The Basics

I live in Yorktown, NY in Westchester County with my husband Bobby and our two kids, Stella (15) and Madden (13).

By day, I’m a sixth-grade ELA teacher in New York City. By every other minute, I’m a baseball mom, dance mom, traveler, and co-builder of My Travel Pack App alongside six of my best friends.

Things That Matter Most To Me

If you ask me what I’m proudest of, the answer is easy. My kids. It may be the most cliché answer, but it’s also the truest. Despite all the moments of questioning my parenting skills, they have grown into genuinely kind, respectful, empathetic people. Nothing I’ve accomplished in life comes close to how proud they make me.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also realized that the things I used to care so much about aren’t the things that actually matter. If I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to stop obsessing over your weight, your looks, and whether or not certain people like you. You'll grow into an incredible version of yourself who is cooler and funnier than you realize and more comfortable in her own skin than you could imagine. You’ll be surrounded by amazing friends, an adoring husband, and kick ass kids, so stop doubting yourself and just enjoy your teen years!

What’s ironic about that now is that people usually see me as a bold and confident person. I’m certainly more of these things today, but also, I've likely just spent the last 3 hours spiraling over a random comment I made 7 days ago.

When I reveal my insecurities to people they’re  typically pretty surprised. But the reality is, I’ve just gotten pretty good at pushing forward while my internal voice aggressively panics. It turns out that confidence and crippling anxiety can coexist pretty well together.

Lessons I’ve Learned Along The Way

I used to think friendship was about popularity and fun. Today I know it’s about ease and loyalty. Through childhood, high school, college, career, and being a mom in a new town, I’ve gained and lost a lot of friends. The ones still here have taught me that friendship isn’t about quantity at all. The truest friendships aren't high-maintenance or filled with drama. They’re easy, steady, and measured by the quality of who shows up over and over through the years. 

Another great part of this stage? Realizing that life does not peak in your twenties! In my forties I’m more comfortable in my own skin, more confident than I’ve ever been, surrounded by incredible people, and still chasing new adventures, including starting a business with six of my best friends. Your forties are basically just your twenties with better judgment, better friends, and a better (earlier) bedtime.

Why I Wanted to Build My Travel Pack

Building My Travel Pack is important to me for many reasons. First, it combines two things I truly value: lifelong friendships and travel. But more than that, it’s my way of saying, “There has to be more than this.” There’s no reason to continue on the same mundane path forever if it doesn’t add peace and joy to your life. I wanted to prove that it’s never too late to take a risk, learn something completely new, and build something exciting. 

The Trip That Started It All 

The trip that changed me most was my high school trip to Spain, France, and Italy when I was 15. This was my first time in Europe and I was fortunate enough to celebrate my 16th birthday in Rome…this travel moment is still a hard one to top! 

Standing in places like the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the French Riviera, and Monte Carlo, with one of my best friends (who is still one of my best friends…hi Ash!) made the world suddenly feel so much bigger yet somehow even more accessible. Looking back, I think that trip sparked my love of travel, the understanding that who you’re with matters, and planted the seed for everything that’s come since.

What Travel Has Taught Me

Travel has taught me so much about myself and my relationships. I’ve learned that great friendships are built on compromise. No two people travel exactly the same way. Every trip teaches you something new about the people you’re with…what makes them laugh, what stresses them out, what they secretly love, and what they need from the people around them. Every shared experience, whether it’s amazing or completely chaotic, adds another layer to your friendship.

Then there’s traveling with family. This brings its own special kind of chaos. We travel with both sides of our extended family almost yearly and this has taught me a lot about myself. We love our big family trips, but I’ve realized that while it’s important for me to embrace the madness, it’s also absolutely necessary to carve out space for calm. My husband, our kids, and I always make a point to break away for quiet moments just the four of us. Some of our best memories happen in those intentional, quieter pockets together where we get to truly connect. 

And this is honestly what I hope people feel when they use My Travel Pack app. Connection. Travel has always been about so much more than the destination. It’s about protecting the friendships, family relationships, and memories that make the trip worth taking in the first place.

It seems like every year, travel develops a new set of rules. Suddenly everyone is doing the same thing, posting the same thing, and pretending they discovered it first. Some trends deserve the hype. Others deserve a gentle intervention.

Here are a few travel trends we’re secretly loving…and a few we’re secretly judging.

🩷LOVE: The “No Plans” Vacation

This in no way means you should scrap organizing your trip with My Travel Pack app. It just means your itinerary shouldn’t look like a military operation.

• 7:00 AM – Sunrise hike

• 8:15 AM – Breakfast

• 9:00 AM – Museum

• 11:00 AM – Shopping

• 1:00 PM – Lunch

• 2:30 PM – Bike ride

• 3:00 PM – Emotional breakdown

Not every minute needs to be optimized. One of our favorite Parisian bistros was found entirely by accident while roaming around the city after visiting Versailles. Squeezed into wonderfully small tables outside, surrounded by flowers, we had a lovely afternoon with a stellar bottle of wine (or two) and a perfect ham and cheese baguette. We never would have found this gem if our day had been meticulously mapped out.

Final Word: Sometimes the best part of the trip is wandering around, finding a random café, and ending up somewhere you never could have planned.

❌HATE: Turning Landmarks into Photo Shoots

But who are we kidding? We had a full professional photo shoot done while in Paris. We LOVE a good travel photo but there is a marked difference between capturing a memory and watching someone film take-37 of a hair flip.

Somewhere along the way, certain destinations became less about experiencing them and more about proving you experienced them. When people are actually getting hurt trying to land the perfect Insta selfie, things may have gone too far.

Final Word: If the entire vacation revolves around getting the perfect selfie or content, the point has been lost.

🩷LOVE: Traveling for Food

We aren’t talking about overpriced, hyper-fancy dining. We mean obsessively researching the best dumpling, pastry, sandwich, or hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a city.

Food has become a top-tier reason to travel. A recommendation that starts with, “You have to eat here,” gets our attention just as much as incredible views.

Carette was on our list for their hot chocolate, whipped cream, and strawberries as well as Chez Janou for their chocolate mousse. Both in Le Marais and as luck would have it, Chez Janou was essentially attached to our apartment. Exceptionally convenient, and entirely worth it!

Final Word: If you hear the dumplings are to die for…go there!

❌HATE: Hotel Turned Content Studio

At some point, hotels collectively decided that giant neon signs, indoor swings, and pink cotton candy walls were more important than comfortable mattresses.

