Pirates are but one chapter in a family's global adventure story

"It's just before midnight and we just have been attacked by pirates."

So began a not entirely atypical blog post by Kaye Caldwell of Hermosa Beach, who since last summer has been traveling the world with her husband and three children.

The April 26 attack on their Italian cruise ship far off the coast of Somalia was but the latest installment in an adventure that has taken the family to the Australian outback, riot-torn Thailand and South African townships.

Fascinated friends and relatives have traveled with them vicariously on their blog, http://www.caldwellsworldwide.com/, which is crammed with pictures of the blond, tan brood smiling on the backs of elephants and sharing potluck with slum dwellers.

"It reminds me of Forrest Gump," said friend Leslie Landers, referring to the movie character who kept stumbling into momentous events he didn't quite understand.

Caldwell, 47, laughs at the comparison. The family, she said, has always had a knack for showing up amid disaster.

In a telephone interview from a cramped hotel room in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir, she described the first vacation she took with her now-husband Jim -- to Florida in 1992, just after Hurricane Andrew ripped through. Then came the engagement a few weeks later in Hawaii, in the aftermath of Hurricane Iniki.

For years, Kaye and Jim, 49, dreamed of taking a year off to see the world. Then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had surgery. She saw it as a wake-up call. "You just sort of come to terms with you might not get to do this when you are 60 or 70, whenever the kids are grown," Kaye said.

Jim, meanwhile, had left a job in intellectual-property sales to start his own firm, but was having trouble getting it off the ground. Henry, Ruby and Sam -- now 9, 10 and 12 -- were old enough, they thought, to benefit from travel but young enough for it not to disrupt their education too much. "We decided it was now or never to take this trip," Kaye said.

They decided to limit their time in expensive cities in favor of more out-of-the way places, where they could rent houses for six weeks at a time and get a feel for how the locals live.

First stop was Townsville, on the northeastern coast of Australia, which served as a base for camping trips in the outback, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and a crocodile hunt. The family headed to Thailand in November, shortly before anti-government protesters shut down two airports. (Jim had been planning to fly home for a doctor's appointment but had to postpone the trip.)