One positive thing about Covid was we spent a lot of time outside and at the beach. By Summertime we were ready to travel beyond the beach and mountains where we had family to visit. Since our 20 countries in 20 years Scandinavian wedding anniversary trip, we had to postpone a scheduled trip to Cuba as well as hopes of traveling to new continents in 2020.
Playing it safe but traveling as far away as possible in the United States, we spent a chunk of our summer in Hawaii. We basically lived in the water, and I was so proud of my family for trying so many new things. Esther Kate was 5 and became a great snorkeler. Lydia June was 11 and had her first ocean scuba diving experience since getting certified at age 10 in a quarry in East Tennessee.
We all had a day where we kayaked up a river in the rain, hiked a mile though the mud and swam a cold waterfall. It was an empowering day. It was cold, kids were cranky, our picnic didn’t work out as planned, and the one-mile hike did not advertise hiking through a river. But we did it! And something inside of me switched that day. It said, “YES. We can do hard things!” I was so proud of us and grateful to have that experience together while traveling. I documented our island hoping trip in Hawaii on my Instagram account, with plenty of photos in my feed and saved on my stories. 
Our Hawaii trip was all about building us up to do a very big cool thing as a family.
To visit Belize and the Blue Hole
While in Hawaii, I realized was tired of watching my family scuba dive. I admitted was scared to scuba dive. I was scared I would run out of air. I knew that fear getting in my way of adventures, because I love to swim in the ocean. I decided to be brave. And I got certified to scuba dive one week before we visited a scuba diving report in Belize. I wanted to dive with Lydia, my older teen Haiden and my husband Brian.
But hmmm….if I’m not on the surface to be Esther Kate’s snorkel buddy who will swim with her? Her teenage sister Aubrey who was afraid of sharks and eels and things that slither in the water? It was going to have to work. We can be brave. Yes, our family can do hard things.
On my first dive, Lydia was already in the water waiting for me to jump in. I looked at Esther’s scared face and I said, “You got this.” I looked at Aubrey and I said, “This is going to be fun!” And I left them on the dive boat with a snorkel guide who had the big job to make them feel safe and have fun.
I descended down to the ocean’s floor for the first time as a scuba diver, in charge of my 11-year old. And leaving some people I just met in charge of my nervous snorkelers on a boat off the coast of Belize. I reminded myself about dropping small children off at school, and the how the drop at the door and walk away trick works better than the sticking around for too long mistake. And how children listen better to teachers than their parents sometimes. And I swam. Fifty feet below the surface. Trusting that a 5-year old and a 15-year old could be brave together.
Eventually I looked up and saw Esther and Aubrey waving down at us from the surface. The snorkel guide Carlos had worked his magic just like I put all my hope and faith into him to do. They were having a blast.
“This is going to work.” I thought to myself as I lived out my mermaid dreams swimming though beautiful coral reef. “It’s going to be a great week. We can do hard things together!”
On the third day we made it to the Blue Hole. We snorkeled the rim together since we are not advanced certified divers to go down 120 feet. The reef system in Belize is the second largest in the world, to The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. While snorkeling with Esther Kate, I asked the guide if I could take off her life jacket. He said sure if I was comfortable with it. Immediately Esther started free diving 6-10 feet deep. She never wore her life jacket again that week.
The next stop was an island where we dropped off the snorkels, and the boat headed back out to deeper waters. Carlos showed my not-scared-anymore girls a shark, an eel, and taught them to free dive even deeper.
We spent a week on a remote island at The Blackbird Resort. We cannot say enough wonderful things about the dive team there, and all the staff. We took a tiny plane from Belize City to get there. We traveled with all our snorkel gear and scuba gear for four people. Yes, four. We can do hard things. We can learn amazing things from traveling.
To see all our amazing pictures from our trip to Belize, visit my Instagram account.
I’m not sure when we will make it to Cuba and that level of off the grid travel that I want to experience with the kids. But for this summer, Belize was amazing.
