Nearly there........

After the births of both of our children, Ben and I have suffered from a severe case of itchy feet. Shortly after the birth of Alex we relocated our family down from Manchester to the South East and Emily's birth also threw us totally off kilter and in a new direction altogether. I have thought quite hard about why their births caused such a profound shift for us and think that the main reason is that they caused us both to really question what we were doing with our lives and why. This new weight of responsibility meant that we couldn't continue with the norm, but forced us to question every aspect of our lives.

So, in June 2007, when Emily was 2 months old, we went on holiday to Devon, where we spent the whole time the kids were asleep plotting our next move.  We had established that we were fanatically passionate about 2 things; our love of offbeat travel and our family, the question was, how to combine these two parts of our lives. The answer, it seemed to us, was simple; start a travel business and share the childcare and the business between us. Ok, now for the hard bit, how?

We spent nearly all of our spare time in the following 6 months (in between working, weaning babies, potty training toddlers etc) developing our nugget of an idea into a robust business plan, with much blood, sweat and tears along the way. Finally, at the beginning of 2008, we were ready to start talking to close friends and family about our plans and the new direction that our lives were going to take.  In the months that followed, we managed to secure funding for our business and briefed several agencies about our idea and how we wanted to execute it.

Then, in June, we began work with 2 agencies who we felt (and have proved themselves to be) a cut above the other people we spoke to; Clearleft for the front end and New Bamboo for the back end. The development of the website began in all earnest, with the 2 agencies, me, Ben and Peter (my Dad) our techhie guru.  This was such a steep learning curve, with decisions needing to be made left right and centre, we needed to learn to trust each other's judgement and everyone on the team.

Finally, in October, we reached the point when we could start putting all of our focus into our new business venture and since then have been working hell for leather in getting the site ready for launch. With brief handovers at lunchtime, when we exchange tales of the events of the morning at  pre-school, nursery and work, we have now settled into a routine of juggling our lives and (fingers crossed) so far everyone seems to be surviving and even enjoying it.

So, the site is almost there, with, at the time of writing, only a handful of bugs left to fix and then it is over to us to get the content up and to reveal the site to you all, can't wait to see our dream finally come alive.........