We’re in no way against a bougie aesthetic and have certainly taken our fair share of trending photos. What we are against is checking into a hotel that prioritizes the “Insta-worthy” vibe over functionality. Content walls everywhere but one pillow for a queen sized bed, a semi-functioning AC, and water pressure that can only be described as a light trickle is not the travel trend for us.

Final Word: Functionality and class over neon signs. Every! Time!

🩷LOVE: The Rise of Secondary Cities

Travelers are realizing there’s a world beyond iconic capitals like Paris, London, Rome, and Barcelona.

Don’t get us wrong, Paris was almost 2 years in the making and lived up to absolutely every dream and expectation we had. That being said, there’s an undeniable magic in exploring the road less traveled.

Give us Porto. Give us Seville. Give us Santa Fe…places where locals still outnumber influencers.

While in France, we traveled 2 hours outside of Paris to the Marne Valley. About 30 minutes from the popular Reims, we spent the day touring small, family-run Champagne houses. Our favorite was Champagne A.D. Coutelas. The grounds were stunning, the champagne was incredible, and the hospitality from our tour guide, Sasha, was unforgettable.

Without having taken the road less traveled we may never have experienced the wonder of Champagne A.D. Coutelas.

Final Word: The most memorable trips happen when you choose the less obvious destination.

❌HATE: Packing for an Expedition

We’ve all seen the videos. The portable fan, portable blender, portable door lock, portable steamer, portable charger for your portable charger…

When did a beach resort require the same gear as a survival trek through the Amazon? Somewhere between vacuum-sealed compression cubes and the third white noise machine, we lost the plot.

True travel luxury is the freedom of traveling light and rolling with the punches. You will absolutely survive without half of that stuff…we promise!

Final Word: If you find yourself packing a pocket-sized espresso maker, unpack it and make room for things that really matter…like the extra outfit you definitely won’t wear.

🩷LOVE: Experiences Over Gifts

We are officially entering the era of experiences over things.

More and more, friend groups and families are ditching the traditional gift-giving holidays and birthdays in favor of group getaways. It turns out, we don’t want more stuff…we want more memories.

Whether it’s learning to make pasta from scratch or spending a full day out on the water, these shared moments outlast any physical object.

Final Word: You won’t remember what was inside the box, but you will perfectly remember the laughs you shared on the trip.

🩷LOVE: Friend Group Travel in Your 30s and 40s

This is our favorite trend. Obviously!

People are realizing that friendships deserve the same intentional effort we give to careers, relationships, and family obligations. In a world that often prioritizes individual hustle, there’s a collective shift happening toward community and shared experiences.

Friend trips are no longer viewed as something you age out of. Instead, they’re becoming a non-negotiable part of how adults maintain their mental well-being and stay connected.

Whether it’s a cozy weekend cabin retreat or an international adventure, these trips are becoming something people actively prioritize.

Final Word: This trend is definitely one worth keeping!

🎬Final, Final Word

Travel trends come and go, but we will happily embrace slower itineraries, food-driven adventures, secondary cities, and prioritizing friendships.

However, if we see you with a travel-sized espresso machine in your bag, we reserve the right to judge. Quietly, of course.

Startup Playlist

When we first started talking about building My Travel Pack, we thought the hard part would be creating the app. Turns out, there are many hard parts, but the big one? Figuring out how to build something meaningful with people you love.

There are seven of us! That’s a lot. But, we’ve been friends for almost 30 years. Traveling together through our college years, career-building years, marriage years, parenting years, and now somehow our startup years.

It’s true that people often warn against going into business with friends or family, and for good reason. When personal relationships, money, decisions, expectations, and risk collide, things can get complicated fast.

But one of the more surprising things we’ve been learning is that even after almost three decades of friendship, we are still learning so much about each other. How we think. How we make decisions. What we worry about. What we’re good at. What makes each of us feel heard, challenged, excited, or overwhelmed.

In a way, building this business hasn’t weakened our friendship. So far, it’s made us understand each other more deeply.

We’ve learned that friendship and business are completely different relationships. Friendship is built on shared history. Business is built on shared decisions. And when you’re trying to create something from scratch, there are a lot of decisions. Thousands of them, actually.

What should the logo look like?

What features matter most?

What stories should we tell?

How should we spend money?

Who owns what?

What happens when we disagree? And trust us…we’ve disagreed.

But never about our mission. We’ve been remarkably aligned on that from the beginning. We all know firsthand how difficult it becomes to stay connected as adult friends, and we’ve consistently experienced the chaotic workaround of planning group trips.

However, we’ve learned that people can be fully committed to the same goal and still have very different ideas about how to get there. That’s where the real work begins.

We’re learning that disagreement isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong. In fact, it’s often a sign that people care deeply about what they’re building.

The challenge is learning how to separate criticism of an idea from criticism of a person. Some of our most productive conversations have started with someone saying, “I don’t think that’s the right approach.” Decades of friendship helps because we’ve built up a lot of trust over time. But even then, it takes effort to listen when your idea gets challenged.

We’ve realized that each person brings a different superpower to the table.

Some of us think about strategy.

Some focus on design.

Some focus on operations.

Some instinctively think about risk.

Some think about growth.

At first, those differences can feel frustrating. Eventually though, you begin to understand they’re actually what makes the team stronger. If seven people thought exactly the same way, we’d probably move faster. We’d also probably make a lot more mistakes.

Another lesson? Progress is much slower than it looks from the outside. People see a logo. A website. A social media account. A few app screens. What they don’t see are the hundreds of conversations behind every decision.

The late-night texts.

The spreadsheets.

The revisions.

The meetings about meetings.

The moments where you feel like you’ve been discussing the same thing for three straight weeks.

One thing we didn’t expect was how much patience this process would require. In a world where we’re used to immediate answers and instant results, building something truly meaningful moves at an entirely different pace.

There are weeks where it feels like you’re making huge progress. There are weeks where it feels like you’re moving backward. But starting a business isn’t one dramatic moment where everything suddenly comes together. It’s a series of small decisions made over and over again.

It’s showing up to another meeting.

Reviewing another document.

Working through another disagreement.

Making another revision.

Taking another step.

Our friendship is the reason this business exists in the first place. The reason we’re building My Travel Pack is because we’ve spent decades figuring out how to stay connected despite the burdens and realities that come with adulthood. This business grew out of a problem we genuinely experienced and every time the process feels overwhelming, that’s the thing that brings us back.

Because underneath the app, the features, the content, the startup conversations…we’re still the same seven friends trying to solve a problem we’ve been navigating for years. We’re just building the solution this time.

