She'll Figure It Out...

by Lee Virden Geurkink

Cover

by Andre Le

- Cambridge Dictionary

When we met for coffee at Press Cafe on a sunny spring morning, Kate Team apologized for being a little fustered. Considering that she was two weeks away from a 23-hour-long trip as a solo parent with her young children, she was the model of calm.

“We’re fying from DFW to Japan and from there to Singapore. It’s going to be 23 hours or more traveling, and three days before my husband meets us and we go on to Bali. But I’ll fgure it out.”

Let me say here that Kate’s two daughters are three and fve. I’m fustered for her. “I’ll fgure it out” seems to be Kate’s mantra. A property manager who ran her own company before becoming a popular family travel blogger, Kate is good at fguring things out. However, as anyone who follows her Instagram account, @adiosteam, knows, a great deal of research and planning happens before each trip so that she can fgure things out.

The travel bug bit Kate early. She and her siblings grew up going to the beach or the mountains. “I’m the youngest of four, and we wouldn’t go far [as my family goes now]. We’d go to the Caribbean, and my sister and I would stay on the beach while my brothers would go diving. Or we’d take road trips to Colorado or Myrtle Beach. We learned to be good travelers.”

As I grew up going on road trips every summer, we spent a minute marveling at how different road trips are now. “They’re so different,” Kate laughed. “We didn’t have to be in car seats!” I said that we didn’t have tablets to play games or watch movies – your choices for entertainment were limited to reading a book, looking out the window, or, horror of horrors, talking to your family. “We did have Gameboys,” Kate admitted. “But we also listened to a lot of CDs as we drove across West Texas!”

The Fort Worth native went to Trinity Valley School. Then, as now, the school had a global presence, and Kate’s family often had foreign exchange students staying with them. “Also, in eighth grade, I did an Outward Bound trip with the school. We had to get special permission to go [because] I was one of two eighth grade girls to go with the high schoolers to Costa Rica. It was a really great trip.”

I asked Kate if she had done a study abroad in college. “Oh, yes!” she said as a huge smile blossomed on her face. “I did a semester internship in London.” (We both agreed that London is one of our favorite cities in the world.)

“I was a public relations [major] at the time. I ended up switching to marketing, but I did the PR internship, and it was so fun.” Kate continued, “Although it was counted as a study abroad, it was really an internship; I had to interview and everything. I swear I was hired because I was from Texas.”

Unlike more traditional study abroad programs, Kate actually had to go to work fve days a week. However, she spent the evenings and weekends exploring the nooks and crannies of London. “The only problem with being an intern is that you can’t travel like other study abroad students. But London is so much fun. I loved it.” research, though – I knew to bring my own cup because they only use tiny cups for beer! But really, that was the start. We had so much fun, and we got along really well. So we started going on trips.”

This naturally led to me asking about their honeymoon. After all, two world travelers should surely have had a pretty amazing honeymoon. They did.

“We went to Thailand, and I planned the whole thing.” Kate said proudly. “I got into serious planning because I tried to get a travel agent to plan our trip. I said I didn’t want to Phuket and all the usual tourist stuff, and the itineraries we got were to Phuket. I could tell it was just a premade trip with nothing that I had asked for.

“I was in property management then, and one of my owners was living in Singapore. I started getting recommendations, and I just fgured it out. That was the frst big trip I planned.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t the last.

“We were three weeks away from a big trip to Europe when I found out I was pregnant. We’d been planning that trip for a year. I’d gotten reservations for restaurants that I was dying to go to. It was something of a shock,” Kate said.

“When we got back and announced [the pregnancy], over and over I heard, ‘Well, it’s a good thing you traveled when you did!’ Everyone said it was over,” Kate frowned as she remembered. “Then right after we had the baby, we had two trips come up. My sister-in-law was graduating in New Orleans… and one of my husband’s friends was getting married in New York… I was scared, but we fgured it out. People were shocked that we brought the baby, but it was great. I got my hair done for the wedding with her on my lap.”

