Day Twenty-Two: Down the Road..

 

 

#22 Where Do You See Yourself in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years?

When I saw this question, I thought "Wow I have no idea what I'd even be doing 5 hours from now, how do I know what my life would look like in the next 5 years! But after doing some thinking about this, 5 years from now, it would be the year 2017. Ryder would be 9, Brynley would be 6, and I will have turned 34 years old. All of those ages just seem plain crazy to me!

5 years from now I hope and pray that I will still be a stay at home Mom, still very involved in my children's upbringing. With having elementary school aged children by then, I hope we will be living in our "dream home" in the city that we plan to stay in for the next years so that my kids won't have to meet new friends over the course of their lives since most lifelong friendships and cliques are formed during these years.I hope my children will be attending Pine Lake Prep school, the charter shool in our area that is based on lottery if they will attend or not. I also hope that I am able to be involved in their classrooms and they will have each taken up a sport or hobby that they love.

For Scot and I, I hope that we are very much still a part of a church that we love, and that our marriage is strong. We will have been married ten years by then, and I will hope that we bring in our TENTH wedding anniversary with a bang! (Or a really cool place to vacation to celebate). I also hope that our health is good, and that I will have kept all  my baby weight off. My biggest fear of getting older is the weight gain that comes along with it! Most of all, I just pray that the next five years we will be happy. I also want to have paid off our bills and working on saving for our retirement and future, as well as be in the dream home if not saving for it.

10 years from now it will be the year 2022. Just typing that looks so weird! I will be 39 years old! Closer to turning 40 than 30- yikes!! Ryder will be 14 and Brynley turning 11 years old. How scary is that to imagine Ryder taking Driver's Ed and practicing driving! While Brynley will probably be giving me plenty of pre-teen angst and attitude to spare by then too. Lord knows I will probably be starting to sprout some gray hairs ha! Considering I just celebrated my ten year class reunion from Highschool and thinking over the past 10 years how much that has flown by, it's almost scary to imagine this where my life will actually be by then. I hope I will again still be a stay at home Mom. I want to be able to pick my kids up from school, take them to whatever sports practices they may be attending and just be there to help with homework or studying for tests.

Scot and I will be married 15 years at this point, and I pray we will be a great team as we near the more challenging years of life as our kids test us to the point of breaking! Again, I hope to be involved in our church, raising our family in a God Loving home. I can only imagine what our country will look like 10 years from now! My brother will hopefully have children by then, and I will be holding their babies since mine will be so far from the babies and tiny kids I have now. It makes me kind of sad thinking ahead this far, and how many memories I have to come with them that I don't want to wish each moment away just because times can be hard in this season of life.

15 years Whew this one is a doozy! 15 years from now, I will have entered my 40's (with style and grace hopefully ha!) and I will be 44 by then. Ryder will be 19, attending his choice college and Brynley will be 16, both driving her own car and driving Scot and I equally insane. Pining over boys and drama with other friends from school. She will be my Mini-Me, a girly girl an doing cheerleading or dance, or whatever sport she may choose. Or maybe she decides not to be in any of that at all, and instead is part of a Math Club or plays an instrument in the Highschool band. Whatever it is, I will be there to support her. I will be missing Ryder while he is away in college, and I will love every minute I get to spend with him when he's home visiting. I will gladly do the laundry I so often used to complain about, and miss the times I had to beg him to put his own clothes on to get changed each morning. Instead, I will be washing teenager tiny tops and jeans rather than those precious smocked baby dresses of hers and size 4T shirts of his. Oh boy that's sad to think about!

And 15 years from now, Scot and my marriage will be stronger than ever, celebrating 20 years of marriage together. Looking on our life as we raised our children and half an empty nest, with Ryder in college, and it's just the three of us living in the same home we've been in over the past 15 years. The memories in the pictures that adorn the walls and mantle, and the ghosts of happy times growing older there too. Birthday parties, sleepovers, Cristmas mornings filled with visits from Santa and the Easter Bunny on Easter morning too,  racing out the door to get to soccer or cheerleading practice, school dances and Senior Prom, photos taken each holiday and first day of school and as the kids get older plenty of grumbling about having their picture taken too! Graduations and moving things in boxes for college, SAT's and first dates with boys. Home games to watch and learning to trust my kids like never before.

So that was what my idea of the next 5, 10, and 15 years from now would look like. I sure hope that I look pretty much the same, with maybe a few fine lines and wrinkles that both the stress and laughing can cause from marriage and raising children. But I pray that we will be one happy family with a bright future and many years still to come.

Where do you see your life in the next 5, 10, 15 years from now??