June 16, 2016

What does life look like right now for me and my family? Busy. We are in a busy season with … well more busy in the foreseeable future. Bennett is 20 months old and on the constant move. Patrick is working out in Kinston and I’m running Miss Jee’s Photography all while being mom. I find that I haven’t written a blog post in a while, mostly because I feel as though I’m lacking complete thoughts or I am afraid that my thoughts aren’t profound enough for sharing… but life isn’t slowing down. I don’t want to forget this season… even though I’m longing for it to slow down.

My brain feels like a bowl of mush lately. I have so many things going on right now that most days I just want to hide. Business is booming and yet motherhood is more demanding than ever. Trying to find that balance seems nearly impossible. My to-do lists are longer than the hours in the day and can I be honest? I’m struggling. When I give to my business, I feel as though it can take from being a mama. I know every working mom can relate with this battle. My heart is to raise my son AND run a successful business… why does that seem so hard to balance on so many days?

Bennett Journey’s mentality on life is GO GO GO. He’s an all or nothing type of kid. He currently is into jumping… and running… and eating. He loves being outside… except he is very weary of touching grass. He loves blowing bubbles and going down slides. He lovessss the water.  He is a joy to be around whenever he is well fed and well rested 😉 I am finding that as he gets older, he is adapting better to schedule changes. This has made traveling an easier option! We have some fun trips planned for this fall!

What have I been up to? Mom life & Miss Jee’s.  I’m doing anywhere between 5 and 10 sessions a month. I spend my early mornings and Bennett’s nap times working on everything it takes to run a business. I am horrible at responding to Facebook messages… because by the time I finish emailing clients, I’m just out of time to respond to anything else. Give me grace y’all!! Social media is fantastic but sometimes it can be overwhelming to keep up with! I don’t mean stop messaging me, I just need a little time to respond. 🙂

Patrick is coming up on 1 year of working out in Kinston at Mountain Air Cargo. He is flying several times a week and working towards his commercial pilots license. I am so proud of how hard he has worked to get to where he is. I don’t understand half of the things he talks about whenever he comes home… but I think he appreciates my nods and mhmm’s.

Since life has been so busy and Patrick has been traveling a lot for work, there has been a lot of Bennett and Mama adventures. We bought a family pass to Marbles (which is so worth it!). We have discovered several local parks and have recently been making trips down to the Farmers market. Bennett enjoys taste testing all the free samples and it’s a great learning experience for B to learn to walk with me and not run off! We are always up for new adventures, so if you have any you want to pass along – send them my way!

We became regulars at the gym when B turned 1. I kid you not, the main reason we are regulars is because of the awesome childcare. They entire staff greets us by name and it’s amazing to have a small kid free break during the morning.

There are a ton of other things I want to update the blog on… but for now… this is all the time I have to spend. 

From our kidless vacation back in April.

I haven’t had the chance to blog much but I couldn’t pass up sharing this testimony.

For Patrick’s job, one of the ways you can receive raises is by acquiring new certifications for various skills that pertain to repairing the plane. When he first started, he quickly acquired the available certifications and while we thought it would take a year to do it, it only took 4 months. That in itself was a praise report.

Well, no one likes to hear that you’ve capped out on raises… but in reality, there weren’t any other options available. For weeks, I have been telling Patrick that I was believing that God would provide a raise that didn’t even exist yet. That sounds kind of crazy… but I had faith. I was exercising my faith.

Hebrews 11:1
Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

I prayed, I spoke scripture and I kept repeating it to Patrick. God is going to provide a raise that doesn’t even exist yet.

Let’s rewind a little and do a tiny recap on something most of y’all probably don’t know. Patrick and I are firm believers in tithing and giving. We believe that the first 10% of anything we make belongs to God so we tithe 10% of everything we make to our church. We also believe in sowing and reaping. We believe in sowing money, time, skills etc. We have praise report and testimonies galore about how by tithing and sowing, our lives have been changed for the better. Every single year, our income increases and we fully believe it’s because we tithe and sow.

