A family travel blog meant to track our family goals and to inspire the world that anyone with vision backed with SMART goals are meant to have their dreams come to a reality!
It is better to travel than to arrive. – Buddha#turknoys #turknoytravels100 #country9 – up and around Mt. Everest, enjoying the view from top, on a plane. For now. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot
“This is it?!” – This would make the top 5 statements the Turknoy kids say all the time whenever there is a travel landmark or bucketlist we aim to go.
“This is it?!” whispered Turknoys Dad when reached Venice. This is an overrated touristic city. Yet, when the rained poured and the city of Venice overflowed, he was thrilled like a 3-year old while ranting about the cold and wet feet we had.
‘This is it?!” said our eldest daughter, sarcastically, on top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world when she just saw brown everywhere and desert view below . Yet, she was shrieking in delight when inside the elevator especially when the floor level reached about 100!
“This is it?!” shouted our son from the top of the Eiffel top while we are all in awe looking out the gorgeous view of Paris. What a classy and posh city Paris is, yet our five year old was not impressed. Yet, he was ecstatic playing under the Eiffel Tower and amazed with the architecture of the tower while climbing up the tower.
“This is it?!” shouts our youngest curly baby pretty much all the time. Yet her laughter inside the trains, planes, cars, if she is in a good, non-sleepy, non-tired mood, is very priceless mixed with the laughter of all family members.
It’s the travel, the journey. Most of the time. Not the destination. Not the arrival.
#turknoys #turknoytravels100 #country11 Exploring the Indian Ocean and atolls of Maldives in a sea plane going to Gangehi Island! An awesome experience, seeing whales and dolphins and clear blue ocean deep! “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot
This is it?! That’s not it! There’s always more to it. All the time. It’s the travel.
Mother Camel: Camels are desert animals. We need the humps to store water and we are known to survive without water for a long time.
Baby Camel: Why are our legs long and feet rounded?
Mother Camel: Obviously, they are meant for walking in the desert better than anyone does.
Baby Camel: Why are our eyelashes long? Sometimes these bother my sight.
Mother Camel: Those long eyelashes are your protective cover. They help protect your eyes from the desert sand and wind.
Baby Camel: The hump is to store water for long days in the desert, our legs and feet to walk in the desert and our eyelashes as protective cover. Mother?
Mother Camel: Yes?
Baby Camel: What are we doing in this zoo?!
Moral Lesson of the Story: Skills, knowledge, abilities and experiences are only useful if you are in the right place.
Travel Lesson of the Story: Find the perfect place for your skills, knowledge, abilities and experiences. Travel. A Lot. Get to know all different places in this world. The world is huge to settle for the zoo.
Home Education Lesson of the Story: You can’t really know how to use your skills, abilities and knowledge and gain experiences if you are stuck in the zoo!
Kids look up to their mothers and fathers for the answers. Most of the time, the obvious questions need the obvious answers. Obvious answers need obvious actions.
We home educate our children. We aim to travel. We want to use our capabilities to the fullest. Zoo is so confining. That’s obvious, right?
Camels shouldn’t be in the zoo but in the desert! Free range!!! ❤
“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.” – E.E Cummings
Have you ever seen someone full of eagerness to learn that they kept on trying and practicing to their heart’s content and when they get to learn the ideas they wanted to comprehend, they shrieked carelessly out of pure delight?
“I got it, Mommy!”
What a remarkable statement that is for a home educating family. When traveling to new countries, that statement with different world scenes as backdrop, where they claim to learn something in an out-of-box method, is beyond an awe-inspiring statement.
Those moments are contagious. We can’t help but feel ecstatic about whatever they are learning, whatever is important for them to learn. The songs they want to sing and how they sing it. Experienced riding one of the world’s oldest ferris wheel
Insert the image of Archimedes running naked around town, shouting Eureka! Eureka!! He has found the answer!
We don’t really get that passionate inside the four corners of our classrooms, do we?
