Hello and welcome to our blog! First things first, who are our unlimited choices and where did that name come from? Let’s rewind back to when I (Francesca) met Ashley – my now husband when I was 17 and he was 19. I was headed off to university to study to become a solicitor, I’d just spent my summer doing work experience in a crown court and I was ready to be a highflyer, a successful and in my eye’s materialistic person. For several years Ashley and I were working, living a normal life with the odd holiday thrown in until 2014 when our eldest son (Jacob) was born. When Jacob was around 9 months old and it was the typical time the mother returns to work after maternity leave I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being stuck in an office all day (after enjoying my freedom outside for months on end) to hand my child over to what felt like someone else to raise whilst I essentially went to work to pay for someone else to look after my child?! It just didn’t make sense and so it was decided I would remain at home and continue to raise Jacob and address the situation again when it was time for school.

In 2016 I devastatingly lost my beloved nan whilst I was 6 months pregnant with our second child (George.) The heartbreak was unreal and it made us take a big look at our lives and whether we were making the most of every moment we had on this planet and with school applications fast approaching we began to look in to alternatives and discovered the wonderful world of home education which is when the name “our unlimited choices” was born. I wanted to show the world and the people who thought we were holding our children back by not sending them to school that, we were doing the exact opposite. Their choices were abundant and unlimited.  

September 2018 when Jacob *should* have started school we took off to Thailand for our first real experience backpacking for 3.5 weeks and fell in love. Upon our return we were constantly thinking about our next buzz and after a year of back of forth deciding on what to do we eventually made the decision to put our house on the market and set off.

Who were we to know the world was about to enter in to utter chaos in 2020 with the pandemic? This unfortunately led to us removing our house from the market and carrying on with life as everyone else around the world was doing.

Post pandemic in August of 2021 we shockingly lost a best friend and mother on the same day (to two completely separate causes) and once again we were back to wondering how we could take more from this life. You know the saying “life’s too short” and you feel its cliché? There is nothing like a double bereavement to make you realise it is in fact not a cliché.

December 2021 with our house on the market we took off and spent a couple of months hopping around the canary islands whilst we awaited it’s sale. We had also placed an offer on a derelict building in the Scottish Highlands as after the results of the pandemic we decided we ought to still have a UK base. The purchase took a lot longer to go through than our actual sale so in February 2022 we headed off to Costa Rica for a couple of months which was just Pura Vida – if you know you know and if you don’t, you’ll need to look out for our Costa Rican blog piece!

April 2022 we finalised on our building and we have been here since plugging away and it’s renovation – it’s a HUGE project which you can follow along with on our Instagram and Patreon. However, we have managed to have a few adventures along the way including a return trip to Thailand, a visit to India and New York! So, that is us in a nutshell! We hope you stick around, we have plenty of adventure stories and tips/tricks to travelling with children with many more to come (once we have a finished house so Ashley tells me LOL!)

Chat soon, Francesca <3