It's been a while... again...

Life changes in dramatic and mysterious ways, always. 

In March, we had all three of our teenage boys living in our home.  After a rather dramatic argument with one, they moved out and into their own apartment.  Time has healed most of the wounds from their dramatic mass exodus, but not all.  I'm not going to talk about that here, because it's personal and I'd like to eventually say what it is I want to say to them personally, individually. 

In April, my husband was able to help get the oldest a job at his then-employer.  It's a good job, in the warehouse, at a local-ish (about an hour away) plant.  It's something he can grow with, earn enough money to pay for his school, and have a stable income that's very high for his age and work history.  He hates it.  Not just slightly dislikes it.  Absolutely hates it.  We also helped him buy a new-to-him car when his was totalled in an accident in May.  They couldn't get him financed, and took back possession of his vehicle, leaving him with a little over half of his original down payment.  He has not been to work in a week, if I'm understanding correctly.  I'm at a point where I'm not even sure how to help him.  I'm making sure he knows the door is always open, and I'm willing to answer any questions he has, but he hasn't been asking for help.  My unsolicited input into the decisions he's making tends to extend the time between our talks (I don't think he likes that I'm a little critical of his choices).  So at the moment, I'm just kind of waiting to hear something from him. 

The middle one of the three teens (19) was released from his restaurant job for not calling in sick early enough.  He's had trouble finding another job in our town, and was arguing a lot with his older brother.  He has decided to move back to Corpus, to live closer to his girlfriend, and his dad, and his former stepmother was able to help him get a job at a dealership in Corpus.  Yeah!!!  He has dreams of being a mechanic, so this is great news!  Although our relationship isn't as fragile as with his older brother, he's also not very responsive, so I hear from him once every couple of weeks to check in. 

The youngest of the three graduated from high school in June.  It was a nail-biter.  In the time he lived with us, he rarely missed classes and was an A-B student.  Once he moved out, he missed so many classes that he had to be put on special "credit recovery" status, and make up classes and work.  We did not know for sure that he would graduate (on June 3rd) until June 1st at approximately 2pm.  He has kept his restaurant job, although he is looking at other options now that he's graduated from high school.  

My daughter is recently divorced (just this week, and is waiting on the signed copy of her divorce decree).  In March, she moved to The Woodlands (where she was born, and where we believed we would be moving near) for a fresh start.  She has had trouble finding a job, despite her TWO associates degrees, but is continuing her college classes, and I have no doubt will find something soon.  Her daughters are adjusting well, love their new apartment and the oldest, her new school.  It's summer now, and they're loving the pool as well as all of the trees.  :)  I miss seeing them as often as I used to, now being so far away and having to split the time they come down here with their dad.  But I'm happy that they're moving onward and upward.

The twins had a successful school year, both earning As and Bs in pre-AP classes, and are currently enjoying their summer freedoms.  They're excited to be going into the seventh grade, and although they miss having their brothers at home sometimes, they are adjusting well to the four-person family with surprising speed. 

As for my husband and I, we have had some difficulty with some financial issues that reared their head from over 10 years ago, but are taking steps to work through those.  It's a long road, and one that meant we would need to stay here for another year before moving as we had planned.  As synchronicity would have it, the same week we made that decision, I received yet another call from a friend that had been trying to hire me on with her company for over a year.  I sent her my resume for the sixth (or was it seventh?) time, honestly not sure that I would hear back.  Within just a few days, I met with the regional manager and was hired.  In the field I have come to know, love and hate (as most do who have worked in the oilfield), but in a completely new direction. 

As you may know, I have been an Office Manager for years now.  My background is in bookkeeping, marketing, human resources, dispatch, and other logistics areas.  Over the last 10 years, I have been in every facet of this oilfield business from seismic exploration and mineral and physical leasing to manufacturing of the productions equipment (separators and more) to specialty chemicals to trucking and transportation.  I love the variety of that job, and the skills I have learned.  But I always hated being chained to the desk, so to speak. 

I wanted to be out in the field, seeing people, helping make things happen.  I wasn't sure if the solution was safety or sales, but I knew that I wanted my next job to be in one of those areas.  Essentially, when you break it all down, I'm a problem solver, a relationship builder.  I studied safety and adult education - anything I could get my hands on - during my layoff period.  But I stopped short of spending money on safety certification because I wasn't sure which direction I would go in.  I studied relationship management, sales management - building pipelines, making contact, providing solutions to problems, documentation of the relationship and steps from first contact to close.  I also studied in great detail the consultative sales approach.  This is what I'd been doing for years.  Have a problem?  Here are some options to solve those problems.  There is no "hard sales" or "hard close" (what I'm not very good at).  Just a problem and single or multiple solutions. As I studied, I got more excited that this was the direction I am meant to go in.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have the "gift of gab".  I enjoy meeting people, talking to them, learning what they need.  I enjoy providing solutions to their problems.  This was the consultative sales approach.  Long before I had a name for it, I used it in my own freelance business. 

