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Family

My family of 5 traveled the U.S. for nearly a year, and it cost us less than staying home

It's amazing what a little creativity and willingness to step outside the box can do.

family of five on a boat
Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

We made countless memories during our slow travel year.

Whenever people share money-saving life hacks like living on a cruise ship or exploring the country via the #vanlife, I see comments like, "That might work for a single person or a couple, but what if you have kids?"

When our kids were 12, 8 and 4, we packed up all of our earthly belongings and spent a year living around the U.S. And no, we didn't live in a van or RV. (Nothing wrong with that life, it just wasn't for us.) We traveled from coast to coast, seeing and experiencing the vast array of gorgeous landscapes and fascinating sites America has to offer, and the best part is we did it for less than what we would have spent staying home.

Was it easy to plan and execute? Not exactly. But was it worth it? Absolutely, hands down, 100%.

Here's how we did it and what we learned.



How the 'nomadic life' idea came about

We were renting a beautiful house in the Chicago suburbs when the owner decided she wanted to sell it. We couldn't afford to buy it, so we had no choice but to move. My husband and I both worked from home and homeschooled our kids (pre-pandemic—that scenario is much more common now), so we were really free to live anywhere.

A friend of mine had been telling me about an extremely affordable house they'd rented in the Outer Banks in the fall while waiting for their permanent home to get finished. I had no idea tourist hot spots were so cheap off-peak, but once I started looking into it, I was gobsmacked.

Seriously, in major tourist areas like Cape Cod and Myrtle Beach, houses rent for upwards of 90% less than their peak summer prices from fall through spring. Owners don't want their homes to sit empty and are willing to rent them for dirt cheap.

As I started researching more, I found that the nightly cost of most vacation rentals is a lot cheaper when you rent for an entire month (though not as cheap as those East Coast off-season rentals). And since vacation rentals generally include utilities, they are even cheaper when comparing them to regular housing costs.

So I posed the question: What if we moved out of our house and just…didn't move into another house? What if, instead of paying rent or a mortgage, we put our stuff into storage, packed what we wanted to have with us in our car and rented vacation rentals a month or so at a time? We could work and school from anywhere. But could we really make that work?

I started sketching out scenarios and crunching numbers.

kids in car

Our kids got used to monthly long car rides. They were not always this happy about it.

Photo by Annie Reneau

How we worked it out financially

We were paying $1,800/month for rent for our house in the burbs, plus $200 to $300 dollars in utilities. That was the top of what we could afford, so we needed to keep monthly housing costs below that.

A storage unit for all of our furniture and belongings was just under $200/month. We figured that was a little less than what we paid monthly in utilities, so we'd just consider the storage unit cost as our utilities equivalent. That meant we needed to keep our vacation rental rent at $1,800/mo or below to keep our same cost of living.

What about gasoline costs, though? Driving around the country means a lot of gas money. And what about hotels and food?

Since we wouldn't be living in one spot, we'd put a pause on the kids' lessons and activities we normally would pay for (violin lessons, gymnastics, etc.). I figured what we saved in kids' activities would certainly cover gas costs, especially if we were only making a long drive around once a month. (We also figured that what the kids learned from a year of travel would be just as valuable as whatever they'd be missing in regular activities, so weren't worried about the disruption.)

girl with lorikeet, dolphin jumping

Our future zoologist got plenty of animal encounters both in zoos and in the wild during our travels.

Photos by Annie Reneau

For overnight stops along the way, we'd try to plan routes that had people we knew and could stay a night with. Otherwise, we'd use Priceline for hotels. (If I were to do it again, I would use the points/miles travel hacking hobby I started last year for free hotel stays, but Priceline got us some good deals.)

We'd be living in fully-equipped homes, so we'd just cook like we normally do. We had a museum pass as homeschoolers that got us into all kinds of places around the country for free, and we're really good at finding free or cheap things to do anyway. So as long as we kept the monthly rent at or below $1,800 on average for the year, we'd basically come out even money-wise.

map with route highlighted

We kept an old-school road atlas in the car and highlighted our route as we drove.

Photo by Annie Reneau

How we planned where to go and what each place cost

We had a few "anchors" to guide our route as we planned. We had to leave when our lease was up at the end of April. We wanted to visit friends and family in California, we had a week-long family camp in Washington State in July, my husband had to be back in Chicago in August for a work thing, and we wanted to spend a chunk of the off-season on the East Coast. We worked backward from there.

