LIFE UPDATE 2025!

Welcome back, you guys, to the channel. I'm Abbey, Caleb, and we are Caleb and Abbey. We've never done an intro like that before. Never have. I don't know. It just kind of rolled off the tongue. We are doing an update video. It's the beginning of 2025. We have not given you guys an update video since July 20th of 2023 and that video was crazy. I think the title of it was like that was unexpected. Yeah, all the different things that happened that were like crazy and somewhat disappointing things that happened in our life. Positive to say things have turned around a little bit. Yeah, we're going to give you an update. I mean, it literally was like a surprise baby, which is so exciting, but you have no money. You have to move out of your house. You have to sell your business. You have to start a new job. It was like what? Yeah, I'm happy to say we've recovered. So let's talk. Let's talk about it. Kind of like reflecting back on all those big life transitions we went through. I posted that video three days before we had CJ. Caleb started a pavement maintenance franchise with a business partner and that was like the same time that we had just had a baby. So why don't you talk about like what did that look like was worth those first couple months with a baby? We've been following along. Our son CJ was born, beautiful baby. I remember even in the hospital during that time, you know, like sending emails. It was just me at the time running that business. So that was hard. You don't have like paternity leave, but that was like we knew that and we're expecting that and your parents were in town. So it was great to have them help out through that time. We got discharged from the hospital on a Thursday, Friday morning through Sunday. Caleb worked 40 hours in three days. It was the craziest weekend ever. I don't even remember that. I'll never forget it. My mom was like let him work now while we're here and in town and can help you and let him go get like caught up so that he's not losing his mind, which was really good advice from my mom. Do you want me to just talk about like everyone? Yeah, update your business. Tell the people how it's going. So through the end of that year, CJ was born in July. Tried to hire on some employees. I had some people work a couple jobs. Some of it didn't work out. We didn't have enough jobs to keep them fully employed. We didn't have cash to be paying guys full-time. No hard feelings with them, but it made it really hard to like get traction and growing the business. Finished up that year and was a little disappointed on how things finished up. And then in the new year, that was January of 24, we hired on a sales guy so he could like really hit the ground running and start to drum up as much business as possible. By March, we were able to start. We hired two guys full-time and we had like enough backlog of jobs to really get those running and I was able to be on the jobs and train them and get them going while he continued to focus on sales. Added a third guy a few months later and now we kind of had a full crew and then August, I think it was, we hired an operations manager, trained him for a couple months. Needless to say, we're kind of like a fully built-out company. We feel finally. You made it, baby. There was some really hard weeks, long nights. I would say summer of 2024 was really hard physically and mentally because yeah, you were still helping with all the operation stuff of physical jobs and it was 115 degrees outside every day. So you're physically doing the jobs and then also you're like running the company. So it was just a lot. We ended the year. We had a pretty ambitious goal for 2024 and we surpassed it by a lot. So that's such an exciting update. We were going through our old photos and stuff last night and just looking at like the progression from the beginning of the year to the end year is literally so different. Yeah, and I feel like we had two babies, well three babies. We had CJ as like a little baby at the beginning of the year. He is now a toddler and then we had Everline. It was like this baby of a company still and now it's it's growing and it's been so exciting for you. And then my business too, like or my job with social media. I feel like it was this baby and now it's been growing too. And so I just feel like we've been fostering like these little babies of things. Now they're growing and like, oh, we're finally starting to see something like just the fruit of your labor is so relieving. Very thankful and a lot of answered first to that because I was stressful. I feel like when you're stepping out and taking risks with your life, you really get to see God move in big ways. And I think we've just been so thankful this year like reflecting back because I guess work is just like a really easy example, but we were in a business for five years and like grinding and worked really really hard at that and we saw like small success in that but now I think we're in roles that God really has like called us to obviously there's a lot of stress, but it's a different kind of stress. I'm not like grinding the nails like trying to make something work. That's not really what's meant to be even like through the sale of full result old online clothing company. We just feel like God was like protecting us from things clearly was like removing us out of that into what we're doing now. We couldn't see it. No, but yeah, then yeah, just grateful. I think we're just in a season of like you up. Thank you Jesus. Yeah, that was a really hard season for me. Yeah, I feel like after CJ was born you guys know I had like a pretty terrible delivery with him and I feel like for at least six months. I was pretty rocked. I feel like a lot of my normal things have been taken away from me. Like my job was gone with my business. I had done every day for five years. I now this newborn baby. I had a really confusing and like kind of terrible labor. I think I was just wrestling with all these things but also had no idea like I don't know what my days are supposed to look like. I don't know what I'm doing. Like I just kind of was just lost in the waters a little bit and yeah, I feel like I'm in a spot now where I just feel so confident