About
Where exactly did MostPerMile come from? Who are we?
In this journey through life, we are constantly discovering and re-discovering new attributes about ourselves, our spouse, and our children. Curt and Mandy met and fell in love in 2000 to begin our journey together, both having a passion for travel. Curt is the calm, laid back one and Mandy is the one who has to work at trying to relax. In fact, Mandy never been one to not do something full-steam. Some quick examples?
- In the 13-ish years of teaching secondary mathematics, she may have been nicknamed “Mandy the Machine”
- She was raised to not ever do a mediocre job with anything
- Responding to school emails while in labor in the hospital may or may not have happened
- If there was a recommendation for breastfeeding for 6 months, she may have quadrupled that after research and validation from the World Hearth Organization… all while teaching full-time and working on a Master’s degree
Making the most of each and every day we are given is of utmost importance to us as we believe each and every day is a blessing. Having the desire to use the world as the amazing classroom it is, we both love to incorporate education into our travels. Mandy was the one who memorized history dates and facts to get through a test, only to immediately hit that delete button on my brain afterwards…. while Curt can start calmly sharing world history when we are randomly walking through a stop we are on. Curt is also the one who will do crossword puzzles while Mandy will do Sudoku, and he will read a book about history whereas Mandy is more of the Travel section type of person with books. We go together like peas and carrots, and use that to incorporate immersion, education, and appreciation of different places with our daughters. All a part of getting the MostPerMile out of what we do.
We have our children in a dual language program at school that started with kindergarten, which is so much more than just learning a foreign language. It is about appreciating other cultures as well as training the brain in a different way when learning a second language. So much research has supported this decision. When we travel to other countries, our fifth grader is our interpreter. Having Curt working for an airline the past 22+ years, we also have funky work schedules to deal with that days off vary from week to week. Often times, we have opposite days off for him versus the girls, so we are embarking on a life-changing journey in 2018: homeschool. However, it won’t be a canned program, but more along the lines of worldschool to immerse in cultures, take culinary classes in the location we live in, spend more time in different places, and explore new surroundings while still keeping up with our state curriculum back home using programs for each subject that best match the learning style and strengths of each child. Since Mandy is still a certified principal, we will put those years of education experience to use! Curt has a background in aviation and has applied that degree with the airline industry in a variety of positions, giving him a plethora of knowledge “in the real world” as educators may say. Our daughters will be guest bloggers as well, enabling them to tie in their writing skills during our journeys.
It is our hope that this blog will help others see that a simple roadtrip can turn into an amazing time of bonding and learning, or a cruise that someone may say “kids don’t learn anything” is quite the contrary. You will not see any shared marketing photos, but rather photos one of the four of us took – usually a phone or a relatively inexpensive camera – as we like to keep this blog real. Budgets and desires vary, but in whatever YOU do, we hope you make the MostPerMile with it and remember that no age is too young to start traveling with your children!