And while we still have a lot to learn, one thing has become very clear: Building a business together isn’t testing our friendship. It’s teaching us new ways to practice it. ❤️

The NYC Years Playlist

If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve been sharing old travel stories from our college years. We affectionately refer to that era of our storytelling as, Phase 1: The “Chaos and Core Memory” Years.

Now, we’re moving into the next stage of adult life, post college. We call this Phase 2: The “Trying to Hold It Together” Years.

This is when local weekends and shorter getaways during our mid 20s and early 30s were the only options. We were no longer financially subsidized by our parents and were now building careers, getting engaged, getting married, even beginning to have babies. Overall, just navigating major life transitions.

Traveling together became harder to coordinate because life started becoming more complicated. Here’s how we handled it and what we learned…

Lots of Trips to New York

Just out of college and suddenly scattered across the East Coast, we had one very important question…how exactly were we supposed to keep the fun going from several states away and an estimated zero dollars to our names?

Plane tickets? Absolutely not. Hotels? Be serious.

So we did what any financially unstable but deeply committed friend group would do. We decided that if you had living space, we were all coming for you. By car, train, bus, or some transportation choice that felt reasonable at this age but less reasonable in hindsight. Didn’t matter though. If someone had a floor, we were on our way.

In the few years right out of college the options were, Lisa’s parents’ house again (which her mother actually loved, but that’s another story) or Aoife’s 250 square foot studio apartment in Manhattan.

Naturally, we chose the tiny Manhattan studio without hesitation. And in your mid 20s, who even cared? Beds were more of a suggestion back then. Couch cushions, floors, one suspiciously small air mattress….everything counted.

Getting ready for a night out in that apartment was absolute chaos in the best way imaginable. Music blasting. Hair tools everywhere. Six people yelling over each other while one person attempted to apply eyeliner in a microwave reflection. Drinks were flowing. Outfit changes were happening every seven minutes. It was pure chaos. And pure joy.

We did it over and over and over again because it was fun, ridiculous, and most importantly…cheap. Well, okay, most importantly because it kept us together. Every time Aoife moved apartments, we treated it less like a lease renewal and more like a grand reopening tour.

It’s Always Important to Eat

So there we were, spending many of our weekends in NYC, technically employed and pretending to be functioning adults. Consistently ordering the cheap beer and waking up with neck pain, we lived off of over-drafted optimism and the belief that “everything will work itself out.”

There were boozy brunches, dinners we absolutely could not afford, and nights that began with “just one drink here” but somehow turned into all-night occupancies full of intense laughter and unforgettable memories.

One crucial lesson we learned early on was, if you’re going to brunch, especially the “bottomless mimosa” kind, make sure you also eat actual food. And if you think you ordered enough…you probably didn’t. Order another round of fries for the table. And maybe a Cuban. You’re welcome.

When it came to eating dinner though, who had the time or money to sit in a nice restaurant eating good food and drinking good wine every night? Not us. We had more pressing things to attend to. The issue with this, however, is that suddenly it’s 12AM and you’re wandering aimlessly around Manhattan on an empty stomach in search of the perfect dollar slice.

But we’d be lying if we said that wasn’t one of the best parts of these trips. There’s truly nothing better than standing on a sidewalk eating a NYC slice in the early hours of a Sunday morning!

The Trouble With Transportation

As many may remember, there was really no such thing as “Uber” back then. At most, rideshares were in their infancy, so we were left with taxis or the subway. Of course this also meant occasionally making questionable logistical decisions at 2AM. Not unlike the time Gretchen and Lisa decided to hop into what was clearly not a cab, for one reason and one reason only…this car had Rhode Island plates.

They assumed this was part of the rideshare situation that was just starting out at the time, which it likely was, but cut to 120 down the FDR and that’s when they learned another very important lesson. Rideshares were not for us at this particular time in our life and until further notice we would be sticking to the safety and familiarity of the yellow cab. Sometimes, a stupid decision can lead to a necessary life lesson.

But honestly, that’s part of what made those years what they were. We were figuring life out in real time. Sometimes responsibly. Sometimes…less responsibly. But always together. And always looking out for one another.

Today, our schedules are tighter and our responsibilities are greater, but the mission remains exactly the same. We’re still chasing that same feeling, just with better planning, fewer floor cushions, and always another round of fries for the table.

💡Tip From The Trip

No one should be wandering aimlessly around the city at midnight searching for the perfect dollar slice. Our advice? Map out your late-night spot early!

Instead of the tedious routine of googling recommendations, texting links to the group chat, and later wrestling with maps for directions, My Travel Pack App will soon streamline this entire process. Your group will be able to find and save the best local pizza spots and directions to a shared itinerary before you even head out for the night.

So when the midnight cravings hit, you’ll know exactly where to go, keeping the focus on making memories, not figuring out logistics.

If you’ve been following along with us, you may have noticed some girls' trip stories beginning to appear. While we do love to reminisce just for fun, there is actually a reason we began sharing our stories.

We thought that if we’re asking you to come along on this ride with us…the app development process, the inside jokes, the chaos, and the memories…then you deserve to know what we’re trying to build and why we’re building it this way.

When people think about a travel app, they probably expect to hear things like:

“Here are our features.”
“Here’s what our dashboard does.”
“Look at this booking tool.”
“Look at our itinerary builder.”

And yes, we are doing that. But if we only talked about features, we’d be skipping the entire reason My Travel Pack exists in the first place.

My Travel Pack didn’t start with an app idea. It started with seven friends.

Seven friends who met in college and managed to keep showing up for each other through almost three decades of life.

And through every stage, we kept doing one thing: we kept taking trips.

Not always glamorous ones.

Not always perfectly planned ones.

Not always luxurious destinations.

But trips nonetheless.

And something we started realizing as we looked back at all of these memories was this: The trips changed and we changed, but the friendships stayed.

THAT is what My Travel Pack is really about, and for this reason, our blog posts are going to follow the evolution of our trips and our transitions through different phases of life.

So let’s break that down…

Phase 1: The “Chaos and Core Memory” Years

This is where we started. Our college party-girl era. The years where we had limited funds with unlimited energy.

The years of spontaneous decisions, questionable travel choices, tiny budgets, and stories that should probably remain only partially documented.

These were the years in which our friendship story started. The era that built our foundation.

Phase 2: The “Trying To Hold It Together” Years

Next we’ll move into our late 20s and early 30s. The local trip years where we would pile into someone’s apartment in whichever city they lived in. Weekends in New York, Boston, Providence, Baltimore, etc...you lived there, we went there. 

These were the years where life started getting real. Careers began. People got engaged. People got married. Babies began to appear. Budgets became tighter. Schedules became harder.

