What Life Is All About

The many faces of Ayden...

 David and I are on a constant quest to find what is most meaningful to us so that we can keep moving toward maximizing those things in our lives. A while back, way before Ayden's time, we made a list of our top five goals to work towards. We posted them on our refrigerator as a constant reminder of what we want for our lives.

Here they are:
1) Maximize Time Together - our ultimate goal here is to find a way to become self employed so that we can control our schedules, be together as much as possible and any time we are apart, we actually choose to be. Our current status on this goal is hanging out together as much as we can in the evenings and on the weekends. It'll do for now but we both want more. It breaks David's heart when he leaves us every morning.
2) Live Simple/Live Green - Our ultimate goal here is to build a very low maintenance house filled with green technology and live off of our land as much as possible. Our current status? We constantly make efforts to conserve energy and natural resources, recycle, etc. We are also in the process of purging and downsizing all of our "stuff" and even our home in hopes to be free to live our lives more fully and to have more fun! Is this process always easy? No, but we strongly believe it is the right path for us.
3) Family/Friends - We live close to both of our families and now have a little family of our own.  This goal is set as a reminder to make sure that we always set aside time to be with those we love and who love us back.
4) Be Active & Healthy - This one is pretty self explanatory. We feel like we are doing great with this goal.  We live a Paleo inspired lifestyle which has made our bodies leaner than they've ever been and we feel great! We were very active before Ayden's arrival and after a bit of a break, are becoming more and more active now as he gets older and more independent.

Our healthy baby munching on a tomato today!

 5) Enjoy the Outdoors - The reason we feel like this should be a priority is because we feel like being in nature grounds us. It is humbling and reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than civilization as we know it. The air is fresher and it is so peaceful! The only time we feel like life is actually on hold is when we are taking in the beautiful scenery that nature has to offer. We recently invested in some new camping gear and plan to do all kinds of hiking and camping this fall!

Now that Ayden is here we feel more urgency than ever to achieve these goals. We used to be on the typical American path of constantly upgrading and supporting "biggerism" ( a Lorax reference for you...) My wanting to be a stay at home mom motivated us to downsize a bit and start budgeting while we were pregnant in preparation for necessary cut backs. But now that Ayden is here, he is showing us what life is really all about.

 We are no longer only making cutbacks out of necessity but out of choice.  Thinking about the world that we want him to live in and the type of person we hope he'll become gives us a whole new perspective of what is actually meaningful in life. We will be forever grateful to Ayden for giving us such a wonderful gift and are motivated now more than ever to reach our goals.

~Sarah