Traveling and home educating shares the same purpose for our family. Song birds singing in their natural habitats. Finding their songs and unleashing the power of their music. The passion, the bliss of singing under the brilliant stars! inside the world’s first ever submarine !
Oh, the stars!
The stars mean different things to different people. Shining stars, their brilliance is simply magnificent, twinkling the night away.
“Someday, I want to be a star!” becomes a popular dream for everyone. There are gazillion stars up there trying to outshine each other. It’s a beautiful sky. But as e.e Cummings noted, there are no dancing!
Institutionalized. One word we learned as we embarked on our family goals. One word we started to detest and shield our kids from. Yet one, we can’t run away from. One word we defines as “No unique dancing allowed.”
During our school days, remember those times that we have to excel at examinations to show the administrators, our parents and classmates that we are shining brightly because we are top of the class or we got several awards and medals? Was it really that important?
We have been there. Top of the class, lots of medals. Not really that relevant in the real world.
We’ve also seen students who were bad at math and staying extra hours to study to ace a test over practicing violin or traveling on a summer vacation.
Shine bright, stars. That is what stars are supposed to do, isn’t it?
Institutionalized. The lazy way to dream, copy the dream and goals defined by the institutions and live the happy, mediocre lifestyle.
There are lots of bright stars but only when the sky is dark. The system is dark.
Our family is part of the system, we can break free for that, but for this period, the system prevails. We can only hope that there will be revolution in the future to free our stars and let the dancing starts!
For now, we travel and learn as a lifestyle. There will be “dark” moments. We do what we can.
Everytime we have those Eureka, song bird moments from our kids, we are taught again and again, (and again..and so on!).. that anything worth learning can’t be taught. Stars can’t make their own bright lights.
The birds, the birds create their own happy songs.
Happy singing birds over brilliant stars. Why not?
Happy singing!
turknoys preferred classroom! Awesome white sand beach at Maldives.. did we mention this is a free public beach???
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” – John Irving
Once upon a time, a poor village girl was lucky enough to be able to go to university in the city financially supported at the start of her degree. It was a dream come true for her, it was almost surreal and fear consumed her to live the life in the city. She continued hanging on her old ways being scared of embracing the wealth of experiences ahead of her.
What happened next is kind of expected. She didn’t adapt well in her new city environment, looked down as being the provincial girl, almost failed at a new subject she’s never trained before, alienated the sponsor for her financial aid, and became the almost-dead tiny fish in the big ocean.
She almost died because the skills required swimming in the small pond is way different than swimming in the ocean. It takes lots of courage. Not only deep-breath-take-in-all courage but make-it-happen courage.
She didn’t have the courage but what she feared most of all is going back to that same old pond, where everything is predictable. Fear of leaving the big ocean took over and survival instincts came in huge wave and she kept on swimming ferociously.
Spoiler alert – the girl turned in to a woman who had her dreams come true.
It’s a beautiful world out there, under the deep ocean blue !
And what happens when all dreams came true already and we are living the life we love? What happens when the future is now?
What happens when we are in deep on the ocean and mingling with all the sea creatures and see habitats underneath? And we ran out of oxygen?! Oh boy that is scary!
It takes courage to live the way of life we love. The what-ifs, the expectations, the fear of losing everything.
It takes a lot of courage to live and improve the way of life we love. The fear of failure on totally different level, the fear of much more risks, the fear of embarrassment, of fear of not reaching the full potential.
It takes a lot of new level of courage to set goals improving the way of life we love. The fear of not being content with the way of life.
At the present time, when stepping up and making things happen for me and my family, when we set any goals, especially travel goals, my metaphor goes from the deep ocean to city’s skyscrapers.
I think skyscrapers when we want to live the way we love and improve it further. Well, I used to think of mountains to conquer, but now, somehow, tall buildings and majestic towers appeal to me more. Maybe because I know, there a lot of things going on inside the buildings that to reach from one floor to another is way more complicated than it seems. For sure, mountain climbers will say the same thing, that going to higher levels require more skills and tools, and that is very true. Not a mountain climber just yet – but it’s on our family bucket list, too!
