Episode 5: Traveling Together After Kids

After years of raising kids, building careers, and juggling life’s endless rhythm, we realized something powerful — we hadn’t truly traveled together in a long time. Episode 5 is our love letter to rediscovery, adventure, and the magic that happens when you step away from routine and remember who you are as partners.

In this episode, we share how travel became our reset button. From the Outer Banks to Charleston, Alaska, Paris, Barcelona, and Italy, each destination taught us something new about connection, laughter, and love. The Outer Banks reminded us to slow down and breathe in the salt air. Charleston brought back our playful side with its pastel streets and soulful food. Alaska showed us awe — the kind that makes you hold hands tighter. Paris reignited romance under the glow of the Eiffel Tower, while Barcelona and Italy reminded us that joy lives in color, music, and shared moments over coffee or gelato.

We talk about the challenges too — the logistics of traveling after kids, the guilt of leaving them behind, and the delicate balance between family and self. But we also dive into the beauty of rediscovering each other outside of “mom” and “dad.” Traveling together became less about the destination and more about the rhythm we found again — the laughter, the inside jokes, the quiet moments that felt like home no matter where we were.

This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt stuck in the routine of life and wondered what it would feel like to dance to a new beat again. It’s about collecting moments, not things. It’s about finding your groove — together.

So grab your passport, your playlist, and your partner. Join us as we unpack the laughter, lessons, and love that come from exploring the world hand in hand. Because when you travel together after kids, you don’t just see new places — you rediscover the person who’s been beside you all along.

We have pulled the songs for you and created a playlist of all the songs mentioned. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAtDhNqC3U7M

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey guys, welcome back to our podcast Grooving Together, where we're dropping a needle on the new chapter in life. I'm Sean. We are here. Hey guys, first off, I just want to call out and say thank you. Thank you so much. Episode four was our most downloaded episode. I see you guys really dug that list competition that Dave and I had. And just for your knowledge, uh unofficial vote, I suppose I have to give the win to David as he got the most likes and responses to his list. So I guess congratulations are in order. Question mark.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

I mean, both of us are great. I thank everybody who liked the list. And hey, we're gonna keep the music coming for you over at this side. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

All right. So also another quick reminder. Do you want to remind you that you guys we are available on all of your platforms where you find your favoriteist podcast from Spotify to Apple Music to Amazon? We are here on all platforms. We also have a Facebook and an Instagram. So please feel free to find us however you like and continue to keep grooving. Awesome. So as we mentioned you guys in the last episode, we did get a question about traveling, and I want to pay homage to that person that asked that question for us in traveling, and start y'all the way back for us in our traveling phase and how we moved up in traveling as a couple, traveling as a family to graduating as a couple. So picture this Sicily 1997. No, I'm playing, but those that know no, but 1997, 98, we started off as a young couple, and pretty quickly our family grew from two to three, and from three to four, and from four to five. So pretty quickly with all of that, and so we are, as you can imagine, young couple, and with a young family, and you know, working very hard to make sure that everything is provided for everybody, and so that left us very little time to take off for vacation to do a proper vacation, a long stemp vacation. And so what we would do, we would always start off with those one-day trips, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, so we started off with one-day trips, no matter what we were doing, whether it would be taking a one-day trip down to the beach, taking a one-day trip down to the mountains or Atlanta, as everything was what we could do on a take of gas, you know, because that was uh what we felt we could afford it.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Right. And so sometimes we would love to just wait till the girls were good and sleep, and we would pick them up, put them in the car, and just drive because we knew that we could get further while they were sleeping, and then when they woke up, it was a surprise. And one of those trips that we took, crazy, crazy what you do when you're young, right? We decided to drive all the way up to the outer banks. Why? Because one of our daughters was learning that in school, and she wanted to see what the outer banks looked like, so we got up, we loaded them up in the van, and we drove eight and a half hours up to Kitty Hawk, where we went there and we went to the Museum of Aviation and saw the Wrights brothers, took them to the beach, and we just had a really good day. And then, believe it or not, we did not get a hotel, we drove right back home another eight and a half hours.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, that was wild. I always pride myself on being able to drive long distances, and when I was younger, I definitely didn't mind to drive longer distances. We got some great pictures from that trip. You know, we were able to get a picture of you, and the kids were kind of doing like a yoga pose over by the port. So no, it was a great trip, but yeah, it's a lot of driving in one day.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Driving when you think about it now, it's like who would do that? Who would do that? But we did, we did. But what we found was that the girls really, really enjoyed the beach, the the outer banks, and we really wanted to do that again. And talking to some of my co-workers at the time, I was telling them about the trip, and they said, you know, why didn't you just rent a beach house? Rent a beach house? No. What are you talking about? But for a family like us with multiple kids, found that is more economic, at least in our situation, instead of renting hotel rooms to just rent out a beach house. So a couple of places came to us that was recommended, and we chose a facility that ended up being part of the Stafford's life for the following five years. So the next year we ended up renting a beach house in one of the lesser-known areas in the Outer Banks in Frisco, North Carolina, and we rented that beach house for five years in a row, and the girls absolutely loved it every year. And the cute part of it, you remember, Dave, they had that guest book, right? And the owners had daughters themselves, and they wrote in the book every time, you know, please feel free to write a note. And our girls they wrote a note to the girls, and so the following year that we came up, my oldest daughter was like, I wonder if the girls wrote back to us, and lo and behold, they did. They wrote a whole long letter, and that also became a tradition for them over the next five years that we rented that same beach house. They would write notes to each other and they would get responses back. And I thought that was really cute, but that just really showed us that tradition in going to these different places was really important in building up the family and building up the love and also understanding of how important it is to take a vacation.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, I mean, I think that vacations is important. We work hard, you want to definitely play hard. And, you know, getting the rental property was something that I hadn't experienced before. And but when you think about it from a logistical standpoint, you know, what you're paying in for the rental property, once you can go out and you can go grocery shopping, you can bring things to the rental property. I know you don't want to always click on your vacation, but hey, you can save a lot of money by by doing that. It just made it to where everyone had their own room as opposed to a hotel room where we're all sharing the same room. It really made a great experience.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

