Things Change

I sure have learned a lot about things in the last little while. I feel like last year this time I was at a very different place. I was pretty determined that I was going to build a new house. I believe that our renter was going to catch up on her rent. I believed that I really wanted to be an entreprenuer. I believed that I would probably only teach 1 school year, would probably hate it. 

Well..... that didn't really happen. 

Our Baltimore renter never paid us much of anything after June 2012 and it took us until Feb 2013 to evict her. She took all of the appliances with her and pretty much trashed the place. We spent a lot of money getting the house cleaned up and trying to find people we could really trust to market and manage our property. We STILL don't have anyone in the house, but we have found a really great realtor that really stepped up and made things happen for us since we couldn't being so far away. We are hoping to get good renters in very soon and finally be able to put good money towards our debt and not those awful (ever growing) mortgage payments. We lost about $15000 from this past year, just having the wrong people in our house and having the wrong people working for us. Jake and I lost a lot of faith in people through this whole experience. 

Of course, we had to pull out of the lot we had reserved to build a house. The mortgage rates were awesome and the cost of building was awesome. It was hard to walk away from that. In fact I spent several hours in bed and some tears mourning the loss of a fresh start. But with what was going on in Baltimore, there was just no way we could have pulled it off. It forced me to really look at our finances and our debts and develop a plan of how we can get ourselves out of debt as quickly as possible and save some good money to build a house in the next several years. It really sucks having to wait so long, but I know this is the right way to do things and this last year I have really tried to step away from "what does Stacey & Jake want now" and instead to really listen to the teaching of the church, and most importantly to humble myself and allow me to hear what plans God has for me and my family. It has been humbling...so so humbling. 

Along with that...... I don't want to be a business owner. I pretty much fell in love with my teaching job this year. Who knew I could love middle school kids! But I do, and I really want to focus on my teaching. The cupcake business was such a burden. It took away all my time with my family and kids. It stressed me out to extreme measures. I gained weight like crazy. There was not much I enjoyed about it. I don't regret doing it, because as I mentioned several times in this post, I learned a lot about myself, and my purpose. I just couldn't see this cupcake business fitting in with my goals for my family. I want to spend the evenings going for walks, and going to Zumba, and having date night with my husband, and putting my kids to bed. I just lost all of that with the cupcake business. We still do small orders and even a wedding here and there, but we hardly run the truck and are hoping we can sell the truck or the business as a whole. I feel embarrassed that I didn't even give it a real shot, but the peace I feel in my life doesn't even compare and so I know I made the right decision. 

It's been a really interesting year. I am glad I am past the bad renter, the stress of "needing" a new house, and wanted to make a business work. I am LOVING every fun day I've had of my summer with my kids and my family. I have soo many blog posts to catch up on and anticipate so many more just this summer! 

Off to get Zoey back to bed! She was going potty. (Our newest adventure.....potty training) Post about it soon!