We looked at rentals through Airbnb and VRBO and quickly found that everywhere is expensive in the summer. However, May is off-peak in Southern California (despite the gorgeous weather), and June is off-peak on the Oregon Coast (because of late school schedules and hit-or-miss weather), so we decided to start in California and make our way up the coast.

For May, we got a 2-bedroom condo right across the street from a beach in Dana Point, California, for $2,400.

For June, we rented a 3-bedroom house a block from the beach in Pacific Beach, Oregon, for $1,800.

mount rainier

View of Mt. Rainier from Crystal Mountain

Photo by Annie Reneau

By far, the most expensive place we stayed the whole trip was a not-terribly-impressive 2-bedroom condo in Seattle for three weeks in July (after our family camp) for $2,700. (Pretty much everywhere in the nation is ridiculously pricey in July. No getting around it.) So we were over our monthly budget to start off with, but that was okay because we knew we'd make it up the rest of the year.

In August, we stayed with my husband's parents in Chicago, so we had one essentially rent-free month.

September took us to a large 4-bedroom home in a quaint little Lake Michigan beach town—South Haven, Michigan—which had the softest sand I've ever felt. Our rent there was $1,300.

cape cod house in the snow

Our son playing in the snow outside our temporary Cape Cod home.

Photo by Annie Reneau

October through January we stayed in Barnstable, Massachusetts—a beautiful Cape Cod town—in what was our best deal of the whole trip—a stunningly idyllic 2,000 sq ft, 4-bedroom, 2-bath home for $1,500 a month. (Again, utilities included.) This house rented for $3,500 a week during the summer. Seriously, the off-season on the East Coast is bonkers.

February took us to Orlando, Florida, where we stayed in a 3-bedroom condo minutes from the big theme parks for $1,200 for the month.

We used some actual vacation time and money we'd stashed away selling off items before putting our stuff into storage and lived it up at Disney World and Universal Orlando during this month. Because our housing was covered and we had our own car and we could bring our own food, all we had to pay for were the park tickets. And because we weren't on a time crunch we could take advantage of far more days at the parks. (Park tickets get cheaper each day you add on, and become ridiculously cheap per person per day once you get past four or five days.) February is a perfect time to go to the parks if you wants pleasant temps and no crowds.

kids smiling

Kids watching Disney World fireworks. Disney magic is real.

Photo by Annie Reneau

By March we were tired. We had decided before Florida to take a break from traveling and spend time my husband's sister's family who were visiting Chicago from overseas in March. That turned out to be a wise decision, as a family emergency arose the week we got back that necessitated us staying in Chicago for a few months. So we officially ended our nomadic travels two months shy of a year.

So how did we fare financially? Adding up all the rent we paid and dividing it by 10 months came to $1,540/month, well under budget. Even if we don't count the month we stayed at my husband's parents for free, we still came in under budget at just over $1,700/month.

car packed for a trip

Our Honda Pilot packed with everything we took with us around the country.

Photo by Annie Reneau

What kinda sucked about our nomadic life

I'd say 95% of our nomadic experience was positive, and it actually went far more smoothly than I thought it might. But there were some downsides, of course.

For one, having to pack and unpack the car every month got a bit old. We each had our own bin of clothing and personal belongings, and we had a school bin and a kitchen bin. It worked well, but it was still a lot to manage.

The kids missed having their friends around, of course, and so did we. We managed to meet people almost everywhere we went, but it's not the same as being with your own community of people. We missed having a home and a sense of steadiness. It was fabulous for a while, but not something we wanted to experience forever.

And as the person who did all the research and planning for our Big, Slow Trip Around the Country, there were times I wanted to pull my hair out trying to get it all timed out just right. I'm still not quite sure how I did it, to be honest, but it all worked out beautifully. I do know it took a lot of time and effort.

Totally worth it, though.

girl on beach at sunset

Sunset beachcombing at low tide on Cape Cod

Photo by Annie Reneau

What was awesome about the nomadic life

First of all, the forced paring down of our belongings before putting stuff in storage was wonderful. We all have too much stuff, and having to decide what was worth paying to store was a useful exercise in and of itself.

As far as nomad life itself goes, the affordability of living/traveling in this way blew my mind. I would never have guessed we could slow travel for the same or less than the cost of staying home.

The kids had experiences we never would have been able to give them if we had tried to go all of these places just on vacations. We not only saw dozens of sunsets at the beach, but we saw firsthand the way the tides change throughout the month. We got to hike through incredible scenery at our own leisure, not trying to cram in as much as we could into a short vacation. We lived in small towns and big cities, enjoyed palm trees and pine trees and learned about all manner of wildlife.