We agreed that traveling with infants is infnitely easier than traveling once the little darlings are mobile. Babies are portable, after all, and as Kate reminded me, “If you travel when you’re breastfeeding, you’ll have to pump if you don’t take them, so why not take them?” before going on to Gili Air, one of several islands across the Lombok Strait. From Gili Air, they will go back to Ubud and then onto Seoul for a couple of days before heading back home.

She did admit that traveling with her kids has, by necessity, changed as they have gotten older. I asked about nap time.

I’m exhausted just typing that.

I asked why she goes to such trouble to travel with her children when her mother is clearly happy to take care of them. I mean, I love my children, but traveling with them as toddlers and preschoolers was almost aways an exercise in frustration that wrung us all out.

Kate didn’t hesitate a moment. “Travel shows you that you’re not the center of the universe,” she smiled. “Everyone else is on the same trip, so you can’t expect the world to revolve around you. It opens your eyes to other people.”

From solo traveler to a traveling duo to travel family, Kate knows how to explore the world. Watch her Instagram Stories. She’s insanely organized. She’s done the research. (I secretly think she loves the researching almost as much as the actual traveling.) She thinks through each moment of the trip she’s planned and is prepared for anything that can go wrong. And if not, well, she’ll fgure it out.

What are the five things you ABSOLUTELY MUST have when traveling with toddlers?

Kate admitted that she didn’t tour colleges when she was looking and is a little sorry about that. “We didn’t tour schools. I went to Texas Tech – I saw a brochure and said, ‘Okay.’ I mean, I really thrived in college, and I graduated early, and because I graduated early, I met my husband, so it all worked out.”

After a pause, Kate said, “I’m already talking to my kids about college. I don’t want them to be so close. I mean, I don’t want them to go to St. Andrews [University, in Scotland], but I just don’t want to run into my daughter in the grocery store! Margaret did say that she wants to ‘go to college where Mardi Gras is,’ so that could work. We’ll fgure it out.”

Considering her children are, at three (Louise, aka Weezie) and fve (Margaret), seasoned international travelers, I have no doubt that they will fgure it out.

Given Kate’s obvious love of travel, I asked if her husband, Craig, liked to travel as much as she does. It’s safe to say that he does.

“Five months into dating, we decided to go to Mexico.” Kate said, laughing as I almost choked on my coffee. “Yeah, that was the start. We did a cheap, everything-included trip. I had done my

“Some travel families nap on the go, but my kids do better with a dedicated nap time,” Kate said. “We go hard in the morning, and then we have a quiet time. My husband can work or rest, and I go and shop or just have a couple of hours by myself. Or we switch. We learned early if the kids are overtired, it rains on everybody’s, and I mean everybody’s parade.”

Another great tip that Kate shared is that the family always stays in a suite or apartment. “The kids go to bed around 7:15,” Kate said. “We have an extra room or a balcony so that we can sit together and have our time. My husband always fnds a wine store and gets a few bottles. We listen to music and just be together without the children.”

I asked if Kate and Craig ever travel by themselves now. She grinned. “Of course! Once a year, we travel without the kids. My mom moved back from California in 2021… so she watches the grandkids while we do four days here and there. We did Mexico City because we like to eat all the food, and I want to do all the cultural things. I mean, I can’t imagine doing a beach trip without my kids (beach trips are easy!), but in Mexico City, we wanted to go to Michelin-starred restaurants.”

The trip that Kate was preparing for is, technically, a beach trip. After spending four days in Singapore, the Teams are fying to Bali. They’ll stay in Ubud

1. A lightweight stroller that you can store in the overhead bin or gate check. Having a stroller in the airport is great for tired kiddos.

2. A carrier. I’ve been using the Ergobaby carrier since my girls were days old, and I still always take it on trips. It’s great to use when you travel to destinations that aren’t stroller-friendly, like Montmartre in Paris or San Miguel de Allende.

3. Travel blackout curtains to help with sleep.

4. A “snackle” box. It’s essentially a tackle box flled with snacks. The fight attendants always compliment it.

5. A sound machine for naps and bedtime. This gives my husband and me some time to listen to music while hanging out in a separate room.

What spots are you dreaming of visiting?

1. Antarctica

2. A safari in Africa

3. Egypt

4. Patagonia

5. Vietnam

BUT… my bucket list is constantly changing!