My Imperfect Perfect: Our Enchanted Life

I've been stressed out a lot lately. I have 4 kids, 2 dogs, 1 parrot, 1 bunny & 4 chickens. Oh.. and a Husband. All of us together make up our family and each of us is very blessed. I have the house I never could have dreamed up, the swimming pool that I dreamed of, but never thought I could have, we are our own boss and to anyone looking in from the outside it may seem that we might have a somewhat enchanted life.

Since I've had my first child I've had a really hard time trying to figure out what my role is. I know that sounds funny, I mean, if I could, I should just be a Mom right? Somehow it's just never been that easy for me. I always felt... guilty... like maybe I wasn't contributing enough to my household or to the world or... whatever. I always felt like I needed to be successful on several levels. An awesome Mom, a successful business woman, (In not just one but several different businesses) a great wife, a daughter that her parents would be proud of. I hired maids to help with my house so that I could accomplish all of these various ambitions. Things were going OK... crazy, hectic, stressed out and nuts... but OK.

Well... whenever my kids lose something they blame the maids for "hiding it". I see them carelessly make messes all over the house... after all... they're not the ones that have to clean it. I go crazy when they treat their toys or clothes like it's garbage and then nonchalantly say... "You can just buy me another one." My favorite is when I got out the iron and ironing board and my daughter didn't know what it was and said she had never seen it before and asked what it did. Wow, she was amazed that such a clever thing existed!

I decided that things needed to change. I decided that maybe I wasn't doing the most important thing I should be doing. I decided that my kids needed to know how to earn money, how to take care of it, how to work hard, how to clean, wash their own clothes and how to cook a meal with stuff from our garden... (because I LOVE it when I set food on the table and they say... "I didn't want this" as if there should have been some menu for them to choose from.)

My Real Estate License expired and I decided not to renew it. I let it go. I said "No" to directing the school play, I told the maids that we were no longer in need of their services and I got busy creating a chart of "chores" for our family to complete. I made things simpler and now... I feel like things are starting to click into place. For the first time in my married life I feel like I'm doing things right. Not that I've ever had any complaints, especially not from my darling husband but it's nice to feel like things are going in the right direction.

I was looking around at our house this Saturday. My family had worked VERY hard to clean it. Things aren't perfect, I have yellow crayon that I still need to get off my Living Room Walls.
Tiny finger prints still need to be erased from light switches. Dry wall needs to be fixed where door knobs have been pushed through from my son "energetically" swinging open the door after my youngest daughter discovered that she could twist off the door stops. (She's fascinated with door stops!)

I look upstairs in my daughters bedroom and I see that she's recently discovered that her wall paper border (that I so lovingly put up while I was pregnant with her) can peel right off if she gets her nails under it! My son's room can never be completely clean, after all, cars don't really belong in drawers.

My 6 yr old daughters room has a collection of stuffed animals that need to be "free".
My oldest daughter collects "treasures" (shoe boxes, old ticket stubs, etc...) that she just can't part with. She sees potential in every thing. My house is clean but definitely not perfect.


I'm lying on my bed looking at a pillow and I notice the stitching on it is not... right. I realize that it's why I like it so much. It's not perfect, it's not symmetrical, it would drive an OCD person crazy. I love it and I think it gives it a human feel, like it was stitched by someone that was making something they thought was going to be beautiful. It is beautiful.



Well...this is like my life. This is my family, this is my home. It's not perfect, the stitches of our lives aren't perfect... but it's simple, and it takes hard work to make it, and it's beautiful and I love it.

To anyone looking in from the outside that may be thinking we have a somewhat enchanted life I would have to say... yep, we do. It's not because of anything we have though. It's not our house or our cars or my pool and it's for sure not the 2 dogs, bunny, parrot or chickens. My life was enchanted the moment I married the man of my dreams and we lived in the tiniest of tiny apartments in Ogden.