On Sunday, the guest speaker who is a successful Christian business man, was speaking about our building campaign. Our church has been raising money for years to grow and expand the physical structure of our church so that we can grow and expand the congregation.

At the beginning of the service there was an announcement about the final amount needed for the project. I felt the Holy Spirit give me a number to sow (from savings from Miss Jee’s) and I quickly countered with about 1/10 of that amount. Throughout the service, I was battling with myself on the amount that I felt I was suppose to sow. It went something like this:

“God… I was saving that money for xyz for the house”

Dr. Dave Martin: “When we build God’s house, He builds our.”

“But God….. that is just absurd, what is XYZ happens….. why don’t I sow (1/10th) of it just in case I need the rest”

“But God…. I want to go shopping…. ” <— no but seriously.

But as the service progressed, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was suppose to sow the full amount that I initially heard. My palms got sweaty, my heart starting beating fast, but I did it. I sowed it. I sowed a seed because I believed without a shadow of a doubt, that God has big plans for that seed.

I sowed and gave my biggest offering to date on Sunday. It was initially hard but then I just reflect on how good God is and how far He has already taken me, my business and my family. He provides. Every single time.

Fast forward to today (only 2 days after sowing my biggest seed).

Patrick calls me to tell me that his boss pulled him aside and said, “Hey, just wanted to let you know you’re getting a raise of X amount per hour…. we just created a new certification that you have already acquired… so your raise will start next month.”

I was praying for a raise that didn’t even exist yet and IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I HAD BEEN PRAYING FOR!!

The crazier part….the total amount of the raise was the amount that I sowed on Sunday. 

I don’t say this to show off about sowing or tithing or anything like that. I tell you this because it’s a huge testimony for my family. If you’re struggling financially and you just can’t catch a break, I would encourage you to do some research on what the bible says about tithing and sowing. I would love to answer any questions that I can!

My church does an amazing job at equipping us with biblical teachings that set us up for success. If you want to check out some of our past sermons, just click here.

You have to believe God for unbelievable things. Dream out of your reality and pray that God gives you dreams bigger than you can think of yourself.

Thanks for reading friends. God is good.

When Patrick and I tied the knot in 2010, I remember the days after the wedding being upset that Patrick had forgot to put his ring back on. For a man who never wore jewelry, getting use to wearing a wedding band was challenging. I would text him, “Found your ring again.” Time after time. The immature 19 year old in me had silly thoughts like, “why doesn’t he want to wear his ring?” …. I am so thankful that Patrick loved me continuously even when my thoughts were a little crazy.

Patrick has always been a man who works with his hands. When we first got married, he did maintenance for a Property management company. He worked on motorcycles, boats and four wheelers in his spare time. He renovated his (our) first home. Wearing his ring was hard for safety reasons, along with the fact that it often got scratched and damaged. As the years passed, he was promoted to Property Manager which brought him into an office. After a few years of that, he went back to school and ran his own company. Again, wearing a ring wasn’t an issue.

Now, he works on airplanes everyday. How cool, right? I’m still amazed at what he does. He has stopped wearing his ring though.  Compared to when we first got married, I was shocked at how much I didn’t care that there wasn’t a ring on his finger. It didn’t make us any less married. 🙂

Marriage isn’t defined by rings. Although they are pretty and make identifying married people easier, they aren’t a necessity. Patrick stopped wearing his ring for safety reasons even though he often wishes he could wear it like he use to. Unfortunately, there were times that his ring would get snagged on something he was working on and it has the capability of ripping his ringer off. It just isn’t worth it to me (or him). 5 fingers is better than a ringed finger in my opinion! 🙂

After almost 5 1/2 years of marriage, we are stronger than ever in who we are as a couple. Rings make it easy to identify us as married… but we want our marriage to be easily identified by our commitment to God,  our unselfish love, our faithfulness to each other when times get hard, our patience, our kindness, our friendship, our understanding, our open communication and our romance.

