Hi There!
We’re Charlie and Colleen Carswell, high school sweet-hearts turned hotel-hopping homeschoolers.
We grew up in a small town, left to travel the world, and eventually found our way back so our four kids could grow up around family.
After years traveling on cruise ships, working in hotels and living in big cities full of vibrant and diverse people, we knew it would be more important than ever to find a way to show our kids the vastness of humanity outside of just one small, rural mountain town in North Carolina.
So in 2021, the week after giving birth to our pandemic baby, we knew it was time to choose family over fear (or what we call: FOFO) and dive head first into building our dream life. It’s not been easy – quitting jobs, starting a family business, taking on homeschooling – but it’s been a journey well traveled and we look forward to the many adventures still to come.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Why Hotels (and not an RV)?
We made the decision to homeschool in August of 2021. There were a variety of factors that played into our decision, but ultimately we wanted the freedom to travel and explore the world together.
At the time we envisioned a full-time RV lifestyle. But later, as our journey unfolded, we found ourselves paralyzed by the research, stuck with trying to navigate this new, strange world of RV-living, and weren’t ready to invest all our money into something we had yet to do and weren’t 100% (or even 50%) sure it was for us.
We soon discovered that traveling by hotel was a much better fit for us (especially with a hotel solutions strategist in the family)!
What is FOFO (and is it for me)?
You’ve heard the saying “faith over fear”, right? Well, same thing. In everything, our motto is to choose:
Family Over Fear Of …
the unknown, failing, not being good enough, not having enough money, not having enough time…
This list could go on and on. But what we’ve found over the years is our dreams for our family have to be BIGGER than our fears.
Our advice (should you want it):
Do it scared. Do it messy. Do it before you’re ready.
Need help getting started? Try spending some dedicated, quality time answering these three questions:
1. What’s the worst that can happen?
2. What’s the best that can happen?
3. Is my family worth the risk?
Why Destination-less Journeys?
Similar to our FOFO family motto, we also have adapted a journey mindset through the years. We found ourselves getting so focused on the end destination that we weren’t fully appreciating and savoring all the present journey had to offer. Maybe you can relate?
This journey mindset is exactly why we started our destination-less travel adventures [REGISTER FROM THE UPCOMING COA WORKSHOP]. It’s an experience based metaphor for how we want to live our lives.
As parents, as a family, and as individuals, our destination can – and nearly always does – change. With each new decision we make, new path we take, new thing we learn. Our futures are fluid and ever-evolving.
If we let go of holding onto this idea of what the future/destination is suppose to be, our life can end up even better than we could ever have imagined.