The point is…
Living the life we love and fully embracing the fun of the experiences takes a lot of courage. I think skyscrapers because when you look down at the view, there is a feeling of falling, and that is scary. What if the building collapse? What if a tsunami washed away the building? (This happened.)What if planes crashed into the tower? (This happened, too.) What if we fall? Oh boy, what if we fall? The embarrassment, the shame, the pain of falling!
Swimming in the big ocean or appreciating the view from a skyscraper may require different set of skills to keep going but it does require the same courageous attitude to keep exploring a different territory, of living a way better life than what we have already or even staying put and enjoying the blessings we are already given.
The first act of courage is to accept that we deserve the way we live, good or bad. Thereafter, to act like we belong, to act and make ourselves deserve more than what we have, that’s the next level of courage.
Looking at how we live as an expat family in the region, we realize that we are sacrificing a lot of things like little bit of green environment. Our family life is nowhere perfect where we want it to be. Yet this is how we want to live our life now. This is what we deserve now. We are in our comfort zone now.
Seven years or so, from now, we made a conscious effort to make things different for our family. That took a lot of us, to look beyond what is now, to set goals and while at the same time, enjoying our happy and content now.
To accept that we prefer the brown sand (and dust!) over the green for now, that’s courage. If, in the near future, that we realize that we can’t survive without a little bit of green, it will take a lot of courage on our part to make the changes we are supposed to do. We can almost feel the fear and we are looking forward to it.
For now, the brown sand (and dust!) enables us to enjoy a variety of colors while realizing our travel goals.
It takes courage to set priorities over our desires.
It takes courage to focus on our goals while living the life we have now.
It takes courage to say out loud to the world our goals.
It takes courage to live the life we want.
It takes a lot of courage.
How courageous are you and your family?
Our Turknoy family – mix and match halo halo! Hoping to travel the world together as family!
Turkey! Turkey! It’s great country to travel with kids!
Home sweet home adventures are the best! There is just pure joy in traveling in Turkey. This country is home for us. We don’t live here for now, but our hearts will always be thinking of family and awesome places in this majestic and historical country. To use Alexander The Great’s metaphor, The Capital of The World. (He’s referring to Constantinople, now Istanbul… but the entire Turkey for our family is, The Capital of The World.)
Since, we have been asked often what are the places to visit in Turkey, thought it would be a great idea to list our favourites, so far. Places we actually visited with kids, where it is possible for the parents and kids to enjoy both at the same time, while learning from the adventures.
There are a lot of places to visit in Turkey. This list is no way comprehensive (our five top favourite places!) and no way connected to any travel agencies.
1. Pamukkale – This means “Cotton Castle” in Turkish. Travertine thermal springs, pools and limestone walls can be enjoyed for several days in any season. We have visited the place during winter and we still enjoyed the springs with much lesser crowd. We also enjoyed the oldest swimming in the world.There are a lot of limestone fallen formation which makes the place look like a make-believe world. Discussions with kids can be focused on science or geography!
Pamukkale means Cotton Castles!
The Ancient City of Hierapolis is also adjacent to the city which can be a huge playground for kids while studying archaeology and history.
This is number 1 on our list and seriously, an underrated tourist attraction in Turkey!
2. Cappadocia – This place is also number 1 in our hearts! Lots of first for our family. First Hot Air Balloon Ride, stayed in an actual cave for several days, can hotel, that is, explored the underground city, definitely seemed like a make-believe world like Pamukkale.
Cappadoccia. – lots of firsts for our family!3. Troia – This maybe Brad Pitt influenced way more than Homer, but being the actual place of Troy, where the Trojan Horse maybe located for real, is just awesome baseline discussion about Homer with kids.
This is a personal choice for us and unless you really love history and archeology, this may be a bit of “tourist trap.” for those tourists who will get of their way to visit.
