This is Forty

Last month I turned Forty. It was quite the year to have a milestone birthday! I originally envisioned celebrating my birthday in France this summer with our friends, but we had to switch gears. So, instead, we headed to our happy place and spent two weeks at the beach. Some of our best friends and their adorable kids who are also homeschooling this year were able to join us, and we celebrated with a family birthday picnic at sunset on Rosemary Beach. Celebrating with my family meant everything to me, and I was so happy that Sloane could join us since it was really important to her to be a part of the celebration! Sometimes, despite plans changing, things turn out exactly as they are supposed to! I couldn’t be more thankful for this evening with our sweet friends and everything they did to help bring this vision to life. Our two husbands literally ran all over town picking up a cake, flowers and food, trekked everything down to the beach and set up this entire event – and then they posed for family photos. I truly believe they are the two of the sweetest and most selfless guys around!

I have to add that this day was absolutely gorgeous but soooo windy!! I am very picky about photography and I can’t believe how beautifully Wesleyann (From Dear Wesleyann Photography) was able to capture all of us and the details of this party despite the crazy wind! I am obsessed with her skills and how sweet and fun she was. Dream photographer.

Forty could be one of the most momentous birthdays we celebrate in our lives. With the average lifespan in mind, forty seems to be this midway point when you are old enough to look back and reflect on a substantial amount of years behind you, and young enough to look forward with hope and plans for the future. I’ve thought a lot lately about the experiences and people that have shaped me – things I’ve accomplished, the lessons I’ve learned, how I’ve grown, the successes and failures I’ve had, and all that I am thankful for. I have also thought a lot about what’s ahead – plans and dreams I have yet to accomplish and the beauty in the unknown.

At 20, there are so many unknowns. What will your job be when you graduate from college? Who will you marry? Will you have children? How many? Where will you live? It seems that over time, those questions are answered and more of your life becomes “established” per say. In my thirties, I became a mom, we planted roots in the city we live in, we made many new friends and began building our home. Often times, our thirties are spent answering all of the questions we had in our twenties and setting ourselves up for later in life. My thirties were a wonderful decade, but now that I’m forty, I feel this sense of comfort and balance between knowing that my life is kinda figured out, but not completely! What I mean by that is, if our thirties are spent trying to answer all the unknowns, once you get to forty you learn to appreciate the fact that you still have unknowns! You realize that there is beauty in not having all of the answers and a completed life. I still have so much to discover and experience. My life is a work in progress and that’s what makes it great. That’s what makes it exciting. I have so many dreams that I am working on and still exploring in this season, and I have a feeling that my best years are still ahead of me!

I wanted to create this post, not only to share the pretty pictures from my beach party, but to document this moment in my life. I am sure that years from now it will be interesting to look back at some of the things I am saying and thinking now. I also thought it would be fun to share with you all a little deeper dive into who I am and how I have arrived at where I am today. How different parts of my life have impacted me and what I have learned from them. Warning – the rest of the post is really long and personal, which is a bit out of the norm for me because I am a fairly private person!

Upbringing

I grew up in South Texas. My grandparents (my mom’s parents) lived close by and we were surrounded by family and friends. My grandparents played an important role in my life, and I am very much like my grandmother. My mom was a teacher and my dad an engineer and we were a family of five. I was obsessed with baton twirling throughout my youth. Twirling was my life and I competed at the national level. It was during my childhood that I began going to look at homes with my dad, and I fell in love with interior design. I was around the age of 11 or 12 when I developed a strong passion for interiors and architecture.

My parents divorced when I was in junior high, and my dad accepted a job in Paris, France when I was 21. Although it was hard to have him living so far away, I enjoyed going to visit over the summers during college. My experiences abroad and traveling through Europe helped shape who I am today. Paris is my absolute favorite city. My dad still lives in there, but he recently retired and might move back to the states eventually. He and I are two peas in a pod, and my mom is my best friend and rock. She moved to the same city we live in after my daughter was born to be closer to us!

