I honestly believe that there is nothing more important in this world than to show love to the people around you.
You have no idea what battles people are fighting.
People deserve respect and kindness whether they show it to you or not.
My soap box for the day! :)
In my couple years of being married, I have noticed that marital roles change on a regular basis.
What do I mean by that?
Any time a transition or a change happens in life, the way you relate to your spouse changes as well (i.e. marital roles change).
What differentiates strong couples from the rest is the ability to stand in the waves and flow with the tide together.
When times change, so does the nature of relationship. A move, a new job, the birth of a child have a powerful impact on a marriage.
Someone once told me that you date and marry the person for the first time all over again at the beginning of these types of transitions.
Each time we have moved we have had a change and growth period.
We have made it through because we never stop dating each other. Discovering new things about each other and letting that mature the nature of our relationship.
The new job has brough out "intense, goal-oriented Gracie". When I was a nanny I was more of a "teacher, mommy Gracie". When I was at my old job I was more of a "restless, creative, home-making Gracie".
They are all elements of my personality, intensified by the nature of my daily tasks.
Kevin has had similar changes during these transitions and as we continue to "date" while we are married, we learn to adapt and change to meet each other's needs.
The driving force behind our willingness to work together?
Love, respect for one another, an intense sense of loyalty, a strong friendship, and a deep understanding that changes will come and we can make it through as long as we are on the same page, supporting each other.
Have you found this to be true in your relationships? Your friendships?
So, we go through all this trouble to buy this house with no appliances or running water and our car dies. Now what do we do?
Let's just say, we had a busy week ahead of us. We showered at our gym in the mornings and I called a friend of the family to come help us make the house liveable.
We went to a furniture store to get some living room furniture, a dining room table, some bureaus for our bedroom and an island for the kitchen. This took about a week to deliver.
We started to fix up the house with the bathroom and the kitchen sink. We got a toilet and got all the plumbing fixed, then we got our kitchen sink fixed.
After that, we went to town cleaning and painting. And more cleaning and painting.
Meanwhile, we had our plumber friend get the rental liveable and I posted an add on Craigslist. There were no responses, so I lowered the price by $50 and we had 15 responses. We settled a tenant, wrote up a lease with a lawyer at the office I was working in, got it signed, and picked up any appliances the rental needed.
(The tenant has been great so far! Has repainted the whole place and had an interior decorator come in. It looks amazing.)
As far as the car dilemma, we went to carmax and got another car. A Honda, far more reliable than the BMW we had. The car shop paid for our rental and for a little bit of the new car because they put a wrong part in the BMW and were the reason the car died in the first place.
A week in, our best friends came to help us clean up the house and do some painting. Our families also came to help us out. We so desperately needed the help and will never forget the willingness of our closest friends to be there for us at that time.
A couple months in, the place was starting to really be liveable and even comfortable.
My friend Amanda came to live with us at that time for a summer internship she was doing in NYC. She has an incredible eye for design and organization and she helped me get out of boxes and organize everything and make it look nice.
Kevin and I started antiquing and found some really unique pieces of furniture to give the place an earthy, yet clean feel. Decorating was definitely the fun part for us.
In Kevin's study, he painted it a forest green and built a bookcase out of trees from our backyard. It is beautiful!
The whole house has a little bit of Gracie style and a little bit of Kevie style and I love that.
Our first home.
Full of sweat, tears, laughter, kisses.
Let's just say we finally understand the term labor of love. :)
So, we found our dream home, figured out the financing, made a great deal and all we had to wait for was for them to finish their part of the deal, fix the heat and any potential freeze damage in the house.
Little did we know, the contractors they hired had no incentive to finish the project. So they would come one day, do an hour of work and then come the next week and do an hour of work.
Basically, we had to wait for months for these lazy people to get their act together.
Meanwhile, our broker did a great job getting us extensions on the amazing financing we got for the house, and our real estate broker did a rockstar job making sure all the loose ends were tied up so that nothing fell through.
