st. louis

Spring has finally arrived in St. Louis and I’m so happy it’s here! Before I get to all the spring time photos, I wanted to share our exciting news! It probably won’t be nearly as exciting to anyone besides our immediate family. But I’ve been so anxious to share!

As of this past week, Don officially left his job of the past 8 years! It’s incredibly exciting and equally terrifying. Nearly 8 years ago, he got hired on as a manager at Quiktrip (a gas station…for those of you who don’t know.) The salary was quite an improvement to the minimum wage he was making at Starbucks so we were excited for the switch. But the hours were not ideal. He worked the dreadful overnight shift for the first 6.5 years before finally switching to days (still not a fun schedule…2 mornings, 3 evenings.) He was never off for holidays unless it fell on one of his two weekend days. So for the past 8 years, he has missed out on countless events with our family because he was either working or sleeping.

Not only that, but we’ve been dreaming of the day that he would be able to transition to working from home. Even though Quiktrip is a wonderful company, he had no desire to advance within the company. Music is his passion and he wanted to be doing something in that line of work. With a big family, taking that leap is not something you can just do. Even after saving up some money, we still didn’t know if it would be responsible to take such a big risk. But then he found out that his Quiktrip location would be torn down to be rebuilt and he would be switching locations and put back on the night shift. The night shift was absolutely miserable for entire family and I just didn’t think we could survive going through that again. So with that news, we took that as a sign that it was time to move on. There were a few other things that played into that decision but it’s too confusing (and boring) to explain in a blog post so this is just the quick version.

So what are our plans now? Well he just started a part time job that is incredibly flexible. The pay doesn’t come close to covering our expenses each month, but it does give us a bit of guaranteed income while we make this switch. Once we finish the studio in our basement, he will be taking on some guitar students. And the thing he’s most excited about is the chance to finally work on his website, Strumcoach. He is so very musically talented and he has always dreamed of being able to use those talents. 2023 Update -He has also recently started a Christian shirt brand with a friend.

I’m thankful to be able to make some money now through my Instagram. Even though we never want to rely on that income, it is nice to have that during this transition. We also have multiple other small sources of income from different avenues (things like stock music/videos and guitar video courses.) So over the next few months, we really hope to be able to devote the time to all these things. Now that Don doesn’t have a full time job tying him down, he will be able to better focus on everything. The hardest part will be staying disciplined when there’s nobody telling you what hours you need to work. But I think his drive and determination (and his love for music) will help push him.

We really are so excited to see where this takes us. But I would ask you to pray for us. This is a very scary leap! I do plan to follow up with a financial post soon. But I will just quickly say that we’re not able to do this because we’re rich. We’re both frugal minded so we do have some money that we have been setting aside to do this. We also aren’t being careless. We have a game plan and if it doesn’t work out over time, we will have to re-evaluate. But right now we’re going to see where this exciting new adventure takes us!

So that’s our news! Like I said, it’s more exciting for us than anyone else. But I have just been dying to share (I didn’t want to post anything until it was official.) It really hasn’t fully hit yet. But even just thinking ahead to different events coming up, it feels SO nice to know that he will finally be able to join us!

Anyway, now on to all the pretty spring time photos! Spring is my absolute favorite! I love seeing everything come back to life after the long, miserable winter. We love going to Forest Park to see all the pretty flowering trees and tulips so that’s where we headed last week. It was a beautiful day and the tulips were at their peak and so, so gorgeous!

As we were driving through the park to get to the tulips, I saw this walkway of trees and asked Don to pull over to take pictures. They were beautiful (even though they didn’t photograph as well as they looked in person.) But we still spent a little time dancing and walking down the sidewalk…and of course taking a ton of photos in the process. I haven’t gotten to take our new camera outside much since we got in on Black Friday. So I’m looking forward to many more outdoor adventures.

I think Desmond becomes more hilarious every day. He was probably our hardest toddler from about the time that he was 14 months to just after he turned 2. Then he became such a fun, happy, funny kid. He has the best dance moves and I genuinely love spending time with him (most of the time haha.) I keep telling Don that we need it to stay warm (instead of the back and forth weather we’ve been getting) because his jeans are all getting too short for him and I’m not going to buy new pants for him before fall haha.

And one of my favorite things in the world is watching my children loving on each other. It makes up for the many arguments I hear throughout the day. We really try to encourage them to value their friendships with each other. Of course they also annoy each other and fight daily. But overall, it’s very evident that they enjoy spending time with each other. And I hope that never changes!

And these two with all these heart melting photos! I couldn’t choose just one!

10.5 years ago we got married at the Jewel Box. It rained on our guests and this natural light loving girl had a wedding at night. There are many things I wish I could go back and change. But the one thing I wouldn’t change is who was up at the alter with me. It’s so fun to be able to go back with all our kids all these years later. (Also taking a mental note not to choose a shirt that makes me look pregnant next time.)

I took an almost identical photo of this one below last year when we went. Both times it was completely unprompted. They are drawn to that bench for some reason. It’s so fun to look back at last year’s blog post and compare it to this year. And I can’t get over how cute and little Clementine was!!

Evangeline’s bows are from Wunderkin. I’ve been majorly obsessing over all of our Wunderkin bows lately!

I’m so excited to be going on more outings now that we have Don with us more often and the weather is warming up! I can’t wait to see where this adventure takes us!!

Have a great week!