Hello! We're Jacqueline and Randy.
Randy is a traditional Catholic who attends the Latin Mass. Jacqueline is a homeschooled, category-defying lifelong learner.
Our Philosophy
We believe in living, loving, and learning. We aim to live in a way that leads to flourishing—and whether you call the end goal flourishing, goodness, well-being, fulfillment, Real Happiness™, or something else, we believe it's not power, pleasure, prestige, or a penthouse that helps get us there. Love, relationships, leaving the world better off, becoming better people ourselves—these are what matter. We try to share our lives with people we love, build community, follow our curiosity, improve the lives of others, act deliberately, maintain balance, and seek truth and beauty in the world.
This blog is a place for us to share some of our journey with you. You'll find stories here of how we strive to embody the virtues and values we believe in. For example, we think self-discipline is one of the building blocks of a purposeful life, so we write about how we've approached building self-discipline in our own lives, such as our habits and how we've formed or broken them. We think it's important to maintain a deep connection to and appreciation for the natural world, and to that end, we share our adventures in gardening, hiking, and exploring.
We know love is vital and we reject throwaway culture—the consumerism that extends to treating even people and relationships as disposable. To this end, we share how we endeavor to respect all people and pursue the path of greatest love in our lives—with our kids, in our marriage, in our work, and in our community. We believe children's rights are as important as adults' rights—even when it's inconvenient. As such, we write about our parenting adventures and critique the way children are treated in society.
We recognize the power of knowledge and education in enabling people to flourish. We believe that people—kids and adults alike—are naturally motivated to learn through curiosity and interest. You'll find stories here about how we approach learning in daily life, experiences we've learned from, and how we shepherd our kids as they embark on their own adventure-filled lives of self-directed learning and personal growth.
We are all interdependent. As much as popular individualist culture might like to argue otherwise, no man is an island. No one can act without affecting others, and we bear some responsibility for these effects. As such, we believe both in the power of communities and in the power of individuals to change themselves and the world, even through small actions.
Change for the better starts at home. Welcome to ours!
About us
We are co-conspirators on a deliberate learning and loving adventure. We met in 2011 at NASA Goddard during a summer internship program. We got married in 2014. We have three inspiring and fascinating kids, a plethora of stories about our adventures so far, and more side projects and hobbies than we can concisely list on an About Us page.
