Hello Lansing Mom Community! My name is Elizabeth, and I am a Jackson mom. I am a Michigan native, and I am a proud Michigan State alumni. After adventurous stints in Virginia and Pennsylvania, we moved to Jackson so we could be closer to our friends and families.
Five Random Things About Me:
- My favorite animals are llamas and alpacas.
- I have met many famous musicians, including John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and The Barenaked Ladies.
- Movies = boring. Documentaries = awesome.
- At this point in my life, I still have never visited Disneyland or Disney World.
- After being interviewed about potato chips, I was quoted in an LA Times article.
Family Life
My husband, James, and I met playing euchre on Yahoo way back in our college days. After spontaneous contact over the course of a few years, we met for our first date, and the rest is history. We welcomed our oldest son in January of 2012. He was the New Years’ baby at our small-town Virginia hospital. That also meant being front-page news in the local newspapers. To this day, he still likes to tell everyone that he is “famous” as a result. Our youngest son was born in May of 2019 and completed our family. While I never set out to have a seven-year age gap between my kids, watching these two boys love each other is one of my greatest joys!
My Many Hats
Sometimes when I look at all of the hats I have worn throughout my life, I feel like the peddler from the children’s book Caps For Sale (just with fewer monkeys). Let me tell you about some of those hats.
My first hat bears the word teacher, as I spent ten years of my life teaching first-grade. Even though it was a stressful career, I loved teaching children to read. Now that I’m further out from my teaching career, I look back on it fondly.
My second hat bears the word photographer. What started as a hobby grew into a small business. Eventually it changed back into a hobby as I worked to find that work-life/mom-life balance. I still love using my camera to capture moments in time. (I shoot Nikon, just in case you were wondering.)
Life-Changing Hats
My third hat bears the word mom. When the opportunity to become a stay-at-home-mom presented itself, I said goodbye to teaching and hello to being my oldest son’s full-time snack fetcher. While I was thankful for the extra time with my son, becoming a stay-at-home mom helped me realize how much I appreciate being with adults.
My fourth hat bears the word commuter. After my stay-at-home-mom-ness felt a bit too isolating, I embarked on a five-year journey of commuting to work for an educational non-profit. When the pandemic hit, I found myself trying to juggle too much while working remotely. So I did what many did during this crazy time in our lives – I grabbed my mom hat, put it back on, and said hello to being a stay-at-home mom again. This time around, I feel much more successful while wearing this hat.
My fifth and most recent hat bears the word entrepreneur. In May of 2021, I decided to start up a Wonder and Wander – Jackson. Wonder and Wander is a community guide focused on sharing kid-friendly gems in Jackson County. This endeavor has been the perfect complement to my mom hat and has taken my family on many fun adventures. It has also helped me feel much more connected to my surrounding community!
Elizabeth, In a Nutshell
When I’m not in full-time mom mode or sharing adventures over at Wonder and Wander – Jackson, you will find me doing the things that make me feel human. I love dancing to live music at concerts, taking art classes, drinking mochas, filling up my phone’s storage with photographs, and taking naps (hey, it’s all about balance, right?). My happiness comes from kid-free time with friends, making others laugh until they cry, and trying my best to do things to make the world a more beautiful place. I am so excited to join the Lansing Mom community and look forward to sharing more about this wild adventure called life.
