I know some of my posts have been a little cryptic in a few areas. The times I’ve had to hold back from giving more detail or just being fully transparent has been due to a need for a little more discretion and privacy while a few of these things have been in the works. Everything has gone smoothly though and now I can spill the beans! So as promised through my Instastories, here is our official, life changing news!
I know I previously mentioned that I was relaunching my home sewing business. I’m happy to announce that the planning and background work that has been happening to reopen my custom sewing and alterations shop is almost complete! I’m hoping for a soft opening in about a week and half with a full, official opening the beginning of August. I’m so grateful there hasn’t been anything completely disastrous despite having to repaint the room more than once,
having a hard time locating all the furniture and tools needed (not even Amazon had what we needed in one stop), and trying to get all that done despite the effects of social distancing. I’ve got business cards, yard signs, car magnets… the whole shebang. As you can see below, the paint was hard to settle on but I got it finalized, painted and will soon be doing a sewing room reveal post!
At 14 years old is when I went full blown advanced in my sewing after winning “Best of Show” with an antebellum gown I made. So it made sense to get formally trained and certified after I graduated high school.
Once Isaac and I got married, I finally opened my custom sewing and alterations business for the first time and ran it for a year before I was so overrun with business and mounting health problems that I couldn’t keep it going. My love for sewing and crafting didn’t die once I had Emmy and continued learning to live with chronic pain/ illness, adjusting to motherhood, and keeping the homefires burning. I tried on several occasions to branch into different home sewing business niches to include an Etsy shop, custom embroidery and applique, and taking the occasional project on for a friend. Unfortunately there was just no reliability or normalcy to life and it simply wasn’t sustainable.
What will make this time different? Well for one, we are putting a hold on having more kids for at least a year. Just that one factor means I won’t be trying to deal with miscarriages, doctors appointments, and all the side effects from those and thus enable me to be consistent. Another huge factore is that Emmy is lot more independent and self reliable. With her not needing constant watching and attention, I can take some time to invest in a side gig. I’ve also adjusted a lot more to living with chronic illness and how to adapt for the bed days and take advantage of the good ones. It will definitely help that I am only doing part time hours to start out while I get my groove going. The final clencher is going to be coming up below. Here’s a hint: consistency.
Another bit of life-altering news for us is that Isaac is going to start working out with me consistently! He has joined me for a few of my workouts on the days he’s been off. I obviously enjoyed having a workout partner and I was so excited after talking with him about it that he actually wanted to make it a more permanent thing.
Before we got married, Isaac was always so good about going to the gym and working out. He had actually lost a ton of weight and bulked up his muscle mass. Unfortunately, when we got married, I was still at the point where I had panic attacks going into the gym so I never could join him. Then his workout partner moved and eventually the gym was lower on the agenda. As his work responsibilities increased, his time and ability to get to the gym or work out at home even was just impractical. With what little time he was off during the day, he was either mentally spent or I needed help because of my unpredictable ups and downs so the poor guy’s health went on the back burner… and yes, I’m mostly to blame.
I’m so excited that we are going to be accountability and workout partners now though! We are going to be doing the Beach Body On Demand workouts and are taking this weekend to get our garage all set up to get our workout in together before he leaves for work in the mornings.
It’s definitely hard to see what we used to be and where we are now but, to keep things positive, back then we didn’t know how to be healthy. Isaac lost weight by eating one meal a day and I had a thyroid swing/ storm and dropped 60 pounds in a matter of 3 months and was incredibly sick. We were both completely unaware of how to live a healthy lifestyle and not just stay busy, but stay active. Neither of us are lazy people by any means but being active on a healthy and maintainable level was foreign. I feel like we’ve come a long way in the last few months to learn what balance really means and have disciplined ourselves in more areas to make getting back into shape not seem so daunting.
Plus… how many couples have a “before”, “after”, and “back to before” collage? LOL
Follow my Instastories to watch us get our garage set up and ready for working out in addition to our health and weight loss progress. (Username: @emily.helvin )
And now for the biggest bit of life changing news…
Isaac walked out the door as the Service and Parts Director at Sam Boswell Honda for the last time on Thursday. Friday, he walked into his new job as the Service Delivery Manager for Eagle’s Wings Technologies! For us, this isn’t just another job- this is a new life.
