Deciding To Move Abroad With Children [Our Family’s Story]

Our life before moving abroad with children (aka the backstory):

We were enjoying life as a rapidly growing family of 5, in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

We had moved to Florida (after spending most of our lives in Colorado) when my husband joined the US Navy wayyyyy back in 2008. First we were stationed in Pensacola, and then Jacksonville.

Larry served 6 years in the military as active-duty (a full time service member), plus another 2 years in the Navy Reserves.

We had our share of deployments and many hours of flight training and other military duties which often kept him away from home for big chunks of time. Being a military family was definitely a lifestyle of it’s own.

The experience of missing first steps, major holidays and birthday celebrations (not to mention the general stress of military life) made it very appealing for Larry to switch from full time enlisted to part time reservist. Once we went Reserves, he joined me in my rapidly growing ecommerce business. (That’s a wild story all of it’s own…lol!)

Overall, life was pretty great- and our military years helped us to fully appreciate our family life and being able to spend the days together.

We loved running our own business. We owned a nice little ranch style home with a killer backyard. And we really enjoyed our proximity to Disney World and their many resorts! (Yay, Florida!)

Most of all, we had amazing friends and family. I know, I know… so quintessential, right?!

We were a pretty typical suburban family. Life definitely had some ups and downs, like most do.

But overall, we were happy and enjoying the beautiful Floridian sunshine! We even decided to add TWO more beautiful babies to our family!

(Actually, we decided to add one baby, which took us a few years to have, and then quickly got pregnant with another rainbow baby right after! That’s a wild and unbelievable story, too!)

Why we decided to start considering long term family world travel:

When I got pregnant with my youngest (our 5th, & finally a boy!!), everything changed. It turned out that the close pregnancies and outside life stressors were more than my body could handle.

We had just laid our beloved rescue dog, Dakota, to rest after a decade of beautiful life together. Plus, business issues and some extended family stuff was adding up to a LOT of stress on my mind and body.

I was also finishing up my master’s thesis in Ancient History. That was a HUGE stressor of its own kind!

Without turning this into a PSA, I’ll give the quick version of the story:

I was 34 weeks pregnant with our sweet SURPRISE baby when I had a very rare type of heart attack known as a SCAD.

I thought I was having heartburn, but all the tums in the kitchen weren’t helping. Nothing seemed to relieve the burning sensation which kept me up all night. In the morning, I started having some shooting pains down my arm and up into my jaw.

With the loving push of my husband and my best friend, I went into the ER just to check things out.

Turns out, they were right! I was having a heart attack!

I needed to have an emergency c-section to deliver the baby as safely (and quickly) as possible before they could do anything to help my heart.

The type of heart attack I had can actually be somewhat COMMON for women under 50. It’s especially common when experiencing hormonal changes (like pregnancy)- and was called Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (or SCAD, for short).

Without getting too scary on the details, SCAD is the No. 1 killer of women under age 50. You should definitely read more about it here and here if you want more info. 😉

(It helps to know the signs, at least! Spread the word to your lady friends & fam! ❤️)

Anyhow, after 6 days in the cardiac intensive care unit (and a baby who spent a few weeks in the NICU), I had a beautiful baby boy; a grim prognosis for surviving the next year; and a sudden yearning to REALLY live life to its fullest.

My initial outlook from the cardiac doctors was a 42% chance of surviving the first year post heart-attack. That’s not even 50/50 odds!!

I was also told that if I couldn’t reduce my life’s stressors, these odds would be even lower.

I was left feeling like I wanted to spend every moment with my husband and children, experiencing the most beautiful moments of life possible instead of dealing with life’s daily struggles and monotony.

That’s how I got the idea to start travelling abroad for whatever time I might have left to spend with my family.

It truly seemed more important than ever to make the MOST out of every single moment we had together- and moving abroad to embark on family travel (on a budget) seemed like the way to do it!

And our business was fully online, so why not, right?!

(Faint chanting….

….Do it, do it, do it!)

Since I was also, coincidentally, in my last semester of grad school for my Master of Arts degree in Ancient and Classical History with a concentration in Roman and Greek studies (especially women’s studies, because, duh, I have four daughters… 🤪) it just made total sense to me to go SEE these many amazing things I’d been studying.

So considering I had spent 10+ years learning about the ancient scribble scrabble of fascinating cultures from thousands of years past, I decided to take my family to see these fascinating places in person!

There are so many amazing things to see in this world, and I definitely felt a new sort of pressure to start living life to the fullest, ASAP!

Traveling the world sounded like the perfect solution to my problems- because travel with kids is a great way to reduce stress, right?! 🤪

I could just hear the sound of exciting, worldly locations calling my name. Foreign beaches, colorful cuisine, I wanted it all.

But where to start??

There is just WAY too much of the world to see in 180 days- especially when you’re dragging 5 kids, 7 suitcases and 3 bottles of wine (wait…wine isn’t allowed through airport check in?!?) along for the ride. Traveling with family is a unique (but rewarding) challenge- especially with baby gear and angsty teens in tow.

And so our story begins…

The Lathrop Clan began having serious discussions of what it might mean to make a LONG TERM trip to Europe, and quite possibly, even consider moving overseas with kids.