And the learning! We studied colonial America and visited all the historical sites of the Revolutionary War during our stay in Massachusetts—a fascinating treat for my husband and I who were both born and raised on the West Coast. We stood on the North Bridge where "the shot heard round the world" was fired, which is the same bridge Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott would take boat rides under, which is within eyeshot of Ralph Waldo Emerson's family home, which Nathaniel Hawthorne also live in for a while. History hits differently when you can see where it actually happened.

two kids on the oregon coast

Oregon Coast beaches are like glass.

Photo by Annie Reneau

We formed lifelong memories together as a family and met interesting people everywhere we went. While watching dolphins play in the surf at Dana Point, I connected with a mother who had lost her son in a surfing accident. On Cape Cod, I met a fellow homeschool mom whose husband worked as the caretaker for a very famous family's private island, and we got to go spend a day there. We also got to stay the night with friends around the country while we made our way from one place to another, and friends and family came to visit us in almost every place we stayed as well, so we didn't get too lonely.

It was also a surprisingly simple life, despite the complexities of planning it. We had what we could fit in our car and that was it. We didn't have to worry about yard work or home maintenance or decorating or anything like that. We got to live in homes that had everything ready for us, so other than just basic laundry and cleaning up after ourselves, there wasn't anything else to think about. We could just enjoy where we were while we were there.

But perhaps most importantly, we proved to ourselves and our kids that it's okay to step outside of the norm, that life doesn't have to look a certain way, and that with a little creativity, you can live a unique and extraordinary life if you want to, even if it's just for a while.

From Your Site Articles
Modern Families

Mom calls out unfair 'double standard' of boomer grandparents who don't help with childcare

"I love my mom dearly, but I'm surprised at how little effort she puts in."

A stressed mom and her happy, busy parents.

As far as generational stereotypes go, baby boomers (1946 to 1964) have often been accused of being a self-absorbed generation that has had no problem hoarding wealth, disregarding the environment, and prioritizing their own interests over their families. After all, they’re the generation that predominantly raised Gen X (1965 to 1980) and older millennials ('80s babies), also known as Gen Goonie, who were the least parented group of people in decades.

It’s unfair to paint an entire generation with the same brush. Still, the people who were once called the “Me Generation” are developing a reputation for being less involved in their grandchildren’s lives than their parents. The different grandparenting styles have been attributed to the fact that boomers worked longer and therefore want to enjoy their retirement. They also have more money than their parents to enjoy traveling and pursuing their hobbies. Those looking to take shots at boomers claim that they didn’t put a lot of effort into raising their kids, so why would they be any different with their grandkids?

boomers, grandparents, absentee grandparents, milennials, grandpa, grandmaBaby boomer grandparents.via Canva/Photos

A mother of one, who goes by TheCalmQuail on Mumsnet (a UK-based mothers' forum), made a controversial post, calling out a significant double standard when it comes to boomers. They had no problem having their parents help raise their kids, but they don’t want to extend the same courtesy to their children.

“It's come up in a few conversations with other parents recently about how little time their parents spend with their children, especially in comparison to when they were younger and at their grandparents' daily,” CalmQuail wrote. “Myself included, I avoided nursery completely when my mother went back to work because free daily childcare from a relative, and some of my happiest regular memories are spending regular one-on-one time with my Nana.”

“I realise grandparents are entitled to their own lives, but the lack of help does seem like double standards, when a large majority have seemingly had so much help themselves,” she continued.

stressed mom, young mom, stressed millennial, woman hands on her head, woman on couchA stressed mom with her head in her hands.via Canva/Photos

CalmQuail added that her mother lives up the road from her but still finds excuses not to help our child or even spend time with her kid. “It often feels like she's an extra toddler, as I have to suggest stuff to tempt her to do anything together; I manage the logistics, drive her there, etc. She will be there for emergency childcare requests when possible,” she continued. At the end of her post, she asked whether she was being unreasonable for thinking that her parents should put as much effort into raising their grandchildren as they had put into raising their parents.

The verdict: 68% thought she was NOT being unreasonable, and 32% felt that she was being unreasonable. Therefore, a majority of parents on the forum believe that Baby Boomers have the same responsibility to their grandchildren as the Silent Generation (1928 to 1945) did to theirs.

