A Year of Adventure

MilMomAdventures started a year ago. Actually, it started as a thought months before that, but our first post was in January of 2018. We, Ashley, Heather and Sarah, recognized that on our second time living in Southern California, we were more comfortable exploring than we were the first time around. We want that feeling of comfort and zest for adventure for everyone who moves here, not just SoCal veterans. After months of discussing creating a medium to catalog our exploration and hopefully encourage others – we did it. We started a WordPress account, made a GMAIL, and had our first meeting, with an itinerary and goal list. Why MilMomAdventures? We wear many hats – professionals, women, military spouses, mothers, adventurers and we wanted to combine these hats into one title because militaryspousemothersprofessionaladventurers was too long!

Our goal was to share our knowledge. We posted 130 times in 2018. One-hundred and thirty places and topics that we found to be useful to us, sharing with the hope to impact other families around us.

Another goal was to encourage us to get out and explore. It is easy to go with the comfort of what you know. Moving every 2-3 years means that comfort level only exists for about one to two years among that time. Exploring new places widens our view of the nation, as well as the children tagging along with us.

Thirdly, we’d like to print the posts into location specific books one day. If not for others, for ourselves – recording what we explored with our kids while we were residents where the military sent us.

In 2018, we explored Southern California, Virginia, and New Orleans – from Disneyland to Legoland, to Colonial Williamsburg to the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and from Cafe Du Monde and the Algiers Point Ferry. In addition, fellow military spouses provided bucket lists to exploring Yuma, Arizona and Monterey, California. The posts were viewed over 7,000 times. Pins and shared links have been shared over 10,000 times. This is no small feat for a blog started a year ago. It excites us that other families are using these posts, exploring and hopefully growing closer together as a family unit.

In 2019, we plan to explore more in Southern California, Monterey and New Orleans. Our hope in 2019 is that more families read the blog, more families go out and explore and more families make bucket lists for each place they live. We would love to hear what you put on your bucket lists!

In 2019, we will be getting the scoop on events for the littles at Pretend City and getting a sneak peek of the USO Camp Pendleton‘s new space! We are working on building relationships within our local communities and with fellow military spouses. There will also be more meetings with itineraries and planning for the months ahead.