Hi Friends! I’m Andi – wife to a loving husband, mother of two wonderful children, and believer in the One true God. This blog has been a dream of mine for a few years now and I’m finally taking the leap! I hope to be able share with you my passions about home, life, organization, financial freedom, and everything in between. Keep reading to learn more about me and how I wound up here.
When I married my husband more than 14 years ago, I excitedly vowed to share the rest of my life and all its adventures with him. I had no idea how accurately the word “adventure” would describe the life ahead of us. Our journey has been filled with ups and downs, crazy twists and countless mishaps but through it all we have been immeasurably blessed.
When life gives you lemons….
In 2011, we were living the American dream… my husband was working his “dream job” as the CEO of a non-profit organization; I was moving up the corporate ladder within the marketing company that I worked for; we’d moved into a beautiful 3200 sq ft home and we were getting ready to have our second child. Everything should have been perfect and it felt that way for a while. Then, the demands of being a working mom of 2 and with my husband’s job, quickly turning into a nightmare… the edges of our “dream” started to fray and unravel. We found ourselves running on an endless wheel of hour long commutes to and from work each day, day care pickups, homework, dinner preparation, bath time, bed time, clean-up time, plop on the couch for 30 minutes before falling into bed only to do the same thing again the next day.
There simply had to be more to life than this rigid schedule and endless list of “to do’s”. So we started searching and planning for a different path. Maybe we would start our own business or take a new job; we weren’t sure but we prayed and thought about it constantly. We had almost landed on decision when out of the blue my husband got a phone call about a job at Christian summer camp. This wasn’t in our plans. The pay wasn’t great and the benefits were marginal at best. We would have to make big sacrifices, move miles away from where we had made a life, had a church home and friends we loved. Our kids would have to leave schools and friends behind. And while this job came with a big perk, a house completely rent-and utility free, it was less than half the size of our current home, was in complete disrepair and well, pretty sad all the way around.
But, we had been praying for a big change.
This opportunity would give us the chance to become DEBT FREE, we’d have an opportunity to serve God in a very unique way, and the opportunity promised us more time with our family and best of all… NO COMMUTING! So, somewhere in between nervous laughter and jokes about this being the craziest idea, we took a leap and hoped we’d find enough sugar (aka grace) to make some really great lemonade.
So that’s where you find us, I hope you’ll grab a glass and stay awhile!
Andi