It all started in the middle of the night…
It felt like the middle of the night when my dad scooped me up from my bed and carried me to the backseat of the van.
“Where are we going? What are we doing?” I mumbled, half dreaming, as he tucked me in and laid my sister across the other bench seat.
My mom turned around from the passenger seat, smiled, and said, “Just go back to sleep. You’ll see the surprise when you wake up.”
And of course, being the trusting, obedient child I was—I did.
What felt like minutes later, I opened my sleepy eyes to sunlight… and palm trees. Real, actual palm trees.
“We’re going to Disney World!” my mom said.
Cue instant wide-awake mode.
If you grew up in the 80s or 90s like I did, raised on the Mickey Mouse Club and the Disney Channel, you know those might be the most magical words a kid could hear.
Now, as an adult, those trips look a little different in hindsight. When my parents, sister, and I flip through old photo albums, we laugh until we cry. Not just at the picture-perfect moments, but at the real ones. The arguments. The wrong turns. The “I’m starving” meltdowns in the middle of a long, hot line.
Because the truth is… not every moment was magical.
We were hot. We were tired. We got cranky. Not everyone got along all the time, especially when you’re hungry, sunburned, and have been walking all day.
But somehow, those imperfect moments are part of the magic now.
They became stories. The kind you retell for years. The kind that gets funnier with time. The kind that makes you feel something long after the trip is over.
Those childhood trips are the reason I fell in love with travel. Not because everything was perfect, but because it wasn’t. Because it was real life…just somewhere new with people I love.
And now, as an adult, I find myself chasing that same feeling for my own family. The kind of memories you can’t quite plan, but somehow always happen when you step out of your routine and into something new.
Travel isn’t just about the destination. It's adventure and discovering new places with people you love.
It’s planning the moments that will become the memories you share. It's about the stories you don’t know you’re creating yet.
And sometimes it all starts with five words…