I honestly think that my generation was the best! I am what they call a “cusp” kid. I am too young to be Generation X but I’m an early Millennial. I wasn’t raised on tech like the Millennials that came along later. I was a kid of the 90’s through and through. I was nine years old when the decade started, and I graduated high school in 1999. Remember the movie American Pie? I graduated high school the same year that they did in the movie. Go back and watch 90’s movies. Nobody had cell phones and it was amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we have the technology, but there was definitely something nostalgic about the last decade before we all had smart phones in our hands 24/7. I heard someone say something the other day about high school during that time – If you did something you didn’t want known, it was just a rumor, it wasn’t on social media where it lives forever! We had it so much easier than kids do now when it comes to the pressures of social media (but that’s a whole other post!)

Growing up during that time just felt pure. As a kid, most people didn’t have internet or home computers. I did because my dad is techie, but for the most part, our childhood resembled something out of the 1950’s in a weird way. We just went outside and played. What was a playdate? We had organized sports, but our lives didn’t seem as scheduled. We had freedom, imaginative fun and less restrictions. When my mom spent time with us, it didn’t have to look perfect and she didn’t have to get just the right picture because she was going to post it later. She didn’t have Pinterest or Instagram to remind her that our crafts didn’t look magazine worthy, and she didn’t waste her time fussing over details that were for show. Our time spent together was authentic and messy and real, and our lives weren’t lived for an audience. Lemonade stands were homemade from a cardboard box and not purchased from Etsy. Part of the fun was making it ourselves. We had birthday sleepovers that I would never let my daughter have now and parties at Chuck-E-Cheese and McDonalds (yep, that was a thing). My siblings and I might be wearing clothes that weren’t perfectly planned, but we have real smiles and unfiltered photos in our family albums. I am so thankful for my childhood.

Because of when I was born, I saw the tech evolution take place. I came of age during the computer age. I was in the workplace when smart phones were first introduced, and I remember getting my first iphone in 2007 when I was 26. So, my generation is that anomaly that experienced the technology revolution at a young enough age to adopt it easily, but we remember a time before it. After all, we used to print out directions on a website called Mapquest before leaving the house because we didn’t have GPS.

I think because of my childhood, I am more aware of how different it is for kids these days. I struggle with the same pressures that most moms face, and I often strive for perfection. But, I do hear that internal voice that tugs at my heart for my child. I try not to let the expectations we have all grown so accustomed to in the age of Instagram dictate what goes on behind the walls of our home or impact her negatively. Although I love to make things pretty, cute and fun and I am very drawn to beautiful aesthetics and I love great photos – I never want to take away from Sloane being a kid and our time spent together so that we can have an “instagrammable” moment. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten older or that Sloane is a little older, or the fact that we just lived through a pandemic, but I find that I am more conscious of what is truly best for my family and what my child truly wants. I care less about what others are doing and expect. I try to live in the present and truly soak it in. With that said, I’m a work in progress and sometimes I fail.. I try to be conscience of it, and I do my best to safeguard her childhood from the pressures of our social media driven world in every way I can.

College

Growing up, I was an A student and loved school, but at some point along the way I burned out. I started college out close to home at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and I wasn’t taking school seriously until something just clicked. I think it was a trip to France with my dad when I was nineteen that made me realize how big the world was and that if I wanted to thrive in it, I likely needed an education. I got my grades up and transferred to Baylor University to study business and joined their Entrepreneurship program. Although my grandmother advised me to study interior design because I loved it so much, I had always had an entrepreneurial spirit and dreamed of owning my own business one day. Entrepreneurship was a newer major at that time, and I was really excited about it. I think I wanted to prove to myself (and my dad too) that I could succeed in business school. I was also in a sorority and absolutely loved my college experience. I am so fond of my time at Baylor, and I think that it changed the trajectory of my life in so many ways. Fun fact, I studied abroad for a summer and lived in the Netherlands in a dorm at the University of Maastricht. At the tail end of school, I met my husband who also attended Baylor Business School. We started dating once we graduated and were both living in the Dallas area.

