The Bucket List

In the first post, I talked about why we are changing the way we live our lives; how we are going to start living our lives to the fullest.

We are on a huge kick right now and already have 3 things crossed off of the list in the last week! I will do a single post for each item we cross off, but it would obviously be way better to make a list to actually cross off.

The list is below, but it will never stay the same. We are going to add to it as we think/see/hear of awesome adventures that we have to try!

Most of the items on the list are something we both want to try, but some things might be something that only one of us is interested in, so I will just put our names in parentheses after it. Although most things we are going to do together, one of my bucket list items is to get a couples massage with my mom. See how that might be a little weird if my husband also joined? HA!

We want to live a life we look forward to every day. By continuously adding to it (and crossing things off as they're accomplished), that gives us room to be creative and to make sure that we are always challenged to keep living an epic life!

We would seriously appreciate if anyone has any recommendations to add to the list, that you type them in the comments below. (Almost) nothing is too big or too small to add! - the "Almost" is there because, while we do want to be super adventurous, we don't want to spend our entire lives' savings on a yacht (although owning a yacht would be BOMB!).

I will number everything on the list and name each of the posts after them so each crossed-off item can be easily found with the story and pictures behind it!

Thank you for taking this journey with us! Without further ado, here is the Bucket List:

1. Start a blog - here is the first blog post, talking about why we are changing our lives!
2. Go skinny dipping
3. Go paint balling
4. See the Grand Canyon
5. Be in my best friend's wedding
6. Have a sleepover in a blanket fort
7. Send a present to a soldier
8. Get six pack abs
9. Start a cheer during a professional sports game
10. Go on the Skydeck in Chicago
11. Shoot a gun
12. Learn the dance from the movie Something Borrowed
13. Stand in 4 states at once
14. Visit Mount Rushmore
15. Learn how to surf
16. Watch the ball drop in Times Square
17. Go on a picnic
18. Hike the Appalachian Trail
19. Play some messy Twister
20. Post a video on YouTube
21. Ride a tandem bike
22. Ride a Segway
23. Milk a cow
24. Walk through the Tunnel of Lights in Ireland
25. Go on an Alaskan cruise
26. Learn The Parent Trap handshake
27. Learn how to tie a tie
28. Spend $0 on food for a whole month
29. Have a mud fight
30. Do the Tough Mudder
31. Be an extra in a movie
32. Experience zero gravity
33. Walk behind a waterfall
34. Backpack through Europe
35. Visit all 50 US states
36. Jump in a pool fully clothed
37. Have a Nerf war
38. Get in a taxi and yell, "Follow that car!"
39. Crash a wedding
40. Play laser tag
41. Go dog sledding
42. Start our own business
43. Dye our hair a crazy color (neither of us has EVER dyed our hair!)
44. Go to Comic Con
45. Write a letter to ourselves and open it in 10 years
46. Plant a tree
47. Drive Route 66  - Done! This was a big one so I broke it into 3 parts: Part 1, Parts 2 & 3 coming
48. Cliff Jump (I'm terrified of this one)
49. Witness a total solar eclipse
50. Ride in a helicopter
51. Make a wish on a coin and throw it in the Trevi Fountain in Italy
52. Float in the Dead Sea
53. Visit the Kawachi Fuji Garden in Japan
54. See the Northern Lights
55. Ride in a hot air balloon
56. Hold hands and cross the Tunnel of Love in Ukraine
57. Be able to do the splits (Alyssa)
58. Publish a book (Alyssa)
59. Eat a cannoli in Italy
60. Visit the Walk of Fame
61. Walk on the Great Wall of China
62. See the Statue of Liberty
63. Ride a gondola
64. Have a child
65. Set foot on all continents
66. Fly a kite
67. Canoe the Minnesota Boundary Waters
68. Sit in a hot spring
69. Feed a homeless person a meal
70. Go to the Olympics
71. Go to the Superbowl
72. Sleep in an igloo
73. Learn how to play and sing an entire song (Nathan - guitar ; Alyssa - piano)
74. Spend the night in a haunted place
75. Go to Disney World
76. Sleep in the back of a pickup truck
77. Swim with whale sharks
78. Bungee jump
79. Skydive (Nathan)
80. Become financially independent
81. Make a craft and sell it (Alyssa)
82. Spend a day at a trampoline park
83. Walk the glass skywalk around Tianmen Mountain in China
84. Get pulled behind a snowmobile in the giant satellite dish that's buried in the woods at the cabin 😆
85. Be able to do 1 unassisted pull up
86. See the Roman Colosseum
87. Walk 75,000 steps in a day
88. Swim in the Blue Lagoon Hot Springs, Iceland
89. Do a color run
90. Hike the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon
91. Get a couples massage with my mom
92. Go zorbing
93. Be in a flash mob
94. Get a picture with the Hollywood sign
95. Try out for a semi-pro sports team (Nathan)
96. Visit the glow worm caves in New Zealand
97. Visit Niagra Falls
98. Build a sandman (instead of a snowman)
99. Stay at a bed and breakfast
100. Dine in an underwater restaurant

