Keeping up with the Joneses!

There is a weird gravitational force that pulls our family toward everyone named “JONES.”  Perhaps it is because my great-grandmother’s maiden name was “INDIANA JONES” (not kidding!)  but, whatever it is, the force continues to get stronger every year!

Most recently, we had the pleasure of being introduced to the Roaming Jones!  A Seattle-based family who are our kindred spirits!  They are currently on their own one year, trip around the world with their 4 kids!  They have been on the road for over a month now and are sending back nuggets of wisdom on what to do and what not to do.  Their blog is awesome too!   Key insights from the Roaming Jones:

– Packing cubes ROCK! They make traveling much easier.

– Skype Premium is worth it!  They have had to do a ton more phonecalls than they ever expected and Skype makes it easy.

– Dropbox is great because you can store stuff in the cloud in case you need it later, like copies of your passports, etc.

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The magnetic pull toward cool people named “Jones” started back in Austin, TX when we met Erin Jones in 1995.  She came to our family as Wescott’s nanny when he was only 6 weeks old!  She went on to travel the world and met her husband Nayay, in Tanzania, where he was born and raised.  Erin, Nayay, Sambi and Kia (their two kids) are all joining us for our stint in Tanzania! Wahoo!

 

Next came Stephanie Jones, who we met 9 years ago!  She was introduced to us through a nanny agency and helped us out with the kids when we first moved to Seattle.  She went on to work with both Cliff and I at Classmates, Kinetix and Allrecipes where we got to work together for 7 years!  We hope that Steph and her husband, Aric, will come visit us on part of our world adventure too!

Then we met the Mercer Island Jones Family…Dave, Deborah, Jennifer and Ryan!  Some of our best buddies on MI as we always have fun skiing, camping, hiking, going to concerts or just hanging out J   Ryan is hoping to go to China next year at the same time we will be there so perhaps we can hook up with the MI Jones in Yangshou!

With all these Jones in our lives, it is not surprising that we ended up naming our son Jones!  He is a great ambassador for all the Joneses and I know my great-grandmother would be very proud J