dripping with passion

Hey, it's Ian. I’ve never written on here before, and I have no clue about any of the rules of blogging or writing - I’m a numbers guy. But Charity mentioned one of the questions she gets asked most is how we finance our vacations with points and get sweet deals. When it comes to trip planning, that's my domain. So I'm writing a guest post. To cut to the chase, the primary answer to how we get points and deals for travel is: credit cards. Sure, on a lot of credit cards you get one “point” (for example: airline mile, hotel point, transferable "ultimate rewards" point, etc) for every dollar you spend with the credit card. And in some categories for some cards (like gas, restaurants, etc) you get 2, 3 or even 10 times points for every dollar you spend. But the real mass of our point collection has come from credit card sign up bonuses . With most credit cards, there is a large number of points awarded when you meet a minimum spending requirement with...

    quite often, i am asked for tips when it comes to traveling with a baby . we have taken our little moses on about thirty flights and to visit to thirteen countries (and six states) – so we certainly have some experience when it comes to this topic … but we are definitely just learning as we go. i’m happy to share what we’ve discovered and what has worked for us! i feel like traveling with a baby gets such a bad rap – there are so many horror stories out there about dreadful plane rides and ruined plans and lots of work. but ian and i love traveling with a baby and feel that having moses along on our adventures really makes them sweeter in a lot of ways. it’s definitely different, and certainly challenging at times, but it’s also so much fun! surely the experience varies depending on the baby and the parents, but i do wish that traveling with a baby was celebrated more and harped on less. it really can be awesome! here’s just a few of our tips for traveling with a bab...

when we were in the states in march, we had the fantastic opportunity to teach a class at brigham young university!  a reader of this blog was enrolled in a course at byu called "global adventure travel," and her professor had challenged the students to invite individuals they knew that had varied experience around the world to be guest speakers in the class. i was so excited when i got an email from sydney asking us if we would come share our experiences with her classmates.  ian and i had a great time preparing and delivering our message - it was a cool thing to reflect on and project to work on together.  we focused our message on six ways that travel helps us to become better human beings. we shared these six ideas through sharing six pictures/stories. because byu is a church university, we talked openly about spiritual aspects of lessons learned in travel, and how engaging in new adventure and diverse culture deepens our ability, in beautiful ways, t...

one of the things i am most dripping with passion  about is world travel - for a lot of different reasons. i love traveling because it keenly teaches me about the stunning diversity of humanity (and the natural earth!).  i love traveling because i love coming home, and because it enhances the elements of my day-to-day life. i love traveling because it can be incredibly challenging and stretching. indeed, traveling is tremendously and uniquely enlightening, enriching, engaging and ennobling. i am extremely privileged to have been afforded opportunities to travel around the world since i was a very small child. when i was six months old, my family lived for a summer in japan, and we spent several months of the next year living in england. a few years later, we went to the phillippines. when i was seven, i was deeply impacted by poignant experiences working with my parents and siblings in orphanages in romania and bulgaria. as a twelve-year-old, i hiked around machu picc...

when the boy first suggested we go take a trip to the holy land over the easter holidays, i was hesitant. that reaction definitely seems weird, because i have a deep, deep love for that part of the world and had held a fervent dream of returning there with my husband for nearly a decade (after living in jerusalem for a few months as a student). but traveling to the holy land is daunting -- the logistics of getting around a very politically charged and foreign place coupled with a desire to experience a very spiritually and historically meaningful place in the best way possible is overwhelming! i tried to convince the boy that it would be better to go with a group of people we loved and a guide we trusted, some year in the future. but he was sure that we could figure everything out and have a really great time exploring on our own, and he eventually convinced me.  and he was right. we had a really, really, really fantastic, multi-faceted, beautiful adventure. i think every tr...

to top off our holy land trip, we crossed the border from israel into jordan and spent two days at petra, one of the true wonders of the world. petra is just dang cool. i loved exploring there nine years ago and i loved exploring there with ian. it is just incredible to think of the civilization that thrived in this beautiful, unique place so many, many years ago and to take in the (mostly amazingly well-preserved) ruins, carved right out of the technicolor earth. we had fantastic weather, enjoyed several spectacular hikes, were mesmerized by the magic of the hundreds of candles at “petra by night,” stayed overnight at the most fantastic bedouin camp, scrambled among ancient history, met new friends from all over the world, and were amused by the ubiquitous camels :) some (okay, a lot of) photos from our petra adventures after the jump…

{i’m trying to cram all the pictures i can into each post so i don’t go on and on and on about our time in the holy land(although i kind of want to because it was so so so awesome!). so today here’s a bunch of photos from the judean wilderness down to the red sea, and tomorrow i’ll post photos from our two days in petra! then, it’s back to london :) buuuut, before all the pictures – i want to share another gojanegive page! my sister saydi is fundraising for refugee aid by conducting portrait photography sessions in boston, new york city, london, and salt lake city over the next few months. saydi is a talented, sought-after family photographer and captures stunning images - this is a huge bargain and  an opprortunity to donate to a very worthy cause. check out her gojanegive page and sign up for a photo shoot! if you don't live near one of those four locations, you can still donate any amount to receive saydi's top ten tips for taking fantastic portraits.  aaaaand….we’re ba...

{before you scroll through the masses of pictures in this post (i know, i need to get better at narrowing down!!) check out gojanegive – the awesomest new platform for doing good in this wild world. gojanegive makes it easy for anyone to raise money to support fantastic charities by doing something they love and/or do already as part of their everyday life. my friend meg is using gojanegive to sell homemade, organic baby food and all proceeds go to refugee aid – check out her gojanegive page and order some! i’m scheming up my own gojanegive project and am so excited to share it in the coming weeks!} aaaaaand…back to jerusalem…   we had three must-dos for our last day in jerusalem: 1. go on top of the temple mount and see the dome of the rock 2. visit mahane yehuda market in west jerusalem 3. spend at least a couple of hours wandering around the old city we accomplished all three, and had some adventures/misadventures along the way. the weather was crazy this day and we got...

on easter morning, we woke up super early to go to the garden tomb for the sunrise service there. we walked through the dark streets of jerusalem before dawn, bubbling up with easter joy. we queued with many other believers at the entrance, thinking about the greatest miracle of all time. and as soon as we entered the grounds of the tomb, we were hit with a wave of faith and happiness that built over the next hour or so as we worshipped among the jubilant crowd under flowering trees and a gradually brightening sky. i count my experience at the garden tomb on easter morning 2007 as one of the very, very best experiences of my life. i had really built the sunrise service up in telling ian about it – but he heartily agreed that it – was – so – awesome …   and he counts our experience at the garden tomb on easter morning 2016 as one of the very, very best experiences of his life. it’s hard to explain the feeling there. it’s so so so so so so wonderful. the service was very differen...