This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Our Growing Family and Lee’s Growing Company is part seven in the series about how my husband and I are surviving the lien years (financial crisis and bankruptcy).

Eventually, after 10 cycles on Clomid and 5 rounds of IUI, we did become pregnant and had our precious children.  During the nine months of pregnancy the only real complaint I had was the severe heartburn.  Other than that, I relished every ache and pain and change in my body.  I was so grateful for the opportunity to be pregnant and fully aware that I may never be pregnant again so I made sure I savored every single moment.

In March of 2003, we celebrated the arrival of our twins, Tyler and Caroline (forever to be named this in the blog in addition to BusyBoy and GigglyGirl but not their real names).  Oh, life was sweet in 2003! I was tired from the lack of sleep and taking care of two children but I was so grateful each night for having 2 children to take care of.  Our prayers were answered.  I pretty much withdrew from everything I had previously been involved with for several months to enjoy the time the twins were small.  Even though we wanted more children, I knew that it might never happen again and was determined to cherish every moment that I possibly could.  I do not think I have ever cherished those long, sleepless nights but the daytime hours were cherish-able.

In 2005, Lee had the opportunity to expand his business to California.  At least it seemed like an opportunity.  In retrospect, he should have turned it down even if it meant losing a client but hindsight is always 20/20.  The laws for small businesses to startup in California (especially businesses that will employ many people and need lots of workers’ comp insurance) are brutal and the government entities involved in allowing a company to startup in California are painfully slow and run by lifetime bureaucrats.  The company used its meager savings and racked up new debt starting the branch in California.

This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Learning Hard Lessons is part six in the about how my husband and I are surviving the lien years (financial crisis and bankruptcy).

After being married for almost 9 years, I left THD in April, 2001.  My primary motivating factor for leaving was because we had been trying to get pregnant for nearly 2 years and had been unsuccessful.  We knew something was wrong but did not know what or how long it would ultimately take to become pregnant.   What I did know was that I did not want all my (mostly male) co-workers to learn about these intimate details of my life.  We had planned our finances with the ultimate goal in mind that I could stop working to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom.  Since according to our plans, we should have already been able to allow me to quit working, we had the financial means for me to stop and the motivation as well.  Lee thought in addition to the upcoming doctor visits that it would be extremely helpful to him if I was home throughout the day.  He was working 60+ hours a week and did not have the energy or the inclination to come home to do laundry, cook, clean, etc.  It would be easier if he knew that many of these tasks were taken care of and I was ready for a break from corporate America anyway.

My grandmother’s death and Lee’s business startup prepared us for what was truly our first major life hurdle and life let down.  We had set goals and worked hard to achieve them throughout our marriage.  While my grandmother’s death was difficult for us, she was “old” and it is somewhat normal in a life cycle for grandparents to die.  So, here we were in our large house with lots of bedrooms waiting to be filled.

As we began treatments for infertility, Lee bought out one of his business partners and racked up some debt in the process.  While things on the fertility front were not very good for us, his business was doing well.  He brought on new staff to help grow the business.

The fertility treatments were nightmares.  The hormones were wreaking havoc on my body emotionally and physically.  With each passing month and negative pregnancy test results, my depression, anger, and frustration over being unable to reproduce grew.  That depression, naturally, intensified in the wake of the terror attacks on 9-11.  I seriously considered giving up on trying to conceive and instead enlisting in the military.  In the end, Lee convinced me that was not the right decision for our lives or for me physically.

As with many American businesses after the terror attacks on 9-11, Lee’s business suffered financially.  We had to reinvest money we had saved into the company to keep it afloat.  The company was not strong enough to support a week of America being shutdown.  We really never stopped to think twice about re-investing our money into the company.  The company needed it, the thousands of people he was employing through the temporary company needed it, and it seemed like the right thing to do.  We probably should have stopped to think twice about it.  At this point, we no longer had much savings and our entire financial portfolio was tied up in 1 stream of income.

Our marriage grew stronger during this time as we had to face various medical and life decisions.  Lee was a solid rock for me during this trying period.  I could barley watch a baptism at church without falling apart emotionally but Lee stood by me every step of the way.  If I had to leave church or a movie or any other event early because of my emotions, he was right there helping me out the door before I broke down into tears.  I became a master at evading questions about family planning.  What business was it of others anyway!?  While silently and privately I was in hell, outwardly I did the best I could to keep a positive attitude.  Keeping that positive attitude and training myself to compartmentalize was preparing me for even greater challenges in the years to come.

