The Adventure Starts Here

Parenting is hard, so we decided to do it somewhere beautiful. Our debut brings you into the origin story of two moms who traded perfection for passports, explaining how we moved from baby-year nesting to confident family travel without losing our sense of humor—or our nap schedules. You’ll meet Kathleen, the “just say yes” traveler who fell in love with the world through study abroad, and Melissa, the research queen who collects flight deals at 2 a.m. Together we unpack the mindset shifts that changed everything: expect tough transit days, name your constraints, and set shared ground rules when traveling with another family. 
 
We swap honest stories that double as practical lessons. There’s the first international trip with kids to Costa Rica, when we tried to extend the journey because the magic outweighed the mess. There are kid-approved “tips,” like Secret Beach in Belize and the cautionary tale of chafing that turned into a packing note. We revisit childhood sparks that shaped us—TRL sidewalk waves in New York, an RV across national parks with a snoring grandpa in a tent, and the first time Rome made textbooks feel alive. These memories anchor why we travel now: connection over luxe, curiosity over checklists, and family lore built one imperfect day at a time. 
 
If you’re wondering how to start, we spell out the pieces that reduce stress: align on budget and pace, decide on naps and room setups before you book, keep food simple (yes, chicken fingers count), and frame travel days as bumpy by design. Expect future deep dives into Belize, Costa Rica, and more, with itineraries, packing strategies, and budget tips you can actually use. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a push to book the trip, and leave a review telling us your biggest roadblock to traveling with kids—we’ll tackle it on a future show.

Transcript

Why Make Parenting Hard Somewhere Fun?

Melissa 0:00

Parenting's really hard. Why not just have it be hard in another country or on a tropical beach somewhere?

Launching Organized Chaos

Melissa 0:14

Hi everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of Organized Chaos, the podcast where two moms, a whole bunch of kids between us, and an obsession with planning family adventures come together to make travel easier for you.

Kathleen 0:28

We are so excited to finally launch this. Today, we're kicking things off by sharing who we are, how we became travel-obsessed moms, and what inspired this podcast.

Melissa 0:40

So buckle up, because our passports are open and we're taking you with us.

Kids 0:44

Welcome to Organized Chaos.

Meet Kathleen

Kathleen 0:55

All right, so Kathleen, time for everyone to meet you. Hi, everyone. I'm Kathleen. I'm a mom of two, married to my husband Parker, for 10 years, and someone who has loved travel for as long as I can remember. Growing up, my family really valued experiences over things, and that absolutely shaped me.

Melissa 1:13

And you had a really cool travel beginning.

Kathleen 1:15

I did. I studied abroad in Europe, which totally changed the trajectory of my 20s. After college, I took a gap year and traveled as much as my budget would allow me. Trains, hostels, backpacking, the whole thing. Then I met my husband and travel just became a huge part of our relationship. Honestly, it's one of our love languages.

Melissa 1:35

You two really are the let's book the flight kind of couple. I feel like all I have to do is send you some sort of post on social media and you instantly say, "We're in."

Kathleen 1:44

We're in. Like let's book it. I feel like our motto is always, "Just say yes." Just say yes to the trip because you don't know what you're gonna experience. Once we had kids too, we really wanted them to grow up, seeing the world as well. But we also wanted to be realistic. The baby years were really hard. And Cecile, my second born, was born during COVID. So it was hard to travel during COVID. And to be honest, we kind of nested at home. We didn't go out. So we stuck closer to home for a bit. And once the kids hit ages three and five, I think as a team, my husband and I felt more comfortable taking them on trips. So that's when family travel really started to feel fun again.

Melissa 2:29

Yeah, and you guys really started exploring the world from there.

Kathleen 2:32

Yes. Now our goal is to show our kids new cultures, foods, and languages, and to raise curious

From Babies To Confident Family Travelers

Kathleen 2:39

little humans. And honestly, travel makes me feel more like myself.

Melissa 2:43

I love that.

Kathleen 2:44

Okay, Melissa, tell everyone who you are.

Meet Melissa

Melissa 2:48

Hey guys, I'm Melissa. I am a mom of three little kids. My husband and I have been married for over a decade. I am that person who, when I'm scrolling at night, I will be texting people, mostly Kathleen, flight deals at 2 a.m. I grew up traveling with my family, sort of the normal song and dance of going on family trips that they mostly planned. But then things really changed for me in college. That was when I kind of started to take ownership. And I was the one who was planning the trips for my college friends, for us to go places. And I really liked to be on the planning side of things too. It was so different for me than you know what I had growing up, where you show up with your pack suitcase on the trip that your parents had planned. I am not a passenger princess kind of girl. So I like to take control and I love it.