The time finally came for our closing, we were so excited, we were shaking!
And, of course, the other side never showed up to sign the papers.
Ha, but we didn't even care. We signed that day and they signed the next day and we were home owners.
As we go up the driveway of our first home, we smile at each other with the biggest smiles ever. So proud of what we were able to accomplish...
And our car dies! Right in the middle of the driveway! Ha!
All we had with us was the keys to the house, a mattress, a cat, clothes, and some cleaning supplies (the only things we owned at the time), and we got to work. We cleaned the house from top to bottom and passed out on the bed with a delivery pizza box and some beer.
We woke up to the sun shining right in our face... Shades. That is why people own shades. Lesson #1 of home ownership.
And we headed off to work in a rental car, to return to our big ol' empty house with no appliances and running water.
What do we do now?
It was cold. No heat in the house for a long time, cold.
It was dirty. No cleaning for at least a year when the last homeowners moved out, dirty.
As we walked through the hallways and the rooms for the first time with our families, Kevin and I fell in love with the place. Oh, the possibilities!
Our family was shivering and told us they would support us no matter what decisions we made. They noted the lack of appliances, heat, water, and the ample supply of bugs. They also noted, that it would be a lot of work, but if we were willing to put that effort in it could be a beautiful place to live. The place sold for nearly double what we bought it for only a couple years prior, so there had to be something amazing underneath the tough exterior.
We appreciated their advice and support. So we slept on it and woke up in the morning and knew what we had to do. Make and offer and pray to God our inkling on the place was right.
So we made an offer - $$, closing costs, and heating or any freeze damaged fixed. And they countered requesting a grand more with all the extras, & we joyously accepted. One step closer to a place of our own!
Oh, but we had to wait for it... A long, hard, painful wait to be quite honest.
One word, contractors.
Another word, lazy.
More about that in the next post.
So the decision to buy a house was made, now we had to find out if this dream was a realistic possibility. So we met up with a mortgage broker to talk about how much of a house we could reasonably afford.
At this point in time, we realized that we wanted to by a home with rental possibilities. A stepping stone of sorts into the real estate world.
The broker gave us all the financial info we needed to move forward. Now all we had to do was find the house of our dreams.
The first house we found and looked at was a place on the Quinnipiac river in New Haven. A bunch of our friends were moving to New Haven, so that seemed like the place to be.
Right when we were ready to put a deposit on the place, it went off the market. (Which ended up being a good thing because the murder rate in New Haven has been rising and the housing costs have been falling. This particular house had close to a 20% drop in value. Whew! That could have been a horrible investment.)
Then we looked at a house in Stratford with good income possibilities that we weren't in love with, but we were starting to get desperate to find a place of our own. The problem was, when we went to put in an offer, they said they weren't accepting offers at that time even though it was on the market.
So glad we missed that bullet, turns out that neighborhood was not too good afterall. We saw another house a street away and it was full of smoke and there was a baby left on a bed in one of the rooms crying. I told the parents their baby was crying and was completely tramatized by the whole ordeal.
Finally, Kevin and I were looking on Craigslist and we came across this gorgeous farmhouse colonial in Danbury that was listed on the market that day, in our price range, it had a rental, and seemed to have everything we were looking for in a home. We instantly called John Anthony and he set up a time for us to go see the home the next day.
Then we called our parents to see if they would come see the home with us. They have experience buying a house and we wanted to have them be a part of this important decision we were making in our lives. They were more than happy to help.
So, we met our parents and John Anthony at the house (soon to be our home) in the middle of winter, with 3 feet of fresh, unshoveled snow, to see this gorgeous place...
A dirty place. With no running water or heat. But with beautiful "bones" and history.
Check out Part 3 for the response from our family!
After Kevin and I were married we went on a long honeymoon across Europe, which was fantastic (and will warrant some posts down the road). Our plan was to get back from our honeymoon and start a year long lease at a gorgeous beach house in East Haven.
