Blog | Alicia Eichmann

How to Remarket to Your Audience with Adwords

If you want to make sure you’re reaching your audience, or a subgroup of your audience, with a particular message or offer, remarketing is a great tool to have in your business toolkit.

Audience lists are a list of people that you identify in a certain way, it’s simply a list of some or all of the people who make up your audience. The most common use of audience lists is for remarketing, which is marketing again to people who have already been introduced to you in some way. But you can build lists of people who are similar to your audience in certain ways, and those are technically new people, so you are not remarketing to them. This is one of my many favorite tricks in audience lists, and we’ll get to that below.

“Audience lists help you reach people who have visited your website, watched your video, engaged with your app, or shared their contact information. Set up an audience source to reach the right people, with the right message, at the right moment.” – Google Adwords

In Adwords open the account you want to work on. Then click on the wrench icon in the top right to open the Tools, billing and settings menu, and click on Audience manager, under Shared Library.

You’re going to start by setting up an audience source.

Click on Set Up an Audience Source, and then Set up Tag, in the box for Adwords.

Select ‘Collect standard data’ and check the ‘user id’ box.

Then click Save and Continue.

Now you’ll see the Global site tag. You need to copy and paste this block of code and put it somewhere in your site management tool (WordPress, etc.) that will add it to every page of your site. You’ve probably already added Google Analytics code, and if so you can add this Adwords tag wherever your Analytics code is, right below it.

Click Continue and then Done

Next Step – Create a Remarketing List

Now click on Audience Lists – you’re still under Audience Manager – and click the plus button.

From the pop up list that the button opens, choose Website Visitors.

For your first audience I recommend starting with All Site Visitors. For this option all you need to do is give it a name, leave ‘List members’ set to ‘Visitors of a Page’, and leave ‘Visited page’ as ‘match any rule group’. After ‘URL contains’, type in your domain name, for example I put in energyformompreneurs.com.

The default duration is 30 days. I like to change it to 90. I’d recommend increasing it at first – set it to 60, 90 or 120 days. For initial list size, you can include people from the last 90 days or start with 0.

In the description you can leave yourself a note. This is a good habit to start even if it seems silly. I put in ‘All site visitors for last 90 days’. As I get into more detailed lists, I’ll continue to record a description and then I’ll be able to look back and remember why I created a list. Trust me, you will love these and over time they can become hard to keep track of, even when you name them well.

Now click Create Audience

It will look like this, empty. Just make yourself a note to come back and check in a few days to see if data is beginning to show. You will be able to run ads once your list size reaches 100 people.

Additional Lists

You can repeat the process and set up a few more lists. Click on the wrench icon in the top right, then Audience Manager, then Audience Lists. Click the circle blue plus and select Website Visitors.

Two good options for lists are to identify visitors to a certain page or group of pages that get a lot of traffic, or to identify and referring site you’d like to group readers by.

I’m going to create a Remarketing List of all visitors to my site from Pinterest. To do that I give it a name such as ‘Visitors from Pinterest’ and then for the rule choose ‘Referrer URL’ and ‘contains’ and then type in Pinterest.com.

You can look in your Google Analytics account to identify your highest traffic pages and strategic referral sources, and use those to create remarketing lists that may be useful later.

It doesn’t cost you anything to set up several lists you might need. Then you can come back and decide which ones to use in campaigns and run ad spend on.

The options for types of visitors you can target include:

visitors of a page
visitors of a page who also visited another page
visitors of a page who did not visit another (specific) page
visitors of a page during specific dates

Then you can choose a rule or set of rules to apply.

Adwords will automatically generate a list of all your site visitors for the last 30 days, as well as a list of similar to site visitors. This similar to visitors list is a fun way to try reaching new readers that are part of your broader target audience, but haven’t discovered you yet.

Running Remarketing Ads

To set up remarketing ads to run to your audience lists, go to your main dashboard and click on Campaigns in the left menu. Then click the blue add button.

Next you choose the goal of the campaign. Each campaign can only have one goal set for it.