This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Risking it All is part five in the series.

In January of 1999, Lee began working on his business plan in earnest and was up and running with a new company with 2 business partners 3 months later in March.  He was literally getting up to go the office at 4:00 in the morning and coming home at night around 9:00 PM.  He put everything into the company.  By everything I mean everything.  We signed the collateral in our house as a loan for the company and the stock options I had earned from THD were put up as collateral as well.  He put all his time and energy into the company.  It paid off.  The company became successful and began growing rather quickly.

Things were going so well for the company that in July, 1999, Lee and I took our first real week long vacation.  We went to the Disney Institute, where we took several classes, visited a few parks, saw the Space Shuttle launch, and spent time at the beach.  It was wonderful, exhausting, and relaxing.

In the fall of 1999, we dumped birth control and began trying to get pregnant.  And trying. And trying.  Nothing became of these tries.  While it was disappointing that we did not get pregnant on our timeline, we just continued to work long hours, volunteer, and enjoy our life.  I was able to do the Breast Cancer 3 Day, which is a 60 mile walk over the course of 3 days for 2 years in a row.  I was also able to volunteer on President Bush’s first Presidential election and to go to Florida to help with the recount.  In January, 2001, I was able to attend the Inaugural Festivities of President George W. Bush.  Lee did not go because he was in Colorado on a business retreat.

After being married for almost 9 years, I left THD in April, 2001.  My primary motivating factor for leaving was because we had been trying to get pregnant for nearly 2 years and had been unsuccessful.  We knew something was wrong but did not know what or how long it would ultimately take to become pregnant.  What I did know was that I did not want all my (mostly male) co-workers to learn about these intimate details of my life.  We had planned our finances with the ultimate goal in mind that I could stop working to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom.  Since according to our plans, we should have already been able to allow me to quit working, we had the financial means for me to stop and the motivation as well.  Lee thought in addition to the upcoming doctor visits that it would be extremely helpful to him if I was home throughout the day.  He was working 60+ hours a week and did not have the energy or the inclination to come home to do laundry, cook, clean, etc.  It would be easier if he knew that many of these tasks were taken care of and I was ready for a break from corporate America anyway.

My grandmother’s death and Lee’s business startup prepared us for what was truly our first major life hurdle and life let down.  We had set goals and worked hard to achieve them throughout our marriage.  While my grandmother’s death was difficult for us, she was “old” and it is somewhat normal in a life cycle for grandparents to die.  So, here we were in our large house with lots of bedrooms waiting to be filled.

As we began treatments for infertility, Lee bought out one of his business partners and racked up some debt in the process.  While things on the fertility front were not very good for us, his business was doing well.  He brought on new staff to help grow the business.

The fertility treatments were nightmares.  The hormones were wreaking havoc on my body emotionally and physically.  With each passing month and negative pregnancy test results, my depression, anger, and frustration over being unable to reproduce grew.  That depression, naturally, intensified in the wake of the terror attacks on 9-11.  I seriously considered giving up on trying to conceive and instead enlisting in the military.  In the end, Lee convinced me that was not the right decision for our lives or for me physically.

As with many American businesses after the terror attacks on 9-11, Lee’s business suffered financially.  We had to reinvest money we had saved into the company to keep it afloat.  The company was not strong enough to support a week of America being shutdown.  We really never stopped to think twice about re-investing our money into the company.  The company needed it, the thousands of people he was employing in through is temporary company needed it, and it seemed like the right thing to do.  We probably should have stopped to think twice about it.  At this point, we no longer had much savings and our entire financial portfolio was tied up in 1 stream of income.

Our marriage grew stronger during this time as we had to face various medical and life decisions.  Lee was a solid rock for me during this trying period.  I could barley watch a baptism at church without falling apart emotionally but he stood by me every step of the way.  If I had to leave church or a movie or any other event early because of my emotions, he was right there helping me out the door before I broke down into tears.  I became a master at evading questions about family planning.  What business was it of other’s anyway!?  While silently and privately I was in hell, outwardly I did the best I could to keep a positive attitude.  Keeping that positive attitude and training myself to compartmentalize was preparing me for greater challenges in the years to come.

This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Life Paused is part four in the series.