We could no longer just throw clothes into a bag and disappear for a weekend without coordinating twelve other moving parts first.

Here is also where we started to realize that if we wanted to remain connected and not watch our friendships slowly fade, we were going to have to work for it.  

Phase 3: The “Intentional Connection” Years

Finally we’ll end in the phase we’re living in now. Our late 30’s and 40’s When we’re in the thick of being wives, mothers, professionals, caretakers, and people with calendars that require a color-coding system to survive.

Ironically though, these are also the years where the trips started meaning more than ever. Because while it may seem like we travel to escape responsibilities, the reality is, we travel to remember who we are outside of them. 

Connection and sense of self are a huge part of the My Travel Pack brand. 

We’re not just building an app. Underneath the tool being created to simplify the planning and logistical nightmares that can create group travel chaos, there’s a deeper goal.

Life naturally pulls people in different directions. No one means for friendships to become harder to maintain. No one wakes up one day and decides to drift apart. 

Life simply gets louder and suddenly years can pass faster than anyone intended.

For us, our trips became our reset button. Our tradition. Our way of making sure we kept showing up for each other. Our way to reconnect not only with each other, but with ourselves. 

And our goal has always simply been to make this reset button accessible and attainable for you. 

Which brings us to the most important reason we’re telling these stories. 

We want to build a genuine connection with you. We want you to know us. Not a polished, startup pitch version. The real version.

The women who have overpacked, underplanned, missed things, laughed until we cried, stressed over budgets, argued over logistics, and still somehow managed to keep these friendships going.

We want you to feel like you can relate to us, our experiences, our friendships, our struggles, and our stories.

We hope that by showing up authentically, you begin to trust not only us as founders, but also the product we’re building.

Because trust doesn’t come from saying, “Trust us.”

Trust comes from showing people who you are.

We’re trying to build something that feels bigger than just an app or a brand. We want to create a space where friendships, stories, traditions, and shared experiences matter. 

So when we share our stories with you, we’re not doing it because we think our stories are somehow better or more important than anyone else’s. We’re doing it because we think you’ll see parts of your own story in them.

Maybe you’ll remember your college trips.

Maybe you’ll remember the trip you almost planned but never actually booked.

Maybe you’ll text your group chat.

Maybe you’ll finally take the trip.

And if that happens, then we’re building exactly what we hoped to build all along. 

A travel app is just the product, but connection? That has always been the goal.

The week before a girls’ trip is a controlled demolition of your sanity. It’s a very specific, make-or-break chaos that you voluntarily sign up for in a moment of optimistic brunch-induced zeal, only to find yourself by Wednesday afternoon questioning every life choice.

It begins with a resurrection. The group chat, dormant for weeks, suddenly pulses with a frantic, rhythmic urgency. Every notification is a digital fever dream where the stakes feel as high as a Met Gala debut. We aren’t just talking about a getaway; we’re curating a four-day character arc. You stand in front of a closet that is objectively full, yet emotionally vacant, and realize the diagnostic truth: you have absolutely nothing to wear.

And here’s where the panic shopping begins. Packages start arriving daily. The Mirror Selfie Dispatch starts.

Standing in your bedroom at 11:00 PM, one leg hitched up to show the “vibe” of a skirt, face blurred out because you’re exhausted, but the outfit - the outfit is the mission. You send it into the void, waiting for the votes to pile in. A “heart” emoji is a pass; a “fire” emoji is a green light; silence is a devastating veto.

Dresses that looked effortless online but somehow feel…off. Half of it gets returned while the other half sits in a growing “maybe” pile on your bed. We aren’t just buying clothes; we’re curating a wardrobe for a four-day run.

The Macro-Analysis of Footwear is the point where the group chat officially loses its grip on reality. This isn’t about protection for your feet, it’s more like a high-stakes engineering summit.

The conversation usually stalls on a single pair of shoes that occupies the liminal space between “visionary fashion” and “orthopedic nightmare.” Are these a need or a want?

• The “Need” Argument: You convince yourself they are a fundamental requirement for “The Friday Night Look.” Without them, the outfit loses its soul. You argue that they are an investment, a versatile staple you’ll definitely wear to work (you won’t).

• The “Want” Reality: Deep down, you know they’ll be vibrating with pain by the time the appetizers arrive. You already own three versions of this shoe, but none of them have this specific attitude.

It’s a forty-five-minute spiral over a strip of leather and a dream. But in that moment, those shoes aren’t just footwear…they’re literally the anchor of this whole trip.

You find yourself standing in front of the mirror again, phone angled precariously, holding a coat over a dress for the Outerwear Audit stage of this game.

• “Does the “peek-a-boo” hem look like a deliberate style choice or a cry for help.”

• “In this photo, the coat looks camel, but the dress is more of a toasted oat. Are the undertones fighting?” Suddenly, you’re all amateur chromatics experts.

• “Does this say ‘effortlessly grabbing a late-night drink in a dimly lit bar,’ or does it say ‘I’m cold and I didn’t plan for this’?”

You know, logically, that you will likely spend 90% of the trip with your coat draped over a chair. But for now, the relationship between that wool blend and that silk midi is the most pressing issue on the planet. If the lengths clash, the weekend is fundamentally compromised. If they harmonize? You’ve won the trip before you’ve even zipped the suitcase

There’s a beautiful, shared psychosis in the deep dive analysis of the curated girls trip wardrobe. We’re collectively building a visual storyboard, ensuring that when we finally stand together, we look like we’re cool and effortless and not like the week-long, spiraling, overthinkers we truly were.

By Thursday, your bedroom is a graveyard of packing cubes and discarded poly-blends. The to-do list has mutated, and the chat has pivoted to the “Weather Panic”. A final, desperate audit of humidity percentages and umbrella logistics. You’re exhausted, over-caffeinated, and your bank account is essentially a list of grievances.

Meanwhile, the calendar fills up fast. Hair appointment squeezed in between work meetings. Nail appointment you refuse to reschedule because vacation nails are non-negotiable. Spray tans booked, roots touched up, micro needling needled…every detail matters.

But beneath the retail explosions and the '“channeling our youth” appointments, there is a specific frequency in the air. It’s the low hum of anticipation. You do it for the moment the plane touches down, the transition from the digital psychosis of the chat to the physical reality of laughing until your stomach hurts. You do it for the stories that don’t belong in everyday life and the rare, uninterrupted luxury of being truly known by the people sitting across the table.

The week before is madness, yes. But the madness is just the entry fee. The trip is the magic; the chaos is the ritual.

If you read our Cancun story, then you already know. We got to the airport. Ready. Excited. Spiritually prepared for spring break.