For this campaign, select Brand Awareness and Reach. (You could pick Website Traffic instead.)

Then select Display as the campaign type. Below that put in your domain name and click Continue.

Give your campaign a name, and select your location and language settings. If you want to go more narrow than the United States, you can pick a city or list of cities.

Because we selected Brand awareness and reach, the bidding settings have been set accordingly. You can leave the default settings and for this campaign you will focus on viewable impressions and that is how you will pay for.

Scroll down and enter $1 or $2 for the Budget. Then on the right you’ll see estimates for cost per thousand impressions, and total number of impressions.

Name your ad group and then under Audiences you have several options for who to target your ads to.

To set up a remarketing campaign you’ll click the middle link. Now you’ll see three headings and you can open each to see your options for lists to attach to your new campaign.

Under website visitors you’ll see all of the lists you’ve created, you may have to scroll down. Under similar audiences you’ll see all the options you have to target lists of people that adwords has identified as being similar to some of your audience lists.

There are many ways you can structure your campaigns. One good way to start is to create a campaign for remarketing to all site visitors, and and add your list of visitors for the past 3 or 6 months, and then create a separate campaign for remarketing to similar to site visitors. Then you can set separate budgets for these two purposes and, even more importantly, show different ads to return visitors than to new potential readers.

Another strategy for the similar to site visitors campaign would be to select web traffic as the goal, and focus on clicks instead of impressions.

You can select several lists, as you click them they will show on the right side.

In the next section below that, click to open the Demographics options. You can see below I’ve narrowed it to show to my target audience of moms age 25-44.

You can explore the options in Content Targeting, but pay attention to the number over on the right which will tell you if you’ve narrowed your reach too much and need to remove some constraints.

For your ad group bid put the same amount as before, it’s fine to start with $1 or $2.

If you have an ad you can add it here, but it’s fine to create the campaign and get that finished and saved and then create the ads either right away or once you have them.

When you’ve filled out the page, click Create Campaign.

On the following page you can click to create an ad, or scroll down and click Continue to Campaign.

Congrats, You Did It!

This is an ok place to take a break. Getting the campaign set up with your remarketing audience lists attached is a great step. Hopefully this also got you thinking about creating some ads.

A Quick Intro to Ads

Much can be said about display ads, but to get you started here is an example, and I’ll tell you the sizes you can create, as well as the ones I’ve found to be the most popular.

For remarketing ads I typically include the logo and a tagline, and then make versions with or without buttons with varying calls to action and some additional text. Think about the goal of your campaign, starting with whether you are reminding your readers about your site, or getting your brand in front of new readers. With your goal in mind, make a set of images that are variations on that message. Run them all in an ad group and then you’ll see over time which versions perform the best, and that can inform future ad creation.

The sizes for adwords ads are:

250 x 250 – Square
200 x 200 – Small Square
468 x 60 – Banner
728 x 90 – Leaderboard
300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
120 x 600 – Skyscraper
160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper
300 x 600 – Half-Page Ad
970 x 90 – Large Leaderboard
320 x 50 – Mobile Leaderboard

These are the sizes that sites who include ad space can choose from. Some sizes are more popular with them and therefore more available. And some sizes tend to go in spots where readers are more or less likely to pay attention to them. I know there is a whole science to this, but I’ll just tell you that from my experience the ones I like the most are the square ones that work well in a sidebar. And if you want your ads to show on mobile, then the mobile size is a good one to try. It is tricky to design an ad that small, but worth the effort if you want to show on phones.

These are the sizes I make for my remarketing campaigns:

250 x 250 – Square
468 x 60 – Banner
300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
320 x 50 – Mobile Leaderboard

To create an ad, click on Ads & extensions in the left menu, and then on the blue add button.

Ad Types

You have two great options here: display ads and responsive ads.

If you select upload display ads, this will let you upload images you have created in the above sizes. This is a good option if you have strong branding you want to use in a group of images and want to really control the appearance. If you have the time to create the images or a designer who can make them, this is the way to go.

