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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Every now and then I run across another family that just blows my socks off. I hear their story and I’m left standing in awe, thinking, “WOW! Now THEY are amazing people!!” And I come away inspired. The Palmer Family of Going Anyway is one such family. Chris and Jill and their amazing five kids are on an open-ended world tour in spite of the unusual circumstances and added difficulty of traveling with a child with special needs. When they first contacted us about the logistics of traveling with kids I was inspired by their spunk and I continue to cheer from the sidelines as I watch the amazing ride they’re on as a family.

Jill has agreed to write for Uncommon Childhood on the topic of out-side-the-box parenting with a differently abled child. I’m so excited to have her on board and to learn from her beautiful example. Without further ado, I’d like to present the fabulous family behind Going Anyway:

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If you’ve been dreaming of a big time adventure with your kids, perhaps spending a year or more in an RV exploring the USA, or Canada, or beyond then you’re going to find Kimberly Travaglino’s book a treasure trove of useful information.

She and her family have been living the dream, touring all across the United States for years and in the process they’ve learned a lot! In this book Kimberly shares her first hand knowledge of how to “Hit the Road” as a family, and this book really does cover it all.

What will you learn?

• How to prepare your family
• The importance of visualizing your journey
• How to get out of debt
• How to choose the right rig for your family
• Budgeting
• Working on the road
• The logistics and legal considerations of road schooling your kids
• How to downsize from your “real life” to your “RV life”
• Pulling together all of the details you haven’t thought of yet, like your mail, jury duty, and license renewals

On a personal note, our family has been traveling for almost four years across three continents and it took us two full years before that to “launch” and downsize from the static house-car-job American lifestyle. It was two years of solid work, weekly checklists and intense focus to transition to our dream lifestyle. I did it all the hard way (just like Kimberly!) If I’d had this book, it would have made the process SO much easier. So many of the issues I struggled with she walks her readers through, step by step. No matter where you’re at in your process, from beginning dream planting to weeks before launch, How To Hit The Road will help.

The Travaglinos are the founders of Full-Time Families, a community dedicated to providing support, resources and discounts for families who live, “full time,” on the road. If you’re considering launching for grand adventure with your kids, this is a great place to start!

“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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