It did. And, you know, later on down the years, we would change locations from the Outer Banks to Charleston to Florida to different places where we would rent out, you know, houses and just have a really good fun time as a family. And that really became our niche, right? But as all things happen, you know, the kids grow up and they get to the point where they don't necessarily want to spend that much time with mommy and daddy. So now what do you do? Because your your personality is all wrapped up into that, right? So now what is it that you do? So I would say that our first time, our first time going somewhere solo, which was it was a little unnerving. It was for my 30th birthday, and we ended up going down to Charleston, and it was Charleston is about three and a half hours away, so not too far away where if something happened, we couldn't get right back up, but I must have called them three, four times out of the day. But we had a good time overall.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah, I mean, I think that anytime you do something new, and this time it was being away from the kids for an extended period of time, you know, you're gonna have a little bit of nervousness. But, you know, you had a really great time once you were able to relax a little bit within that, you know, Charleston area, and they had a lot of great food down there in Charleston. I remember getting the Oreo cheesecake, which was, as they say, the bee's knees.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, I remember that. But one thing that stuck out for me, they had that place where you can make your own scents and bath salts, and you could experiment with the different flavors and scents and things like that, and make your own bath salts. So that was really cool. But really, um, probably by day two, just A, I wasn't always a mom, I was a person who was in a relationship with this person, and we didn't always have kids, so that started coming back slowly but surely, and we would do that once a year as well, and then eventually we decided to venture out and do a big girl, big boy trip, and that would be going out to Las Vegas for our anniversary.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah, going out to Las Vegas was really a different experience for us because you know, I have been on a plane before, but it had been a while. So just getting on the airplane, flying out to Las Vegas, seeing the what the Grand Canyon and Nepheus are coming in, and it was really an amazing experience. But also not being huge on flying, it was also like, okay, uh we're up in the air, but now it's like we're coming back down. So let's see what this city of Las Vegas has to offer.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

And I wasn't always the best travel agent that I am now. So all I went by was things that I saw on TV. And so when we went to Vegas, we were like, where do we stay? Well, I watch Oprah a lot, and it always seemed like when she sends somebody to Las Vegas, she's sending them to Mandalay Bay. Let's stay at Mandalay Bay. So that's where we stayed, and it was a pretty good trip overall. But I tell you, by the time day five came, I was ready to come home. I really missed the girls, and you know that's okay that you missed them, but we we had a good time, and eventually, short shortly afterwards, we would have the opportunity to travel to where was that in Florida? One of the keys. It was gang. Kibis Gang. This young man won an award, and his uh company flew him down key Biscayne. So that was really cool, and that was on my bucket list. I always wanted to go down the Florida keys. I mean, Keebis Gang was definitely not on my bucket list, but kind of on my bucket list. So basically, what we're saying is the more that we got into practice, the easier it got to leave the girls at home.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

