes. That is so right. That's a big one, too. So yeah, so make sure you tune in to next week's episode. I'm so excited to share all of that with you. While we unpack everything about finances, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Unpacked With the Blinks. We hope it inspired you to step out of your comfort zone and finally book that bucket list trip. If you liked what you heard, please hit that subscribe button to get notified when a new episode hits the tarmac. And be sure to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have a suggestion of something you'd love to hear on a future episode, please send us a DM on Instagram @withtheblinks or Mrs. Blinks. We'd love to hear from you. And don't forget, magical memories are within your grasp. See you next time. (upbeat music)