The Southern Life – Behind The Scenes With Kendal Rodgers

Hello! We are the Rodgers family — Kendal, Clifton, Hagan (5.5), and Dorian (3). We lived in Austin, Texas, shortly after our oldest was born, then moved (back) to Indianapolis, Indiana, for three years where we had our youngest, and we are now living in a Southern city called Dothan near the Alabama/Florida/Georgia tri-state area. Yes, that’s three cities and three different houses in roughly five years; chaos is the only constant in our lives. Indianapolis is where we would call ‘home’ though, and I even wrote A Day in the Life of a Midwestern Mom highlighting some of our favorite spots in the circle city. 

My husband is a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army and I am a marketing manager at a tech company in LA. I have worked remotely since becoming a mother, so, coupled with the military’s generous 30-day annual leave policy (compared to most jobs in the U.S.), we are able to travel quite frequently. We are definitely experiences-over-things kind of people and our travel style is minimalist too. We’ve had the same trusty Ergo carrier and Mountain Buggy Nano stroller since 2014, and we usually fly with one carry-on per person. I was previously an Air BnB super-host in Indianapolis (somehow…with two small children), which was a huge help to our travel budget too.

We have been traveling since our firstborn was six months old, taking both our kids to places like Washington D.C., San Antonio, New York, Iceland, Germany x2, Miami x3, Chicago x4, Las Vegas, the Netherlands, Paris, Jackson Hole, St. Barthélemy, Atlanta, and a whole slew of other fantastic American cities–especially cities in Florida now that we live down South. You can see which ones we keep going back to, but the two weeks we traveled by train in Europe and the week spent driving around Iceland were the most memorable. This past year has been quite busy for us as parents with our latest cross-country move and two demanding jobs, but we’ve found a new favorite family activity: day trips to the beach. We live just an hour’s drive from some of Florida’s nicest beaches, so it makes for a lovely weekend getaway. Close to home, we love to cook, play board games, renovate our home, and go on bike rides together. I’m actually taking the boys snow skiing for the first time this week out West! It’s funny how once you live somewhere warm, you’re willing to pay to go somewhere cold and vice versa. Ski school…here we come!

I spent two years working with Bébé Voyage, from 2017-2019, acting as the Destinations Editor and then the Chief Content Curator. In addition to writing hotel and gear reviews, blogging about our trips, managing and editing guest blogs, and helping run social media, I co-authored the fabulous travel guides to help guide families all over the world to places like Sydney, London, Stockholm, and Tokyo. I can’t tell you how much Bébé Voyage has inspired me as a mother… beyond my travels and our now never-ending bucket list of destinations. I found a community of parents with shared values and a zest for living fully, adventurous people who want to show the beauty of this world to their children. And I made lifelong friends along the way with co-founders Juliet and Marianne and colleagues like Elizabeth of Dutch, Dutch, Goose. We are raising kind-hearted multicultural kids, caring about the environment, and enjoying every inch of what this big wide world has to offer along the way. Does it get any better?