Jeannie Ralston
For more than 23 years, Jeannie Ralston has been writing for magazines, both on-staff and as a freelancer. Her work has been published in Life, Time, National Geographic, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon, Texas Monthly, Glamour, Prevention, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Real Simple and This Old House. She was a contributing editor for Allure for eight years, for Ladies Home Journal for three years and at Parenting magazine for eight years. She and her husband renovated a stone barn on 200 acres of the Texas Hill Country and began growing lavender as a crop, becoming the pioneers of a new agricultural industry in Texas. Their life on the farm, called Hill Country Lavender, became the basis for Ralston’s memoir, The Unlikely Lavender Queen, published by Broadway Books. For more visit jeannieralston.com.
The Mother of All Field Trips: Homeschooling two kids in 14 countries
When her two boys were 9 and 11, this adventure journalist and her National Geographic-photographer husband decided to hell with boring old school: what better way to learn about history, culture, languages—and each other—than travelling together around the world? So the family set out on what turned into a three-year adventure that included the Great Wall of China, Egypt during the Arab Spring, leopard-spotting in Serengeti, the heights of Machu Picchu, World War II landmarks in Normandy, a Civil Rights lesson in Selma, and so much more. By the end, not only were they closer as a family, they became true global citizens and explorers, bonded by a priceless trove of memories and experiences.