I mean, I think the girls, you know, the girls are the girls, so they're gonna do what they do. But at the same time, we we gotta get some time to relax and reconnect. But going back to Vegas, I think Vegas is a great area if you really are into casinos and gambling. I know that sounds very obvious, but everywhere you went, it kind of reminded me of an adult Disney World. Because you would go through the hotel, and no matter what you no matter what you had to do, you're gonna have to walk through a casino. Yeah, you all have ever been to the mountains before, but a lot of times if you go up to the mountains and you go through like a restaurant, like when you come out the restaurant, they always bring you through their little general store gift shop. And in Vegas, it's it's always it don't matter, you could be at a library, you're gonna come through a casino. You could go to you could go to the uh supermarket, you're gonna come through casino. If you're into that, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

It's great, yeah. I mean, it's it's uh it's a beautiful place out there. We went in February, actually went to their uh mock-up of Paris, France. Uh went to their Eiffel Tower and had some really great French food. It was delicious, and they treated us like kings and queens because it was our anniversary. They brought us out this big tort and it had a happy anniversary written in chocolate. It was really good. It was good times, but I definitely was ready to come home for sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, but I think the Las Vegas trip set it up in our brain to where not only could we be away from the girls for a little bit longer period of time, but we could begin to travel, like you say, in a different way. So flying, you know, I'm a big driver, so I like I don't mind driving if it's a reasonable amount of time or malice. I'm gonna probably drive. Yeah, it kind of you Las Vegas really opened up my mind to be able to fly to different locations as a way to experience more different areas.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So and I think it also opened us up to the idea of yes, we're in the groove of taking the family trips once once a year, but we really needed to throw in at least one couple trip once a year. Well, now we're graduated to two couple trips a year and one family trip a year. Now, now that's where we're at. But Vegas definitely was the turning point in our relationship as far as learning how to get back together and spending time with each other as well to build on that piece of it. And then here comes the 40s, so that was us in the 30s taking the quick little five-day trips out and everything else. But here comes number 40, and I really wanted to do cruising, I wanted to get on the boat, I wanted to do cruising, and every every big milestone, you know, I'm trying something new. So we tried, what do we do? We tried carnival, and we went on carnival glory. And let's just say there was a lot that we learned from cruising that time go around. One, remember that the you have to dress for the place that you're going to, not the place that you came from. So we came from you know, North Carolina, it's in February, and it's cold. So I have on sweat, sweatpants, sweatshirt, toboggan, you know, because it's really cold outside, and we drove the same day to catch the boat down to Miami. And when we got there, of course, it's hot, it's hot in Miami, and they have to stand in that long line, and we overpacked, and it was the line was long, and you know, needless to say, by the by the time I got onto the boat, I was sick, and then this was my first time on the boat, and so with the moving and the motion of the ocean, let's just say Shantavia did not have a good time for the first three days, but I have learned my lesson from that.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah, uh, we didn't have a lot of background with regards to cruising, even though I think we may have watched a few videos online before we went on the first cruise. It was a case where, hey, we're gonna try this thing. So I had some co-workers that had talked about cruising and being a great way to travel. Your food is included, you know. They can you get basic beverages like lemonade and water included. You know, you can bring sodas on board. So I was like, okay, the food's included. Once I get there, I don't have to drive anymore. You're gonna wake up in a different location each day. Maybe this is okay. I know I'm not a huge, I'm not a swimmer, so I was always like hesitant to get on the cruise ship. It was like, oh my gosh, we're out in the middle of the ocean. Maybe I shouldn't be on the cruise ship. But but I was like, hey, let's give it a try. It's a 40th. Let's give it a try and see what it's gonna do. But like you said, all the motion of the ocean, we just weren't real well equipped that first time for for all that. And additionally, they had all these games and carnival things they were doing on the first day, and we didn't know any better at that time. We were like, we gotta try everything that we that we uh see on this on this ship. Yeah, and we tired ourselves out, even on top of we were already tired from just all the travel day of. So it was really wild.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

