The Birth of S + A: Part 2

Part 2

In Part 1 of Becoming a Team: The Birth of S + A, I talked about how there were 3 key factors that helped Sean and I fully commit to starting a business together. The first was renovating and designing our modern farmhouse when we lived in Auburn, New York. I talked about how the project brought us closer together and helped us to tap more into our God-given talents for real estate designing and renovating. There were 2 more elements that aided in the final push toward jumping in full time.

Travel

Sean was doing extremely well in his job when we lived in New York. He was traveling all around the Country to give seminars to hundreds of men and women selling and giving information to other people in the diesel industry. He was giving it his all. With the position and incredible performances, he would travel often. I remember him being gone several 3-5 day trips multiple times within a 6 month period. It was such a testament to how amazing he was doing. The feedback was truly moving. But, Sean and I learned, we don’t fare well apart. Our baby girl was only a few months old and our oldest was getting older. I had so much support from family. Sister-in-laws would help me out daily, my mother-in-law was always dropping groceries off and babysitting. My kids adored playing with their cousins every day. But the reality of it was, my best friend was gone. We were miserable apart. We did the best we could and enjoyed the time we had until the next trip came. I found myself having strong levels of anxiety multiple days before he’d leave for another trip. It wasn’t that I felt alone because I wasn’t. I just wasn’t with my teammate and it was important for us to be together. We decided after we jumped full time into real estate that traveling separate isn’t for us. And that’s ok. It works great from some couples but it’s not the beat of our drum. There is also something incredibly romantic about the thought of never having an empty bed again. And that makes all the difference.

The Catskills

The last factor came a few short months before we made the jump full time. It was April of 2019 when we were asked to help out a very special couple friends of ours for a youth group retreat. The retreat was held several hours away up in the desolate hills of the Catskills, New York. There would be no reception, no internet, and no adults except us, our friends, and a few more parent volunteers for approximately 50 juniors and seniors. We’d be staying in a 4 bunk bed cabin with our two littles, our friend and her two littles, and a third parent volunteer and her baby boy as well. Maybe it was the intensity of the weekend wondering and praying that we’d make it out still sane that drove us to asking ourselves the life question of “Who are we?” This question was brought about from my sister-in-law after her and I had spoken about how one reaches your dreams or takes risks for the future. She sent me a text that said, “ You and Sean should write a list of words that desire who you are. Every single good quality. When you do this, recognize who you are, who you are together, and what you need to live your best life and be your best selves.” On the 3 hour drive to the Catskills, we decided we’d give it a shot. The list we made contained a fair ratio of serious to comical labels and phrases. As we analyzed the list, a few specific words hit very close to home and made us stop and say, “that’s it.” Probably somewhere between “ Hottest dad ever” and “Wife you don’t deserve” we honed in on “Creative,” “Resilient, “ and “Builders.”

Creative  

Sean and I have always loved games. One of our very first dates was in a common area during the first few days of our dating relationship that started in Gaming, Austria. Sean challenged me to a card game of something… it was Gin Rummy or War or a similar card game to those. All I remember is losing and trying to grasp how it happened like maybe how Sean cheated slash should not have won. After having a deep discussion about feelings and swapping stories of family members flipping tables after games lost to storming out of family sporting events, we realized that our competitive and game playing muscles will not only be flexed frequently but also be felt deeply and emotionally. Lesson learned. 

To this day Sean and I LOVE games. We love card games and bored games but most importantly we love creative games. The games where you make up stories or finish drawing pictures that someone else started or try to match hilarious adjectives to unexpected nouns in a game like Apples to Apples. Sean and Ann love coming up with new ideas, words, thoughts, etc… and sharing them with each other. We love the mulling over process and bouncing ideas off of each other and receiving feedback. We love trial and error, calculated risks, and sometimes plain old trust falls. At the end of the day, I think it all comes down to the fact that we have lots going on up in our brains and thank God we married equal party members that can hang on during the other person’s thought ride. 