 

So, if you see us out and about and one of us is ringless, don’t you worry (not that any of you have probably noticed). All is well in the 1/2  ringless Tobler household.

Anyone else have a ringless hubby? 🙂

 

Check out these babies. ❤

 

Last night I had a nightmare, woke up to pee, looked at my phone and then couldn’t fall back asleep for two hours. It was lame.

You know what I had a nightmare about? I had a dream that I had a photo session that I had to take Bennett to. Why is that so horrible? My child doesn’t sit still and if there is something to discover, climb, pull apart etc… he will find it. My entire dream was spent chasing Bennett around while ignoring my clients and failing at my job.

There is nothing profound about this post. This is just what I have been thinking about lately. The mommy brain thing is real. So painfully real. I find myself struggling with communicating with people lately when I also have to watch Bennett.

For example, we sold a couch and chair on the WF B/S/T site yesterday. We moved the set into the playroom so that the new owners could easily inspect them (and so I wouldn’t have to clean our dog hair covered sunroom). As she is telling me she loves them, Bennett climbs up on it, walks to the edge, I see him about to jump off, I lunge and grab his arm, he twists mid air, his feet leave the couch and here I am dangling my kid who just face planted and barely missed a serious fall. I heard the first couple words out of her mouth and then I have no idea what she was saying… all I was thinking was don’t let your kid get seriously hurt.

I find myself doing this so often. Not just the oh my goodness, you’re going to get hurt, but Bennett will just disappear when we are out and about. He’s not one to sit in a shopping cart, he wants to be up and moving and walking…. which turns a simple trip to Target into a circus with disappearing acts. Terrifying.

Even play dates can be challenging. I try so hard to be actively listening but I find myself trying to make sure Bennett isn’t finding an open door that leads outside, electrical sockets, etc.

I know what you’re going to say. Just relax. Or just wait until you have more kids. Yea Yea Yea. I hear you… but the things I am concerned about are the “you’ll seriously get hurt” things. Like, don’t scale the oven. Don’t try and run away from me in the gym parking lot. The things that if they happened, would be life changing.  Maybe more kids would relax me…. but right now I feel like my brain is mush.

Anyone else have a serious dare devil child who keeps them on their toes? 

 

Patrick and I bought an amazing home back in 2012.  It is in the heart of Wake Forest, has a beautiful exterior, a private back yard, the list goes on and on. The best part though? We got a killer deal on it. All of the homes around us are twice if not three times as much as ours.

We moved in and did a few quick changes like new carpet and paint for a few rooms. We put new floors in our sunroom, my office eventually turned into Bennett’s room etc. As our lives have changed, our home has slowly followed along.

Towards the end of last year though, we sold our first home in Youngsville which we had kept as a rental for 3 years. This prompted us to start potentially looking for new home. We found homes we loved but the price tags were hard to swallow. Did we really want to DOUBLE our mortgage? Hmmmm no.

We decided to utilize the 1500 square feet that we DO have, keep a stupid low mortgage, renovate what we can and really start making our house into the beautiful home we are dreaming about.

I think the hardest part is knowing that what we have planned can not be completed in a weekend. It’s going to be months of hard work and late nights. A lot of sweat and elbow grease.

The biggest thing we will be doing is turning our sunroom into a part of the actual house. This will require new siding, air ducts being rerouted, electricity, new windows, raising the floor, new doors, new carpet… among other little things.My current office is upstairs in a bedroom. The older that B gets and the less that he is sleeping during the day, means me trying to cram all of my MJP work into just an hour or so because there isn’t room for B to play in my office. By completing the sunroom and turning it into my office, I will be able to work in short bursts downstairs while B plays. By changing the sunroom, this starts the chain reaction of redoing the kitchen… It’s like a domino’s effect.

I’ll be blogging about the process and keeping anyone who wants to follow in the loop.

Cheers to turning our dreams into a reality. ❤

There are so many paint colors that need to be picked… but I’m leaning towards this pallet for the kitchen.

One of my friends asked an interesting question that it literally took me all day to think of an answer.