And there was no plane.

Not delayed. Not boarding. Not even hiding somewhere at another gate. Just no real flight that existed in any meaningful way. Which, in hindsight, feels like a pretty strong argument for better booking systems. Because here’s the thing about group trips:

Getting out of the group chat is one battle. Actually booking everything correctly is a completely different one.

This is where things have the potential to quietly go off the rails. Someone books one hotel. Someone else finds a “better option” and books that instead. Half the group is on one flight, the other half is “thinking about it.” And there’s always at least one person who swears they booked…but can’t find the confirmation.

So now instead of excitement, you have mild anxiety and 37 screenshots floating around with no clear answer to the simple question:

Are we…actually good?

This is exactly why we’re building the booking feature into My Travel Pack app. Not as an afterthought. Not as a “nice to have.” But as a core part of making group travel actually work.

Inside the app, your group can:

• Book flights, hotels, and accommodations directly

• Keep every reservation organized in one shared place

• See, in real time, who’s booked and what’s confirmed

• Access actual confirmations without digging through emails, texts, or camera roll screenshots

Everything is tied to your Pack’s trip. Everything is visible. Everything is real. And yes, we’re fully aware that it’s 2026. We all technically have confirmation emails. We all could search our inboxes. We all could stay organized. But we don’t.

Because group trips are not solo trips. They are layered, chaotic, moving parts with multiple people making decisions at different times.

Which is how you end up with:

• Mismatched bookings

• Confusion at check-in

• Or, in our case…a completely nonexistent flight.

The booking feature is our way of eliminating that entire category of problems. It’s the difference between:

“I think we’re booked?”

and

“We’re booked. Here’s everything. We’re good.”

We can’t promise your group won’t argue. We can’t promise someone won’t change their mind last minute. But we can promise this:

If you’re using My Travel Pack app to book your group trip…there will be a plane.

Cancun ‘99 Playlist

Every generation has its defining moment. The Boomers had Woodstock - good one. The Millennials had Fyre Festival - bad one.

Gen X? Well we’ve always been like that unruly middle child, and…

We had Cancun - not too good, but not too bad either.

The Universe Says No

We were 27 girls on a bus headed to Logan Airport like we had everything under control. It was spring break ‘99, and within hours of leaving URI it became very clear that no one, especially the airline, had anything under control. They, in fact, did not appear to be aware that we even existed.

There was no plane. No flight. Nothing. Just us and 30+ other students from nearby colleges slowly realizing we had collectively imagined a trip to Cancun.

They hit us with, “We’re working on it,” and handed out food and alcohol vouchers as if that was gonna fix everything. The only thing it did, however, was provide us access to free booze.

And here’s where things sort of…escalated…

People quite literally began to lose it. There were payphone lines full of kids waiting to call their parents. There was yelling. There were tears. There were declarations made to airport staff that were not entirely grounded in reality…most notably, “We’re sorority girls, our fathers own states and stuff!”

To be clear, no one’s father owned a state. These were words of people in crisis.

Soon the airport staff had no choice but to give up. They caution-taped off a section of the terminal with orders for us to “stay here.” So, we stayed there…until we were all asleep on the airport floor, cheek-to-carpet, dreaming of beaches we may never reach.

When we woke up there was actually good news: a plane existed and we were leaving for Cancun later that day. There were now tears of joy!

And then…it started snowing! Of course it did. This story was never gonna be easy.

So the airline did the only reasonable thing left to do: they put all of us college students up in an airport hotel for the night. This was either incredibly generous or wildly irresponsible. Spoiler: not the first one.

Not Unpacking That

We’re gonna keep this part tasteful. Some of us have parents who read things on the internet now. What we will say is: 60-something college kids, a hotel, two days of pent-up vacation energy, a bar, and a shared sense of “we’ve already been through some shit together”…it got aggressive.

There was a lot of drinking. We were running up and down the halls, taking elevator rides just because, wearing bed sheets as clothing, etc. People were starting to pair off like it was a reality show that no one signed up for. Absolute debauchery. The kind where when you wake up the next morning everyone agrees, “we’re just not gonna unpack that.” And we are not elaborating further.

The Banana Made My Top Come Off

The next day we finally made it to Cancun. Here’s the thing about almost not making it somewhere: when you do get there, you’re committed. We were now in Cancun to make up for lost time.

The banana boat was supposed to be fun…and that’s the last time we took someone’s word for it. We climbed onto a banana tethered to a speedboat but what we didn’t account for was its unhinged driver. This man chose violence.

He went one speed. Fast. The ocean rushed up to meet us in ways that actually hurt, and as lives flashed before eyes, we all went flying in a not so graceful group wipeout. In the chaos, and to the thrill of every guy on the beach, one of us lost a bikini top. Not really part of the plan, but Cancun had been throwing us curveballs since Logan and at this point, we were just catching them.

When we weren’t being hurled topless off of an inflated banana, we lived at the Tiki bar where our Spanish peaked at ordering fries: “Necesita papas fritas” was our favorite thing to say. We’re sure we were being made fun of…and, fair!

We Believe We Like To Party

Obviously every trip has a soundtrack. You don’t choose it. It chooses you.

The soundtrack to Cancun ‘99 was handed to us one night at a club packed with hundreds of people, lights flashing and glow sticks at every turn. This was the late ‘90s fully and unapologetically itself.

“Believe” by Cher and “We Like to Party” by the Vengaboys became the anthems of this trip in a way that songs only can when you hear them at exactly the right moment in your life. When we hear these songs today, we’re immediately back there, sunburned, dehydrated, and making the best bad decisions.

The Cancun Bus and So Much Foam

On the night we decided to go to Señor Frog’s, everyone instantly knew what it meant: the Cancun bus. You know the one. It travels at a speed of 120 mph while you just hold on and hope you make it to your destination alive. Thankfully we did!

The infamous foam party was our next questionable decision. The boat took us to a random island where we were met with an incredible amount of foam. Foam that got into places it had no business getting into. It was loud music, lots of booze, and a crazy huge crowd full of drunk people. All of this was rounded off with a spring break staple…the wet t-shirt contest. Naturally, some of our friends entered this contest. Also naturally, one of them won as the rest of cheered, laughed, and screamed “she’s ours!”

And honestly, that was probably the perfect ending to the trip with the not so perfect start!

💡Tip From The Trip

“Stop waiting for the perfect conditions to begin. Begin, and make the conditions perfect.” - Alan Cohen

Did we miss two days? Yes. Did those two days happen anyway, just in a different not so ideal location? Also yes. Did we end up getting more of an experience than we realized at that moment? Genuinely, yes.

