Our Story

Hi! We’re the Hoffmeister family: Marc, Danielle, Hannah & Olivia

A couple years ago, we were all busy living the life you’re supposed to want: high-paying career (with long hours to match) and big house with a pool in the suburbs, fat retirement accounts, and plenty of homework and after-school activities to keep the kids out of trouble. We filled what little free time we had by going out to restaurants and taking a week-long vacation every now and then. On paper, it was a pretty good life.

Yet we were beginning to realize that all the stuff we thought we wanted wasn’t really making us happy. Even that dream of an awesome retirement no longer seemed worth the price we were paying to secure it.

In fact, we began to wonder if we’d even make it that far.

Something drastic had to be done. After a lot of soul-searching, we decided to sell almost all our stuff, pull our daughters out of school, and take a year-long trip through the Caribbean, South America, the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia as a family adventure. And despite all our fears and doubts, and the obstacles we encountered on the way, we actually went through with it!

It was an incredible trip. Also, it sometimes sucked. We saw amazing things, made a ton of mistakes, and learned a whole lot about what we really want out of life in the process. Would we do it again? Yes! In fact, we will do it again. and again. and again. But there are definitely some things we’ll do differently.

About this website:

We started this blog as a way for our family & friends to keep up with our adventures, but as we continue our experiments in lifestyle design, we hope it will evolve into a place where families can find inspiration and advice, trade ideas, and reassure each other that we’re not all crazy. (at least, not in a bad way)

So if this sounds like fun to you, please come along for the ride by subscribing to our newsletter or RSS feed. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding a whole bunch of resources to help you plan your own adventures, and maybe avoid some of the mistakes we’ve made (or at least laugh at them).

We love meeting people who are crazy like us – If you have any questions, suggestions, helpful tips, words of encouragement, or just want to say “Hi!”, just send an email to Marc or Danielle [at] 4suitcases [dot] com. We appreciate your feedback!