Hank Debruin & Tanya McCready have been married for 17 years and started their husky family before starting their child family.

They now have four children, Logan, 12, Dustyn, 10, Michaela, 6, and Jessica, 4 years old. They live in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada, in a stunning wilderness area full of lakes and ridges and hills which sits on the doorstep of Algonquin Park and their life revolves around dogs!

We first profiled them in Dec. 2010, just before Hank ran the Yukon Quest race, in Canada in early 2011. Right now, as this interview is republished, Hank is out on the trail running the Iditarod! You can follow the race and his progress at the official race site.

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“How do you do it?”

It’s the most common question asked:

• By young mamas pregnant with their first, hoping hard that their days of adventure aren’t drawing to a close
• By new parents with dark circles under their eyes, taking their first flight to visit Grandma
• By a Dad whose toddler is bouncing through a quiet museum
• By families feeling locked into their school or work schedules with only two weeks off each year
• By folks with teenagers who feel time slipping through their fingers and long for one last hurrah
• By families engaged in international adoption
• And people who’ve lost sight of their dream

But what they really want to know is…

• How we travel as much as we do with newborns through teenagers
• How to manage the logistics of travel with kids
• How to keep a toddler happy on a long flight
• How we get our kids to eat fried grasshoppers or tongue meat tacos when they’re served
• How to talk their kid’s school into an extended field trip
• How to turn their kids into FUN travel companions
• How to unplug their kids from a gameboy and plug them into real life adventures
• How to inspire their teenagers to love family adventures
• How to take that kernel of a dream and turn it into reality

Everyone has a dream

Many parents share the dream of traveling with their children:

• Climbing around Etruscan ruins in the hill country of Italy
• Snorkeling with your five year old and listening to him yell, “Hi Nemo!!” through his snorkel
• Wandering the halls of Europe’s great museums over a long summer holiday
• Driving across your own continent and back with all seven of your children
• Touring with Daddy’s band and being his biggest fan at every concert
• Sampling sausage at German street fests and mustards in Dijon, France

Everyone has a dream with their children. Then, somewhere along the way they trade their dream for the “reality” of life with kids and before they know it, they’re filling out college applications and have missed it. Too many people miss it.

You don’t have to miss it.

You can live your dream!

How do we know?

Because we are!

Keri Wellman is exploring Europe with her four kids from their base in Germany. She’s a fiction writer, a marathon runner, a laughing mother and has the soul of an adventurer.

Jenn Miller is in the fourth year of an open-ended world tour with her four kids, across three continents and fifteen countries, so far! She writes for the travel and home education markets, bakes a lot of bread and loves to climb things with her kids. She’s a second generation Gypsy Mama.

We’re here to tell you that you can travel with your kids and love it!

We’ll show you how!

You’ll learn the secrets!

Bottles to Backpacks: The Gypsy Mama’s Guide to REAL Travel With Kids is a book you’ll return to again and again as your kids grow, the adventures change and the dreams just keep getting bigger!

You’ll learn:

• The 7 P’s
• The One Bag Rule (and exceptions!)
• How to prepare for health care & emergencies away from home
• How to deal with jet lag, temper tantrums, picky eaters and scheduling difficulties
• To navigate taxis, ferries, trains, buses, planes & long lines gracefully
• Games to play at home to prepare for airport scanners, third world bathrooms & more
• How to develop a safety plan
• To talk the educational powers that be into granting you a long term field trip
• To quantify the learning that takes place outside the box in a way that the schools will credit
• To inspire your teen to LOVE family travel and invest in it
• To work up the guts to let your teenager travel alone for the first time

And SO much more. It’s 140 pages of travel wisdom, resources and encouragement from those who’ve “been there, done that” with every age group.

If you dream of travel with your kids, you NEED this book!

Are you ready for adventure? Get the book!

Would you like to read what other traveling families are saying?

Hurry! Get the Launch Week Discount through December 3rd!

Angela & Jason and their son Bode make up the team behind the site Bode’s Well.

This intrepid little family is off an an open ended adventure pursuing health, education and the life of their dreams!

We caught up with them and asked them to tell us a little bit about their life on the road.
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“Can we climb over there?” eagerly asked my seven year-old, her pink straw hat casting dappled shadows on her freckled nose.

A row of arches, no longer bearing the weight of a roof, let the bright Italian sun showcase the etched pillars sticking out like ribs in the footprint of the villa.

Across the courtyard was a crumbling wall exactly like the one we had just stepped from. People paused to take pictures and wandered the path high on the bluff above.

Assuming the opposite side had an identical staircase, I said yes.

Before I could get my camera out of the bag, my daughter and nine year-old son were standing on top of the unfenced bluff.

“That doesn’t look right,” said my husband, as he dashed down the path.

It was only when I trotted over, I realized how high up the kids really were.

And there was no staircase.

My little explorers had climbed the edge of the crumbling wall up to what was once the top of a Roman villa. Ancient roof tiles stretched from the turf, where the kids stood, and extended across the broad expanse of the hill. In places, the herringbone pattern was disrupted by gaping holes, which exposed the sickening drop fifty feet below. (more…)

Sometimes, the most fabulous things that happen in life, in a family, happen beneath the surface. They aren’t loud, or showy or obvious in any way; and yet, they’re earth shaking.

Justin & Heidi Mussler and their kids eagerly hosted us for a lovely day in Jamaica Plain a couple of weeks ago. They took us to a street festival and we marched in a parade. It was perfect in every way, even the spring downpour that sent us all running for their house and a board game and to sample the chocolate they’d made after watching our chocolate podcast.

On the outside, they look like the average family, two kids, two parents with two jobs and a delightfully funky flat in a charming section of Boston.

But on the inside? There’s a revolution going on. They’re the force behind The Great Family Escape and they’re quietly revolutionizing their world. (more…)