Pivotal Jewels

In January I had this post about a silly fortune cookie, and today I submitted my letter of resignation at my job. I have always wanted to be in private practice. In my original plans, I had thought I would continue working at North Care and slowly build up private practice over a year or so and eventually just do pp. I began working some this summer on getting a practice going, and have been seeing a couple of clients for two months now. With adding a baby to our family, the time I already had scheduled off for maternity leave, and lots of prayer we concluded the timing was right and this was the best choice for our family. I had already planned to take off the next three months or so for maternity leave. During that time I am going to work on some marketing things and getting on more insurance panels. Then hopefully after the new year I will start building up a few more clients.

I always seem to struggle with change and making big decisions. In talking with my mentor this week she said "You know Annaleise, it is moments like today that are pivotal jewels on your path. Enjoy embracing your decision! What a day!"
I thought about those words a lot. Enjoy embracing your decision. Pivotal jewels? After the stress of wrestling with decisions I'm not sure I enjoy embracing them very much. Which is silly when you have made a decision that was carefully and prayerfully made. So here is to enjoying and embracing my decision. Life is changing in many ways, and I want to put more energy into enjoying it rather than looking back and questioning.

Here is the website that Michael has started for me. I am still deciding about the wording and other things I want to put on it that have not completely unveiled it just yet.

On the move...

Things look pretty chaotic on our end. We are in the process of packing our apartment and moving back to our house. Michael spent the day yesterday ripping out the carpet at our house, replacing the wood on the steps of our stairs, and painting. I had to work all day, but joined in him in painting until 1 AM last night.


Michael's handiwork with the stairs. He has been working so hard!


Our bedroom- painted warm caramel and carpet ripped out


Isabella's room in warm caramel and one wall of ballerina pink. (I love paint names! What a fun job!) The warm caramel is a bit dark for a nursery, but I am hoping my vision for it comes together when it is all finished.

Our carpet is being laid right now and Michael is retexturizing our bathroom to re-paint the painting mistake we made in there. I better start packing more boxes!
Hope everyone has a good 4th of July weekend!

Goodbye Hasley...

We handed over the keys to our renters this week. It was a weird feeling to give someone else the keys to our house and drive away. I cried as we drove away. I guess I just felt nostalgic about the first house we ever lived in together. We had many special memories there together and with our friends and family.

On the porch of our very first home together...


1820 Hasley Drive

On to our next adventure in life...who knows in a year we might move back to the Hasley!

What have we been doing?

The last two weeks we have been home have been absolutely crazy busy! One more week of craziness with VBS next week at church every night after work, and keeping my nephews one night. After that I plan to do some organizing, sitting around, watch a movie, and catch up with my friends and my unread magazines. So what have we been doing?


Michael began coaching a little league team for a boy we go to church with. They have one practice and one game a week. I snagged this picture of Michael getting his breakfast on his way to his game last Saturday. So far they are 0-2.


We went out with some of our "longest standing" (as Michael says) friends for dinner the other night at the Cheesecake factory. I had never tried their strawberry shortcake dessert and it is one of Amy's favorites so we tried it out. It was great as all of their food is. Amy is due with their first baby in one week! I was so glad we were able to catch up with them before they become parents. Can't wait to meet Kaitlyn!


Last Saturday night we ran in the Downtown Dash 5 K race. Here we are together.


Amy, Heather, and Me pre-race


I went to Stillwater last weekend, had lunch with some MFT girls and went to a baby shower for a friend from grad school. It was really great to see those girls! I miss them so much!


I went to lunch one Friday at Nonna's with Amy and Heather. We had this AH-Mazing dessert!


Oh...and did I mention we moved in the last two weeks. We moved to manage one of the apartments shown in the back of this picture. We will be renting our house over the next year and then we will make some decisions about renting our house, selling our house, area we want to live in, etc. Things are mostly unpacked at our apartment, and things at our house are in disarray as we need to put some things in storage and donate some things.

WHEW!! I am ready to go to bed before 11, be home before 9, and find my watches!! :)