The other option is to create responsive ads, which means you have photos and then pieces of text that you put in, and then adwords fits that content into a few different ad sizes and styles. This is a great option for getting started without a big time investment. It’s also a good way to test a new idea, before you take the time and potentially money to create the image ads for a campaign.

So there you go, everything – hopefully – that you need to get started with remarketing in adwords.

While everyone else is focused on getting traffic and showing ads on their site, I say flip the script – put your message on their site.

Let me know if you have any questions!

– Alicia

What Will We Teach Them?

Motherhood, Parenting

As millennial parents, we know that our kids will face unique challenges. Our kids, born 2010-2025, have been termed Generation Alpha, and they will be the first generation born entirely in the 21st century.

This gets me thinking: What kind of world will they live in? What challenges will they face? How can we best prepare them?

The world is the most global and interconnected that it’s ever been. The United States, founded as a nation of settlers and immigrants, is the most diverse ethnically and culturally that it’s ever been.

However, as millennials we have inherited a society that in many ways has forgotten its identity and lost its way. Many of us are disillusioned with the religious and political establishments.

If you pinned us down on it, we’d have to admit that deep down we have big questions about the fundamentals of life. Why are we here? Is there a higher power on our side or are we all alone? How do we make decisions, what beliefs make up our compass?

Sometimes we pull ourselves together and we think we’ve got some answers, other times not so much. But what do we believe strongly enough to teach it to our kids?

What do we want them to know about life? What are the values that we want to pass on? What are the things that we know that we know? How do we pass on the humility that is honest about our struggles with some of these questions, while still preserving the message of hope?

I want my kids to value love over fear, peace over division, hope over despair, and freedom over security.

I want them to be creative and curious, hopeful and free. I want them to go into the world with open eyes and open hearts, knowing they will encounter darkness at times, but also certain of their ability to carry the light.

Let’s explore how to raise our kids to be joyful, courageous and resilient, to live lives of creativity and freedom, of love, joy and compassion.

Let’s talk about science, history, and technology, but also politics, economics, religion and philosophy.

Because our kids can take it. They are ready to go there. Our kids are brave and kind, they are earnest and smart, and they were born for this. We must not white wash our history, dumb down our curriculum, or insulate them from the important issues and events of our day.

Instead we must gently inform, educate and equip them for the tasks set before their generation. Just like their parents, I believe our kids crave authenticity, honesty and challenge. They want to know what’s real, and they want to know how to engage their lives with intelligence and passion.

This path is not for the faint of heart, for it will require that we go into our own hearts and face our own demons. To teach our kids the real stuff of life, we’ve got to stop hiding from it ourselves. But it’s not quite as daunting as it sounds once we get into it, because this is also our path. We were also born for this.

We are brave, we are strong, we are resilient. We are here to do all sorts of awesome things, and one of those is to equip our children and set them on their own paths.

Practicing Living in the Present Moment

Motherhood, Parenting, Spirituality

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of the present moment, and living fully present, especially since recently reading The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. (I use affiliate links for books. I appreciate your support.)

And then that was immediately put to the test this week as I began the process of potty training our youngest son. In the past, whenever I was potty training, I inevitably spent my days wishing I was somewhere else. This time around I set my intention to embrace the experience and live in the present moment, asking what lesson it held for me.

What I found this week while focused on being present in the moment with my precious son, as I sought to see the lesson to be learned, I realized that the experience itself was helping to teach me how to be present.

Ever since I began to awaken to a new level of spiritual reality a few years ago, and began the process of renewing my mind, and aligning with my soul, and such, I realized early on that being present and patient was quite difficult for me. I have always been a planner, a forward-thinking, detail-oriented, responsible, future-focused individual.

Now I’m learning to change my perspective, to rewrite the rules, to enjoy the journey in an entirely new way.

On the one hand, watching myself potty train our youngest is showing me how far I’ve come, that I have changed so much, and for the better, in my pursuit of my better self and a better way of life and service.