Why?

We have become what we swore we wouldn’t.

My husband and I had everything going for us. We needed to be on the move constantly; so we moved from Minnesota to Colorado where outdoor adventures were plentiful. We had awesome jobs in the oil and gas industry, which included regular parties downtown Denver. We had an itch for adventure, which brought us white water rafting, mountain climbing and biking, hiking and camping, snowboarding, and site-seeing.

After living in Colorado for almost 5 years, in 2015, the oil and gas industry took a turn for the worst. My company shut its U.S. doors, and I lost my job. I received another job offer shortly after, but before accepting, we decided that maybe now was the perfect time to move back home to Minnesota. We feared that we would never get an opportunity like this again. What if I loved my job as much as I loved my first one? – That would be incredibly hard to leave. We didn’t want to wait too long because we wanted to be with family when we decided to start our own family.

2015 was an amazingly busy year for the two of us. We moved our small family of 4 (my husband, myself, our dog, and our fish) to a small house in our hometown. We got new jobs. We planned our wedding and were married on a cruise ship. We left for our honeymoon; and when we got back, we focused on getting thank-you’s to all of our friends and family that came with us on the cruise or who sent us gifts.

Now it’s been a year since our honeymoon, and we are comfortable. We settled into our small house in suburbia. I am just keeping my head above water at my job as a financial analyst at a large corporation, with unbelievably long hours, and not enough vacation. Every day we come home exhausted. Yes, sitting behind a desk for 12 hours with no breaks can still be exhausting even when you don’t physically move!

We are 27 years old and don’t have energy to do a thing after work. The weekends consist of ordering pizza and relaxing from our long work weeks, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, and cleaning the house. We enjoy not having to do anything for two days (that’s if we don’t have to work on that specific weekend, which does happen too).

I want to point out that we do have fun occasionally in the summer on a couple of the weekends that Nathan doesn’t work. We bought dirt bikes last year with our tax return money and bring them to my parents’ cabin and his family cabin and go crazy –fast and dirty! However, I think we were only able to do that 3 times last year.

I read a quote a couple of weeks ago that has haunted me since: “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” – Benjamin Franklin

That is us! We did die at age 25 when we moved back to our hometown. Yes, we were busy getting married and moving and learning our new jobs, but we also stopped living what a real life should be. Life should not be work, sleep, clean, repeat. That is not okay to me, or my husband, or hopefully you.

That’s the “why”. Here is the solution:

We have come up with a new way that we want to live life – so I’m creating this blog to document our new life-changing journey. I’m hoping it will keep us inspired and possibly, no, hopefully, inspire others as well!

We have created the start of a bucket list, which is just a list of things, big or small, that we want to see/try/taste/experience/do during our lifetime. We will explain how we find the time, money, and motivation behind each item that we complete on the list so that others can follow in our footsteps or use pieces of our journey to start their own.

So here’s #1: Start a blog.

This weekend for a more exciting item to cross off the list!

Our world is such an amazing place. There is no reason for anyone to not enjoy their lives they way they were meant to. We only get one life. We get one shot. Are you wasting it, or are you living it to the fullest?