For those who read Jen’s Genuine Life in their feed reader or email, I added photos to my previous 2 posts that you might want to check out. I have a goal to add more photos to all my posts in the future.

Lee and I are very goal oriented.  Now that we had truly established ourselves in our jobs (he was a Division Manager and I was a team lead) and were making a home for ourselves in our community, we were ready to move into a larger house.  Our thinking was that we would move into the house and then immediately get pregnant filling the house up with children.  I could quit my job to be a Stay-At-Home-Mom and life would be wonderful.

We did move into the larger house but we revised the goals somewhat.  Lee decided he wanted to start his own temporary staffing company.  We were willing to risk everything financially but we thought it would be better to risk this without having children.  So, we put off the children for a year or two.

In the early summer of 1998 and at 28 years of age, Lee and I moved into a roughly 6,000 square foot house.  I was embarrassed by how large it was since it was just the two of us living in it but I loved it all the same time.  We had 5 bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, nice neighborhood, the works.  Well, the works except for furniture but we knew that would come.

Within a month of moving in, Lee began working on a business plan with 2 other men.  Then my grandmother’s breast cancer returned.  While Lee continued to work on the business plans, they were slowed somewhat by my grandmother’s illness.  The only time to work on it was on weekends but we were spending almost every weekend at the hospital and then later at my parents’ house while my grandmother was in Hospice care.

My grandmother was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986.  She was in remission until 1996, when it came back.  It returned by metastasizing from her breast to her bones.  It was everywhere in her body: her back, her legs, her skull.   But she fought and fought it valiantly.  She had chemo.  She would have bad days when she felt sorry for herself and was angry at the hand dealt her but for the most part, she stayed positive.  In late 1997 she was doing better but in June of 1998, it was back.

She went through another dose of chemo which was brutal to her system. After a very difficult 24 hours, she decided she did not want to fight it anymore.  I was with my mother the day Nanny decided to quit the chemo.  I drove my mom to a Ryan’s Steakhouse for dinner that night to get my mom out of the hospital.  My mom was an only child and her father had died several years before.  She was so sad that night. I do not even think I knew what Hospice was before that night.  I was trying to understand what was happening next, be there for my mom, and absorb the pain of knowing my grandmother would die soon.  I have never been back to that Ryan’s Steakhouse since that night. The thought of it still makes me ill to my stomach.

My grandmother moved into my parents’ house for Hospice Care.  They lived a good hour away from Lee and me without traffic.  It took about 2 – 2 ½ hours from our house during Friday afternoon rush hour.  My sister was in college and my youngest brother was still in high school.  My mom was up all day and all night during the week taking care of my grandmother.  Lee and I stayed at my parents’ house every weekend for 8 weeks.  I thought the least I could do was to have the room monitor and take the night shift on the weekends so my mom could rest.  I also wanted to give my brother a break from my grandmother’s disease since he was in high school.

So, on Friday nights, Lee and I drove to my folks’ house.  Each time my grandmother woke in the middle of the night, I was there to help her as my mom and dad did during the week.  These were long, sleepless weekends.  I would go into work on Monday mornings at THD so tired I could hardly stand it yet somehow I made it through the day. I would leave as soon as was permissible to go home and crash. My boss and my boss’s boss were very understanding and sympathetic during this time.  It made me even more grateful to be an employee at THD and not traveling all the time.

Lee had his 10^th high school reunion on a Saturday in late October, 1998.  My mom insisted that we go to this and not stay at her house.  My grandmother died early that Sunday morning.  Lee and I went with my parents to the funeral home to make arrangements.  That was the first time I had been to a funeral home to actually make arrangements for a deceased relative.  While I was sad that my grandmother died, I was so relieved that she was out of the excruciating pain that her cancer caused.  It was a difficult funeral because my emotions were so torn between grief at my loss, concern for my mom, and gratitude that my grandmother was in a better place.

As I was still mourning my grandmother’s death, Speaker Newt Gingrich was re-elected and then a week later he resigned in November, 1998.  Pretty much this was a horrid 4 weeks for us.  Lee helped calm me.  He was a rock when I needed him and yet he showed emotion over the loss of my grandmother as well.  I knew our relationship was forever changed after that ordeal. After nursing a grandparent to her death, we were stronger as a couple than we had ever been.

This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Our Maturing Careers is part three in the series.