On the other hand, it’s still incredibly hard for me to just sit for hours and play duplos and watch Team Umizoomi and Story Bots. But as I practice witnessing myself from the vantage point outside myself (in alignment with the pov of my soul), and I set my intention to find the lessons and learn them, and gently insist to myself that I relax into the present moment, I shift into a wonderful new state of mind.

I allow myself to rejoice in my son’s life, to enjoy his joyful, innocent and enthusiastic presence. I relax, and sit, and soak into the moment. I play duplos and snuggle and do the potty routine 2-3x an hour. And I realize at some point that my son is teaching me to be present.

When I release my judgment (of him, of myself, of our routine, of the situation – there are many options in both parenthood and potty training) and focus on being present in the moment, I see him as he is, I see myself as I am, and I am able to focus on loving him and being present.

And my soul itself is soothed by this process. I find a state not unlike that I find in meditation at times, where the outer world and the inner chatter fall away, and you are able to simply focus on something simple that fills you with joy and gratitude, just for the simplicity and complexity of this gift called life.

My challenge to you today and this week is to consider what mundane or tedious life circumstances might have a lesson for you, and to practice being fully present in the moment in those parts of your life. Look for where you have resistance to your life and ask yourself what it would look like to accept those parts. Relax into the experience and invite spirit to speak to you as you allow the moment to be what it is, without trying to make it something different.

It’s important to remember that we can apply spiritual principles to anything. This journey is all about finding your true self, about finding a new and better way to be you. This means what you are learning can be applied to what might seem to be the most boring or ‘non-special’ parts of our lives. Practice inviting spirit into every part of your daily life; expect miraculous shifts and you will find them.

Resisting Fear During the Coronavirus

Books, Spirituality

Let’s talk about the coronavirus for a minute. As for everything in this life, there are two sides to the coin of this new threat.

We’ve been talking about how our first directive as spiritual seekers is to seek to transform our fear into love, ceasing fearful thinking and seeking to view our world through the eyes of love.

This virus poses the danger of pulling us back into fear. This is currently the most immediate danger for many of us, that we will allow fear to sneak back in and color our sight.

However it also has the potential to unite us, to bring out the best in us as so many tragedies do. The best in us is that part of us that knows our true essence is love and that we are all connected on a deep spiritual level by our shared humanity

Something about a threat like a virus brings out our oneness. We are one human race. We have the same hopes, fears and dreams. We all are mortal and potentially vulnerable to the effects of the virus in the same way as everyone else on this planet. It does not discriminate.

My encouragement for you today is to resist the pull of fear. Be smart, be aware. But allow these events to foster in you your love of all our fellow men and women, your sense of connection to all the people alive right now across the world, regardless of race and nationality.

Feel that connection. Feel our Oneness. Send love and light from your heart to those who have been directly affected. Speak courage from your heart, across the miles, into the hearts of those who are on the front lines of this threat to our collective health.

Your thoughts on this do matter, your prayers will be felt and heard. Your steadfast commitment to love and unity will touch us all. Let us not falter but rise to whatever the challenge is that God and our own soul conspire to place in front of each of us in this season.

My Story – Part 1

Motherhood, My Journey

Early Years

I grew up in church. I’ve been ‘saved’ ever since I can remember. I have vague memories in early grade school of answering the “if you want to receive Jesus or just rededicate and make sure” call to come forward.

Church was a regular part of life that I took for granted, without thinking about it until everything changed in 6th grade.

Growing up in Kansas City we’d get anywhere from 0 to 4 or 5 good snows each winter and they weren’t often thick enough for sledding, so when we got a good snow it was a big deal. But I can’t really remember the sledding. All I remember is the last time we headed out to go sledding, and I never made it there.

I was sitting ‘shotgun’ in the front seat, my brother and neighborhood playmate were in the back seat. We stopped at one of two stop lights that were on the way to the park with the great sledding hill. As the light turned green my dad looked up and started to go and I looked over and saw that this lady in a van was running the red light and was going to hit us. I instinctively folded my arms over my chest and ducked my head, and boom, crash.