So here it is. Don't travel into the boat the first day that on the same day that you embark on the on the cruise. That's always a no-no. Make sure you dress for where you're going, not where you came from. And three, I hope that you're seeing the pattern of we don't know everything. We just close our eyes and try, and if we like it, we go. If we don't, we don't. And you have to, you know, be okay with okay, that that didn't work out, let's try something else. Don't just give up because the you had some little flubs, you know, it shouldn't feel like a job. Your vacation is your vacation, and you should always go in there with a fun state of mind. But I will tell you that because of our other issues that happened on on the boat that wasn't our fault. Let's just say there's an alter ego of mine. I call her Hurricane Tavia. She is a force to be reckoned with, to be for sure. And when I got home from that cruise, I let them know some of my displeasures. So they provided us a huge credit for the boat, but we had to take it the same year. So we ended up for the family trip, we ended up booking another cruise with that uh credit. I think it was like two or three hundred dollars or something like that, uh, ship credit, whatever. And that cruise was much better, much better, to the point where we actually ended up taking a third cruise that year for Dave's birthday. And so we did three cruises in one year, and now we're hooked on cruising. We're not, you know, we're not in the high high numbers, but we're not in the low low numbers either. We're on cruise number 16 or 17, I think. But cruising is definitely our way to go, and it's a great way to spend time with each other because you don't have to think of anything. But like Dave said, once you're on there, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, I mean, cruising and grooving, that's uh what we do. I I think that, you know, I would be remiss to say on that first trip, yeah, there were some things that didn't go the way that it should, but you know, Carnival had some employees that were helpful, helping us to help mitigate some of the things that were going on. Some great recommendations, a little bit of seasickness happened for me a little bit too. So, you know, just giving some uh good recommendations, like chipping on some apple juice and they have some free complimentary motion sickness pills. Not to say, I say bring your own motion sickness pills if you need it or patches, but but they do have them on board. If you ever get on a cruise ship, uh especially I know for carnival for sure, you can ask for a motion sickness medicine and they'll give it to you. So super helpful staff, but yeah, definitely now that we know what we're doing, it's cruising and grooving, baby.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Cruising, grooving, cruising and grooving. Also, ginger tea helps as well. And every time that I go on the trip, I always have my motion patch, and I always bring some ginger tea with me. So if if that happens again, you know, I'll have that. That definitely helps to settle the stomach. But to answer y'all's future questions, no, we true uh Carnival is not the only one that we've been on now. Uh, we've been on Celebrity, Virgin, Royal, Caribbean, Norwegian, Norwegian, and Coastal Coastal. MSC. And MSC. Yes. We've been on a good little bit of them. But then that gets into our bigger thing. We we dream, we dreamed bigger. Okay, so now we've done the cruise. Now we've done the flying. Now let's try to combine the both of them together. Which then gets into our 30th metaversary, where this was our biggest trip. We were away from the girls for now. At this point, they're they're grown, they're in their 20s now. So, but we were celebrating our 30th metaversary, and we went on a 15-day trip across the seas. We went to Paris, we went to Barcelone, and we went to Italy. Got to see the Eiffel Tower. They were in the middle of a strike, so they shut that Eiffel Tower down. We went to the Louvre, which was magical. Dave was we were first off, when we got to the Louvre, that big old line that you normally see, that was when we got there, we thought it was closed too for the strike because we were like number six in line. And but no, we were just number six in line. And next thing you know, you turn around and the crowd is like huge. So while we're waiting for it to open, Dave looks online and he sees where's the best path to get to the Mona Lisa once you enter into the Louvre. And there were some other people, English-speaking people, that were behind us, and they were like, We following you, because we heard we overheard you, we're gonna follow you. And man, everybody, as it said, everybody else was going left. We ended up going right, we hit some corners and stuff, and when we turned the corner, there she was, Mona Lisa. And guess what? It was nobody in the room. We hung, we hung air for about 10 minutes with nobody there, just snapping and taking pictures. I heard that that is absolutely almost impossible. And because we got to the Mona Lisa first, once we got finished, it seemed like everybody else was coming in to see the Mona Lisa, which left the museum pretty much empty. And it just for like two hours. It's that vacation magic that Dave and I always seem to find those unbelievable stories that happened to us that nobody would believe. But it did happen. Like it seemed like the museum was all to ourselves for like two hours. It was no crowds, you got to take as many pictures as you wanted to, didn't feel rushed. It was absolutely beautiful, and then we flew over to Barcelone to catch another cruise ship. We caught the Costa and we went around to some different stops in Italy. It was a magical time, but I will tell you that I learned that 10 days is probably my max because after day 10, sir, I was very tired of pasta.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, I mean, shout out to the Costa Tuscana chefs over there. I mean, they were very amicable to make different things for us that weren't on the menu. I mean, we were in the an upgraded suite, but still they we were very helpful to make things that weren't on the menu because, like you said, the pasta, I like pasta, but oh my goodness. Uh just give me some hot wings or maybe give me a burger. Yeah, after about four days, yeah, I'm I'm good on pasta. But pasta was good though. It just was a lot.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