Many parents on the forum have experienced similar situations with their boomer parents and have given them a little grace by acknowledging that their grandparents didn’t have many resources or retirement expectations, so they dedicated their energy to their families.

stressed woman, tired mom, woman doing laundry, woman needs help, crying woman, folding laundryA stressed mom doing laundry.via Canva/Photos

“I know this will turn into a boomer bashing thread but my experience is my parents and their friends are early retirees with a fair bit of cash and feel they’ve earnt a nice easy long comfortable retirement (they have worked hard but only the same as us except we can’t afford a nanny, cleaner etc like they did…).so they’re busy on holidays, golfing, socialising,” a commenter wrote. “My grandparents were typical of their generation—very hard working, modest life, and incredibly family orientated, they had us every holiday.”

“I don’t think my grandparents had much in the way of expectations of retirement,” another commenter added. “They retired relatively early by today’s standards, and lived far longer than they expected. There wasn’t much of a sense of ‘enjoying your retirement’ by jetting off around the world or pursuing personal hobbies - they were always there and available.”

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with baby boomers enjoying their retirement, but their children have a right to feel a bit miffed by the shift in grandparenting priorities. As times change, so do expectations, but why does it feel like younger people are always getting the short end of the stick when it comes to life's necessities, such as childcare and the cost of living? Unfortunately, so many younger people feel like they have to go it alone. However, kudos to the boomer grandparents who do help out with childcare, just as their parents did. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and these days, our villages need to be growing instead of shrinking.

Humor

Comedian's hilarious raps get nursing home residents grooving anyway they can

Pauline Schantzer (aka Polly Wolly) created "The Finger Dance" so those in wheelchairs can groove.

therealpollywolly/Instagram

Comedian Polly Wolly raps and dances with nursing home residents.

You're never too old to sing or dance. And Los Angeles-based comedianomedian Pauline Schantzer (@therealpollywolly) is making it her mission to keep residents in nursing homes doing both. The actress, writer and rapper (aka Polly Wolly) has been bringing her beats, songs and dance moves to nursing and assisted living homes, inspiring them to live it up and find joy.

"I started performing in nursing homes in November 2023," Polly tells Upworthy.

She got connected with her first nursing home via her friend, Rena Hirsch, who was the director of the nursing home that first booked Polly. "At first I didn't plan to pursue [work] in nursing homes. But I grew up going to see my grandma in the nursing home, and my mom Judy who is my comedic inspiration also lives in an assisted living home," she shares. "She has minor dementia, so it means a lot to me to give people laughter. My mom used to be full of laughs and jokes, and she's lost that. So it's been really tough on me to experience that. And humor is how I've dealt with it."

Understanding her audience, Polly recently created a song called "The Finger Dance" that allows everyone to get dancing, including those in wheel chairs. In the video, Polly raps and sings as she interacts with the residents. "In the wheelchair, let's groove! What's that button do? Oh ooh. It's electric, vroom vroom. Can't get up? That's fine! Put your fingers up real high, aye!" she raps and sings in the video.

She continues, "Move it from side to side. Yeah girl, looking real fly! Aye! Shake them fingers, don't be shy. You got arthritis? Come on just try!" Polly pans the camera to the small crowd, who have their fingers up and are grooving along with her.

The sweet video got tons of supportive comments from viewers. "Ur in those homes everyday! I love it! Respect what you do so much, laughter is the best medicine," one wrote. Another added, "👏👏 I love how you bring a moment of happiness and joy to our seniors !! ♥️" And another viewer shared, "You've got me over here doing the finger dance at my desk while at work. Lol."

Polly adds, "I wrote this song, 'The Finger Dance' because my mom always did this dance [with her fingers]. She was so cute, she was overweight and her cheeks would look all chubby and she'd point her fingers up in the air. It was inspired by her."

In another post, Polly performed another original song in another assisted living home, encouraging everyone to dance through their aches and pains with more funny lyrics. "You got aches, you got pains, da da da da da da. So groove with your cane, da da da da da da da." And viewers noted that her performance was "100x better than Coachella" and "Next stop…Coachella."

Another bop she created is called "Shake It Doll", and it's a banger that has consistently put smiles on faces when she performs it. During a recent show, she told the crowd, "Let's get wild up in here, you know? We only live once. Let's do it!" she said as the song started. "Shake it doll, shake it at the mall! Shake it doll in the bathroom stall!" The beat is irresistible, and in the video Polly dances alongside an enthusiastic woman.