Troy, kids inside the Trojan Horse! 4. Temple of Athena – The place is close to Izmir and Ephesus, but the view from the Temple defines serenity. Not necessarily recommended for travel with kids, but for those looking for solitude. We were just lucky, we managed to enjoy the view and serenity with kids. Great moments.
Temple of Athena and Mount Ida. – serenity ! 5. The Capital of the World – Constantinople or modern day Istanbul – There are a lot of things to do. Full week exploring with kids may not be sufficient. The list just goes on.. Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and Bhosporus Boat Trip!
Blue MosqueHagia Sofia
To stay in one continent and see the the other one from afar – this should be on everybody’s bucket list, don’t you think?! Visit Istanbul!
Atlas wasn’t forced to hold up the world. He was convinced that if he didn’t, the world would fall.
Atlas is the Titan God of Astronomy and Endurance. Endurance? Who endures astronomy? Astronomy is an exploration, a fascination for all of us, the endless journey into the unknown and timeless magnificence.
Astronomy should be an endless and timeless exploration. Not an endless and timeless endurance.
Yet, somehow, Greek mythology managed to tame the wild and free souls of ancient people. As early as those ages, we are scared to have unlimited boundaries to explore, so we bury ourselves with the preconceived irony of life.
God of Astronomy and Endurance. Yes, you have the capacity to explore yet you should choose to stay put and hold up the world otherwise, if the world would fall then you are a failure at being god. You, Atlas, should endure the responsibility of the world!
But, hey, it’s your choice! You are God of Astronomy, you can explore the universe. But remember. You are also God of Endurance! Don’t enjoy exploring too much that you forgot to endure and suffer with your responsibilities to the world.
See the ironic sense there? We do. It’s very obvious. We see it in all patterns in life.
Each of us have become our own version of “Atlas”. We hold the world in a certain standard because we were told to, expected to. Otherwise, the world would fall flat to our faces with shame and embarrassment. We all have responsibilities, we all need to hold up the world. Otherwise, the world would fall. The people around us would crumble.
We are all raised to conformance. Raised to follow a certain pattern in life set by our parents, by our religion, by school and by society. We get so molded by norms, rules, commandments, expectations that being a good person means full compliance.
Being human, we all scream to be free, to be wild, yet we are tamed to conformance. We are tamed to follow order.
Yet, we are always reminded by the same institutions who mold us that we are free. That everything we are now is because of our choices!
And yes! Like Atlas, we all believe that we are free to choose the life we want. This seems like an immense illusion?
Yes but there is a bigger illusion. The real illusion is not the free choices we make in life, the bigger illusion is the world falling, people around us crumbling! The odds of those happening depends how we look at the illusion of our roles in carrying the world.
If Atlas only learn to let go of the world, the world would carry him and continue its rotation and revolution, playing its part in the Universe.
Nobody should carry the world on its shoulder. Nobody can.
Our existence in this world is important. It is. Because it is unique! Nobody is responsible for our existence but ourselves.
We are responsible for our own choices, for our own way of living life. If we screw it up, then we only have ourselves to blame. See that highest peak in the world, Mt. Everest? It’s within anybody’s reach! Especially for this kid!
That is way more scary right? To be responsible for our own decisions? Then we have no one to blame? Can’t blame our parents, our religion, our school, our society? If we stood our ground and live the life we always wanted, and we fail, that is a huge slap to our faces.
Why risk those odds? Let’s just conform and be the majority. Let’s continue holding the world, because the world will not fall and we will be safe and conforming.
For our family and with our travel goals, Turknoy Travel 100, we choose to let go of the world and enjoy the view of the world’s rotation and revolution, as it should be.
We aim to travel. A lot.
We don’t send the kids to school because we believe in learning, not indoctrination.
We do not belong to any religion, we believe in God strongly.
Our ways and means of parenting are frown upon by elders and society, we listen, to them but we make our own decisions based on the uniqueness of our children.
Our children are unique individuals. Parents are happily together with similar goals in life yet we cherish the differences in our personalities. Who we evolved to be will be based on how each one of us wanted to evolve.
