From Teacher to Work at Home Mom

I never thought this would be my story...

Back in 2018, I was a newlywed and a special education teacher. My husband was in corporate sales. We were crazy in love..and yet barely had time or energy after our full-time jobs to spend quality time together. It was like Groundhog's Day- each day was full of rushing home from work, squeezing in a workout, making a quick dinner, watching Netflix, and falling asleep only to wake up the next day to an alarm clock ready to repeat the same cycle.

I remember thinking...wait..is this IT?

We had finally found the person we wanted to spend life with and yet for 40+ hrs a week our lives were completely separate. Both of our jobs were stressful in their own ways and yet we didn't really want to talk about the stress of our jobs in our limited time together. In addition, it had always been my dream to be able to stay home by the time we had babies. I couldn't figure out how that could happen while I was still teaching full-time.

All I knew was that this current lifestyle wasn't working for me. I was starting to feel burnt out from public education and my husband was way too creative to be in a stuffy sales job. SO...I took matters into my own hands. Slowly, I started learning how to make money from freelancing (where businesses pay you to do work for them). I started out by writing for companies...writing their emails, blogs, newsletters, websites, social media captions, you name it- I wrote it! And LOVED it. I could hardly believe I was getting paid to do something I enjoyed so much!

Not long after, businesses started talking about adding video content with my written work. Luckily, I knew JUST the guy for the job. My husband, Brady, had been producing videos for fun since he was in 6th grade! He never saw a potential to do it as a career until I started freelance writing. And just like that- Hey Huffers was created! We had our very own side hustle where we could work towards common goals together! Every penny we made was amazing and felt exciting but it got us thinking...could we potentially run our own business full-time?

Not long after we were both officially juggling the side business, 2020 arrived and with it came the Covid-19 pandemic. Suddenly, we were both working our full-time jobs from home along with our side business and while it was a bit hectic, we absolutely loved being home together!

This experience lit a fire under us to keep this lifestyle going even as people slowly started going back to school or to the office. So we added up what we were making, cranked the numbers, saved up a healthy emergency fund, and then...we both quit our jobs. YES. You read that right. We BOTH quit our jobs. We thought it would be more gradual yet here we were both leaving the security of a 9 to 5 job. And feeling SO much peace about it. God was leading us down this path and we were being obedient to His call. We weren't sure WHY it was then but He made it abundantly clear He wanted us to take the leap of faith then and there.

The timing meant I left one semester into the school year (radical, right?). Regardless, we jumped in with both feet to the world of full-time self-employment. Nothing could slow us down now...except I was so incredibly tired and couldn't keep my eyes open. What on earth?! I'm normally super energetic but felt like I was dragging through that first week.

As the weekend rolled around, I started to wonder what was wrong with me. A friend suggested, "Maybe you're pregnant." I laughed and said "No way!" But the idea was planted so when I ran to to the store to grab some groceries that evening, I went ahead and tossed in a pregnancy test. I completely forgot about it until the next morning. I remember thinking, "I may as well take this test to put that idea to rest." Well, lo and behold..within seconds, I was staring at a positive pregnancy test. I WAS SHOCKED.

My shock quickly turned to excitement and I couldn't wait to surprise Brady when he got home. See his reaction HERE.

It made so much sense that I was sleepy all week. And while it wasn't necessarily the plan to get pregnant right as we were both leaving steady careers, it was actually really beautiful timing. Running our own business gave us the flexibility to attend all prenatal appointments together. It allowed me ample opportunity to rest and get ready for baby girl to arrive. But the real blessings came when she was born. And we didn't have to leave her. We didn't have to scramble to figure out childcare. We planned client work around our family and not the other way around.