What’s in a Name?

So how important is deciding the right “brand” or website or blog name? Well, apparently, it’s pretty important to us at least.

Megan and I have spent nearly two weeks trying to come up with just the right name to capture the essence of what we are trying to do here with our crazy, educational, outdoor-bent, family-focused, RV adventure. Our list grew to over thirty name ideas, slowly getting pared down to 8, then 3…

At the end of the day, we decided that the name should capture the essence of what it means to be human—not just something related to a year-long road trip. We want to continue writing long after our last mile logged on the road. Life is messy, but it is also beautiful. And no matter where life takes you—whether you rent or own a home or travel in an RV or wherever you are, we are all on a beautiful, muck-filled journey together, personal flaws and all.

Of course, our family name is Mkrtschjan (pronounced “MUCK-er-chyahn”), and once we recognized it, we quickly fell in love with the juxtaposition of beauty and, well, dung.

Welcome to our blog, Beautiful Mucks.

Over the course of our road trip (it happening at all is still a big fat maybe), we hope to feature posts written by everyone in our family who can write. Our two oldest kids, Seth (age 7) and Eleanor (age 5), will most definitely get in on the action. For the two youngest kids, we may do a YouTube thing or Insta-videos or who knows!

For the next year or so, we hope to simply talk about life as we explore the country together as a family. We want to get to know each other, explore nature, continue to learn the educational basics, and do a heck of a lot of rock climbing, hiking, and more. And, of course, I hope to play a heck of a lot of concerts and I’ll probably talk a lot about beer (a recent serious interest of mine is opening a micro-brewery in our home town of Saint Charles).

Megan and I have even talked about a friendly “beer vs. desserts” food truck (RV?) competition between the two of us. (Personally, I think my homebrew could beat her cupcakes any day, but I do love beer.)

Cheers to what’s ahead!