Kathleen 3:35

And you definitely are the queen of research.

Melissa 3:38

Yes, I really am. And like I said, I really enjoy that part of it. So the first big trip that I ever planned was with my roommates in college. It was one of those classic trips through Europe where you hit as many countries as you can as quickly as you can. And I really like looking at all the different locations and planning out the travel times and how can you get the most bang for your buck or time spent in each place. My husband, he also has a travel bug. So one of our favorite things to do together as a couple in our earlier dating or married years before we had kids was to travel together. But then, sort of like what Kathleen said, when we started having kids, it just felt hard to travel with them, especially far away.

Planning Obsession And Research Skills

Melissa 4:18

So we kind of would split things into local trips with the kids. But then any kind of big international trip that we were going to take, we would leave the kids back at home with grandparents or babysitters and do that. But by the time our third kid hit one year old, we decided that we really wanted to take our kids on those big trips too. Suddenly, we just kind of adopted together the mentality that parenting's really hard. Why not just have it be hard in another country or on a tropical beach somewhere? So we just kind of might as well give it a go.

Kathleen 4:50

Yeah, and big shout out to the grandparents. My dad also watched the kids in our early years when we wanted to go on trips. So we were still able to do the things we love together, my husband and I and these big international trips. God bless Papa, because he is really made it easy on us to pursue our passion of travels. I know your parents are the same way, right, Melissa?

Melissa 5:12

Yeah, my parents and my in-laws on all sides we're very lucky that we have a hands-on network of grandparents to help wrangle the children.

Kathleen 5:21

Papa Grandma..

Melissa 5:23

Bebe, Papa, Grandpa, Nonna, Grandma, all of them.

Kathleen 5:28

Shout out to you guys. Um, okay, tell me how old were your kids when you took your first international vacation?

Melissa 5:35

We had a one and a half year old, a four-year-old, and a six-year-old. And we, our first international trip together was to Costa Rica.

Kathleen 5:44

Yeah, Costa Rica, baby.

Melissa 5:48

Yes, Pura Vida for Life. We'll get into that Costa Rica trip maybe on a future episode. But the TLDR is that that first vacation together changed us so much. Travel is now how we connect as a family. The kids have kind of caught the research bug; when I tell them a new place that we're going, they'll poll their friends, say, "Have you ever heard of this place?" And, you know, do research in their own kid-like ways. And it's really fun. It's how we connect as a family.

Kathleen 6:16

You told me something funny when you were on the way over here. The kids were very excited about us recording our first podcast, and they were giving tips and tricks. What did they say again?

Melissa 6:25

One of our episodes that we're gonna do about Belize, my oldest one, Liam, he said, "Well, you have to tell them about Secret Beach." And then my middle son, Beckham, he said, "But you have to warn them about chafing." We definitely had an experience where my son, for the first time, experienced chafing just from having a wet bathing suit running around all day at a pool club. Tip and trick: watch out for chafing when you go to Secret Beach, guys.

Kathleen 6:51

Yeah, yeah. No swim trunks with built-in underwear. I think the men can attest to this. I wouldn't know about that.

Melissa 6:59

Absolutely. Good tip from the kids. So Kathleen, speaking of travel, do you have any favorite family trips that stood out from your childhood?

Kathleen 7:10

Yes, one particular one comes to mind. Growing up, we didn't go on a lot of international trips or on a lot of planes because I'm one of four. And I'm sure as uh you and our listeners both know is that it's very expensive to fly a family of six anywhere. Oh, yes, so

Grandparents, Help, And Mindset Shifts

Kathleen 7:30

much money. So we did a lot of road trips through California, uh, around the southwest of the United States. But one year we flew out to New York because my siblings and I actually ran track and field when we were younger. I did the high jump. My younger siblings did cross country and long distance. And so we made it to the junior Olympics that were in Buffalo, New York. There's not a lot going on in Buffalo. So after we competed, we flew down to New York City with my parents, which was awesome. It was a really cool big city experience. I had never been to a big city like that before. We went to TRL and stood outside and like waved during um Carson Daly's whole spiel.

Melissa 8:17

We're probably dating ourselves. So if you are a younger listener and you don't know what TRL is, it was called Total Request Live. It was on MTV and it was the show of our teenage years.

