Live Life to the Fullest!

I recently saw this quote:

"Live like you will die tomorrow. Dream like you will live forever."

It's very powerful for me. Life can be so so short. I've had several people taken from my life far too early. People who never got the chance to marry or have children. People who never got to see their children grow up. People who never got the chance to meet their grandchildren. I try very hard to make our lives meaningful. Make memories with our kids. Enjoy each other. I try to keep our stress at a minimum so we spend more time smiling than frowning. There's no guarantees in life and the people I love can be gone at any minute. I need to make the most of my time with them now.

I think it's very important to make memories, be silly, do things that some people think you are too old for. Live your life and have no regrets. I don't want to look back when I'm 80 and wonder what I did with my time. I want photo albums filled with memories and smiling faces.

Obviously, if we truly treated each day like our last, the house would never get cleaned and we would never go to work. :) But I think the sentiment behind this statement is to at least take part of every day and make it memorable. Even if it's only ten minutes.

And for me, part of life is dreaming, and dreaming big. If you don't dream and make plans, go after what makes you happiest, what is the point?? I don't want to just exist. I want to my life to be spectacular. I dream and do what I can to make those dreams come true. It's not to say I'm not afraid, but I push past the fear and just do it. I work hard and I'm making my dreams come true.

How about you? What does this quote mean to you?? Do you live your life to the fullest?? Do you have dreams and try to achieve them?

Life is not easy.

I didn't think that was something that needed to be said. But apparently it does. I get very frustrated with people who think life is all rainbows and sunshine and they will get everything they want without having to work for it.

I wasn't born with any kind of silver spoon. My dad worked real hard to give us what we had. We had everything we needed though, and I look back fondly on my childhood. My parents taught me by example that life is not easy and you need to work hard. And even then, hard work won't always give you fancy things. I try to teach my kids that too, though sometimes I do think they are too spoiled. Financially, we are in a better place than my family was growing up...which I attribute to the hard work my husband and I do. (Not that we work harder than my parents did, my husband was just lucky to get into a career that pays better than my dad's did.) It's not a matter of wanting to give my kids more than I had. We want to enjoy our life and do fun things as a family...and sometimes fun things cost money. We like to go on vacations since we can afford them. It's something we rarely did when I was growing up. And sometimes I do wish my family could have made some of the great memories we have with our kids.

Money aside, it takes a lot of work to make a marriage work, parenthood, owning a home. None of it can be done successfully without a lot of hard work. And a lot of times, it's not fun. The complete opposite. It's complete hell. But the benefits outweigh the hell. I see so many marriages fail and people complain about how hard it is to raise kids. I never entered into either thinking it would be easy. I had prepared myself from the beginning. Some days it feels much harder than I ever anticipated, but it's all worth it.