So, my friend was able this time to make it work.  The job started out as a part-time offering in the sales department (outside sales - getting tickets signed) three days/week.  It would be more than I was being paid by the unemployment office, but considerably less (almost half) of what I'd been making the last year or so.  As the oilfield is very fluid, and companies that have survived this downturn have also learned to be very fluid, the job position changed before I was hired, and I was hired on full-time at only about 15% less than I was earning before my layoff, but I would get a company truck (which at a commute of approximately 42 miles each way, per day would offset the earnings lost).  I would spend 3 days/week in the field and 2 days/week working in the office.  It's also changed several times since, as there have been changes with other employees.  The company hasn't been sure of where to put me - both safety and sales have been considered, as well as a combination of those.  I'm about 6 weeks in, and I'm currently working in the field 3 days/week, in the office 2 - split between assisting the Office Manager/Controller and doing administrative work in the safety department.  It currently appears that at the end of this month, I'll be in the field full-time in sales, both getting tickets signed and making cold calls to increase our customer share.  I may still help out with safety, but probably in increments that can be measured in an hour or two here, an hour or two there, not on a 2 day/week basis. 

I'm still writing, although not regularly.  And my photography has taken a back seat as well.  I'm kind of hoping that once I settle into the new job well, I'll get back to both in a more regular form.  I have started to work out again, and eat a little healthier.  So there's that.  :)  

The day before I started my new job, my husband made the move from his previous employer to a family-owned machine shop, in charge of the maintenance of their machines.  One that happens to be owned by some of MY extended family.  :)  He's enjoying his job and his time there, and some of the possibilities that they have suggested for the future. 

I think that I have learned - finally - to not try to predict what the future will hold for us.  Instead, we are doing the best we can to plan for anything the future may hold (good and bad), and to enjoy what we have right now. 

I'm back

So, it seems like every time I post, I'm announcing changes.

Then I don't post for 6 months or so again.  Hopefully this time will be different.

I am a full-time WAHM again.

Again, I'm re-dedicating myself to my writing (the blog here, and a couple of others - I've found and joined a local writer's guild - yeah for accountability!), as well as my fiction writing, and my photography.  I continue to photography landscapes, seniors, and my own children (ha!).  But I've found that my passion in photography is evenly split between landscapes, and women's intimate portraiture (boudoir).  I'm learning a lot in that field, and hope to be making strides toward opening a Boudoir Portraiture business.  Some of that may be chronicled here as well, although photos won't be shared on this page, due to their sensitive nature.

I'm experimenting with freezer cooking (cooking from scratch as much as possible), baking (which I've always loved), and playing around with new-to-me recipes.  All of which I'll be chronicling here. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

And hopefully I'll find more time for reading.  My other great love.  :)  You may see a book or two in these pages from time to time, if that's what you enjoy.  I'm always open to recommendations.  If you have any, feel free to send a comment my way.

So, I hope you'll continue along this journey with us.  And bring along a friend or two who might enjoy it as well!  :)

Happy New Year 2014 - almost through

Lots of changes for the Earley household in 2014.

2013 was alternately a wonderful year for us (it brought us grandbaby #2, among other great things) and a bit of a difficult year.

Work was really difficult for me this last year, and I had to make some really tough decisions.  I am proud and honored to have helped build the company, Phoenix Chemical Technologies, during my time there, and I wish them all the best as they continue to grow.  A part of me is incredibly sad that I won't be a part of it as it continues to grow.  But I do believe it is what is best for them, and best for me and my family.

The good news is that with our current plan, I have become a partial WAHM again.  I'm working part-time with a remodeler and custom home builder, Superior Custom Builders, which is an awesome company!  I plan to pick up the pace on my fiction and non-fiction writing - to include blogging again (yeah!), AND launch a family business (No Time 4 DIY).  I have also started with dōTERRA, and am learning tons about essential oils and their uses!  I'll be experimenting with a more sustainable lifestyle, including vegetable gardening, flower gardening (for the photography business, and well, just because it's pretty), more home cooking (which means some recipes, especially the copycat-style recipes which I need to try many of), and more (which you'll read about, and see through photography and video on here).  All of this means more time for the things I love!!

The bad news is not necessarily all bad, but it does mean a reduction to one income until I can get a steady-ish income from my photography and writing, and as we build our family business.  That's scary, but a decision we did not make lightly. 

