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.