"It makes me really happy to see the residents really enjoy it. A lot of times they will first refuse to dance and enjoy. But when I get a man or woman who doesn't [initially] want to dance to suddenly get up and move, it means so much to me," says Polly.

She has big plans for the future and reaching more residents in nursing and assisted living homes. "I would love to do a nursing home tour around the United States. I have a lot of big visions for it," she says. "It really warms my heart a lot seeing how many people around the world tell me how much I'm making their day and giving joy to them. It means so much to me to see people have laughter. That's what life's about."

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

It's hard to truly describe the amazing bond between dads and their daughters.

Being a dad is an amazing job no matter the gender of the tiny humans we're raising. But there's something unique about the bond between fathers and daughters. Most dads know what it's like to struggle with braiding hair, but we also know that bonding time provides immense value to our daughters. In fact, studies have shown that women with actively involved fathers are more confident and more successful in school and business.

You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? I'll just let these images sum up the daddy-daughter bond.

A 37-year-old Ukrainian artist affectionately known as Soosh, recently created some ridiculously heartwarming illustrations of the bond between a dad and his daughter, and put them on her Instagram feed. Sadly, her father wasn't involved in her life when she was a kid. But she wants to be sure her 9-year-old son doesn't follow in those footsteps.

"Part of the education for my kiddo who I want to grow up to be a good man is to understand what it's like to be one," Soosh told Upworthy.

There are so many different ways that fathers demonstrate their love for their little girls, and Soosh pretty much nails all of them.

Get ready to run the full gamut of the feels.

1. Dads can do it all. Including hair.

parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artworkA father does his daughter's hairAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

2. They also make pretty great game opponents.



parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artwork, chessA father plays chess with his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

3. And the Hula-Hoop skills? Legendary.



parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artwork, hula hoopA dad hula hoops with his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

4. Dads know there's always time for a tea party regardless of the mountain of work in front of them.



A dad talks to his daughter while working at his deskAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


5. And their puppeteer skills totally belong on Broadway.



A dad performs a puppet show for his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


6. Dads help us see the world from different views.



A dad walks with his daughter on his backAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


7. So much so that we never want them to leave.



a dad carries a suitcase that his daughter holds ontoAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


8. They can make us feel protected, valued, and loved.



A dad holds his sleeping daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


9. Especially when there are monsters hiding in places they shouldn't.



A superhero dad looks over his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


10. Seeing the daddy-daughter bond as art perfectly shows how beautiful fatherhood can be.



A dad takes the small corner of the bed with his dauthterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


This article originally appeared nine years ago.

Kids

Baby born with incredibly luscious locks looks like an adorable mini-Maui from 'Moana'

"The second he came out my belly, the first thing they said is 'Oh my God, his hair!'"

@jchelleistryingherbest/TikTok, Wikifandom

Maybe he's born with it…

Some babies are born ready to rock out, and little Lucio is one of them.

Lucio first took the internet by storm earlier this month, when his mom, Naya “J’chelle” Perry, posted a TikTok showing off his incredible “Farrah Fawcett” like locks.

As Perry shared in the clip, Lucio caused the medical staff to do a double take in the operating room.

“The second he came out my belly, the first thing they said is ‘Oh my God, his hair!’” she said, as a picture of three-hours-old Lucio with a full head of shiny, black-brown hair popped up on screen. She dubbed this his “placenta perm.”

As Lucio grew, so did his mane. By three months, he had a halo of curls. Cut to 18 months old, and Lucio looks like the spitting image of Maui from Moana.

Unsurprisingly, some folks have been hit with a twinge of (lighthearted) jealousy of Lucio’s luscious locks. As one person joked, “Baby got an entire roller set and I’m sitting here bald. You win, kid.”

Another business-minded viewer saw a lucrative opportunity, and wrote. “Get that baby a shampoo contract.” Seriously, couldn’t you just see him in a commercial with a fan blowing that mane, Beyoncé style?

The term “placenta perm” is an informal term used to describe the curly or wavy hair pattern that some babies are born with due to the presence of lanugo—a fine, soft hair that covers the developing fetus during the second trimester of pregnancy to keep it warm.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Lanugo typically falls off in the last eight weeks of pregnancy, mixing in with amniotic fluid and becoming part of its first food, and, therefore, shall be part of its first poop after birth (the more you know). However, some babies, like Lucio, don’t lose all of theirs. Experts aren’t exactly sure why this happens, though it’s generally believed that genetics, prenatal development, and hormone levels play the biggest roles.

