About Us
Who are these people and why should we care?
Jason
Hello! You obviously have great taste in blogs because you are still here and are looking for some kind of information about us. So here is a little more about me. With a BA in Photography I spent about 16 years running my own photography business.
Since I first began working I have worked as just about everything under the sun. I have explored different careers such as cable installer, restaurant server, inside sales, customer service, teacher, retail, set builder, security guard, personal trainer, marketer, graphic designer, web services and a whole lot more. I am currently a teacher and studying again to work in web design and programming.
I love fitness, food, and travel. Along with those, some of my other hobbies are woodworking, photography, archery, shooting sports, kayaking, scuba diving, hiking, biking, yoga, and more recently tennis.
I am father to 2 amazing boys ad lucky husband to one beautiful wife. I have thus far bee all over the US, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia, India twice, Mexico more times than I can count, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, the Bahamas.
At the top of my travel wish list currently is England, Scotland, and Wales (which we had postponed due to the pandemic in 2020), Japan, Norway, Belize, Brazil, Bali and Vietnam.
My favorite types of food are Mexican broadly (street tacos specifically), Ramen and Sushi, Indian, Middle Eastern and Vietnamese. I also love many newer American foods based on healthy ingredients including vegan and plant based recipes, and a great burger and pizza (with tons of delicious toppings on thin crust) are usually an option. Quite honestly I love so may foods from around the world it can be difficult to pick a favorite!
Kim
This is Kim. She is my saint. She is intelligent, sarcastic, creative, and unceasingly efficient. Our first trip to Ireland will always be a favorite memory of mine.
Killian
This big guy is the one who made me a father. Killian is super smart. Not only that, he is a very talented musician who has been playing the piano for more than half his life, as well as saxophone and trumpet.
Killian loves to play tennis with his school team, as well as archery at school through NASP.
When it comes to food, Killian favors (like his dad) authentic foods from all over the world.. Some of his favorites are pho, tacos, sushi, and of course, burgers. Pho Tai is currently his favorite dish out there.
His top five travel destinations are currently the UK (England, Scotland, and Wales) and Ireland, Vietnam, Brazil, Alaska, and Japan. He has thus far been to Mexico, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, And the Bahamas.
Jameson
This amazing dude is Jameson. His favorite activity is to play with his friends, playing Minecraft and Lego, basketball, archery and tennis. He is also super into knights and medieval times.
His top 5 travel destinations right now are the UK, Germany, Japan, China, and Egypt.
When it comes to food, Jameson loves fruits of all kinds especially plums, peaches, pineapple. He loves pho, street tacos (adamantly not American tacos), orange chicken and just about anything with rice. He really loves Mexican and Asian foods, and like his dad, he loves a good pizza, and like his mom he loves some mac and cheese.
Jason was born in Nashville and moved to California when he was only a year old. Kim was born in Louisville, Kentucky and shortly moved to New Jersey for several years, before ending up in California around the age of 10. They met in the city of Orange and married less than a year later. After many years together, they expanded their family, first with Killian, and two years later with Jameson. Not long after they became pregnant again and moved to Kim’s home state of Kentucky for 2 years, where we had our third son Finnegan, who tragically passed away at 7 months old due to SIDS. They moved back to California for 5 years and once again moved back again at the beginning of the pandemic in July of 2020. Currently living in Oldham County just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, who knows how long before they end up back in California, or somewhere else, perhaps abroad??
Other Things We Find Important
To finish school in high school or college, just ins’t enough. We are devoted to the idea that learning is a life long process, a journey. Much like travel, it isn’t always the destination that is most important, but the path and experiences that lead you along the way. It doesn’t matter if like me you want crave to learn new languages to communicate in, how to play an instrument, the history of some fascinating aspect of world or cultural history. How to write a book, create a software program, take a perfect photo, design a website, or the finer points of Shakespearean Thespians. We stay young through learning. With childlike curiosity we look for what is new or can be learned around us. When we stop learning we die. We choose to continue on until we do just that.
From Weezer to Willie, Midland to Sugarland, Bollywood to Dollywood, The Beach Boys or Broadway cover bands to country, rock n’ roll, solo singers, classical, Emo, or arguably the greatest band of all time The Beatles (revisit also The Beach Boys). Music has a huge place in our hearts. It connects people from one culture to another. It makes us move, entices us to sing and to dance. Begs us to be sociable, guides us through lamentation and increases our focus. Our boys study music. We study music. We enjoy the rhythms and the rhymes. It can bring us all together. Being open to new sounds is a part of who we are. Indulging in classics, new sounds and guilty pleasures alike, music is in our souls.
They are there from the minute we’re born for most. For many, we are brought into a one that was missing something until we were found. We grow up, and most seek to be a part somehow of the family they were given. Whether our natural ones, or our adopted ones, or work ones, or our furry ones, everyone has a family that they call their own. Reluctantly or not, for better or for worse, we choose to love ours with all of our hearts. Through holidays and hard times to celebrations and sickness. Our families are ours. If we embrace them like we do the world we seek to know, we become richer, better versions of ourselves.
For some, families are small. Some, for one reason or another, find themselves without their natural families. And others may lose touch with their own. But there is another kind of family. One made of people who choose each other. To put up with each other through thick and thin. To weather the storms and celebrate life. Many stay in touch over great distances, even around the world. Likewise many span years and decades of an closer than normal knowledge of each other. These are our friends. Our chosen families. The ones that the lack of blood relation alone could not prevent form happening. One thing is for certain. Those who chose friends that become family, who are loyal and dedicated, even when things get tough…. those become another kind of kinship. Those become Framily.
We desire to experience the world to its fullest, we dare to go out into it. To meet a place and a people as they are, to know them through their food, their music, and their culture.
An understanding of the value and benefit of embracing the human capacity to grow, can be attained by seeing, smelling, touching, listening, speaking, tasting, walking, traveling, and fellowshipping, and attempting to know as much of the world as possible. The further you go off the beaten path, and out of your comfort zone, the more you can grow and understand who you really are. We seek to embrace this concept as often as we can, and to help others to do the same.
We believe that in gaining an understanding of people different than us, we can see all of the ways we are the same. In this, we befriend the world and grow our human family and create bonds with all of the children of God. Trading a bit of ourselves, in exchange for a bit of those we meet, the world becomes a little closer to our hearts. When this happens, we can love our neighbors greater.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain
