All right, let's talk about the importance of trips. Trips are, so I'm in Florida right now. I do this every year. We've been doing this for, I think this is our seventh year where we flee the snowy Buffalo for like two to three months. and get one or two or three different airbnbs in different parts of florida and just enjoy the weather and enjoy life whatever it's become it's actually an incredible thing and i can't imagine our life without it it's a big
It does a lot of things. It's a big part of our family culture, just our little tiny me and Hannah and now River and Knox. Our family culture is sort of defined by this pilgrimage that we make.
to the mighty mouse every year and we just have just piles of memories of ridiculous things like we went to pollo tropical i don't know if you ever heard of pollo tropical it's like a kind of latin i don't know it's like a latin fast food chain down here it's like chicken and rice and beans and sweet plantains and things like that it's awesome and we love it and the first year we were down here we didn't want to leave so we tried like renting
uh like a mobile modular home thing from a friend who just bought one as like a rental unit but it just totally fell through and we were homeless but we still didn't want to go home so we just lived in like a uh in a what's it called what i don't know not a hotel a motel we lived in this like really janky
motel for weeks and i actually if we just like my iphone reminded me it showed me a picture of me without a shirt on because i'm sure there was no ac in this motel at the little table in the motel you know by motel i mean like you open the door and you're at your car kind of thing. Working on liveware actually at the time, but we were having a ball and we were broke. That was the year of liveware where I didn't have a job. And so we ate at Pollo Tropical like every day.
Because you could get a half chicken and rice and beans and whatever for like $7 or $8, I think it was. And that was enough for two people to eat dinner.
So we were like, oh, this is great. So we just ate at Pollo Tropical every single day. Anyway, so we were at Pollo Tropical yesterday and one of us just made a joke about like, so everybody here is like homeless, right? Like they all live in... you know motels and they're just eating here because it's the best deal on the block i don't know we just had a good laugh point is is there's a million of these types of memories um and the cool thing is it's not just memories
Between us, it's memories with our brothers and sisters and friends and whatever. All of these people who've come to visit us since year one, we've had people come to visit us. I remember we were like, yeah, we're going to do this. And we'd be down here and then people would be like, hey, can I come visit? And we were like, yeah, sure, whatever. And that has turned into people like Hannah's brother and his family. Hannah's brother has been down here every year.
I think actually last year we all got COVID and they had to cancel their flight. So maybe not last year, but there were, anyway. He's just made it a tradition. He's been here since year one and he brings one or two or three or he's got four kids. This time it was just him and his wife, but he'll bring like some subset of his family.
uh on like a special trip you know and they'll come and visit us and they stay with us and we go to disney and we we fish and we we get out on the ocean we we do stuff um and it's it's just generally awesome and that we have that with most other family members like so anyway so there's tons of memories not just for our little family but also for our big family and the point is have to just kind of talk
and then sort of like hit record actually for once. Um, and the other is like, I've realized that, I mean, we've realized this a ton, but it's just getting more and more clear that so, so her brother and their family and.
and our uncle and aunt they were all here for like a week and they left and we're like oh you know it's kind of whatever and and hannah was sad she was more sad than she hates goodbyes and she was pretty sad and i was like why are you so sad you know and she she was like well like we live they live in the same city now they used to not they used to live in like across the country but they live in the same city now and we see them but you don't get to interact with them like you do
when you live in the same house for a week you know she's like sad that like this level of interaction and and connection that you have when you're on a trip like this you just don't get otherwise even if you live a half an hour away from that person even if you live five minutes away and this is just totally true for us that when you stay in a place together you you know you play games at night after the kids are down and you
uh you get up and you take a walk with whoever wants to take a walk and people go do things and you're you know i did a ton of walking and talking with my uncle that i don't do back home because it's just like hey you want to take a walk sure let's take a walk the kids are asleep or whatever
um and just what yeah i don't know some if you've done it you know what i'm talking about and it's just such a reminder to me how important that is and it's like that is actually a big big big life thing for me is take trips with people it's it can it shows it's yeah you be you want to be like deeper friends with somebody take a trip with them that's the fast track
make an acquaintance, build up somewhat of a friendship enough that you can be like, Hey, do you want to go here? And they say, yeah, whatever. And you go, you're really tight after that. Sometimes you hate them. I've done that. I've done where you've gone on trips with people and you're like, oh, that wasn't good. We'll just stick to being acquaintances because not everybody's compatible, you know, and you've got to kind of suss that out a little bit.
Taking trips with people is awesome. It adds a level of excitement. You're never bored. It's like sometimes when you're taking a trip with just your family, it can be you're in the groove, you know, like it's fun. It definitely is fun. But.
I don't know Hannah and I have taken 10,000 trips together and there are just some where you're like huh like it'd be kind of nice if there was someone else here to like shake it up like we're you know we're getting a little bored of the same conversations and whatever so
Taking trips with people is a huge life hack. It's a relationship hack. It's a family hack. And you just make bonds that you wouldn't otherwise make. And you interact with people in ways that you wouldn't otherwise interact with. And it's great. And I think the best way to, I mean, we do it throughout the year. Otherwise, like not even just in Florida, we do it throughout the year, but that it like, this is cool because we have kind of a home base. So we have a car.
It's a lot cheaper for everybody. We buy an Airbnb that can fit other people. And we do things like shove our kids into the same room or even into our room. Like I told you about the last Airbnb, we had both kids in our room. the closet that was like a walk-in closet and then the other just next to our bed and whatever so sometimes it's inconvenient for sure but we generally try to get an airbnb big enough that it can fit other people
Like we have two extra rooms right now. So it's a total of four bedrooms in this place and we have one.
and when no one's here knox and river get their own room and then we have a spare that i should probably turn into an office but when people are here they can take up up to three rooms ideally people are only taking two rooms and then knox and river sleep together but anyway nonetheless we buy we do this airbnb thing we just plant ourselves here we've done all the the hard work we have all the staple things that you need we have
We figured it all out. We have a van. Now this is getting worse, but for the longest time, nobody had to rent a car when they visited us. And we bought a van and we could cart tons of people around. The van seats like, what does it seat? Nine people? Eight? eight people um and it was just us so it's like we could fit an extra six people we could fit my entire family my other family anyway so now people have to kind of rent cars a little bit but all you got to do is fly here
You can hang here. We can make meals at home. You can ride around in our car. You don't have to pay a dime for, you know, Airbnb-ing. And if you just like tallied up how much money we've saved people over the years, we generally have like four to six.
groups of people visiting per year and that's just groups like within those groups there's lots of others sometimes um and yeah and those people just you know have a free place to stay and and they don't you don't have to think about it you don't have to plan anything you don't have to hunt down an airbnb it's like it's all done so this is an awesome thing that we've done and i'm proud of it and i it's been huge for our family
in and community again it's not just family we have i can think of three groups of friends that that visit regularly um so yeah it's just cool so rent a rent a big airbnb somewhere sunny And just invite people to come hang with you for a bit, you know, and then you get people coming in and out. You'll have a ball. It'll be the best time. Yeah, I don't know. Family trips. You got to take family trips. I'll be seeing you.