Everybody is unique. We can’t carry someone else’s responsibilities for themselves. Not family. Not school. Not religion. Nobody.
With eyes wide open, we love every moment of our lives. That very scary part, we are willing to face. If the world drops, which we believe it won’t, the blame is on us. That’s cool. Tell us, “We told you so.. “ and we will just say back, “It was worth our while!”
The world is there to be explored, not to stay on our shoulder and treat as a burden.
That is one mythology we are willing to tell to our kids.
“I learn by going where I have to go.” – Theodore Roethke
The fun thing about life is we will never know what we are capable of doing and achieving until we know better.
And the very unfortunate thing in life is we will never know better until we just go for it…
Ahhh, life is great! It makes taking risks less risky because we kinda know that we all don’t know what we are doing anyways!
(If you don’t know this, then newsflash – we are all winging it in this life!)
So, why not throw all inhibitions out of the way and just GO FOR IT!
There is a big world out there to explore and to experience. Endless surprises awaits anybody who has the courage to ask for it. So, we always just say GO FOR IT!
These are the most common phrases we hear ourselves say to why we should not travel with kids. Just change the “travel with kids” with any goals your hearts are crying out to achieve but scared to accomplish and we’re on the same page.
Since our goals are set already, we try to be hard on ourselves to kick our a$$ to action. Usually works for us. Hope this works for you, too.
1. “Uhmm, I don’t know….” – which actually means I’m too lame (or pathetic) to even source out information from Google and Wikipedia or talk to friends and colleagues who know about stuff! Don’t be lame, JUST GO FOR IT!
2. “I don’t have the resources,” similar to “I don’t have time” or “It’s expensive.” – Which actually means I’m too lame (or pathetic) to even source out information from Google and Wikipedia and other sources to work my way around lack of resources. So we say, “Don’t be lame, JUST GO FOR IT!”
3. “It’s complicated. I have so many considerations to make…” which actually means “I’m too lazy to move out of my comfort zone. So we say, “Don’t be lazy, JUST GO FOR IT!”
4. “I don’t think I can do that..” which actually means again that I’m too lazy to move out of my comfort zone. So we say, “Don’t be lazy, JUST GO FOR IT!”
5. “I really want to do that..BUT…” which means “But, I really don’t want to.” So we say, If really want to, JUST GO FOR IT! If you don’t really want to, let’s move on, quit it!
Eye on the ball or drop the ball! It’s that simple. The first one requires a lot of balls working, though. That’s an awesome thing!
Yes, just go for it and then we’ll know better. That’s life and living life.
Dreams. Goals. They can come true.
No filter required #turknoys #turknoytravels100 #country12 Lapland where we experienced Aurora borealis #northernlights for three consecutive nights! Family goals do come true! For real! #unicornvibes #travel #travelgoals #familytravel #travelwithkids #familygoals #travelblog #unschooling #homeeducation #sweden #lapland #abisko #kiruna #bucketlist
“To journey without being changed is to be nomad; to change without journeying is to be a chameleon; to journey and be transformed by the journey is to be pilgrim.” – Mark Nepo
The picture of traveling with kids used to give me images of whining, crying, outbursts and lots of kicks at the backseat of the plane (oh that poor passenger!) Not to mention the screams of “I am tired.”, “My feet hurt really bad, we are walking for hours!” and “We are starving.”, shouts of suffering like we subjected them to the huge amounts of torture while traveling.
And yes, that look of fellow travelers, and locals in the area… The – “What are these parents thinking?”-look. And the “Some people should not be parents!”-look, joined with “Oh these poor starving, tired kids, being dragged by their parents to foreign, scary places.” – look.
Side note: We don’t like judging the people we meet on the road when our family travel but we like to judge ourselves through the eyes of these people. That is a bad habit and we are working on that.
But, yes. Traveling with kids are these images, looks and judgments. Not going to sugar-coat that. Traveling with kids is not easy. Traveling with kids is sometimes a form of torture to all family members and people surround us (especially that fellow airplane passenger.)
