Welcome to Mommy and Me Overseas!  My name is Heather Jenks, and I am a mother of three children ages 7, 5 and 2 years old.  We’re avid travelers that got most of our exposure from living overseas in Germany (not military related) for three years.  I’m currently a “stay-a-home” mom that is hardly at home!  Many of you, like myself, have taken your children to some sort of “Mommy and Me” class.  Be it music, art or ballet, we know how many different activities there are to fill our days and memories doing stuff with our children.  For the last 4 years, my less ordinary “mommy and me” activity with my kids has been to travel overseas with them, often alone, to try to enrich their daily lives with multicultural experiences.  My own personal love for maps and travel began at a very young age.  My step-dad was in the Navy and traveled to various different countries and always brought us back presents from places like Bahrain and South Korea.  One of my grandmothers then took me on my very first trip to Europe when I was 14.  Today I have been to 24 different countries on 4 continents and we aren’t about to stop!

We moved back to the United States in April of 2013. My husband’s job continues to provide some restrictions on his ability to travel with us.  However, we both value the life experiences and lessons children can learn from being directly exposed to other cultures, so traveling is a big part of our parenting philosophy.  Therefore, I am the lucky one that gets to plan trips to take my children abroad whether or not my husband can join us.  I see it as a fun part of my job as their educator.  Since it is different to travel from America to far off places as opposed to already having a base in Europe, it’s been a learning experience for me since the added expense of long airplane flights make strategic planning of trip important.  I hope to share some tips I learn with you too!

I hope you will join us on our journey and follow along on the blog!!!