I woke up a second later in the car, pushed up against the far left side of the intersection. My door was smashed in, my dad was checking to see if I was ok. Apparently I seemed fine, but then I started to move and realized my shoulder hurt, bad.

I remember asking my dad what was taking so long and he said the ambulance was on its way, but was taking a bit because the first report that went out said no one was hurt.

It turned out all I broke was a collarbone. And while that was a painful injury with what felt for a 10 year old to be a painstakingly slow and annoying 8-12 week recovery, it was also a miracle.

I distinctly remember them telling me that if the van, which impacted the car near my feet, had been a foot closer to me that I could have been in a body cast.

I remember simultaneously not being able to truly process what that meant – body cast? what did that even mean? what did that look like? – and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that something had saved me and that I was here for a reason. I walked away from that accident with a sense of calling and destiny that I’ve never been able to escape.

But it took 20+ years to make sense of it. I set off on a personal quest for meaning in the only source I knew – the bible. I found a copy of Haley’s Bible handbook in our house, and I remember sitting in our sunroom in the summer between 6th and 7th grade, reading it, and then reading the Bible, and then reading the handbook again. I set out to read the Bible and understand it.

And not just the Gospels and Genesis. I read Numbers, and Leviticus, and the minor prophets, referring to the handbook when I didn’t understand something.

Bible Quizzing

In 8th grade I visited a Nazarene church with a mission friend who was home on furlough and discovered Bible quizzing. So cool, I was hooked.

It was April and there were only two months and a few quiz meets left in the year. I went home and memorized as many as I could of the dedicated 100 memory verses that there would recitation questions about.

The following year I memorized all of them. And when I won the jump I knew the answers to the question 95% of the time. I started memorizing whole chapters. We went to regionals and nationals and won trophies. It was a lot of fun.

Senior year came and it was time to go to college. I almost went to MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas City, but my parents convinced me to visit Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, and I really felt the presence of God there, somehow I knew that was where I was supposed to be.

I absolutely loved my four years there, and I remember talking to the career guidance counselor freshman year about picking a major and telling him I wanted to teach and he said there were two tracks. I could get a degree in education and go that route or I could pick a topic and take it all the way to a doctorate and then teach it at the graduate level.

Getting My Degrees

I decided to go deep. Now I just need a topic. Some good friends of our family that I looked up to advised me to get a ‘tent making skill’. Many times over the years I’ve questioned my degrees and wished I would have listened to them. But at the time although I enjoyed everything I learned in school, church was my world. I felt drawn to whatever had the highest meaning about life in an ultimate sense. For me that was the Bible and I felt drawn to study it deeper.

I wanted to understand, to know, why I was here, why we here, what God was really telling us through the Bible.

So I picked New Testament as my major. I tried to minor in Youth Ministry or Psychology, but because of the classes ended up needing another option and ended up picking Old Testament. So I learned both Greek and Hebrew, and it was fascinating to learn to read the text and the terms in the original language, while also studying the accompanying culture.

Senior year I met my now-husband, and after graduation followed him home to Virginia Beach, Virginia to get my Masters degree at Regent University. They had the degree I was looking for, not the typical 60 hour MA or the practical ministry track, but the 72 hour Pre-Doctoral academic track. Yep, that’s for me, because I am so serious about this. I started my studies in Virginia in Jan 2006.

In 2007 we got engaged, Charles graduated and found a full time webmaster job at the School of Divinity where I was still a student, and we got married in the fall. I took the spring semester off and then resumed my studies, finishing in May of 2009.

In the fall and winter of 2008 I came to a fork in the road. I was preparing to graduate, which raised the question, what next? Was I getting my doctorate? Where? How?

That Christmas we had a really special time with extended family and I remember coming away from that holiday with an impression having been left on me. Something touched my heart, changing my priorities. I had only applied to a few, hard-to-get-into doctoral programs, and when the letters came back negative, it felt right.