#turknoys #turknoytravels100 #country4 another rainy day at the Vatican City! “To journey without being changed, is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim.”–Mark Nepo Cheers to all of us finding our pilgrim! 🦄🦄#unicornvibes #travel #travelblog #familygoals #travelgoals #travelwithkids #familytravel #unschooling
Yet, we are advocates of family travel. We are passionate about packing our bags times five not because it’s fun at all times (it is fun most of the time.) nor we like to torture ourselves (notice, how many times the word torture appears on this blog post!)
We like traveling with kids because of the golden moments.
Kids are pretty good at being in the moment, enjoying the moments.
Experience people, places and events in their wholeness. To be mindful of the moment. To be a child again with no worries. This is our golden take away from life’s experiences, what we always observe when we travel with our turknoy kids.
We constantly move places to evolve, to travel. Yet when we are in certain place, we let the place evolve us. Enjoying the place, the people in their wholeness, that is what makes traveling a pilgrim.
#turknoys #turknoytravels100 #nepal #country9 Getting cozy with the holy people! “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller #unicornvibes #travel #travelblog #travelwithkids #travelgoals #familytravel
It’s so easy with kids to identify what they appreciate and what they don’t. When we take them to museums, their body languages tell us what they love to see. It doesn’t matter if it’s a famous painting or sculpture. They are not influenced by the preconceived notion or majority’s view of what is great and what is awesome. Their eyes know and seeing that spark every time they see something new for the first time, and they love it, that’s appreciating something in their wholeness.
What is not easy however, is for us, “molded” adults to let them choose and enjoy their own moments.
When all the kids didn’t like to be among the crowd who wanted to see Mona Lisa in the Louvre, Mom and Dad were like.. “Uhm, what the?! We took you to Paris and Louvre so you can see the magnificence of this painting, world-class, timeless masterpiece and.. you don’t want to wait your turn to take a picture with Mona Lisa?! Are you all kidding? (or in our mind – are you f*&%ing kidding us?!) A million kids would want to have your place and see this once in a lifetime opportunity and you want to pick your sister’s nose?! (True story!) – to which they replied: But, Mom, she has something in her nose!.. and it seems illogical at that time. And truly a waste of time and lots of euros!
These kids chose picking Kayra’s nose over oogling and admiring Mona Lisa. And when we forced them, they turned cranky and grumpy followed by a lot of whining!
Our younges Turknoy and Mona Lisa 😜😜
That doesn’t sound like a “pilgrim” to anyone. Well, it certainly didn’t sound like a pilgrim for us then and now. Just a making a point here. No judgment, remember?
The hardest part of traveling with kids, and parenting kids, in general is when we take them to certain places where we want them to look at what we think are awesome, magnificent masterpieces and they choose to look elsewhere, to what they think are awesome, magnificent, masterpieces.
Traveling with kids doesn’t not mean they are going with the flow and itinerary of the parents. Traveling with kids, as difficult and inflexible it may sound, means five different minds and hearts each finding their moments and wanting to be transformed by the journey.
After exploring several countries, we are slowly learning to let go and have the kids enjoy their own journey leading to their own pilgrims. It didn’t even bother us when they chose hanging out with the pilots instead of looking at how great and magnificent Mount Everest peak is. We had to emphasized to ourselves that the peak of the highest mountain in the world is magnificent for us, what is awesome for the kids are the pilot and co-pilot navigating the plane. There is nothing wrong there.
Our Turknoy enjoying hanging out with the plane co-pilot instead of enjoying the peak of Mt. Everest!
Kids are pretty good at being in the moment, enjoying the moments. Moments important for them, not by dictated by anyone or anything.
That’s how kids evolve. That’s how people evolve and learn from places and experiences.
Now, our picture of traveling with kids give us images of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, images of three cheeky monkeys transforming into three awesome, strong willed adults equipped with passion and memories to change the world.