It was enchanted when we came home from our honeymoon only to find that our water-bed broke (flood all over) and we had to use all of the money from our wedding to buy a bed. My life was enchanted the first time I held each of our children in my arms. My life was enchanted when we were so poor that I had to cut back on groceries and cutting coupons became my full time job. My life was enchanted even before all of those people were in it. It was enchanted when I was 8 and my Mom would do my hair in a fancy braid. Or when I was little and I would ride on the back of a motorcycle with my Dad. All of these things are what make my imperfect life... perfect. I could lose all of my "stuff" and go right back to living in the tiniest of tiny apartments in Ogden and I would be just as happy as I am now... more crowded (maybe even more scared) but happy. It's not what I have in my life, but who I have in my life that makes me happy. Those people make my life enchanted, it's what makes everything that's imperfect... perfect.

I think I had so many other distractions in my life that it took me and my family getting down to the basics (growing our own food, cleaning our own house, my kids making their own money, etc... ) to bring it into balance. My kids are happier, they feel more important, more confident, less... bratty. hahaha It's good to have them work, it's good that everything isn't given, it's good for them to watch a garden grow that they helped plant or to watch chickens grow or to see how nice things look after they worked so hard to get it clean. After all... You can't see the magic that's happening around you if other people are sweeping up the pixie dust for you.



The day our whole entire house was clean (and we were the ones that did it) I took pictures. It was a momentous occasion and one that needed to be recorded for posterity. I thought it also might serve as proof that we did work hard because 10 minutes later it didn't look anything like this. Everyone take a peek because you may never see it this way again! : )


The outside of our house with our newly planted trees. (Thanks Jeff)

In our entry. Notice that there's no dust. I'm sure you're very impressed.

Entry again. Yep the kids even cleaned the mirror.

There are still cobwebs at the top of the entry... we're workin' on it.


My favorite room... the kitchen. Notice how there's no...I mean... not very many dishes!

Our family room. The TV with neverending finger prints but...

it was vacuumed very well.

Even the piano was not just dusted but polished! Oooh!! Wouldn't it be nice if it was like this all the time? We do too much living here to keep it perfect. Oh well!!

Close Your Eyes & Jump!

The last day of High School my senior year I remember standing on the stage in the auditorium looking out at the seats. I was alone, it was dark and I was center stage. That's where I enjoyed my High School years, on the stage performing or on the stage painting scenery or on the stage goofing off while I was supposed to be in another class. I was the President of the Theater Club and more than half of my classes involved theater in one way or another. I was wondering what I was going to do now. I was graduating, I worked at Pizza Hut as a waitress and Zach and I had just broke up "for good" this time. Lots of my friends told me I should go to New York to try and make it on Broadway. I loved performing but I knew that's not the kind of life I wanted forever. Trying to decide what to do with your life is probably the hardest question you'll ever ask yourself. It's also a question that I've learned you don't just ask yourself once but several times throughout your life. At least I do.

I eventually got a job at America First Credit Union as a Teller. I was the worst Teller ever! I was immature and was better at talking to the Members than counting out their money properly. I got "promoted" to the Loan Officer side of things... mostly just to get me off the Teller line. That ended up being a good fit. Something clicked and my career took off. Zach and I were married, we had Hailey and by the time Brooklyn came along we felt like I needed to be home with our kids. We were going to be negative $65.00 every month. It was so scary but the leap was worth taking.

I sold Pampered Chef for a while. I sold boxes of my homemade caramel. We started selling stuff around our house on eBay. Then it turned out... we didn't need that money. We took the money from eBay and started going to local auctions and bought more stuff. We sold that! We found a great deal on some "ATI Remote Wonders" ( I don't even really know what those are but they sold great.) We had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of them only... we would need an $8,000.00 loan. (Which we had no way to pay off if this didn't work out.) Once again, we closed our eyes and jumped. We paid off the loan in two months and that's how our eCommerce Business got started. Now we have several manufacturers for our products and that business is pretty successful. What if we wouldn't have jumped? It was super scary pushing ourselves off the ground and into the air not knowing where we would land. We did though, crossed our fingers all the way (we still are) and so far (6 years later)... we're still in a pretty good spot!

