In my last post, I explained some of the reasons I left blogging four years ago and why I came back. I’m excited to jump into my new vision for this blog, but before I do that, I wanted to “catch up” on what has happened since my last post.
In 2014, we were living in West Virginia while my husband, Justin, finished school. In 2016, he graduated and we packed up our home (and our sweet dogs) and moved to Northern Indiana where Justin and I had both found jobs. We were so sad to leave our friends in WV but we have enjoyed building a new community here in the Midwest. And our dogs were thrilled that we moved to a home with a fenced in backyard!
In the early fall of 2016, we decided we were ready to start our family. I got pregnant and we were over the moon! Unfortunately, that pregnancy was ectopic (not inside my uterus) and ended after eight weeks. I will share more about that experience at a later date, but suffice to say it was devastating, traumatic, and a very dark time for us.
2017 was a big year for our family. We learned that we were once again expecting a baby and after a lot of prayer and weighing our options, Justin and I made the decision that I would leave teaching to become a stay at home mom. After 6 years of teaching special education, it was bittersweet to walk away from the classroom but I was very excited to be able to spend more time with our little one. Then in November 2017, our little LJ was born. He has been the sweetest gift! I have been staying home ever since and spend his nap times doing some part-time administrative work for a nutrition counseling company. It’s a good balance for me and I’m very happy with this set-up right now!
So in the span of four years, I went from a special education teacher in West Virginia to a stay at home mom in Indiana. While my life looks very different now, the mantra of “simplify the chaos” still resonates so strongly with me. I believe that we can so easily overstuff, overcomplicate, and overcommit our lives which leads to busyness, stress, and exhaustion. Where is the joy in that? I consider myself to be a minimal-ish mama and that has shaped so much of my family’s lifestyle and the way we strive for balance. My hope for this blog is that it becomes a place where I share bits of our life and ways that we maximize joy by simplifying the chaos that can easily crowd our days. I hope you will be able to find something here that resonates with you and helps you simplify your own chaos so you can truly enjoy whatever season of life you are in.
simplify the chaos 