It was a lot, it was a lot of pasta. It was a lot of pasta. And the coffee man, if you if you ain't used to to drinking that, that strong coffee, yeah, that was that was no bueno. We had a wonderful time, but that's what you learn, you know. You you try, you swing for the fences, and I learned, you know, not I am not that girl that's gonna take a 15-day trip. I think that that was way too long. I think 10 days is probably about my max for that. And why was it too long? I just it was more so the food, the I love history. Y'all, y'all get that right. I love history, but it was a it was a lot of history to unpack. And you know, I I'm just a beach bum. I love the beach, and this trip wasn't about the beach. We didn't go to one beach on that trip. So I from that trip I learned 10 days, and I need at least three days of beach.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah, I mean, something that with the European trip, it is it's definitely the flights over there, it's definitely an investment. So I understand why we were over there for the duration of time because it's like, well, how many times are you gonna be over on this side of the Atlantic? But I get it, you know, maybe 14 days or 10 days or however long it was is too long. But I'd say I had a good time, though. I I enjoy seeing like there's a little mall about 35 minutes from Paris. It kind of reminds you of what the strip malls, the outlet malls that you hit see in Orlando or even in you know the Charlotte area, like those outlet malls, and they they had some really good shopping. Like the prices, it just depends. Depends, but some of the pricing for say what you might spend in the states, you know, for some blue jeans, maybe it might run you in the states 45 bucks at the outlet mall. But sometimes over there it was like 35 bucks. I don't know why. I mean, I know the euro was a little bit more valuable than the US dollar, but still, like some of the stuff was really good pricing, and just be able to find that. And the fragrances, I'm a I'm really big into scents. So there's a scent called Creed, and in Paris, that's where Creed is made. And it's so many Creed shops, and the pricing of Creed over there is so much less expensive than the Creed here. So when it comes to shopping, I mean Paris, uh it's not it's not a secret, but Paris has a lot of things to offer, especially when you get out of the main part of Paris, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:21

And that trip was amazing. I mean, you definitely spoiled me on that trip. I was able to go to the Louis Vuitton cafe, which you may or may not have known, but I was one year less old when I learned that they they are chocolateers, so they have all this different type of chocolate. Oh, and the chocolate was amazing. The chocolate, oh man, I can order me some right now. Man, that was so good. And then we went to the Dior Cafe, and that was an experience. You got to walk through his museum of different designs that he did, and then once you got up to the very, very top, it was a cafe. It was so good. They had this strawberry tart with like four different types of strawberries. Who knew? And the tart was so buttery. Oh my god! Oh gosh. But those are those bucket list trips that you get to go to, and we've we've gone on a lot. Another bucket trip that we went to was to Alaska, and that was you know, that was very personal for me with my mother's last request before she passed away, uh is where she requested for her ashes to be spread, so we took that trip, but that was a beautiful and religious trip, but we came out from Seattle, and of course, of course, I am a Starbucks girl, so I had to go to the original, had to go to the original place, and that was really that was really dope. That was really on my my above list. So these things that we find out together as we travel as a couple, I am so blessed to have such a wonderful partner that loves to see me happy and I love to see him happy, and with that, we just enjoy each other on these vacations, and we find that that is the fun. That is the fun in being together as a couple and always rekindling and getting to know each other a little bit better. So whether it is antiquing, whether it is vintage shopping, whether it is taking these long trips, or just sitting on our couch and our mom paw kettle recliners listening to these vinyls, it's about spending time with each other. And that's really what we want you to get from this podcast. I know traveling without the kids was an adjustment. It didn't happen overnight, so we don't want you to think that that's something that is gonna immediately happen, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah, you have to kind of experiment. Maybe you start off with a few hours away from them, and you know, you you do it just a date night, and then maybe you try to do it overnight, and you just kind of go from there.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

But you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your relationship. It's it's like you wouldn't drive your vehicle and never give it an oil change, never get the tires rotated, never get the checks, the brakes checked. So you you gotta give yourself some maintenance on that. And doing this and setting aside some time, and maybe you can't afford to go out on these big trips. Everybody can't do it, but find something that you two can step aside, away from the kids, away from all of the noise, and pour into each other. That's right, that's definitely important. Do you want to give you an update on the vinyls? We are currently at 593 vinyls um added to the collection. Woo-woo! So we are um very excited, and as always, we want to thank you for taking the time out to listen to us and sipping on your coffee, and uh, we hope that you continue to