What we learned from this experience is that your adventure starts when you do. Just begin!

And those days you do get? Make those count so hard that the ones you lost are embarrassed they ever existed.

So you did it.

The trip has officially made it out of the group chat’s “we should totally go somewhere” phase and into something that almost resembles a real plan.

This is huge.

But, now we’ve arrived at the part where things historically fall apart:

Where are we going?

…and even more chaotic…

When are we going?

Let’s talk about “when,” because this one has been humbling us for decades.

26 years ago, it was, “I can’t, I have a final.”

Then it became, “I can’t, I just started this job.”

Then, “I can’t, I have a wedding.”

And now?

It’s evolved into a full-blown scheduling obstacle course: Extended families. Kids. Sports. Dance competitions. Work travel. Real travel. Someone’s always booked, double-booked, or emotionally booked.

And what happens?

Well, if you’ve been paying attention then you know what we’re going to say…the group chat turns into a chaotic scroll of:

• “What about June 12–15?”

• “Wait, I can’t do that weekend.”

• “What about the next one?”

• “I’m away.”

• “I might be able to…”

• “Let me check.”

Suddenly we’re 47 messages deep, no closer to a decision, and someone’s already mentally canceled the trip.

And we haven’t even touched WHERE yet. This exact chaos is what made us stop and ask…Why is this still so hard?

When we started building My Travel Pack, we knew this part had to be simple. Because honestly, once you lock in the when and the where, everything else starts to fall into place. So we built something into My Travel Pack app to tackle just this:

The Poll Feature

Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just…finally organized.

You drop in a bunch of date options → everyone votes → done, dates picked.

Then you do the same thing for destinations → done, location locked.

But wait, there’s more!

You don’t have to stop at dates and destinations. You can use the Poll Feature for all the other decisions that inevitably turn into group chat hostile negotiations…restaurants, reservations, activities, excursions, all of it.

Because nothing derails a trip faster than 14 opinions, zero decisions, and someone saying “I’m good with anything”…when you know they are absolutely not good with anything!

Get your pack together, throw in the options, and let everyone weigh in like normal people instead of a chaotic group of chat gremlins.

The payoff?

Instead of decoding vague responses and scrolling like a conspiracy theorist with a red-yarn corkboard, you get a clean vote and a clear answer. Done. Clarity. Moving on…

Because the trip shouldn’t die at the starting line.

It should actually…happen!

*Click for The Key West Playlist *

Picture it, Rhode Island, Spring Break Road Trip, March 2000. Five URI sorority girls, eyebrow-less in a Honda Civic, bound for Key West and armed with the delusional confidence of people who hadn’t yet lived in a world with GPS.

But first, Sears! We obviously needed a camcorder…if the chaos wasn’t documented on a shaky hand-held, did it even happen? We hit record, hit the road, and made it exactly 15 minutes down Rt.138 before realizing the MapQuest printouts were still sitting in the chapter room at Sigma Kappa. We had to turn around, immediately wasting a full hour of freedom for our Hewlett-Packard ink and paper lifeline.

Once we actually pointed the car south, we didn’t stop until hitting Lisa’s aunt and uncle’s house in South Carolina. Despite still vibrating slightly from the McDonald’s coffee that had been keeping us buzzed up to this point, we collapsed for eight hours straight. We had planned for a sunrise start, but were really more of a 10am type-a gal back then and were lucky to be back on track by 8.

The second half of the drive was exactly what you’d expect from five girls in a compact car. Surrounded by empty cups that once housed the questionable McDonald’s “coffee” of that era, we slept in curled up balls on the floor, feet in faces, and heads in armpits. But the second we hit the Seven Mile Bridge - windows down, music loud, surrounded by crystal blue water - that 20 hours of sardine living was well worth it.

Was It A Cult?

We checked into the Southernmost Hotel and instantly inherited a group of guys from Kentucky as our background characters for the week.

They were nice. Some cute even. Until one night at the hotel bar when they introduced the mantra that still haunts us to this day. They’d press their forearms crossed against their foreheads, hands facing out, fingers spread wide, and yell, “DEER WITH ANTLERS!” Then, separate their arms moving their wrists down to their temples, hands still facing out, and whisper, “merely a fawn.” Was it a cult? A stroke? We didn’t know…but by Wednesday there was nothing you could do to stop us. It was the kind of inside joke that literally no one else finds funny. And yeah, we do understand why. Clearly it made an impression though, because 26 years later we’re still talking about it.

Blood, Suds, and The Residency

Meeting people on vacation has always been one of our favorite parts of traveling, but the truth is we generate enough chaos on our own. Like the night at Irish Kevin’s when Lisa was persuaded to enter a beer-chugging contest. The whole bar was cheering her on. It came down to her and another girl for the title and you could see the “will to win” in her eyes. Consequently, you could also see it in the beer cascading down her face and onto her shirt. Sadly, Lisa took second place that night, but, still maintains that in everyone’s hearts she came in first.

Then there was Sloppy Joe’s. We didn’t just go there, we held residency. Every time we walked in, the band stopped to announce, “THE RHODE ISLAND GIRLS ARE HERE!”. We were on that stage every night - singing, dancing, maybe making out with the band a little. Our only real skill? Being hot shit…hot shit fueled by Red Bull, vodka, and pure audacity. Not having smartphones back then was a godsend…amiright?

And then, naturally, the sea tried to kill us…twice. First, our friend sliced her foot open on the snorkeling boat. There was blood. There was panic. There was a brief consideration to turn the boat around. We didn’t. We wrapped that foot up, reassured ourselves she was fine, and continued on.

And snorkeling was great…until the moment Lisa tried to hurl herself back onto the boat. In one fell swoop, a rush of ocean water flooded into her mouth in what she would later describe as “the gallons.” It was not. She did however spend the next several hours dramatically nauseous while our injured friend hobbled around on one foot for the remainder of the trip. Everyone survived!

Damp Towels and Mild Regret

As our trip was coming to an end, we did the most 20-year-oldest of 20-year-old things and decided to stay another night with no plan and nowhere to sleep. No problem! We’ll just sleep on the hard, questionable floor of our friend’s room. There were debates. Some arguments. Not everyone was thrilled. But we sure did get our extra 24 hours, didn’t we?!

Somehow that drive back to Rhode Island seemed to take twice as long. Probably because the dopamine had worn off and all that remained was the smell of damp towels and mild regret (some stories stay in that camcorder). But twenty-four hours later, cramped and exhausted, we crawled back into our beds, passed out, and descended into our dreams, likely about a deer with antlers…or maybe the guys from that band.

