940 Saturdays

Fill your life with adventures, not things. Have stories to tell not stuff to show.

940 Saturdays are the number of Saturdays that you will have with your child from birth until their 18th birthday.  That doesn’t seem like many days, does it? And so what are you going to do about that?

For us, when we started having kids, we were working hard just to pay bills, only to do the same thing again the next month.  And we hated it.  We felt trapped and we saw no way out.

But then we went on a trip in a 30 foot RV and our lives were forever changed.  We realized we were happy in 280 square feett of space with 4 boys under the age of 6 and we started working on ways to minimize, get rid of stuff, and live more simply.  I joined every group that I could find that would help encourage me and I spent every spare minute working on our goal; even in the middle of diapers, baby toys, and chaos.

It took us 18 months to sell almost everything we owned (or that owned us), and although we are now back to living in a home again (after a 4 year adventure through the United States, Bolivia, and Peru), our way of thinking and spending money will never be the same.

Here is what we know:

• We know that we will have to constantly fight traditions, safety nets, the opinions of others, and even sometimes the opinions of our own children.
• We know that we want to show our children to love people more than possessions.
• We know that we want our children to value their relationship with their parents and siblings as more important than any other relationship they could have (until they are married, of course).
• We know that we want our children to see a different way of making money, by working smarter rather than harder, so they can have time for their own adventures someday.
• We know that this is not for everyone and we do not expect other families to live as we do.
• We know that this may be hard and that at any time one of us will want to quit, and when that happens we will have family discussion to see if this is still the right fit for our family.

And most importantly we know that we love being on dirt bikes with our kids, having the thrill of adventure to chat about, and seeing the look on all of our faces after a fun day together; just the 6 of us!