So, here's to a new chapter in our lives...  Hopefully we'll be seeing each other here for a while.  :)  Please feel free to share my posts, send your friends to check us out, and all advice from seasoned photographers, writers, recipe adventurers, and more is incredibly welcome!  (I'm close to begging).  :)

Co-op, Football, Karate, Basketball... oh my!

I've allowed this blog to go on far too long without posting. To the few followers I have left, I'm sorry. :) I am happily settling into a new routine... hopefully one that will allow me more time to blog again! :)

We joined a homeschooling co-op group in September in our area. The kids are taking Animal Science (for the little ones), Biology (for the teen), all are taking Art Classes. I'm volunteering as a volunteer coordinator for the group, and have been heavily involved in the co-op. Possibly a little too heavily, as the areas of my life that I really enjoy have been neglected.

The teenager played 6-man football this year. This was the inaugaral season for our newly-formed team, and again, I was as heavily involved as possible (volunteering as treasurer).  We had a great season, won more games than we expected to, and can't wait for next year!!!  We are enjoying the time off, though.  :)

The twin boys started taking Tae Kwan Do at our local YMCA on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They've thoroughly enjoyed the experience, although we will be taking a break from it for the month of December. Mom's a little overwhelmed. :) I've used this time to work out, making my fitness more of a priority than I have in past years. I've managed to shed 24 pounds (gained back two during Thanksgiving), but more importantly, my energy level is much better and I'm feeling more confident and relaxed.

I've switched jobs. I really enjoyed my last job, both what I did and who I worked with. But working every weekend meant that I couldn't spend time with my now-14-year-old son. So I'm now working with a company that's proving to be very flexible with my hours, and where I have weekends off. It's going to be a balancing act, as my pay is the same, but without working weekends, and with my hectic schedule, I'm only getting an average of 27 hours/week. So, big pay cut. But I'm working on a proposal now that will hopefully smooth that out and allow me to get back to contributing what I'd like to my family finances, while also helping this growing company with their needs. I'm really enjoying the job, the company, and the people that I work with, so I can see a future with this company.

My husband is still working at the job he got in January. He's gone from 4, 10-hour day work-weeks to 7*10s back to 4*10's. The extra pay was really nice, and allowed us to buy a few things we'd been waiting on buying, as well as get caught up on some bills that were sitting on the back burner. But it was also crazy-hectic, as he was able to contribute much less to the day-to-day household needs, and with me working full-time, the balance fell on me to make up the difference. I'm missing the money from his overtime days, but so glad he's more able to help now. :)

I've scratched the surface on my new venture: life coaching, Dream Teams, corporate training and business consulting. Feel free to check that out at Kim Earley, Renaissance Woman. It's still a work in progress, but I'd love it if you'd follow me over there, drop me a line and comment! I <3 comments! :)

That's about it for now. There's been loads of other things going on, but it's been so long, and I just needed to get started on the road back! :) Hope everyone is doing well, and I'd love to hear what y'all have been up to!

We've been busy

We've been busy lately with the struggle to get by.  Both of us working full-time has led to changes in the household, and back to the grind of never enough time to do all that we want to do.  Of course, it's also enabled us to start paying some bills and make some plans for our future, and that's definitely a good thing... but we've stayed busy.

How do you cope with making sure there's enough time for fun?  We haven't had nearly enough of that lately... fun...  And definitely not enough time to make steps toward our future.  Hopefully that will change soon, though...

Did you think we dropped off the face of the earth?

So first, I need to apologize.  For those of you that follow my blog, I have not kept up with it since switching over to Blogger.  Blogger isn't the reason why, but it has happened.  :)

We have been continuing to home school, albeit a bit slower than before, but we're continuing.  It's taken a while to get back into a routine.  So, what's happened?  Let me fill you in a bit...

Hubby was involuntarily unemployed in May/June 2009.  I was involuntarily unemployed August 2009.  We have spent the last year and 1/2 alternately applying for jobs, traveling out of state for job opportunities and freelance work, considering building businesses, and working on our house as money allowed.  I started school, then took a break from school.  In January 2011, we both were offered full-time jobs.  This is exciting, as although we haven't accumulated a ton of debt while we weren't working (which is a big change for us, as we tended to accumulate a lot of debt before we became unemployed), we have been very behind on paying some bills, and they are bills that we really want to pay.  The other reason it is exciting is that they are both (hopefully) long-term jobs, not really subject to layoffs as our last jobs were, and they are close to where we currently live.  The concern here was that for both of us to work full-time, we were going to need to put the kids back in school, where we would prefer to continue homeschooling, and we would have so little time to make our dream life happen.  However, as fate would have it, we were able to both find jobs that will work for our lifestyle.  Each of us currently work full-time, 4 days/week, but only one day overlaps.  The downside is that we have no time off together, except for vacations or other days off that we will schedule.  Another downside is that I work weekends, which leaves little time for extended family visits.  The upside is that we are earning an income comparable to what we were earning a couple of years ago, without having to sacrifice what we want to do, long-term.