Having Kids

I felt in my heart that it was time to start a family, and then see where we went from there. I graduated in May, started looking for a job to help pay back student loans, and found one building websites for a small real estate team. We started trying and I got pregnant in Aug. I worked in the office full time for 9 months and then after my son was born they let me switch to working part time, mostly from home.

One night that summer right before I found out I was pregnant, I woke up from the only dream I’ve ever had that impacted me this way. In my dream I had seen a boy and he and I had this special bond, and then I woke up and found myself crying from a real sense of loss. Because it felt so real and meaningful, when I woke I felt I had lost something I was meant to have. A week or two later I found out I was pregnant and then I was at peace because I knew God had shown me my son. I told my friends and family that I knew it was boy, and didn’t even think about names for the first kid because I knew my husband had always wanted to name his first son after himself, and his father. And I knew we were having a boy. That’s the only time in my whole life up to this point that I’ve ever had a dream like that. Usually I don’t even remember them at all.

Searching

During my years in college and grad school I always felt a bit restless, like I was searching for something I could never find. I got used to this feeling, it was a constant companion that never went away.

Until I got pregnant for the first time.

Being pregnant filled me with this incredible peace that I was where I was supposed to be and doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I think the dream really contributed to me being able to be in that place during my first pregnancy.

That restless feeling went away for 8 years. I spent those years working from home and raising kids. We had another boy in 2011, and another in 2014 and then got surprised with a final fourth in 2016, while debating whether to have 3 or 4 kids. But he is meant to be here, I see now how he completes us. Looking back I also see so much providence in his coming in 2016, helping me to keep my priorities on family at a pivotal time.

When he turned 6 months old and started sleeping through the night, I began to get back to normal, getting enough sleep and feeling more myself – as happens at some point for us after each baby. But this time that restless feeling came back.

I couldn’t shake it.

What now? What’s my purpose? What is the meaning of everything? What are we doing here? Isn’t there something more?

At the same time the feeling was more one of purpose and hope and curiosity. I knew so much more than last time.

Me and my husband. Our four boys. Doing life together. Ok, what does that look like?

As my older boys had gotten into school, it became increasingly on my heart to research homeschooling and consider homeschooling our boys.

This would require leaving my job, and so I started reaching online business and other ways to work from home, with greater freedom and autonomy.

Early in my research, learning about homeschooling took an unexpected turn into personal growth and healing.

What I found in a few early books I read helped shed incredible light on me, and why I was the way I was. It helped me see how being schooled had formed a large part of my identity. This set me on a course to ‘unschool’ myself and made me more determined to find a way to homeschool my boys.

Starting a Blog

I’ve always been a big reader, but I had slowed down quite a bit during those early child raising years. But now I was searching again and I was hungry so I read book after book about psychology, business, personal development, nutrition.

I started a blog in the Spring of 2017 called Energy for Moms and I shared about the books I was reading. I was increasingly not only restless, but truly unhappy and just feeling, stuck. You can see in my blog archives from the summer of 2017 where I talked about trying to read my way out of starting to feel depressed. After my second son I had been in a bad place emotionally for awhile and I wanted to keep from going back to that state of mind.

So I searched, and I learned, and I worked, and made dinner and changed diapers, and searched, and read. I took courses and learned strategy. I read books and worked on my mindset, and my attitude, and my patience. I took a blogging course, and recorded a couple of videos during that time, saying where I was at and where I wanted to be. It’s evident in my writing that I had a faint but solid glimmer of hope and resigned determination to just keep going forward.

I learned a lot about the blogging and the online world, but I hit a few roadblocks. I stopped writing. I rebranded to Energy for Mompreneurs. This felt a bit silly because I was not an entrepreneur yet, but that was the world I felt drawn to and I wanted to learn everything I could about it and figure out how to belong in it. As 2018 turned into 2019 I was switching my focus from writing and blogging to figuring out how women made money now, without building a reader base first.

So I learned all about service-based solo entrepreneurs, I met a lot of other moms and saw what they based their businesses on. The biggest categories seemed to be virtual assistants, marketers, and coaches. I knew I had the potential to do any of those. I was encouraged by my options.