Kathleen 8:31

Like coming home from school, watching it. I think it was at three o'clock. Anyways, look it up if you have more questions. Saw Carson, waved and screamed in my little preteen self outside the windows of MTV. We went to the top of the Empire State building. We went to Times Square. It was just a really fun experience. And I think broadened my horizon for things that were outside our little bubble of not only Orange County, but California. So that was one of my favorite memories traveling when I was younger.

Melissa 9:08

I love that. It sounds like an absolutely amazing trip that you had with your family.

Kathleen 9:13

Okay, your turn. Tell

First International Trip With Kids

Kathleen 9:15

me about some of your favorite memories traveling as a child.

Melissa 9:18

I'll do two. I'll cheat. So one of my most cherished memories was actually a trip that I took. I was in the fourth grade, and my grandparents drove six of us cousins between the grades of fifth grade down to second grade. Took us on a cross-country trip in an RV to as many of the national parks as they could. So we went and we saw Mount Rushmore, we went to Yellowstone, we went to the great salt flats, and it was this epic vacation. And we were gone for, I want to say it was like a month of our grandparents taking us on this vacation. And it was just such good bonding time with my cousins and my siblings, but also with my grandparents, and they've both since passed away. So it's something that we all look to as one of the most epic trips of our childhood all together. So that was really fun.

Kathleen 10:18

Was it in an RV?

Kid Tips: Secret Beach And Chafing

Kathleen 10:20 Melissa 10:20

Yes, we were in an RV. One of the funny stories that we always tell is that there were enough beds in the RV - t here was kind of like a bunk bed over where the driver's seat was, and then beds in the back - so there were technically enough beds for all of us to sleep in the RV together every night. But we all laughed because my grandfather snored so loudly. So this poor guy who was the main driver doing all this for us, we all us grandkids and my grandma, so she was in on it too, w e kicked him out and he would have to sleep in a tent on the ground every night.

Kathleen 10:52

Stop.

Melissa 10:53

We were so mean, but he happily did it because we all thought it was funny and hilarious that there was a "bear" outside when really it was his snoring that was so loud we could still hear it from even in the RV. So yes, it was a really fun trip.

Kathleen 11:08

I can hear the joy in your voice recounting that memory.

Melissa 11:12

It was really one of those awesome vacations that I'll never forget. I like have tears in my eyes right now. And another really fun trip was one of probably my earlier international trips with my family. And that was with my siblings, and we went to Italy for the first time. I think my youngest brother was maybe like five years old. I was a preteen /teen in high school. So we went to Rome, Florence... and I think it was just one of those first times where you're just really immersed in another culture and just kind of seeing all these things that you've heard about in your social studies classes. And it was an amazing trip there too.

Kathleen 11:49

Do you remember which city in Italy you enjoyed the most as a kid?

Melissa 11:54

As a kid, I enjoyed Rome the most. I think that it had the most recognizable buildings to me that were things that I could kind of like recall. The Coliseum is near and dear to her heart from a USC football standpoint. So it's fun to see the real thing.

Kathleen 12:13

We are a podcast divided. Melissa is a Trojan USC fan. I went to UCLA. I'm a Bruin. So that might come

Childhood Travel Memories: NY And TRL

Kathleen 12:22

up here a few times.

Melissa 12:23

Yes. So fight on, by the way. So going to Rome, I just remember kind of having this recognition of things that I had heard before and then seen in real life was really cool. Seeing the Vatican. It's just uh one of those things that the pictures don't do justice, and you have to see it in real life to really experience it. So now that you know a little bit about each of us, let's talk about how we met.

Kathleen 12:47

It actually all started with Parker, funny enough.

Melissa 12:50

Yes. So Parker and I met in high school. Actually, Parker was friends with my husband, Brook, since middle school. So technically, we can thank our spouses for forming this relationship.

Kathleen 13:02

I think they're probably happy that we're giving them so many shout-outs in this first episode. They, I guess they are responsible for this podcast.

Melissa 13:11

Yes. Shout out to the husbands. Thank you, husbands.

Kathleen 13:15

So Parker, Melissa, and Brook have been friends for over 25 years. Q my entry into the group around 10 years ago. We had our babies and remained friends. Melissa and Brook lived up in Los Angeles for a time. And then when they moved back down here to Orange County, we really reconnected as friends. And that's when the wild idea to take our kids on an international trip together started.

