Hi there!

We have been living throughout Latin America for the last 2 years with our 5 boys, ages 9, 7, 4, 2, 2.

Living abroad has helped our family grow in countless ways. We have enjoyed the increased amount of time spent together, as well as the number of adventures we experience over and over again.

We created Families Living Abroad because we want to help make the process of living or traveling abroad easier and more accessible for families.

If you'd like to know the long story of how we got started traveling you can read that saga here 😊.

👋 We always knew we wanted to live abroad at some point, but for years we were stuck on HOW. How do we find a place to live? How do we get visas to move somewhere? Where would we put our kids in school? and of course, How could we possible afford moving to a different country??

Doing it ourselves seemed overwhelming and impossible. So we looked for US employers that had international offices. We figured that if we worked for a company then THEY would pay for us to move abroad and take care of all the logistical stuff. Sweet!

Buut, after some soul searching Taylor realized he did not want to be an employee anymore. Entrepreneurship was his path, so we put the international dreams on the back burner. I went back to graduate school and started teaching and before you knew it we had three kids, a mini van, and a house in the suburbs to boot. When 2020 happened, we suddenly found ourselves completely location independent. Taylor was working from home, and our oldest son was homeschooling. It was now or never.

We joined a bunch of Facebook groups, researched safest places to live abroad, and Taylor and I took a 4-hour plane ride to Merida, Mexico to check out possible rentals. We got back and submitted our documents to the Mexican consulate for visa approval. We were doing this! Then we symbolically got hit multiple strikes of lightening.

• ⚡ I got COVID and got really, really sick.
• ⚡ Taylor's company hit a tough patch and we found ourselves without income
• ⚡ The Mexican consulate stopped processing visas for 6 months
• ⚡ We found out we were pregnant with twins

We took it as a sign from the Universe to hold off on our moving plans for the moment. To be honest, twins scared the pants off us. We had no idea how we could handle twins let alone navigating a new life in a new place.

In August, we welcomed two more beautiful boys into our family. And then something weird happened. We didn’t die! Twins was definitely hard, but I was confident this was a crew we could take on the road. Plus, the cost of domestic help in Mexico is half of what it costs in the states. In fact, I saw living abroad as a win-win for all of us.

• • I could hire help with the kids and house
• • The kids could learn Spanish
• • Taylor could take more risks with his business because our cost of living would be cut in half

During the next three months we sold all our stuff, put a few things in storage, rented out our house, packed our bags, and did a lot of other things I’ll share in more detail later. January 2021 we arrived in Playa del Carmen, Mexico with 4-month old twins, a toddler, a kindergartner, and a 2nd grader. Our international adventures had begun.