Adventure & Love

Do you or your family have a motto? A simple statement that sums up how you want to live your life?

Coming up with a family motto is a sort of live on purpose instead of by accident kind of idea for me, and I want that in my life.

Steve decided that our family needed to come up with one after reading a series of posts off of the blog "The Art of Manliness". (Great blog...Check it out.)

So one evening, Steve and I went to a restaurant and hashed one out. Steve's mom was watching the boys for us. So, we had the time to really talk about it and come up with something that we were proud of.

 Here is what we came up with...


"May our first word be adventure and our last word love."

Or for short...

Adventure & Love

We are committed to the life-long learning of our faith and our world.

We strive to minister to our family and others through service.

We are dedicated to a lifestyle promoting overall health and fitness.

We face life with a sense of humor and a lot of laughter.

We make our home a peaceful, restful place from the cares of the world.

We are honest with and show kindness to our family and others.

We do not give up when life is hard and face adversity with integrity and stoicism.

We make family time a priority.

We know its okay to make mistakes.

We forgive.

Mother's day gift from Steve. It says "Adventure & Love" on the front and "Eilers" on the back.

When the boys get a tad older, we plan on having periodic family meetings where we talk about anything important going on with the family, remind ourselves of our family motto and ask what we can do better to stay true to what we value. Then we will do some learning activity like teach the boys how to change a tire, pitch a tent, catch a fish, etc.

It is too easy to get caught up in things that don't matter, and before you know it your kids are grown, 20 years of your life are over and you are left with a sense of emptiness and regret.

To be purposeful about how we want to live and the kind of family we want to be gives me a sense of peace and excitement.

You don't have to be married with kids to do this. I encourage everyone to sit down and physically write out what is important to you, what do you value, what do you want to accomplish, what must you do now to achieve this...And then set up regular times to revisit what you have come up with to keep you on track.

One of my summer projects is to make wall art with "Adventure & Love" written on it. Something like this, but with our motto on it.

Sincerely,

Linda Eilers