💡Tip From The Trip

“Embrace the ‘Digital Dark’ and stay in the moment!”

Back then we had the “godsend” of no smartphones and although this trip was 26 years ago, looking back, we learned a valuable lesson: the best way to replicate that “hot shit” energy is to intentionally put the phones away. The best inside jokes happen when everyone is present and not just posing for ‘the socials’.

Plus…keeping the phones down ensures that those “mild regrets” stay between you and your friends - not the entire internet!

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…we’d love for you to leave us a comment, like this post, or even restack it if you feel so inclined :)

If you’ve been following along, you know our story. In a nutshell, we needed a better way to plan our group trips.

In our last Pack Behavior post, we walked through the five phases of a group trip’s slow descent into group chat purgatory. Those phases didn’t just come out of nowhere. We’ve lived them - over and over again for more than 25 years of planning trips together.

Okay, maybe not all of the texting nightmares or link avalanches in the early days. I mean, we’re Xennials. We started this journey back in ‘98, when there was a little something called MapQuest and a little nothing called GPS. But even when technology arrived, the problems didn’t disappear. They just moved into email chains, group chats, and chaotic spreadsheets.

Eventually, after several, several, several years of this, (why didn’t we come up with this sooner though) we finally asked a simple question: Why isn’t there one cohesive place where a group can budget, plan, and organize a trip together?

And in a slightly shocking turn of events, that idea went from, “Haha, there should be an app for this…” to “Holy crap. We’re actually making an app for this.”

Watching It Come to Life

It all started when we stopped hesitating and finally committed to actually building this thing. We partnered with a development team and collaboratively began mapping out what the first real version of the app should look like.

The most surreal part of this process has been watching something that started as random conversations between friends slowly turn into a real product. There were definitely moments where we thought:

“Are we really doing this?”

Then the first designs came in.

Then the prototype.

Then the screens started connecting.

Suddenly, it stopped feeling like an idea and started looking like an actual app. And now, for the first time, we’re ready to share a little sneak peek of the prototypes we’ve been building behind the scenes…just a little though 😉

We hope you like what you see!

The Welcome Screen

Your welcome screen is the dashboard for your trips. This is where users create their “Pack” and start planning trips together.

From here you’ll be able to see:

• Navigation tabs

• Your active travel packs

• Upcoming trips

• Pack Funds with visual progress toward your shared savings goal

The Pack Funds Feature

Honestly, this is the foundation of My Travel Pack - born from the decade ago, genius idea we had to create our own shared travel fund.

Because let’s not pretend traveling isn’t expensive. It is. Especially when you have to pay for everything in one awful, “I hate myself” payment. And believe us, we know all about that! But, we’ll tell you this…when we started making small monthly deposits into our shared travel fund, something magical happened.

When the trip rolled around…that thing was already mostly paid for! Suddenly things felt easier and our budgeting stresses were significantly minimized.

My Travel Pack is built around this idea.

This app will allow your group to:

• Create a shared travel savings goal

• Track your group’s contributions

• Receive gentle monthly saving reminders

• Watch your progress together as your trip fund grows

So…Why Are We’re Sharing This Now?

Many of you have been following our journey from the very beginning. Your support means more to us than we can adequately express and we wanted to finally show you what we’ve been talking about the last few weeks.

We’re still early in the process. There’s a lot more to build, but this is the first moment where we can confidently say: My Travel Pack is real.

And yes…Holy crap, we’re actually making an app for this!

We would love for you to leave a comment and let us know what you think. Feedback is always welcome and much appreciated!

There are few modern day experiences more revealing than trying to plan a group trip. Assembling IKEA furniture is pretty high up on the list but still pales in comparison to the slow-burn psychological warfare of a group text.

The group trip chat is where personalities go to be exposed and oftentimes where the group trip goes to die. If your trip actually makes it out of the chat, you are a true inspiration and should be rewarded…not by us though, we can’t reward you, but someone definitely should. Because let’s be honest, you passed a 146-message case study in group chat dysfunction that follows a very specific, very painful trajectory and you deserve to be celebrated. Now let’s break down the phases of our collective descent into purgatory.

Phase 1: The Enthusiastic Era

It starts with a spark of hope.

Lisa: “We HAVE to plan a trip soon!”

Missy: “Yes, bitch.”

Bo: “I’m in!”

Aoife: “Absolutely!”

Brina: “100%”

Energy is high. Everyone is emotionally wealthy and financially delusional. Within 12 minutes, we’ve assembled a list of destinations that completely ignore the laws of economics and reason:

• Paris

• Napa

• Malta

• “What about a yacht?”

• “My cousin has a cabin in Montana, but it’s ‘rustic’ (there is no plumbing).”

During this stage, not one person mentions the pretty significant factors that generally determine the fate of an adult group trip…budget, PTO, expired passports, childcare, life schedules…but nevertheless, we persist.

Phase 2: The Schedule Collapse

Aoife: “What dates work for everyone?”

Silence. Eighteen hours pass. Typing bubbles appear, disappear, appear again...

Jess: “Can’t do June. Jon will be in Somalia.”

Lisa: “Baseball tournament and dance comp this summer but I can work around.” (she can not)

Gretch: “I’m flexible.” (she is not)

Missy: “I’ll check my work schedule and let you know!” (She will do neither)

Phase 3: The Budget Evasion

Someone asks about the budget. The chat goes cold. Seen by 7, responded to by 0. And finally someone speaks.

Bo: “Whatever works!” (Translation: I refuse to be the first one to name a number.)

Eventually, someone suggests, “Maybe $2k?” Suddenly, one person goes mute, one person suggests camping to “save money,” and one person insists “flights aren’t that bad” (they are in fact that bad).

Phase 4: The Link Avalanche

Structure has officially left the conversation. You now have 6 Airbnb links, 4 hotel options, 2 “This looks cute” messages with zero context, and 1 accidental screenshot of someone’s LED light face mask in their Amazon cart.

Gretch: “Which one do we like?”

Brina: “I like them all.”

Jess: “I like the third one.”

Which third one, Jess? There are fourteen links. Nobody can remember which property had the $1,200 cleaning fee or the weird bunkbed room. The information is now buried in group chat purgatory.

Phase 5: The Accidental Accountant

Without an election or a salary, one person becomes the researcher, debt collector, and unlicensed therapist (remember Aoife?). They start a spreadsheet with good intentions and high hopes. Eventually, someone says, “I’ll just put it on my card, you guys can pay me back.” And this is where friendships, and credit scores, also go to die.