That’s an image worth the torture, uhhm….Yeah, I mean challenges when trading with kids.
“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell
Our family’s first hot air balloon ride! First for all of us, exploring Cappadocia, Turkey! #turknoys #turknoytravels100 #travel #travelblog #travelwithkids #unicornvibes #travelgoals #turkey #cappadocia #hotairballoon
There are 196 independent countries in our world today. So, why 100 countries by 2023?
Our primary reason why 100 countries is because we want to provide the kids our best milestones for our available resources in a limited time.
Doing some simple math, that is more than 50% of the total countries. This means that if (when! – we are the optimistic bunch, right?!) we achieve our travel goals before the kids turn legal age, we have taken them for the first time to more countries than they will visit for the first time when they grow up.
Come to think of it, isn’t that how good parenting goes nowadays? We, parents, tend to give the children more resources than they would actually need to cope in their adult life?
Pick up and drop to extracurricular activities, after school – don’t we know how that felt. Those swimming, soccer, choir practice, add in the dance, voice, musical instrument lessons.
Parents used to complain about this, in our family. When we pick up our kids from these classes or practice, we rant about how “Our parents never pick us up from swimming classes, or taken us to any classes… “ or how “My life is passing by right in front of us while waiting for you to practice choir…” or “My tombstone will read.. Here lies Mom and Dad, driver of the kids…”
We can really get more creative whining and the complaining until the kids ears fell off.
Obviously, we don’t like this particular task, but we perform it diligently anyways. And someday, our kids, for sure, will not consider this huge effort, that time when they strongly believe that we have ruined their lives for good for being the worst parents ever in the entire world!
Happens to the best of parent , we think! Our personal opinion. This is the cycle of parenthood:
Parents try the very best within all the available resources. Children want more. Parents try harder. Children elevate their needs and desires. Parents unable to give more. Children blame parents. Children work for their own or they become parents themselves. The cycle carries on.
Indeed, the cycle can happen to any parent. It happened to our parents. And our parents’ parents. Well, remember our parents nagging how we have the better of things?
Well, our parents did try our best to give us all the resources they could ever afford. None from any side, think it was enough. There is always something out there in a different generation to elevate the needs and wants.
Awareness and acknowledgement of this cycle made us set expectations with the children. Open discussions with little bit of negotiations work wonders all the time.
Especially for our travel goals.
“Your parents want to travel, want to come along?”
“Yes?”
“Okay. You can come to 100 countries we will go to as family.”
“Only until 2023. By then, if you want to see other countries with us, you will have to pay for your own travel expenses.”
Expectations set. No harm feelings, kiddos, we’re off to couple cruising in few years.
And this goes to not just traveling. In all aspects of parenting.
We should give our children the resources we can give as parents, BUT (that’s a big B-U-T) not to the point of disabling them to do greater things in life.
And definitely not to the point of sacrificing everything we have parents as human beings so that we are left with no identity the minute our kids are adult enough to stand (preferably travel) on their own two feet.
The secondary reason is just the number itself!
We tend to associate the number 100 to perfection. To great and awesome exam grades, 100% effort in studying for exam, competing for something.
We want our turknoys to associate 100 to the 100% love and adventure we want to offer them. Then someday, to that 100 times we step on foreign soil and felt happy, scared, excited, all those rush of emotions while looking at each other’s’ reactions. One hundred times we felt happier than we ever could.
100 first times. 100 first steps. 100 milestones.
“Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prior to being bitten by travel bugs, our family are advocates of customized education even when our kids were attending their early years of ‘education” in schools. We believe that every individual is unique and every kid has their own preference and phase of learning depending on their inherent talents and capabilities. We believe it so strongly that we even think it is commonsensical. Think evening gown, tailor made vs. store bought. Kind of obvious, right?
However, the Turknoy parents were educated in a traditional fashion. Our minds were molded to have the mindset that if we enroll our kids to the best school available, then we are doing what every parents should do. That we are good parents.
And we wanted to be good parents.