Yea! We had a house.  We had no money to decorate it but that was ok because we had a house. I refused to go into debt decorating the house.  Lee appreciated this sentiment.  We decided to decorate it as we had the money.

We were like 2 ships literally passing in the night for those first couple of years in our career jobs.  When we did not have to travel and were home together, we were selfish with out time.  We wanted to spend time with each other.  So many people said we were lucky to have “quality” time together.  Honestly, we wanted “quantity” time.  We learned we could get along with an enemy if we only saw them a couple of hours a week.  We wanted to live our life together not in hotels away from each other and on the phone.

Obviously, our next goals involved finding jobs that did not require so much travel.  Lee made the decision for himself on this very abruptly one day.  He was sick of some things happening at his company and turned in his notice effective immediately.  He paged me and I returned the call from a pay phone in a hotel lobby in New Orleans.  My immediate concern was whether we had the money for our mortgage.  He worked on the budget and determined we needed $500 more a month than we had to make ends meet.  He took a temporary job at Pizza Hut delivering pizzas once more while looking for a job.

Getting a job in 1995, was much different than it is today.  Every Saturday night or Sunday morning we scoured the Sunday paper looking for any job that might fit Lee’s work experience.  We typed (on MS Word and not an ancient typewriter) cover letters and resumes.  We faxed those that we could on Sunday afternoon and the rest went in the mail first thing Monday morning.

He got a job within 4 weeks.  The dot com bubble was getting some air about this time and it was much easier to get a job in 95 than in 92 and 93.  His job was actually as an Administrative Assistant (aka Secretary) for a temporary staffing company that was opening offices in Atlanta.  He did the job assigned to him and more.  He was quickly promoted out of the admin role and into various positions within this growing company.

1996 was an exciting time to be a native Atlantan and it was an exciting time for Lee and me as a couple.  Lee was no longer traveling on the weekends.  We had the opportunity to get involved in the local county Republican Party.  We went to precinct meetings and conventions at the county, district, and state level.  The trip to Augusta for our State Convention was one of the first non-work related trip Lee and I took since our honeymoon.  It was not a glamorous trip but it was fun.  We learned a lot, met many more people, and had a good time.  The following weekend, we actually went to a bed and breakfast for the weekend.  It was so good to be able to go on a vacation even if it was a weekend getaway just be by ourselves.

The Summer Olympics were coming to Atlanta that summer and it was affecting everyone in the state in some way.  There were all sorts of jobs throughout the city because of the Olympics, which really helped the temporary staffing company employing Lee.  Now that we were more established in our career jobs (as established as you can be after 3 years), we were able to afford live off of one of our incomes.  With the left over money, we did things for ourselves like a few short weekend trips and purchasing nice gifts for our family.  For example, Lee and I purchased tickets for our family members to attend one of the Olympic events.  All of our brothers and sisters and parents went with us to watch the US in an Olympic baseball game.  We were excited to share some of our moderate financial success with our family.  The rest of the money we were saving for a rainy day and/or a bigger house.  We had learned from Lee’s experience, it is important to be able to say “I quit” when things get bad at your place of employment.

After the Olympics were over, I began looking for a new job.  Remember, the dot com era was upon us.  I found and landed a job doubling my salary in 36 hours.  I scoured the Sunday paper, sent in my resume, had a phone interview on Tuesday morning, and a job offer on Tuesday afternoon.  I was floored that it happened so quickly. The job was for a consulting gig at The Home Depot working on an Informix database in the Imports IS Department.  We used Informix at Mead and that gave me a leg up over my competitors.

The consulting job was fabulous.  I did not travel anymore. The job was in the same area of Atlanta as Mead’s Home Office for the Containerboard Division so my commute did not change.  I was actually working with people who were close to my own age and since the job was at THD’s Store Support Center (known in most other businesses as Corporate HQ) there were lots of the employees.  The little IS Department of my division at Mead had 15 or so people. There were only 3 other girls females women (whatever you prefer to be called).  I was the youngest employee in my department by at least 10 years for the majority of my time there.  Now, I was working on a floor with about 100 other employees, most of whom were my age give or take 5 – 10 years.  There were so many people in similar life situations as Lee and me.  I enjoyed the environment immensely.

When the project I was on at THD went live, the contract employees were let go.  I knew that going in.  I was able to get another contract position rather quickly.  While I was at that job, I got an offer to work at THD full time and I jumped on it.  I could not wait to be back working with the people with whom I had previously worked.