Recently, I have made the connection in my own brain to connections that may have come from my family’s side as to how on earth I acquired any kind of artistic ability. I can’t draw and I can’t paint pictures. Nada. My sister growing up was the artist. She was sketching and painting incessantly. My parents gave her an art corner in our shared bedroom that screamed Picasso to its core. She was and IS extremely talented. Mary has designed our logo and painted huge canvas art pictures for our home. She is currently in graphic design school and absolutely loving it. Recently, I have also remembered finding artwork from my Dad hidden deep down in the basement recesses of my childhood home and thinking that he was also extremely gifted in the art department. All my life, I just played soccer and loved kids. Therefore, I'd be a soccer playing mom and teacher. It was basically all I thought about for 20 years. Well, I tried teaching for two years and didn’t find satisfaction in a forever career in this department. It was necessary for me at the time and I have very fond memories of my early education undergrad classes and my years teaching elementary school. I had my first baby and Sean and I decided I would be a full time stay-at-home mom after we brought our son home. I was happier at home than in school. Until Sean asked me to take a risk with him and flip Tallmadge, our first flip house, I never ever thought that interior design would creep itself into the recesses of my soul and grab hold with such intensity. 

Resilient 

If there’s one thing I am sure of with my relationship with Sean, it’s that I have chosen a man who holds a fundamental and unwavering “stick-to-itiveness” unlike anybody else I have ever known. I received a phone call junior year of college that no girlfriend at any age should ever receive. The voice on the other end was telling me that he was currently following the ambulance that was carrying the boy I loved to the ER after an accident at the gym. I was told it took three other crossfit athletes to lift my 210lb boyfriend into a car after a horribly failed deadlift. Upon arriving at the hospital, I found Sean connected to a hodgepodge of wires lying flat on his back unable to move an inch. We didn’t know it at the time, but Sean had suffered a terrible strain to his back that left him completely immoble. With the aid of morphine and major pain killers, we left the hospital early the next morning to my apartment where Sean lay for the next 3-4 days without any kind of movement whatsoever. We still joke about the days that I would aid Sean in his bathroom procedures. I would hold up a urination container given to us by the hospital while blindfolded and commence the disposal and clean up of said bodily waste. I realize that the story portrays how Sean displays resilience in his ability to heal shortly after and commence his intense workouts and marathon training soon after but now that I read back my recountings, I think that I may have given myself the short end of the stick! I continued classes, fed my boyfriend, helped him go to the bathroom and still said yes to his marriage proposal less than two years later. Who’s the resilient one now!?

All jokes aside, resilience is one of the number one attributes that we are trying our best to teach our children. It doesn’t matter what we do in this life, whether it be sports, academics, careers, tragedies, and hardships, giving up is not a card we hold anywhere near our hand. There are tools and strategies that can be taught and learned throughout life to sharpen the characteristic of a resilient person but ultimately it’s a decision we make when it is hardest to do so. Every challenge in life is an opportunity for us and our kids to practice getting up when knocked down, digging deeper when the pain hurts almost intolerably, and trying again and again until your goal and dreams are achieved. Building anything in life is impossible without resilience. 

Builders

Sean recounts his extreme fondness toward Lego as a boy. Even now as my 4 year old is completing 6 year old legos in less than 5 minutes, I’m realizing that we may be subconsciously forming a family of builders. Currently our youngest is acting as the wrecking ball within the construction crew but hey, if she has a different idea for her future than fly babe. I hope you find that destruction dream you’re looking for. 

Sean is always building. He has built me many physical things like shelves and coffee tables but what he builds more of are ideas, projects, game plans, strategies, tactics, and road maps. Sean can take a normal, mundane day and build family memories from some glow sticks or rain puddles. Building for Sean and I means growing. Lou Holtz gave a speech at my college graduation. He said, “ In this world, you are either growing or dying. So get in motion and grow.” It’s phrases like this that make our hearts burn and it’s men like Lou that set the world on fire. 

In our maroon Jeep Wrangler on that snowy cold day headed to the rolling hills of the Catskills, we asked ourselves, “what do we creatively and resiliently build?” We decided to become Creative and Resilient Builders and spend the rest of our lives finding out for ourselves.