How We Went From Dreaming To Planning

Now that we’ve told you a little bit about WHY we decided to explore the idea of family world travel, let’s talk about how we narrowed down our plan!

Actually, the conversation of moving abroad with children to Europe first came up a year earlier. We were going through some super stressful life transitions, and we really just wanted to make some sort of major change. We were feeling stuck in the rut of day-to-day suburban life.

But when we first talked about it, it was a pipe dream. Something we joked about doing in that vague time frame called, ‘One Day.’

In fact, family world travel seemed almost magical and surreal!

The idea of actually DOING IT- taking the kids out of their schools, selling our house, and leaving all the people we loved behind and travelling world wide– seemed absolutely bonkers, and (dare I say) reckless! Irresponsible! Downright WILD.

Then to consider the financial aspect of moving overseas with kids and actually traveling with kids? It definitely didn’t seem within our reach. I imagined it to be quite an expensive endeavor, even if we attempted to keep our family travel on a budget.

But after my heart attack, our entire perspective on life shifted. The roadblocks suddenly didn’t seem so big.

I’ve never been a ‘slow down’ type of person. I’m a full-on, give-it-all-I’ve-got-until-I-drop kinda girl, and rest is not in my vocabulary. We weren’t sure what my life expectancy was, but we knew that my future was going to be scary and required some major changes.

Looking at life through the eyes of potentially having a year (or less) to live was what REALLY pushed us to make the family world travel idea happen, IRL, and stat.

It would be hell’s bells, balls-to-the-wall, no going back. (Like I said, I’m not a slow down type of person.)

Armed with this new knowledge about our future as a family, I (once again) suggested the idea moving overseas with the kids to Europe so we could travel long term. It was no small ask, considering we’d travel with kids from baby thru teen.

This time, my husband was 100% on board!

We were going to start our family world travel journey!

(Wow… I definitely wasn’t expecting that!)

When our family looks back on that time, Larry likes to say that I was determined. He knew I was 100% serious about going no matter what.

He told me, “You were going. I could see it in your eyes. So really the question was whether I was going with you- or not. And that wasn’t really a question at all.”

I don’t remember feeling so resolved about it! But before Larry had the chance to chicken out and come to his senses, I knew we had to pick a main location for our family’s home base. ASAP.

Why pick a main living location, if we really wanted to travel the world?!

We knew that traveling the world with 5 kids would be no easy feat. And we wanted them to still have a sense of ‘home’ and stability, especially since leaving home can be scary for kids.

To make our family travel easier, we decided we needed to have a “home base” to return back to on a consistent basis. Then, every 6-8 weeks we could take a trip to another European country. Essentially, I wanted to go EVERYWHERE we could!

With speed trains on our side, this seemed like the smartest plan. We could see the many wonders of the world, while still providing our kids with a sense of stability and a place to call HOME.

How we narrowed down our ‘home base’ for our move abroad with family:

First, we eliminated places using my own personal rubric (in no particular order):

1. I hate the cold. I can tolerate a visit but I’ve no desire to live in the snow. My childhood in Colorado was more than sufficient on that front.
2. I love the beach. This one is self-explanatory. I mean, come on! If you could life any lifestyle in the world, daily beach side mojitos should be at the top of the list, right?
3. It needs to be somewhat affordable, because I have yet to perfect my money-tree seed invention.
4. It needs to be safe for the kids, with plenty for them to do in their daily lives while we’re local.
5. It needs to have access (preferably via the Hogwarts Express) to the rest of Europe. Totally stocking up on pumpkin juice for the many train rides! 🎃
6. It has to have SOME sort of local, historical interest. We’re history-loving nerds, yo! This was a given.

Using this framework as our guide, we knew what to look for.

So we got started on our search using the most logical way to narrow down dream locations… the YouTube travel channels. 😂😂😂

Without getting too specific, we found a few cities on YouTube that looked absolutely amazing! First, we starting making a list of our top choices. (And thanks for all the awesome family travel tips, youtubers!)

Next stop on our search: popular expat websites, especially ones that narrow down the top places to live.

Some of the prime places we procrastinated working (aka web-surfed) were:

• Best Countries for American Expats by Thrillist
• 45 second Perfect Place to Live Abroad Quiz
• BBC’s Best Places for Expats with Kids

and we probably spent the most time here:

• Nomad List (with handy dandy filters)

In the end, it was Spain that called to us the strongest. Finally, we decided on a coastal city called Valencia. Your dream city might be somewhere else and that’s totally cool, since your priorities will be different. 🥰

But in general, this was how we narrowed it down.

Okay, Spain, here we come!!

Oh, wait… we’ve gotta do the whole VISA application thing first. Bummer.

Which brings us to the next part of our story- and how we actually PLANNED out our move: Preparing For A Move Of EPIC Proportions For Our Family World Travel!

I’ve also put together a pretty in-depth post about Applying for A Non Lucrative Visa, for our non lucrative Spanish visa, if you want to check that out as well.

And if you have any questions about how we moved our family abroad to start traveling with family, please comment below! 😉