and what I'm doing. I enjoy what I'm doing. I love doing social media content. I love being at home with CJ. I love like helping you with and supporting you and whatever you need with your job and different things. Like I feel like it's just been we're in this sweet spot. I don't know. I can't really say anything more except I'm just really grateful. Yeah, and that was a really hard season for me mentally and even spiritually. I think I struggled a lot and I'm in this spot where I've come out of it and I'm like, okay Lord, I see your goodness through it and that you were consistent through it and I feel like in a better space with God too. I think it's normal and like good. We're allowed. We're supposed to have those seasons in our walk. I feel like a lot of my prayers have been like I don't need anything else. I'm so thankful for where we're at now. Jog your guys memory at the time. We had just downsized from a five bedroom like 3,000 square foot house that we were using for a lot of inventory for the company to a two-bedroom. Basically a thousand square foot apartment is a kind of culture shock of renting a house of that size to now. We added a human to our lives and we're in a smaller space. Yeah, so that was good because that made us purge a lot of like things in June of this year. We purchased the house that we're in now and if you've been following along some of the renovations, we've been doing turning the house of the home series that Abby's been doing feel like I've been able to like Thrive a little bit with owning a home because I've been like adding tools to my like toolbox and being able to do projects. It feels like you're investing into your house, but also increasing the property value too. So it feels like double positive. I think I felt well, I know I did. I felt so anxious in that apartment not because the apartment wasn't nice or because we had a great neighbors. It was great. But just this I just felt really claustrophobic in it with our horse of a dog and our little baby and I was there all day long. I was just kind of a hard season for me and I think it was really good for me to have that because I was trying to kill this little yesterday. After CJ's birth, I feel like there's this switch in me where it's like kind of a dog mentality where I'm like, I'm going to do hard things. I'm going to suck it up. I'm going to push through these things are hard. I'm not going to freaking complain about it. I'm curious if a lot of moms feel that like after having a baby, it's like I just got to do hard things and suck it up in life. I kind of think that is I think that's where like moms just are. Yeah, you hit your stride. Oh my gosh. It's the best ever. I'll be like we ran a half marathon. I've been hitting all these having all these goals in the gym. Like literally I just wallpapered CJ's room and that's such a silly small thing that was hard for me and it's those little things. I'm like, I'm a freaking fighter. I'm not going to stop. This can't beat me. You know, it's like those little small things but they actually do when you win in the small areas. I feel like it does give you confidence in like the bigger of life. It's so silly, but basically I'm a doll. Let's kind of talk about like what are our goals for 2025? Obviously, we can't predict the year. They're going to be hard things are going to be great things, but obviously you can have like some goals along the way. I mean, it's some of the things based on this past year health is important for me. I neglected my health this past year when it comes to sleep diet and working out. So one really simple one is I'm trying to get eight hours of sleep every night. You know, you hear those stories of those business entrepreneurs. I only slept two hours and went back to work and grinded and it's like it's not it's not actually good. Don't brag about that. I want to be able to net average for the whole year have eight hours. I'm also trying to just get back in the gym. It's so hard and your defense like you were saying you were working 15 hour days outside and then you get three hours of sleep and you go back like I was like, I'm he can't even do it right now. So there's a season but you're past that. Yeah, I think I'm past it until summer the next growth period and then I'll backtrack. We'll see. We're also would like to have a baby in 2025. That's on the list of goals. Yeah, probably for me. I didn't sit down and do like a whole list of things, but I think one a table one. I want to do is I want to get back into Scripture memory this year. We're Christians, you know, talking about prayer and Jesus and all these things and I always feel super close to God when I'm memorizing verses and I have not done that probably like two years. So I am doing a weekly Bible Scripture memory. I feel like that's my smart goal. It's attainable. Yeah, we're trying to get a play button this year. Yeah, if we get a hundred thousand subscribers, that'd be pretty freaking cool. So yeah, hit the subscribe button and the like button because that actually is a big goal. But sometimes I'm like I share that. I don't know. Oh try to buy it. We need to buy a car. Yeah, so that's really yeah, I'm driving a lemon at this point. It was called that by the dealership. So I don't feel bad saying that. Yeah, my hood doesn't fully laugh like there's some problems with it. I think that's it. I think it was a good update for the people. Yeah. Thanks for reflecting with us and just letting us ramble and chat. We love getting to share our lives with you. It feels like such a gift honestly. And I hope this is beneficial to you guys in some way like not everything's peachy keen is what it seems on the internet and we can do hard things. We can get through it. If you're in a hard season, you will come through it and you'll look at you'll look back in a year, two years, three years down the road. You'd like wow, we are resilient. God hears our prayers and answers them and there was purpose in that. So we're thankful for that. It feels good to be on the other side for now. Yeah, it's on the next ball drop. We'll trust in the Lord. We will. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for watching and we'll see you in the next video. See ya. Bye.