There are a ton of reasons for us pushing for this transition that I don’t have time to go into right now but I’ll just basically cover the essentials. The nature of the car business is that it’s expected and even announced at events that they “know you miss a lot of things with your family to do your job.” It is expected for you to not be able to prioritize your family or be present for holidays, family gatherings, recitals, life events in general. Even in upper level management Isaac only got Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Years Day off. No eve’s, no days after, no weekends off, or anything. I know this is a societal problem in general where one or both parents neglects family to pursue a career but we have different convictions on that and see the direct results from the misplaced priorities often resulting in broken marriages, bitter children, and lonely individuals. Emmy and I have adapted over the years to Isaac not being able to be present at all. Even on his day off, he was either decompressing from the stress of the work week and/ or gearing up and psyching himself up for the upcoming stress of the week. His job and position were incredibly demanding, high stress, fast paced, and mentally and physically draining. He left for work every day at 6:45AM and would get home anywhere from 6PM to 8PM with the average being around 6:30 or 7PM. It was not uncommon for him to go several days in a row without seeing Emmy just because of her sleep schedule. He was rarely with us at family events and we never planned on or included him in really anything because he could be called away or needed last minute. We only ate together as a family on his day off and family time was an “as we can squeeze it in” thing. This isn’t bad- it’s just the nature of that job position. No one would want to sit through and listen to all the reasons we started looking into a career change for Isaac so I won’t bore you with that but I will say that when Emmy and I went on a 2 week trip and didn’t miss him because he was so absent in our life already, that’s when we knew we needed a change.
The hardest part in that change was finding what Isaac wanted to do vocationally. When we got married, he was in the middle of college to become a US Marshall but when he realized that doesn’t provide much of a family life and he’d be gone a lot, he changed gears. As promotion opportunities at work presented themselves and consequently more time demand, the degree was put on the back burner. So he never had time to finish his degree and therefore making a job transition, especially into a whole new career field, almost impossible. “BUT GOD” is all I have to say though. Isaac did a lot of research and digging into what he wanted to do for the rest of his life and the benefits he wanted out of a job and landed on IT. Our original plan was to find something that enabled us to move out west but unfortunately nothing became available. I won’t go into the details of how Isaac was eventually hired at EWT but I will say that both Isaac and the owner’s main priority was for Isaac to transition respectfully and peacefully out of Honda. Sam Boswell Honda provided so many amazing opportunities for Isaac and our family. Isaac posted this on his Facebook and I think it really encapsulates how he and I both feel about it.
Taking off the hold hat and putting on the new one- a cliche but an accurate one.
At his new job, he only has to work 8AM- 5PM! He gets 9 holidays per year off, he is in a more family oriented environment, and he gets every single weekend off! We can now have dinner together as a family and while there might be an occasional late night, it will most likely be predictable and few and far between. We can make plans and keep them, we can get more involved at church, Isaac won’t have to choose between family time or alone time or catching up with friends because there will be time for all of that! I’m not gonna lie- I even voiced to Isaac that I was nervous about having to learn to live actual life together. When my dad retired from the Army it was a rough transition for it to go from him not being part of life at all to all of a sudden we have to keep in mind that he was there and available and needed to be considered in plans. I’ve seen so many other friends of mine deal with that too when a husband comes off of deployment. I suddenly don’t have to do everything at the house by myself and Isaac *wants* to help and do them. I can’t just make plans for the weekend because he’ll be there and might have a preference so I need to keep in mind that Emmy and I don’t just flutter around doing our own thing anymore. We are truly going to have to learn to live together in a way we never have before. I’m nervous but also excited because if there’s anything Isaac and I do well as a couple, it’s come together as a team for the greater good and to conquer the harder challenges.
My sweet sister and brother-in-law sent us a gift to go celebrate this milestone for our family so we went to Bella’s for the first time and really enjoyed taking a moment to enjoy a nice dinner together and talk about our future and new “normal”.
We are chomping at the bit to start our new life together. It isn’t just a new job. It’s a new career, new opportunities, new mindset, new life! We feel like we got a second chance at living. It might sound dramatic but it’s true. God provided so well for us through Sam Boswell Honda and as He always does He has provided so well for us in this next step. The only way to look at how everything played out and smoothly transitioned is to say “there’s no doubt that God did this”.
The difficulties and stress from this transition are certainly not over and we have so much to adapt to like new pay plans, launching the sewing business, starting to homeschool, etc. but I know this- I now have Isaac to rely on and go through the stress with me. It’s *our* stress together. It’s so good to feel like a team now.
Don’t forget to keep up with our exercise/ weight loss journey and all of our new transitions through my IG account! I’d also love to hear from anyone reading this who likes to make new friends. 😀 See you around!
Big Loss - Big Resolution 
So happy/excited for you and Emmy!
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