One year, flies by so fast. I can recall looking back in my life where, “just another year has passed, and not much has changed.”
But until I decided to become an entrepreneur and really focus strongly on changing myself, my life, and my family’s lives, each year has now become significantly different.
I have lived in New York State all my life. Born in 1972 in a small country town outside of Utica, Sauquoit. Yea, it’s a town name that very few people could spell. Finishing high school, I needed to go away to college. I had to find a college that had year round schooling and living.
The reason was because in my senior year of high school, I had to move out of my father’s house.
I was the last of the 4 Jones girl’s, and vowed I’d be the one who made it through graduation as my 3 elder sister’s all had to leave at age 16. They weren’t as lucky as me as I was able to move in with my girlfriend Sandi and her family. They had to live in abandoned houses, in their cars, as well as jumping house to house night to night with some of their friends.
I went to Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and trained in Radiography. Starting my first job in the hospital. Fast forwarding my life moving to Syracuse/Liverpool, Buffalo, and then finally Rochester NY where I found and married my husband and started our life having two amazing children.
I have always been proud to be a New Yorker. Those that live in New York and are from New York, know what I mean when I say the feeling you get when you say “I’m from NY.” Not snobby, just proud. That state speaks volumes in reputation and confidence to people. It was all I’ve ever known. I know all the bugs, all the seasonal changes, the trends, when the leaves will change, how to drive easily in a huge snowstorm with 6 feet of snow on the ground, the secret back woods play forts where my name is forever spray painted, the country roads by the back of my hand, where to go camping, which fingerlake has the best wineries, what route to take boating across Lake Ontario to get to Canada, how to drive your OWN car in downtown Manhattan (yeah, there’s a technique) how people react in certain situations, and I could go on. I’m proud.
Still proud. Still Sad. It was all I’ve ever known for 39 years.
But, when I look at what makes me happiest in life, my goal was to create security, confidence, and happiness in our quality of our lives and my kids lives. Deciding to start my own business with Team Beachbody was something I did not for the money or the awards that were on the table to achieve. I signed up because I’ve been helping people achieve happiness and fitness through changing their own lives as well as helping train others to do the same. It’s just deep inside me to help people and to be a giver. I have always tended to overextend myself so someone else could get what they needed or feel comfortable.
I became very successful growing my little old home business in health and fitness. Who knew that back in 1991 when I was first asked to get trained to teach group exercise, that wearing spandex would move me into a life that I am living today.
The greatest part of this industry that I moved into is that it is recession proof. No matter what happens with the economy, people always want to look younger and fitter.
So why did we move to Texas? My goal was to have a huge house that my kids would not be embarrassed to bring their friends to. A big back yard with a huge pool. To live in sunshine.
My husband John had resigned from his job in Buffalo back in April 2011. He was commuting 2 hours each day for this job as that was the only one he could get in his field of IT. It was his dream title job being a CIO, but it came with distance.
We could have moved anywhere. We looked at the USA and said, where. We were free to go anywhere. My kids weren’t in school yet, so where.
Narrowing down the states in the USA when it comes to the weather was priority #1 but then priority #2 was ease of travel. We like to travel a lot as well as I personally schedule trips to CA for some video filming for Chalene Johnson’s workouts or for Team Beachbody. My family living back east, easy 1 leg to get there.
So our states were narrowed down to primarily TX or CA. We chose TX because they do not have state income tax. In which, being an entrepreneur works in our favor. You can get a HUGE house and land for about the same money as you would in upstate NY. Traveling in and out of DFW is really easy and not much of airtime. We had a base of existing friends here. And finally, the biggest reason why we moved here is my husband is a HUGE Dallas Cowboys fan. 😉
I flew down twice having my realtor run around for 2 days straight each time. We looked at about 80 houses by the time I found the one I wanted. She was tired out!!
My husband and kids had never seen the house until the day we could walk right in.
It was an adventure and It’s unreal how much we have done and traveled in just this past year. We moved on September 23 from New York. Starting our 1500 mile drive down through NY, PA, OH, KY, TN, AR and finally arriving in TX on September 25.
Earlier than expected. We spent the night in a hotel but planned for our BIG night before moving into our house to be at the Gaylord Texan.
Life has been amazing and lighter since living here. Just one year has passed. We have gone to Cowboy’s games, Ranger’s games (cheering on the Yankees!), family trip to Atlantis Bahamas, My husband and I went to Bora Bora Tahiti for 12 days. We had my 18 family members here in our house comfortably for 1 week for the Jones family reunion.
Our kids are thriving in school as well as karate, dance, T-ball and flag football. My husband has found a new passion in coaching my son’s teams. Being a New Yorker coaching flag football for the first time in Texas is kinda crazy, right? But we wouldn’t have it any other way.
