Let’s Catch Up

Hola!

It’s been awhile would be an understatement. I haven’t sat down to write in what seems like ages. 14 months to be exact. I definitely miss having the luxury of sitting down with a cup of coffee in my pj’s worrying about nothing but what to cook for dinner and timing it just right so hubby would have a hot meal to come home to.

Something I’ve realized within these last 14 months is that life moves in stages and it’s more like I’m writing my life story as each day passes. Whether it be a good chapter or a chapter you’re trying to hurry through because you just can’t wait for it to be over, it doesn’t matter. Life doesn’t slow down because you’re enjoying a certain stage nor does it hurry along when you can’t wait for the particular season of your life to pass.

So while my homemaker life came to a close shortly after we arrived in Dallas, my heavy workload season came to a close as well but we’ll touch on that in a minute.

So where have I been? Good question! I’ve been so busy I barely have time to sit down and eat a meal or finish a load of laundry. For a few months I was working full time as an event coordinator at Main Event and then shortly after I received an offer to work online as a virtual assistant. I debated on what to do for a few days, and I had a gut feeling that I should take the job for some odd reason (because I really needed more work). 

Life was completely hectic for a few short months. This is how my days went:

• Wake up, make breakfast
• Squeeze in an hour or two of online work
• Get ready for my other job
• Make us breakfast and pack my lunch
• Work 8 hours
• Come home, make dinner
• Put in another hour or so of online work
• Do something that needed to be done around the house
• Get ready for bed

And so on and so forth. That routine lasted only a few months because I was working 6 days a week and very quickly became burned out. I ended up making the tough decision to cut back at Main Event to part-time so between both jobs I was working an easy 50 hours per week. I was managing, tired, but managing.

Between all of this, we decided to move into a two bedroom apartment. We were going to stay in our one bedroom but again, I had that gut feeling that we needed to move. We moved in at the end of February and it’s a good thing we did because on February 7th we received a huge surprise.

Just like most couples we were reaching a point to where we didn’t want to try for babies, we wanted to just let whatever happens, happen. We were finally in a good position, had great jobs, had been married for over two years and decided that adding an addition was something we wanted.

I remember it very clearly. We went to a Superbowl party and our friend who was hosting the event had this adorable little girl who we thought was the most precious baby. We left the party thinking how excited we were about the idea of having one of our own maybe sometime soon.

Three days later I woke up from a dream around 6:00 AM. In that dream, I was told by somebody to take a pregnancy test. I tossed and turned but by 7:00 AM my heart was beating out of my chest so I went ahead and took a test not thinking that it would be true.

The three minutes it took to show up seemed like an hour. I was shaking, I’m not sure if I was nervous, excited, or scared.

On the morning of February 7th, I knew my life was about to change. The test said YES! I immediately woke Kevin up and with a grin on his face and chuckling he said, “I knew it.”

I’m over here thinking it’ll take about a year, enough to give my mind time to adjust to the idea of becoming a mother, but clearly, God had other plans.

Fast forward almost a year, and here we are! Please welcome Brooklyn Christine Long. Born on Thursday, October 4th, 2018 at 3:52 PM. Weighing 7lbs. 10oz. and 20 inches long.

In short, this is why I think it’s so important to go with that gut feeling. If I wouldn’t have listened to it, we would have been stuck in our one bedroom apartment with a baby and two dogs and had I not quit Main Event (as sad as it was), I’d be stuck at home, jobless.

I have been blessed with the opportunity to stay home with our baby and earn a paycheck in the process and trust me, I know how lucky I am. I think about it each day and do my best to not take it for granted.

So what’s happened since my last post?

• We had a BABY GIRL
• My work from home, virtual assistance job turned into a full-time gig 
• I was promoted to an Operations Manager and flew out to Arizona to meet the crew I work for
• I’ve been back to Florida a few times to see my friends and family
• My husband and I took a babymoon to Tennessee

Those are just some of the things that have happened since my last post. I have so much to catch you up on. I’m hoping to carve some time out and post every once in a while as it’s something I am passionate about, it just isn’t my main focus anymore.

So what can you look forward to within my upcoming posts?

• How my pregnancy went
• Our Tennessee babymoon
• Labor
• Postpartum
• Baby Brooklyn
• Prague Updates
• Future travel plans
• Life in Texas
• My career

And much much more. Thank you for reading! I look forward to updating you guys throughout this busy, crazy, beautiful life I am living. 

xoxo

Ashlyn