The couple we were renting from were awesome. Both lawyers (which we thought the both of us might be at the time), beautiful family, and similar to us... the husband loved the red sox and the wife loved the yankees. We just loved that about them.
However, while on our long honeymoon, this couple was not doing so well. Cheating happened and they were taking steps toward a divorce! He e-mailed me a couple days before the move-in date that he needed to live in the house they were going to rent out and begged us to do "the Christian thing" and void the lease.
Yikes!
We prayed and thought about it and said to ourselves, well there are other fish in the sea, we will find another home to rent.
My parents and my sister Hope were great because they knew that we were going to be at their house for a couple weeks after the honeymoon, so they painted the room and bought us a gorgeous bedroom set to suprise us when we came home. It was darling!
Little did we know, we'd have to stay there for a couple more months than planned and my family was more than accomodating.
The economy was in a downturn and the real estate market went south. Rentals were few and far in between. Every place we looked at was snatched up within hours of putting down a deposit. We were in a serious crunch.
At that time, our friend Amy said that we could house sit for her family since they were going away for a couple months. This was such a blessing!
During the time we were house sitting we got in touch with John Compton, a real-estate maven. He gave us access to a software to look at houses on the market. I researched the market backwards and forwards and realized for myself that we could potentially buy a place.
Why not?
Our family is in CT, our jobs are in CT, we have amazing friends in CT.
Plus, if we ever wanted to move, we could just rent it out.
So, the search began!
I wish there was a celebration around earth day.
Family and friends, a nice meal, gifts, the planting of a tree.
Next year this is happening.
One of my favorite things to do when I'm writing serious PR materials is to write "blablabla" in places where I am unsure of the facts or can't think of the word to complete the sentence.
For example,
Tony, Inc. is the leading blabla elevating the standard of care in the blablabla industry.
Since bla bla, blablabla groups have hailed the fledgling company for increasing their productivity and profits.
Changing the lanscape of the blablabla industry for the better - Tony, Inc.
###
Then, I just go back and fill in the "bla's" lol!
I love blablabla.
P.S. I made up the name Tony, Inc. for this example. :)
During spring break my senior year in college we went to see a medieval times musical on horses in Florida.
This is a story for another day, another time.
On the way to that show, I started talking with the cab driver.
He and I spoke in Spanish about how different Latin American culture is from American culture and he said something to me that stuck in my mind.
He noted in his country people work to live and in America people live to work.
This is so true.
Work is such a major part of our lives. If we count up the total hours we end up working in our lifetime, it ends up being years of our lives.
People of all cultures have to work to live, to put food on the table for their families.
In America (and I'm sure some other places in the world), often our lives start revolving completely around work instead of around our families and friends.
Since I started working at the PR firm, I've realized how easily this happens. How being busy can make you forget what really matters: God, your relationships with your family and friends, and serving those in need.
Work and home life balance is so important.
How can we work hard to do well at our jobs and keep our priorities in check?
An age old question, I guess.
Would love to hear what you think about it.
Grace
Hi friends,
So this past weekend Kevin and I played with our friends Brett, Adam, and Bekki at Wilton Trackside in our newly formed band "The Wooden Arms" (Like a hug from a tree, not like the weapons lol!)
It was a total blast! A couple weeks ago we practiced in our barn for like 6 hrs and then we had a quick run through at trackside. It was so nice to be in touch with our musical side and just put ourselves out there for the world to see.
I seriously had no idea what to do with my hands, so I looked like a total idiot at times, but truly enjoyed the whole experience.
Plus, April came to support me with her bf and we had a blast taking advantage of the great music and free drinks. Ha! We danced and giggled like school girls.
Such a fun night. I want to do it again!
My sister Hope's boyfriend suprised my sister with a trip home for Easter.
A couple weeks ago, he contacted my parents and let them know he was planning to bring her up.