In an interview with Newsweek, Perry further shared that while no signs of Kciso hair popped up during any ultrasounds, there were other “old wives’ tale” omen, including an itchy stomach and some acid reflux. Hence why someone quipped, "I know that heartburn was killing you" in the comments.

Perry admitted that Lucio’s unique character is of being “super curly in the front and straighter in the back”—which makes sense, as most curly-haired folks have different levels of curliness on their noggin—makes things a little harder to style, but luckily grandma is mostly in charge of that.


@jchellestryingherbest He thinks hiding behind his hair gives him an excuse to act like he don’t hear me 🙄 #momsoftiktok #boymom #toddlermom ♬ Suavemente - Elvis Crespo

"My mom is the master braider for him," Perry said. "He will get fussy if I try to touch his hair, but will sit just perfectly for grandma!

Regardless, that iconic look is worth all the fuss in the world.

And if you’re wondering. No, there are zero plans to cut Lucio’s hair. Until he asks for it, that is.

Sometimes what makes us unique takes time to discover and cultivate. And other times, we are simply born with it.

Blink-182 on a nuclear submarine.

Monica Gill, dressed in a long shirt with a bikini printed on it, took the mic at a bar in Palm Springs, California, recently and gave a raucous performance of “All the Small Things” by pop punk legends, Blink-182. During the performance she gave an exaggerated “emo scream” for one of the song’s memorable lines, line “work sucks, I know.” It was all fun until after her performance, a man filming her told Gill and her friends that Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge, who co-wrote the track with bassist Mark Hoppus, was watching the entire performance.

In the video taken by a man named Kyle, DeLonge experiences a range of emotions during the song, from some slight head nods to amusement to complete bewilderment. He had to have been wondering if she knew that he was in the audience and was mocking the song or just having fun, completely unaware he was watching. “She had no idea the guy who wrote that song was sitting right there. I told her and her friends, and they lost their minds,” Kyle captioned his video.

@websitelandlord

She had no idea the guy who wrote that song was sitting right there. I told her and her friends and they lost their minds. #blink182 #tomdelonge #coachella @Tom DeLonge @blink-182

Kyle says that while he was recording the performance, it was clear she didn’t know DeLonge was in the bar watching her. “I noticed that she started singing in a big way too, but I saw that her eyes were looking at her friends the whole time,” he told Today.com. “I had a feeling she didn’t know, because none of her friends were looking over at Tom DeLonge or anything. So I was like, I think I should probably tell them.”

Kyle later uploaded another video of the performance where Monica gives the “Work sucks!” line all she has.

@websitelandlord

Replying to @Amy Lynn I wish I had more. This is the only other clip I got. #coachella #blink182 #Coachella2025 @Tom DeLonge

After the song, Gill and her friends talked to DeLonge, whose body language seemed a little standoffish. “I kind of blacked out a little bit because I was so starstruck,” Gill says. “I just remember saying to him, ‘I didn’t know you were here. I wouldn’t have made a mockery out of your song.”

TikTok · Kyle | Website Landlord

tom delonge, blink 182, palm springs california, karaoke, monica gill, barsTikTok · Kyle | Website Landlordwww.tiktok.com

3912 likes, 69 comments. “Replying to @GinaLynn480 this is a photo of her running over to @Tom DeLonge after I told them he was sitting right there.”

Blink-182 has had a resurgence over the past few years. In 2015, DeLonge left the band to focus on his work with UFOs and was replaced by Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio. After nearly 8 years apart, DeLong re-joined Blink and the band released the number one album One More Time… and its follow-up, a deluxe edition, One More Time… Part-2. This summer, the band plans to embark on another U.S. tour.

Here, Hoppus shares how he and DeLonge reconnected after his cancer diagnosis and got the band’s classic line-up back together.

@z100newyork

Have you experienced this kind of relationship with an old friend? ❤️‍🩹 #MarkHoppusOnElvis #MBInterviewLounge Mark Hoppus delves into his complex relationship with Blink-182 bandmate Tom DeLonge, and how, ultimately, his cancer diagnosis allowed them to reconnect. @iHeartRadio @Mark

DeLonge has made headlines over the last few years not for his bands Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves, but for his work on UFOs. In 2015, he founded the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences to explore the phenomenon. His efforts contributed to the release of declassified Navy videos of unidentified objects. During a 2023 Congressional hearing on UFOs, DeLonge and his organization were commended for their work on bringing attention to the controversial subject.