We're now making plans to a) rebuilt a financial base, hopefully better than the one we had before; b) buy some things to make some repairs/remodeling to our home which we didn't have the funds to do before; and c) get medical insurance, which means that we'll finally be able to get healthier again.

Some of our current plans include:
1)  Create a garden, for both aesthetic purposes, and frugal/healthy living purposes.  We want to start growing our own vegetables, which should help cut into our food bill, as well as encourage us to eat more fresh veggies.
2)  Finish remodeling our 4th bedroom, as well as do some other projects (extend our front porch, build a back porch, etc.) around the home.  We also need a new roof, a carport/garage, and some outside lighting, which will be hefty investments.  I'm looking into wind energy and solar, but those are further future projects.
3)  Purchase a utility trailer (my parents have graciously loaned us theirs, but we need one of our own)
4)  Purchase a (used) utility 4-wheeler.  We've wanted one for fun anyways, as we enjoy riding ATV's, but this one will primarily be used with a variety of attachments:  dump bed, mower, tiller, etc.
5)  We have been considering raising chickens, but haven't decided for sure on this one.
6)  Fruit trees/bushes.
7)  Purchase a used RV for family vacations on a frugal budget.  This one is also a little further down the road for us, but it's in the longer-short-term plan.  :)



Personally, I'm still trying to determine if I will go back to school.  There are so many things I want to do (the Scanner in me) that I haven't been able to decide what for.  My passion is writing, photography, and traveling, so I'm thinking that I might just start with a Fine Arts AA degree.  But then I realize that I am not even certain that getting my degree is what I want for me.  So I continue to debate.  I'm also still playing around with the idea of becoming a career coach, but not the typical career counselor, more like Barbara Sher, Valerie Young, or Barbara Winter.  More along the lines of helping develop entrepreneurs, and helping people find a way to earn money from their passions. 



It's nice to be able to make some plans again... now if I could just figure out what I want to do!  But, there's time to figure that out, and now there are options that we didn't have before!  :)

Have you figured out how to create your dream life? What are you doing to make your dreams come true?  I'd love to hear about it!

And 2011 starts with a bang!!!

So the last year and a half has been a time of change for our family.  We've learned a lot about surviving, and thriving, on less.  We've learned to make more frugal choices, and to really shop for the best price on something we want.  We've learned a lot about our goals and our dreams.  I've completed a novel, began to submit my photography for publication.  Hubby has begun to work on his painting and his art.  We've begun homeschooling the kids, gotten involved in the homeschooling community here, and learned what our goals are in that direction.  We've made a lot of changes, and we look forward to what the coming years will bring in seeing those changes come to fruition. 

At the same time, we recognized that our dreams were still lacking one very important, and as of late, elusive thing... money.  We have gotten behind on some of our bills, need to rebuild a savings account, would like to purchase an RV, among other things.  We've both spent many months trying alternate ways to earn money, but also looking for full-time employment.  We've had a few promising interviews, some where we thought job offers were just down the pipe, but those offers never materialized.  I've interviewed for jobs paying nearly half of what I normally earn, my husband has interviewed for ones where he would have earned what he was earning ten years ago.  All of that worrying and frustration came to an end within the last week.

I got a job earning just a little bit less than I did in 2009, with excellent benefits, working with what appears to be a great group of people, with a 4-day work week (Friday-Monday).  My hubby also got a job, earning more than he was earning in 2009, again with excellent benefits.  My job started today, and hubby's starts on Monday.  His is also a 4-day work week (Monday-Thursday).  This means that we could potentially continue to homeschool the kiddos, and only have to worry about daycare on Mondays.  We may still elect to put the Kindergarteners in school for a few years, but we'll make that decision in the next few days.  Our 14-year-old will continue to homeschool at least for this school year, at which point he should be at a ninth grade level.  We'll re-evaluate at that point whether to put him back in school, or allow him to continue to homeschool.

The income we'll be earning (each of us much better than we have recently come to expect), combined with our more frugal nature of late, I hope will allow us to pay off those bills, and start saving at a much faster rate than we expected, putting us back to being debt-free (or as much as one can be, with a failed business on the books) and able to put money away in savings. 

The four day work weeks mean that we'll be able to make doctor's appointments and be actively involved with the kiddos, no matter which option we choose.  Of course, it also means that we will not have any days off together (except holidays), so there's that one drawback.  But neither of us are working overnight shifts (and we've gone that route before), so we'll still be home together in the evenings, eating dinner, watching TV, movies and such.  So we'll be good, I think.

So here's to 2011!!!  :)  How's your 2011 been so far?