What was the best thing to happen in 2015?

What was the worst?

How do you want to improve in 2016?

 

The first thing was actually a little hard to answer. Without trying to sound dramatic, 2015 was a challenging year. It was hard trying to figure out motherhood while running a business. It was challenging to find a new normal in our marriage now that we have a kid. We had a lot of huge changes in 2015… and if there is one thing that I have learned this year, is that I struggle with change. I’m a creature of habit and 2015 didn’t let anything stay the same long enough for me to sink into a comfortable habit hole.

We started the year with a 3 month old and Patrick still running his own company while going to school full time. I also returned from maternity leave back in January.

We ended the year with a 15 month old, Patrick working at a new job and me ending the busiest year I have ever had with Miss Jee’s.

We decided to sell our home in Youngsville (Patrick’s first home) after having it for a rental and having tenants in it for 3 years. So for months Patrick has been working on fixing everything over there and we actually close next week! As much as having the extra income was nice, I’ll be happy to just have our current home for awhile.

By selling our house, there are a few awesome things that will happen in 2016.

1. We will become debt free other than our current mortgage.
2. Patrick will be able to work on completing his commercial pilots license by purchasing a plane.
3. We will be renovating our home to bring my office downstairs along with updating a few other rooms.

I’ve never been so excited for a new year. I just have a feeling that it’s going to be the best year yet.

I made a post about 3 or 4 months ago about how I didn’t know if I would be blogging much this fall due to how busy I thought I was going to be.

Well…. I was busier than I thought I was going to be and I am just now coming back up for air. I felt like I was in a rough and tumble ocean these past 4 months… and although I’m hesitant to use this word, I truly felt like I was drowning at times.

Whenever I returned from maternity leave (January 2015), I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would have at least 3 sessions a month for Miss Jee’s. My  biggest dream was to have 3 consistent sessions and my little heart would be happy. After shutting down and turning people away for 5 months, my hopes were small for my return. I sit here and I’m literally shaking my head in disbelief at how my 2015 and more specifically, my Fall went. I was blown away at how busy I was when I returned from maternity leave, but yall… let me tell you about these past 4 months.

Here’s an example… In the first 3 weeks of November…. I had 16 sessions and a birth. Let me spell that out in case you missed it. SIXTEEN sessions in 21 days. At the beginning of November, I had to announce that I was booked for the rest of 2015. That crazy part? 2016 doesn’t look any different. I’m already booking into May of 2016.

These past 4 months have been some of the most trying times for me. I wasn’t prepared for just how busy I was going to get. I didn’t plan rest days or family days…. I just went full steam ahead for 4 months. I would wake up at 4 am to work until 6 or 7 (when B would wake), and every minute that he was asleep, I was working. I’m now in recovery mode. All of the things I have put off these past couple of months, now I’m finding time to do them! They say you live and you learn, ain’t that the truth. There were so many things that I learned this Fall that I will be implementing for 2016 to make sure I’m the best mom and the best business woman that I can be. I’m going to make sure I have a boat that floats for 2016. No more drowning.

What a validating year 2015 has been. Do you know how many times I have questioned myself for not going to a 4 year university? For taking 6 years to get an associates degree. How many times I have doubted that I was on the right track. How embarrassed I was that my husband paid all the bills while I worked to build MJP?

2015 though…

I finally can stand on a mountain top looking over 2015. All the valley’s, the ditches, the hills, the mini mountains and I throw my hands up and I yell, “I did it yall.” I have worked so hard for this year for the past 5 years.

I built a successful and thriving business from the ground up and I’m bringing in an actual income. The best part? I’m still able to be a stay at home mom. All the glory to God!

So cheers to what 2016 holds. I know it will be the best year yet… which says a lot because 2015 was pretty grand.

I finally have some time to start blogging again. I have so much to share about what I have learned over the past 4 months. I hope you’re ending 2015 on a high note as well. If not, the only way is up! Keep moving forward!