I've always loved real estate and I really wanted to flip houses. I knew nothing about it really so I went to real estate school to get more information. When I was finished I decided to take the test to become a Realtor. Then the scary part came when we started submitting bids to purchase houses. We had to take out mortgages on them so if we didn't fix them up and flip the quickly we could be upside down pretty quick. We did two at a time and it worked!

People tell me all the time... "Wow! Look at you guys! How did you even start something like that?" or "Julie! If there's something you want to do you just go do it! Don't you!" Is that wrong? Should I not take the risk? Why is that weird? Why doesn't everyone do that? If it's something that I would love, shouldn't I take a chance? Not everything I ever did worked out but I did learn something from everything I ever did! It's freaky to stand at the edge of the cliff, not be able to see where you're going to land and jump anyway, but if I don't just close my eyes and jump... won't I still just be standing here?

Fireworks & Traditions

When I was little, I got to ride my bike (with about 30 other kids) to start off the 4th of July parade in Layton. My Dad was involved with the parade for a few years so I had an "in". I was so excited getting my bike ready with streamers. After the parade we would go visit my Grandma & Grandpa that lived right by Layton High School. There would be a BBQ there during the day and the whole family would be there. I mean everyone! My Uncles, my Great Aunts & Uncles & all of their families were there eating, playing volleyball, frisby or just sitting around and catching up. The anticipation of the coming fireworks was so great we would be exhausted by 3:00. My Mom would take us home to take a nap and we would fight and cry all the way home about how "untired" we were... and how we wouldn't even be able to sleep... and Grandma would never make us take a nap... and our Mom was the meanest Mom in all of Layton!! (She was pretty proud of that title for many years.) Of course, we were asleep the moment we got into our beds and a couple hours later when we woke up we were on our way back to Grandma's & the excitement started all over again waiting for the fireworks. We all sat in the football field at Layton High School and watched the amazing fireworks!

This didn't vary much from year to year and being at Grandma's & watching the fireworks in Layton goes back to my earliest memories. I'm not sure if they always had the booths in Layton Park or if we just didn't start going until a little later but soon that became part of the tradition as well. The Baptists started making an amazing BBQ to sell there & that became part of the tradition. (If you haven't tried it you have GOT to try it next year!)

My Grandma passed away, my Grandpa moved away, I don't see all of my Great Aunts & Uncles anymore except at family reunions or if someone gets baptized. An amphitheater was built (which my Dad actually helped create), I got married & so did my Brother & Sister, we all have children of our own.

Today I watched my girls in the Kaysville Parade. We ate lunch and my kids fought me all the way home about taking a nap. Turns out... I'm the meanest Mom in Kaysville! After a 2 hour (much needed) nap we got everyone up and went straight over to Layton Park. After we had so much cotton candy, slushies & junk food we thought we might explode we walked our kids with their freshly painted faces straight over to the Layton Amphitheater. There we met my Mom & Dad, my Uncles & their families, my Brother & Sister and their families. What used to take up 3 blankets on the football field at Layton Park now takes up the whole middle section of the upper Amphitheater! It's not planned out... we all just find each other there, year after year.

The symphony played, the fireworks started and I'm holding my daughters & son. I'm looking at them and the family around me and I'm missing my Grandma. I look at my children in the different stages of their life and I can remember doing those same things, during each of those stages, in this same place watching the fireworks. I feel like that just happened. I feel like I was just barely the two year old in awe of the glitter & sparkle in the sky. I feel like I was just barely the four year old that still wants to bounce from Mom to Dad and finally to Grandma's lap to watch the excitement. I feel like I was just barely the 6 year old that watched the fireworks intently because I didn't want to peel my eyes away and miss something. I feel like I was just barely the 9 year old who wanted to go sit with her friends instead of her family... I mean how uncool is sitting with family?

For 30 minutes of fireworks every year in Layton park time stands still. It's the only time & place where my past is mingled with my present and where some memories linger and new memories are made. Each year at that place, during that time, another stage of my life is marked.

I'm watching my children and I know the memories they will have of this magical place where Grandma's live forever, where family always unites and I know that every year a stage of their life is being marked in that same place.