You Want How Many Kids?

Tom and I get this a lot when we mention how many children we want. By the way, we want 4 although we know it is really up to God how many we are blessed with. We are hoping to not be blessed with more than that but if it happens it happens and we will figure out how to deal with it. I have one brother and Tom has two sisters (although he  only grew up with his older sister as his younger sister was adopted when he was a senior in high school) and as much as we love them we both want our kids to have multiple siblings and have a big family. My mom is one of four, my dad is one of two, Tom's dad is one of five and tom's mom is one of five with 5 (I think) other step-siblings so we both grew up with big extended families and LOVE that. So basically we want our children to have lots of siblings because we see how awesome it is through our parents.

We know financially it is more difficult to have 4 kids, but once Tom and I pay off our student loans (in hopefully 5-7 years) we will feel like millionaires considering our monthly payment is 2.5 times our mortgage right now. But we also know that our children will not be in the latest and greatest clothing and we're fine with that - they grow so fast anyway that to me it seems like the biggest waste to spend a lot of money on their clothes. We know that eating out will be a treat but that's how it is with us too since we only go out maybe once a month or on a special occasion.

College tuition is the only thing we know we will struggle with having 4 kids. Most people believe that their children should take out loans and that as parents they do not owe their kids a paid college education. But Tom and I believe education is the most important thing we can give our children and want to give them the best they can get. We also do not want our children to have to be in the insane school debt that we are in as it is a huge financial burden and if God forbid we were to loose our jobs there is no way unemployment could pay even half of our payment thats how much we owe. My parents paid almost all of my education but Tom's parents were not able to and he got very limited financial aid as he was in one of the most competitive physical therapy programs and they don't give scholarships so his loans are massive. We have already decided that we will be starting a college fund for each of our children as soon as they are born and then we will help out a much as we can so that they leave school with very minimal debt.

We are already planning a family vacation to Disney next July for our Little Man's 1st birthday :)

We still plan on taking family vacations every year by making sure we save throughout the year. We both love to travel and my parents traveled everywhere with my brother and I - from Hawaii to Europe - and we want our kids to travel to amazing places as well. Growing up my parents believed traveling was more important than having a summer camp or having "toys" like dirt bikes or 4 wheelers and as much as I wish we could have a summer camp and travel to Europe that won't be an option with 4 kids so traveling wins. Again, this means we will have to save and skip eating out except for special occasions, but traveling is important to us and we want all of our kids to experience that no matter how many we have.

So yes, 4 kids is "a lot" to most, but it is just right for us and we can't wait to grow our family :)