I’ve been loving my morning routine of getting to the gym… well most days. Half the time the motivation is simply that B has somewhere to play and I get a hour long (2 if I wanted) break. That simple motivation gets me out the door and getting out of the door is always (mentally) the hardest part.

Before we decided to have B, I was at the top of my game physically. I was running, weight lifting, hitting pr’s. There was always room for improvement and there will always be new goals but I was on the right track. I was working on a weightlifting program pre baby and FINALLY I have started that program again. I thought I would share so that if you need a step by step guide of what to do in the gym, here it is.

Meet Jamie Eason. She’s a mom, bodybuilder, fitness coach…. awesome person to follow on Facebook. She has two main programs (probably more). Both are free. Both are awesome.

The first one is her Post Pregnancy program for all the mama’s who are getting back into it. She breastfed her son for over a year so I trusted her. She KNEW what it was like to try and protect her milk supply. She had realistic workouts and the program in general was awesome. Most, if not all of it could be done at home.

The second is the one I started back in 2013 and am working on again. Her LiveFit Trainer is awesome. The Bodyspace app makes it even easier. You log in and it literally tells you step by step what you should do. It allows you to track how many reps at what weight and how long you rested in between. It can’t get any easier.

^ Choose what day you’re on.

It gives you a list of the workouts. When you choose to track the workout, you can enter the info for each set.

It even describes each movement and you can watch videos on how to do it properly.

I can’t describe how much I love lifting weights. There’s something about giving it your all, trying your hardest, reaching a goal…. it’s amazing. That feeling I get when I’m at the gym. I feel strong. I feel like I can conquer anything… ok that might just be the endorphins… but still.

I love this program because it clearly states my vision for every time I step into the gym. Don’t be a cardio nomad; going from one cardio machine to another. Lift some weights! There are so many FREE programs out there… so find one and get to moving… and lifting.

I was telling some of my close girlfriends about how I’m feeling like ME again. Not because I’m losing weight (that’s a perk) but because I’m feeling strong and healthy again. I’m taking it one day at a time and trying my best to take care of myself spiritually, mentally and physically. To be the best wife, mother, business owner and friend, that I can be. I have to take care of me.

What can you do for YOU today?

I didn’t know how much free time I had before Bennett entered into our lives. Even during the busiest seasons of life pre baby are nothing like my busy seasons now.

The first year with Bennett and nursing were hard to find extra time. More specifically, going to the gym. It just wasn’t working with the schedule that Bennett was on. SO, I bought my treadmill and settled for at home workouts. Here’s the thing… I really really missed the gym.

The thing about kids and kid schedules is that they change all.the.time. Just when you think you’ve settled into a schedule that works, BAM… it morphs into something different. So when his schedule finally changed into something that worked with the gym nursery hours, I made a big leap.

I finally added B to my gym membership. I was really hesitant to sign him up before he turned 1. Now that he’s one, I finally felt like we were BOTH ready for it and let me tell you… we BOTH are loving it. His nap schedule is finally in slots where the nursery is open and I can go before his first nap so that I can shower when we get home and he goings down for his nap. Before,  I was always hesitant to work out before his nap because that meant I was left with sitting in sweaty clothes trying to nurse a baby. Gross. Not fun for either of us. Now that he’s not nursing, it’s easy peasy. Just go work out, bring him home, feed him a snack and put him in his crib. Loving it!

I am going to soak up every minute of this new schedule. I get an hour in the gym to myself while B plays in the nursery. It’s a win win for both of us. I leave feeling refreshed and high on endorphins and B gets to play with other kids!

It’s so important to find time to do something for yourself everyday. That is easier said then done BUT we have to try. I often feel torn in a million different directions between Bennett, running a business, running a household, being married… as do other moms. Finding time for our selves is hard. We often come last BUT you have to put yourself first so that you’re recharged, refreshed and can give your best to those around you. For me, that means I need to workout… or drink a hot cup of coffee in the quiet of the morning or getting together with a girlfriend sans child. Whatever it is for you, try to do it. Take time for you. You deserve it. Especially all you moms with multiple kids!