Falling in Love With Waco

If you can tell I am a straight to the point type of person. Tell me what works for you, let me apply it to my life, and if it doesn’t work, o’well, at least I tried. Here is my story that has brought me to falling in love in Waco.

A little background of me and my husband.

Roller coaster ride of dating for 5 years. Finally told him to shit or get off the pot. 

Fast forward to us being married for 1 year

Pregnant with my first baby girl. We bought a new house. All in the first year of marriage. Back on the roller coaster of money, sex, parenting, and really just trying to grow up with each other but also finding our own selves. Our first year of marriage was rough to say the least. 

In all that chaos, I got pregnant with my second baby girl. I was put on STRICT bed rest at 8 weeks for my entire pregnancy. Like no lifting, I had a 2 year old at the time, no sex, no exercise, nothing! I had a hemorrhage surrounding almost the entire placenta so If I bled out I would of lost her. 

I lost my dad suddenly to a heart attack 3 months before I gave birth to Vivienne. It was my first experience with death and it was my dad. He was everything to me. Like everything! Its a pain I still can’t explain if I tried. With the loss of her husband, her high school sweet heart, my mom was gone also. She still to this day has never been the same. 

After I had Viv I had really bad postpartum. I drank a lot. well, enough to just go to bed and not think of my dad. I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions of the loss of my dad. I was pissed, Pissed at God. Pissed at my dad. Pissed at my husband. I was just mad. One of the nights, I remember I went to check on my girls. It was dark and I had my contacts out so I was pretty much could not see anything, feeling my way through the halls. I saw something. I felt something. Enough for me to actually move out of the way and catch a blip of oops coming out of my mouth because I thought I was going to run into someone.  I knew it was my dad. I didn’t feel scared. I checked on my girls, went back to bed, and laid there hoping to actually see him again. 

My husband got a job in sales and we started the adventure of traveling every summer to different states. 2 weeks on- 2 weeks off…. He would have to leave for the “on” time to sell in warmer states so a lot of the time it was just us girls!  We always went with the same crew, same wives, same thirty-something kids between us all, and shacked up in some apartments they provide and explored the crap out of the cities we were in. It was so much fun!!! Until it wasn’t. 

We built a house in Utah! Signed the paperwork, Moved all of our belongings into the garage and that night drove to Georgia for the summer! We got to Georgia and that next month I was pregnant with our third daughter.  I WAS SO SICK!! Lol! Got home and everything pretty much fell apart with our crew for the next couple of years. We decided to take a leap and leave the group we have loved for so many years and venture out on our own. We got the opportunity to do a decentralization project and move to anywhere in the country! We got to chose! and for some odd reason we chose Waco. Mind you I have never been here. Never really been to Texas. It was such a odd choice. We wanted something close to Utah that I could drive if I needed to . Somewhere with great schools. and somewhere with not a whole lot of snow. So for some reason Waco came to our minds. 

We spent the summer in Dallas and I drove too and from to find a rental for us so the girls could start school on time. Everytime driving into here I was thinking to myself “What the hell did I do!” I missed my mountains, the closeness of each store, and the tightness of the houses through the community. Everything here is wide open spaces and I wasn’t used to that at all! We found a rental in Robinson and everything started to oddly fall into place. My husband was now able to be at every school event, home every night, and just actually home. Previously he was gone a lot with the other company.  I was feeling a sense of peace with my kids, with my dads death, and with my husband.   

I have always wanted to start my own cookie bakery. Every time I saw someone starting something up I always kicked myself in the butt thinking, COME ON KINZ! So I perfected a couple of my recipes and posted a picture on Instagram. Within a hour I got a dm saying how can I order this? Is this local? And I had a thought that maybe this could work.

I have been on this up and down since I moved here and since I started Milkbottle. Doubting myself, waiting for the bottom to fall out, do they really like me, what if someone doesn’t like my cookies, or worse…me? Until I had my first real brush with Wacoans. One friend asked me, How can I pray for you? I pray for your business and for you! And that struck me like a lightning bolt. She genuinely cares for me. From then I have had many touch my heart moments with people and their support of Milkbottle. But she made a real direction change for me in my thinking of Waco and my new life here. 

Right now, I am waking up feeling refreshed. Falling more in love with my husband. Being the mom I want to be and loving myself in this moment. Taking this life day by day after this rollercoaster of marriage and life we have had. 

 …and today I am falling in love with Waco.