In all of my spare time from mid 2017 to mid 2018 I worked on ideas for my business. I talked to women online, did market research, learned how to diy my branding, looked at which of my skills were marketable, and made my first money from a small job for a friend.

The first half of 2018 was full of turmoil at work, and this combined with the culmination of my own journey brought me to a breaking point in August.

By late summer 2018 I had set up two desks in my office, with two computers. One was for my job, and one was for my business. I would work the hours for my job at that desk, and then look for time to sit at my business desk and work on figuring out a plan that would carry me to the future I was envisioning.

I remember two days in a row sitting at my computer desk for my job, and sitting there, making myself work and just sitting there crying through the process of getting simple tasks done.

That was when I knew it was time to make a change. My parents came in town for the weekend and at the end of their visit, on the way to the airport I finally told them where I was at, how I was feeling and what I wanted to do. My dad called the next day and offered to loan me some money as an extra emergency fund for my income. The next monday, Aug 27, I gave my company two weeks notice.

My last day was Sept 7, 2018. I had been there since Aug 3, 2009. Some of my friends thought I should just be grateful for a reliable job that paid well and let me work from home. But what had long been God’s provision and a perfect fit had become a toxic environment for me. And I see now that something in me had been awakened and I was being called forward into a new season.

Reflecting on this past year

My Journey

It’s Saturday. Two of the boys spent the night at grandma’s. The third woke me up at 5am with bad dreams. The fourth, who is 3, crawled into our bed at 6:30am.

It’s been exhausting two weeks, a busy month, a crazy summer, and insanely unpredictable year of transition and change.

And all I can think is how grateful I am for all of it. For the boys, for this house, for a year of growth and change.

It’s been a year of change in two different and deeply meaningful senses. My husband lost his job the first week of January and we immediately decided to sell our house of 5 years and rent while he found a new job he could settle into. During the past 8 months we’ve lived in 3 places and each tried multiple jobs, or for me – business models. So it’s been a lot of physical change and shaking up of life.

The other year of change just ended in the traditional sense. On Aug 27, 2018 I gave my boss of 9 years my two weeks notice. I knew in my heart that it was time for me to move on to a new chapter, a new season of life. My goals were to prepare a way to start homeschooling our boys, and to give my husband greater career flexibility. I had just finished a year of research and networking and my plan was to start my own business.

My husband was suddenly let go due to downsizing, in Jan. He got a new job across town in April and we moved into a nearby rental house, taking the opportunity to start homeschooling.

In May he got a better job across town the other direction, this time near his parents and in the area we wanted to be in. While we gave him time to get settled in the job, we debated breaking our lease early, and whether to rent again or buy, while being told that the market was hot and it would be best to wait a while to buy. Meanwhile the kids and I were a bit cramped in our small white rental house. I remained incredibly grateful for it, but also starting to dream about a house in Chesapeake.

After only just starting to look at neighborhoods, mainly focusing on learning the traffic patterns of the area, looking for where our price range might coincide with a decent commute, I saved a few properties on zillow, and then got an email of a similar house, it was a FSBO that just came on the market that day, which was Aug 23. I called the seller the next day, we saw the house the following day, negotiated price the following week, ratified a contract, and set closing for Aug 30.

Despite the fact that neither of us were using an agent, everything went so smoothly that closing was moved up to Aug 27.

I woke up that day super excited about closing on the house, and then slowly realized it was exactly a year to the day since the day I had given my boss notice a year earlier.

This year has been full of miracles, and growth, a rekindling of hope, a rediscovering of faith, a stripping back of old layers of bad habits, old thinking.

I feel like I’ve come back home, and at the same time am starting a new season that feels like a whole new life. I have so much yet to learn and figure out, but I finally feel I am setting out on the right journey, that I’m headed down the right path.

I’m looking forward to sharing that journey with you, sharing what I’ve learned, where I’ve been, where I’m at, and discovering together where we are all headed as we make sense of this wonderful gift called life.