He then contacted me to help him find a photographer in the area. I instantly though of Aaron Huberty who has a terrific photo bloc (link to come) and went to Wheaton with Kevin. He now works at CHS as a teacher (which is where Kevin and I went to college).
It took everything in me not to tell my sister. We talk every day and I just wanted to burst it out. But, I was good and acted suprised when she said she was coming up for the holiday. :)
Kevin and I had Friday off from work so we hung out with Hope and Jordan. We went shopping and had a good time.
On Saturday morning my sister went to get her nails done with my mom and when she got home, Jordan suprised her with broadway tickets to see "Wicked" in NYC!
On their way back from the city, Jordan texted Kevin and me "TEXT HOPE".
The day before, Jordan said if it was hard to find a reason to get her to the beach he would have us text her to have them go with us.
So, I texted Hope and asked her if she wanted to meet us at the beach and to check if that was okay with Jordan.
He clearly said it would be okay.
When they got to the beach, Jordan pulled out all the materials for a world class picnic.
Hope turned to him and squeeled saying, "This is the perfect end to the perfect day!"
If she only knew what the end would be!!
So, I texted her that Kevin and I were stuck in "traffic" so they should go ahead.
I was also texting the photographer with their exact location.
As they were eating, Hope noticed a photographer taking a picture of the landscape. Before she could say anything, Jordan stood up and said,
"Can you stand up with me?"
As she stood up, he went down on one knee and said something to the extent of,
"You are the most wonderful person I have ever met. I love you and want to be with you for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?"
She replied with a resounding, "Of course!"
Afterwards they came to my parent's house for a celebration.
They are both some of the most amazing people alive. Generous, kind, considerate, and beautiful to boot.
I could not be happier for the both of them and to be able to celebrate their love for each other!!
Today was a particularly difficult day at work. I had a number of tasks to complete and I had my first PR Plan presentation with a client.
Our team worked on this presentation for a month, perfected it and delivered it today.
Our client seemed to like most of it, but had some comments on one slide. Because of this, time ran out and we weren't able to finish the presentation we worked so hard on.
NIGHTMARE.
I look back on the day and it was good overall, but my perfectionist side wants me to think differently.
You know what?
I actively choose not to define my day by this hiccup.
I choose to take this lesson and grow.
And, I choose to watch a movie tonight, worry-free with my husband and my cat.
I honestly believe this is a choice. That we can choose what our minds dwell on from day to day.
I choose positivity, optimism because that is what is good for me and to be quite honest, that is what is good for our little family.
Movie with the family, here I come!
Today, the president of my company came up to me and said, "I can not give you enough compliments for how well you have done today. If you keep up the good work, I can really see you moving up here in the near future."
This came at the perfect time for me. I was working on a bunch of projects and needed this affirmation to give me the boost to work hard on them.
Perhaps my boost in energy was really because I'm a goal-oriented, type-a, with borderline OCD. Who knows?
The relationship between compliments and productivity seems to be situational at times and often based on the personalities in the interaction and may also have to do with the way a person was raised.
My parents used goals and affirmation to keep me motivated/focused as a kid, so I respond well to that stimuli.
What keeps you moving during the day?
The key to doing well in a high stress job is to understand that the craziness happens in an "ebb and flow" type fashion throughout the day.
How you choose to handle it will make or break you in the corporate world.
"Ebb and flow" is a term often used to describe tides... They come in and they go out.
In the same way, tasks in a high pressure job will always be there, but the stress you feel from all the work comes and goes in an ebb and flow fashion. Possibly based on deadlines or other priority items that need completion.
My trick has been to take some time to write "to do lists". Organization is super helpful in this process. If all you have to remember is to look at a "to do list" then you don't have to waste your energy trying to think about each thing on that list separately. It gives your brain a much needed break to work on the tasks at hand.
Also, I've found that it's helpful to take one task at a time. There may be a million things to do, but getting one project done is better than a bunch of half projects.
Those are my current musings. Take them as you may. Hope they help you in some way!
