My Name is Randy - Welcome to

The Lollipop Road!

Along with my wife Amy and our two boys, Drew and Benjamin, we are embarking on a new adventure (as if having kids is not one of its own).  As I edged ever closer to a mid-life crisis, my values and priorities started to become more pronounced.  Well, luckily it wasn’t driving a fast shiny car with the top down (although that might be nice too) and it wasn’t running away to some exotic place for a month (although that does happen on occassion); it was spending quality time with family and sharing my talents with the world in a meaningful way. Amy has joined in this crazy fantasy – and together we’ll make it a bit easier for you to navigate the wonderful, but chaotic world of family life.

By all accounts, we’re a normal family trying to make a positive life for our kids and enjoy our time together.  Oh, we also love to travel, which as folks with kids will understand, became a bit more challenging on delivery day.  Unlike many parents we know, we refused to let that change our passion for traveling the world, it just had to be tweaked a bit.  In our quest to make our travels family friendly, we poured over various resources and searched high and low for the magic answer.  What we found always fell short of what we needed.  Instead of allowing that to discourage us, we took matters into our own hands!

Our answer to the problem was to create our own resources.  While we admit that in some ways we’re still in the discovery stage, we’re hundreds of days and thousands of miles away from the aimless wandering that consumed us in the beginning.  We’re passionate about family. travel and the ability to bring the two together to develop a stronger family bond, promote educational enrichment and develop a more well-rounded child.  I cannot imagine not traveling with the kids – it is the best opportunity to be a family.

We’re also focused on providing a healthy, well-rounded environment for our kids, which often includes navigating through the hype, misinformation and controversial topics that most families simply try to avoid or ignore. Whether  behavioral, nutritional, educational or philisophical, we’ve searched high and low once again to find the answers. Through trial and error (okay, mostly error), we’ve come up with lots of recommendations and many cautions that can be viewed from a practical point of view with a huge dose of reality thrown in for good measure.

Hopefully you will find our rantings educational as well as entertaining.

So, what is The Lollipop Road? 

It is not only a blog, but a philosophical brand that was created to provide practical travel information and other resources for families while allowing interactive discussions on important travel and family related topics.

Why is it called The Lollipop Road?

We want to convey the importance of family and travel.  Lollipops represent our children and the Road signifies our journey and its importance to our path in life.  Oh, and it just sounds FUN!

Do you cater only to families?

No, our resources and discussions can be applied by many different groups.  Pretty  much anyone with a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, cousin, or friend with kids would be interested.  Some valuable resources will be useful to anyone who travels.

What is your background?

Well, I’ve done lots of interesting things.  Most recently, I was the  CFO for a  fast-paced company.  I decided to leave that job so I could spend more time with my family and concentrate on my real passion – travel and writing.  My educational background is in business and law.

More interestingly, I lead student tours for a major travel operator in the educational market, have written numerous travel related articles and have published a 474 page guide to family cruising.

Clearly, travel writing is what I love most, so I recently formed Lollipop Road Media LLC.  You can also find out more about me at my website.

Please share and enjoy!