We paid exorbitant amount of tuitions for several school terms. Imagine this, one school term for one kid is equivalent to one parent’s lifetime education, including the graduate school, in our home countries. No worries, we used to say. We are trying our best to be good parents.
We picked up and dropped our school diligently to school, on time, every day. We got off work to attend parent-teacher meetings to discuss about the school curriculum which our kids probably learned at home already. We wanted to good parents.
We required our kids to do their tons of homework (starting at age 3!) and nagged the kids about studying hard and forced the kids to learn something they didn’t want to know, that some of them are not yet capable of learning, because of standard curriculum and have-to learning milestones. We wanted to be good parents.
We accepted explanations and letter of apologies from kid bullies who punched our natural-born leader kiddos so they can conform to the kids’ standards of friendship and compliance. We wanted to be good parents.
Settling into the routine of wanting to good parents, we booked a holiday, because that’s what some good parents do. They take their kids to holiday adventures. On a school term break, of course!
We travel with three kids in tow to France and Italy. Our first two countries to explore together. Awesome magic happened. Imagine how they describe that first kiss, that first love? Multiply that by five thousand! That’s how the parents felt when they see the kids mingling with fellow tourists, talking to locals, enjoying the magnificent sceneries and landscapes, enjoying the art, the culture, the architecture of these fabulous countries.Rain or shine, our family explore! #turknoys #turknoytravels100 “A rainy day is the perfect time to walk in the woods.” – Rachel Carson #unicornvibes #travel #travelgoals #travelwithkids #travelblog #france #nicefrance #country1Family of five , 2 boys and 3 girls… crossing the travel bridge while ranting and raving to each other! #unicornvibes #travelgoals #turknoys #travelwithkids #turknoytravels100 #travelgoals #country2 #italy #florence
Things did not go to plan. We experienced being left behind by trains, we cancelled hotel bookings, we made impossible hotel re-bookings, we got lost, a lot of times, took the wrong train a lot of times, almost starved to death (using the kids’ words), a lot of times.. and we observed how the kids were more than just going along with the flow. They were discussing and making decisions with us. Yes, there are a lot of whining and complaining, but sorting things out with all family members, despite the helplessness of the situations, those moments are the eureka moments for us! We wanted to travel more together.
We wanted to travel more together so the parents can witness the shine and joy in the kids eyes every time they see something new for the first time. Every time they contribute to the travel decisions and get to say “See, Mom and Dad that was a nice call. Aren’t you glad we got down on this metro stop? ”
We wanted to travel more together so the kids can witness the shine and joy in their parents eyes every time they see their dreams realized. “Wow, Mommy, you are teary-eyed. How long have you wanted to see the Eiffel Tower? And then attempted to answer without sobbing too much… “All my life, babies. All my life.” We didn’t need to tell them that dreams do come true. We showed them what reactions we had when dreams do come true.
We wanted to travel more together so we can share more awkward moments, like that time when we almost got thrown out of the hotel because of the noise the kids made and their parents handled that really diplomatically with the hotel receptionist. (At least, when in front of the kids!)
We wanted to travel more together so we can share more scary moments like that time when our baby almost got left behind in the airport (true story!) and survive to tell it!
All those moments, moody, grumpy, scary, fun!
Mum, remember that time when we were in Paris on top of the Eiffel Tower?… “ Of course, darling, I do remember, vividly.
And the great part is, we will hear that kind of phrase for a long time since the kids started traveling now that they are still young.
We wanted to be good parents. We wanted to travel more together. You know that decision tree, when you are face with gain-gain choices, we choose the gain that feels right.
Traveling together feels right for our family. We took the kids out of school, stopped paying tuition fees, stopped waking up wee hours every school day, stopped stressing out the kids to finish their homework, said good byes to bullies and started enrollment to airline mileage points.
Baby steps. To a path with not so much trail.
Three days exploring the Louvre with kids and several years to get over the memories (maybe never! Hopefully never!)
Turknoy Travels 100! 