Melissa 13:40

Yes, there was an early moment when we were talking about wanting to travel more with our families. And I think it was over drinks, just a few of us. And we said, kind of wait, "Whoa, you're thinking about that too?" You know, we're all kind of thinking about this adventure together. And then you have that hesitation of, okay, we have never really traveled internationally with our own children, let alone with another family of children. So this is either going to completely ruin our friendship or it will help our friendship to blossom.

Kathleen 14:14

And thank God it was the latter. And really, Costa Rica was the first trip we took, as we mentioned before. And the kids loved it, the parents loved it. During the trip, we were calling Alaska to try to extend a couple of days. But since it was around spring break, there were no flights available. It was just very magical and everything we hoped it would be. And truly, when you're finding somebody that you want to travel with as a family, I think it's important that your goals and values aligned about like budget, how you parent your kids, if you're going to share space, if not. So just really, if you're picking another family to travel with, make sure that you guys all are on the same page about how the trip's going to go in advance because it'll just do away with any sort of fights that might happen, just not fights, but disagreements that might happen while you're on the road together.

Melissa 15:10

Yep, absolutely. Being on the same page with not only your spouse and your own internal family unit, but with the other family or families that you're traveling with, I think is imperative. And we kind of set some ground rules before our trip as far as budget and sense of adventure, how much adventure in a day. And oh, by the way, we have little kids, we need nap time, all those sorts of things helped us. So, really honestly, one of the points of this podcast is it's just kind of an extension of our normal conversations that we're having between the two of us as we're planning trips. Like I said, share some tips and tricks for the audience to think about.

Kathleen 15:47

Okay. The importance of travel and the purpose of this podcast is really the heart of why we started this.

Melissa 15:55

Yeah. For

RV Across National Parks

Melissa 15:56

both Kathleen and myself and our husbands and our families as a whole, travel isn't about luxury or social media moments. It's about connection. It's about giving our kids experiences that they'll remember and moments that are going to shape them for the rest of their lives.

Kathleen 16:11

And don't get me wrong, I am the social media poster on the trips, and you will see a lot of pictures from me, but it's generally only while I'm traveling because we're just having so much fun and we want to share our joy with uh our friends on the internet. But for traveling, it's also about modeling flexibility and curiosity. Kids, they learn so much by observing, tasting, listening, trying new experiences. Although I won't lie, they mostly have chicken fingers and french fries when we travel.

Melissa 16:45

Yeah, that's definitely one of our running jokes that there have to be chicken fingers in the country that we are going to. And on that topic, one of my oldest Liam his tip is that the best chicken fingers that he has ever had are from this specific restaurant in Belize, which we can get into in the future. But all joking aside, we know that traveling with kids is really hard. We know that it can be just this mental blocker that feels like, "How do you even start?" "How do you even think about doing that?" It's so hard, especially with little kids, to just parent in your own house. Can you imagine doing that on the road and all the stuff you have to bring and just all the unknowns, language barriers, time differences, all that kind of stuff? So it can feel really overwhelming. But that's why we're here. We're here to share the really hard stuff and the hard times and the reality of it, but also the fun times and all the joy and memories that we've made on our past trips, future trips... The trade-off is so wonderful in both of our opinions that we feel like it's worth it.

Kathleen 17:52

I think the whole mental mindset has to do with framing. If you go into it understanding that certain parts are gonna be hard and you just accept that, then you won't be anxious going into every day about what bad thing is gonna happen.

Melissa 18:06

Totally.

Kathleen 18:07

So, like a travel day. We know that they're generally bad. And if you anticipate that,

Melissa 18:12

We know that you will probably get in a fight with your spouse.

Kathleen 18:15

Parker says that if we don't fight on a transit day, it means it's gonna be a great trip. So I'd say just frame it that there's gonna be hard parts and let it go. But for us, you were here to talk about our wins, the mistakes, kid meltdowns, chafing, packing hacks, favorite destinations, budget budget tips, all of it. We're here to share with you guys.

Melissa 18:41

Our hope is that this feels like traveling with friends who've done the research for you.

Kathleen 18:45

Thank you for joining us for our very first episode of Organized Chaos. We're so excited you're here.

Melissa 18:51

Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and stay tuned for episode two, where we dive into planning our Belize trip and all the chaos that came with it.

Kids 19:00

Thanks for listening. See you on our next adventure.

Kathleen 19:13

One more note if you want to reach out to us online, you can visit our website at ourorganized chaos.com.

Early Italy Impressions And USC-UCLA Tease

Melissa 19:22

And then on socials, we're on Instagram at our.organized.chaos And then on TikTok with the same handle, our .organized.chaos. So follow along.