The Real Pain Points

While we laugh to keep from crying, the problems are structurally unsound.

• No Budget Visibility: No one wants to be the “cheap one” or the “overspender,” so everyone’s silent. The budget isn’t set nor is it transparent, so no one really knows what to do about their own savings for this trip. There’s no real discussion or voting system for what we want to do or how much we want to spend on certain aspects of the trip.

• Information Chaos: Links get buried in hundreds of texts. People thumbs up messages as if emoji reactions are a legally binding voting mechanism. They’re not. Scrolling back through hundreds of texts to try and find information sent 2 weeks ago and voting with emoji’s is shockingly inefficient.

• The Burden: One or two people carry the mental load, leading to “emotional micro-tensions” (which we’re fairly certain is the technical term for wanting to kick your best friend’s ass). No one wants this. We love our travel pack, but the ‘I’m gonna beat you!’ phase is inevitable when the systems we use for planning our trips are garbage.

Why This Happens

It’s simple: Group chats were designed for memes and “I’m 10 minutes away” texts when you know damn well you haven’t even left the house yet. They were never meant to manage shared savings, complex itineraries, or travel planning decisions. The struggles that come with putting together a group trip are often the reasons why so many trips never make it out of the group chat. The burden of budgeting, saving, and planning over texts, notes in your phone, spreadsheets, and multiple apps, becomes overwhelming. When this happens, that spark of hope from phase 1 has already started its sad journey to fizzling out.

So Let Our Pack Save Yours

We realized that if we wanted to continue to see the world and ensure our trips continued to happen without chaotic planning systems and needless micro-tension moments, we needed to stop planning in a space designed for GIFs. That’s why we’re building My Travel Pack. It’s an app designed to move the struggle out of the chat and into one organized, transparent place so your phase 1 spark doesn’t have the chance to even dim, let alone fizzle out!

Learn more about what’s to come with My Travel Pack App by visiting our website at My Travel Pack and following us on Instagram @mytravelpackapp.

And if any of this reminds you of your travel pack, share or restack this post and send it to the group chat…it just might save your next group trip! And remember…Your pack may be wild. Your travel planning doesn’t have to be!

We want to hear your stories too. Which one of your trips never made it out of the group chat and it still hurts your soul to this day? Where did it go wrong? Tell us in the comments.

People often ask how our group, a chaotic mix of teachers, business women, a nurse, and a lawyer, has managed to travel together for over 25 years without ending up on a true-crime podcast. They want to know the secret to coordinating schedules, navigating geography, family obligations, and actually having the money to leave our houses.

The honest answer? We struggled. Frequently.

Back in our college days at The University of Rhode Island, planning a trip really only involved deciding whose car to take and which floor to sleep on. One of our first trips together started with 5 of us driving from URI to Key West in a Honda Civic and ended with us sleeping on some friend’s motel room floor our last night there…but that trip is a story for another post.

After graduation we were scattered, no longer living in the same house or around the corner from each other “down the line” in Narragansett. In the early 2000’s the seven of us were spread across New York, Maryland, and Rhode Island. There were times where we would pile into Aoife’s 240 square foot apartment in Manhattan because we didn’t have the money to really travel, and a weekend in the city filled our need to spend time together. We would pretty much sleep on top of each other, some on the couch, some on the floor, 3 in a full size bed…it was a great time to be alive. As time went on our trips did get bigger. Key West again (this time with plane tickets), Puerto Rico, Miami, Nashville, Charleston, but as the trips got bigger, life also happened. Careers, mortgages, big geographical moves, and tiny humans starting to appear, made planning these long weekend trips start to feel like a military operation. Changes had to be made. Organization and strategies needed to be implemented if we were going to continue planning our long weekends together. We were fully committed to making this work because not making time for each other was not an option. Our friendship was too strong and the time we spent together was too healing, we just knew we had to keep this alive no matter what. It was a matter of survival! And this is when Aoife emerged as our key financial strategist. We’re still not 100% sure if she’s a willing unpaid employee or if we peer pressured her into this position, but nevertheless here we are.

The “Aoife” Factor

So for about 15 years now, our strategy has relied on a single point of failure: Aoife. Every group has one, the Type A organizer who actually understands how spreadsheets work. Our standard answer to anyone who asks how we do it has always been, “get yourselves an Aoife.” Here’s how our ‘highly sophisticated’ system currently works:

The Mandate: Everyone Venmos Aoife a set amount of money each month and she transfers it into our shared travel fund.

The Responsibility: You handle your own flight; Aoife handles the group’s collective budgeting and saving sanity.

The Reality: Poor Aoife became an unpaid part-time debt collector, sending “gentle” monthly reminders to seven adults who apparently forgot how math (and deadlines) work.

It’s not perfect but it’s ours and we love it. Just kidding, it’s awful and we hate it. Well, mostly Aoife. She really hates it. But, every dark cloud has a silver lining and as we used to say in good old Sigma Kappa (the sorority we were in back at URI in the late 90’s) “Everything happens for a reason.” I mean, if we’re being honest, most people say that, but Sigma Kappa really took that and ran with it. Lucky for us it seems to be true and brings us to the current day planning of our 2026 trip to Paris and the moment this passion project of ours just sort of clicked simultaneously for all 7 of us.

The Silver Lining

One would think that after 25 years of traveling together we’d have this down to a science, but, one would be wrong. Currently as we plan our trip to Paris (which is our first trip to Europe together) cracks have been revealed. Aside from Aoife’s unwanted banking career, this system of ours has essentially devolved into a digital scavenger hunt for information.

Brina and Bo (the foodies) are deep in the trenches of French bistro reservations.

Aoife and Jess are building itineraries that rival a State Department briefing.

The rest of us are scrolling through 400 unread messages trying to find the link to the Airbnb we liked three weeks ago…clearly a touch behind.

It’s annoying, it’s unorganized, it’s chaotic. When you’re our age and have a career, a family, bills to pay, schedules to keep, responsibilities to tend to, it’s hard to keep things straight. You can make all the lists and schedule all the useless reminders your phone allows, but we all know, it just doesn’t always work. Life is hard and planning a trip with your friends in this stage of life is HARD. That’s just like regular hard but in all caps. You get it.

So after years of sitting around drinking wine, staring at spreadsheets, and joking that “there should be an app for this”, we finally stopped joking. It went something like…

“There should be an app for this”.... “Should we make one, haha”....”Yeah sure, and let’s have it budget and save for us so Aoife can quit her job, haha”....“Wait. Should we?”....We can’t. Can we?”....

…6 months later we’re in development and My Travel Pack app is on track to launch this summer! Stay tuned!