A while ago now the lovely The Boy and Me tagged me in a meme to list the things I would like to achieve before I am forty.

At the moment I am 35, giving me just 5 years to complete this list of things to do and so I have tried to keep it realistic.

Time seems to pass so quickly at the moment I am not sure hwo I am supposed to get anything done but then I look back over the last 5 years and realise how much David and I have achieved.

What would I like to do with my life in the next 5 years and where do I see myself 5 years from now?

Well, my list looks something like this, in no particular order

1. Plan and go on a girly trip to New York for my 40th with Michele Stapeley, Laura Watson and Petra Knight.

2. Be a confident driver. I passed my test on the 23rd December and have had my car less than a week so I have a long way to go before I am going to be a confident driver.

3. Believe in myself as a mother and try not to care so much what other people think. I often find it hard to make friends as I sure people won’t like me and so I tend not to try.

4. Become a better wife. I would like to cook better meals for all the family and I want to learn to bake. I also want to be more house proud and keep a tidier house than we currently have. I would like totry and take regular time out from parenting to be a couple with David. Just one evening a month would do.

5. Have a fourth baby. David and I have always said we would like four children as he is one of four. We would like a bigger age gap this time though! I would like Esther and William to be at school. So Matilda Bump would be about two and a half.

6. Make a career decision. I have three options to choose between, return to primary teaching, retrain as a secondary English/drama teacher or start my own business running book based baby and toddler classes. Whatever I decide I do not want to work full time again until all our children are in secondary school. I hope that will remain a possibility for us.

7. Buy a house and turn it into our family home. We are house hunting at the moment but it is proving very difficult to find waht we are looking for and what we need to enable David to continue working from home.

8. See the Northern Lights.

9. Visit my sister and nephew in Australia, in an ideal world I would love to combine this trip with visiting New Zealand and Borneo when the children are all a bit older, but I am not sure whe will stay out there that long.

10. See Giraffes in the wild. Not sure how realistic this one is going to be with 4 children!

My big ambition is, when our children are 10, 8 and 6, to travel round the world with them for a year. If this proves not to be possible then for a few years I want to take them out for extended holidays to far flung places to experience life within different cultures. My parents always go on about us being well travelled but we’re not, we’ve been to lots of army bases around the world (mostly Europe) we have not made the most of the travelling that we did and we certainly did not truly experience different cultures, languages, ways of life and traditions. That is what I want my children to do. And I know that it is important to David too. We do not want to live abroad but we want our children to explore the world and all the possibilities that it has to offer. I want my children to live in England and have the proper roots and home that I never had. I want that for me too. David is my family now and I am finally beginning to lay down roots.

WOW! This all became much deeper than I intended. But these are some of the things I would like to do before I am 40.

Thank you to The Boy and Me for tagging me and to twopointfourchildren for starting the original meme.

I tag …

Boo Roo and Tigger Too
Dummy Mummy
Mum on the Brink
Holly Bobb