Career

I moved to Dallas to work in technology sales. I was recruited by IBM straight out of college and subsequently spent 5 years working for various tech companies before starting my interior design and event planning company. Chris jokes that if I had stuck with tech, I would be his boss by now! But you know what, it just wasn’t for me. I am so thankful for that part of my life – the friendships I made and the experiences I had. I bought my first new car on my own, paid for my own apartment and lived on my own, traveled, had nice client dinners and attended really cool events. It was a time that I discovered so much about the world and myself, and I appreciate that period of growth and exploration. However, it wasn’t where my heart was. I used to sit at my desk and daydream about owning my own business and designing homes. I wanted to be in a creative industry and ultimately, I left corporate America to pursue my passions and have more flexibility to stay home with any future children. Through this journey, I realized that finding true success in a career requires that you have a talent or knack for what you are doing (basically, you are good at it) AND you love it or feel invigorated by your work. I had this calling inside of me that led me to start my design business, and I am so thankful that I had the courage to leave my well paying job to take a risk and a loving partner that understood me and supported my decision. After nearly a decade of running a successful business, I felt it was time to focus on my family and go in a different direction. I am now excited about new goals and dreams and my plans for new ventures.

I have learned that over time, we change and evolve and we realize that what we once wanted or put a lot of importance on might not be who we are anymore or is no longer our priority. I think that if we never change, grow or learn than we aren’t opening up ourselves to all of the possibilities God has for our lives and what He is teaching us though our journeys. We should never stop going deeper or learning more about who we are, and accepting how that impacts the course we are on. If we need to pivot, that’s ok. If we need to follow our hearts down another path, that’s ok. I believe it’s actually really important and necessary to evolve and grow and implement the knowledge we’ve gained and lessons we’ve learned along the way, into our daily existence.

Marriage

Chris and I dated for three and half years before he proposed, and we were engaged for a year while we planned our dream wedding in Miami, Florida. We had family and friends that flew in from all over the country (and world), but it was a smaller intimate affair and a time that I will always treasure. There are no words that can describe how much I love Chris. What we have together is truly special. He is the love of my life, my teammate, my biggest supporter and my best friend. We balance each other out so well. On one hand, we are very similar in our values, likes and dislikes and we enjoy many of the same experiences. On the other hand, our personalities are different and we complement each other – somehow magically making up for what the other person lacks. There is so much to be said about a strong partnership. We go further and grow more together than we ever would on our own. Together we can accomplish anything. This April we will celebrate eleven years of marriage!

Motherhood

My daughter was born a micro-preemie at just 26 weeks and only weighed 1 pound 12 oz at birth. I had a very complicated pregnancy and childbirth, and almost died during my delivery. Becoming a mother has been the single most important thing I have ever done and will ever do in my life. Going through the experience of having a baby in the NICU for 98 days and watching her fight for her life, while I recovered from a stroke, changed me. I learned to lean on God for everything. It brought me to my knees and strengthened my faith. At that time, my friends were having babies and it seemed that everyone around me was pregnant or celebrating the birth of their children; meanwhile I was struggling to watch mine learn to breathe on her own.

Instead of asking God “why me, why couldn’t I have a normal, happy and healthy pregnancy and delivery?” I chose to thank God for what he had given me. He spared my life and my daughter’s life. Chris and I witnessed so many miracles during that time, firsthand. God was teaching us how to depend on Him and strengthen our family bond – I could somehow see that in the midst of it all. I had bad days, but overall, I focused on being thankful and finding the purpose in this journey that was ours. It became a beautiful story of perseverance, survival, strength, and unfailing love. I learned to choose my perspective, which is life changing. I could have chosen to wallow in sorrow and fear; but instead I chose to ask questions, research, pray hard and became my child’s advocate. Through it all, I became the kind parent I never knew I could be. My daughter is now a healthy, happy and well-adjusted seven year old, and you would never know she was a preemie.

What’s ahead

So there you have it – a really good look back at my life! Now what?! I am so happy to have this blog, and I am looking forward to dedicating more time to it now that we are nearing the end of our home build. The home build, although a blessing, has been a very stressful and time consuming process. I am excited about settling into this new season of life in our home and having more time to devote to other areas of my life. If you read this far, you are a trooper, and maybe you learned something about me you didn’t know before. I hope to share more exciting things this year, and I truly thank you so much for following along on this journey of mine!

Sources:

Photography: Dear Wesleyann Photography

Flowers: Bella Flora 30A

Umbrella: Business & Pleasure

Plates, Poufs, Candle Holders: World Market – Here, Here and Here.

Flower Lights: Coterie Party Goods

Placemats: Target

Blue Folding Tables: Home Depot