My father introduced me to the wild at a young age.

He showed me how to respect the wild and survive in the wild.

My grandfathers taught me about hard work, living off the land, and how important your word is.

Now that I have three boys of my own and a beautiful loving wife, I ask myself everyday, am I living up to this challenge? 

Unfortunately I fall short many times.

Fortunately we're standing on the shoulders of giants and thankfully covered in grace to try again the next day. 

(Personal Story Coming Up)

My wife never takes a break, she works day in and day out to enrich our kid's lives. I'm crazy thankful and blessed to have a partner that is so committed to adventure, teaching our boys, and an abundant life. 

That being said, when she's away.... the boys will play, as they say. 

Juli hopped on a plane to catch her sister's wedding recently, meaning I was left to fend for myself for a few days with our wild chil'rens. 

The boys and I (we have 3 kiddos, 2 5yo's and 1 3yo) decided it was time to find a hidden beach that we'd been searching for and just never been able to make it to. 

It's about a 4 mile hike over a couple of steep ridges through the jungle. To be fair, the boys legs are only about 24inches long at this point, so this long of a hike over this terrain is no cake walk. 

My older boys (Tripp and Cade) spent the entire walk jumping onto lizards and catching centipedes. (They are legit expert lizard catchers.)

My youngest boy (Mumford) figured out pretty quickly the fastest way to the other side was on my back. 

Seeing the world through the eyes of your kids is a very refreshing experience, everything is new and everything is 'wow'.

We finally made it to 'Survival Beach' and what a place it was. This beach was about a 1/2 mile of completely remote, completely empty, Caribbean blue ocean with white sands and tidal pools. 

Needless to say we found about 94 hermit crabs, a flounder, starfish, and a sea turtle. Our boys love 'critter catchin'.

One thing that we never had to work very hard on with our boys was picking up litter. Seems like no matter where you go humans have left their mark. We filled up our pack, being sure to leave this beautiful place better than we found it. 

These are the little trips that add up to an entire lifetime. 

I had plenty of work that needed doing. 

Plenty of items needing attention. 

But putting all of that on hold and giving my boys an entire afternoon of adventure is going to stay with us for the rest of our lives. 

I'm sure you can relate, we all know it's the best investment we can make - making it happen is always the tricky part. I hope this weekend you and yours can share an amazing adventure.

We had an incredible day and for a moment I felt like a 'successful' Dad, haha.