While most people strive to clock in and out of work every day, leaving work behind them, clearly, Grace and I are far from normal.

Work has always been a passion of our's. I mean, we literally met at work. Classic love story. A girl sees a guy guiding a tractor trailer into a loading dock, and that guy has to ask said girl for a radio pack. Love at first sight, clearly. So inspiring, that we had to hide our relationship from our coworkers for months. That was until we went on a company wine tour, and some liquid courage helped me forget that we weren't telling people we we're dating. Yeah....whoops.
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Do what you love, with the people you love. 

After spending the better part of a year working at the same agency, Grace moved on to an amazing scenic shop in Maryland. Hatch is one of my favorite vendors to work with, so Grace and I got to collaborate together on amazing projects for Google, CNN, Business Roundtable, YouTube and the like. Always made life interesting - not worrying about rushing home for dinner. Because the two of us were usually sitting on a cement floor at an event venue, eating a cold sandwich or granola bar and prepping to bring our ideas to life. We also got to do arguably one of the most important projects of our careers, bringing PPE gear with smiles to those who needed it most.
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But then things got interesting. 

If you didn't know, Grace and I moved to Chicago in 2019 while I had a good job to give us stability in the life change. That situation quickly crashed and burned, and suddenly we were both in a new city, in a new house, with no jobs, no proper work contacts and two dogs that had a hefty tennis ball budget. For two people that list "planning" as one of their top skills on their resumes, woof. Poorly done.

I took the first entrepreneurial plunge and decided it was time to start my own marketing agency, Inkling. Great move for the first few months, even got to hire Grace for our first big project. But then, we were suddenly looking down at an event industry crippled and crushed by COVID-19. Hindsight is 2020 and no one saw this pandemic coming, but Ed and I put the work in and Inkling has come out on top. So I can't frown on hard earned success.

As we navigated a client-less and job-less industry through 2020, Grace seized the opportunity to launch the custom gift box business she has always dreamed of. Turned out to be exactly what people needed - a way to promote connection and positivity while we were all stuck at home. Between her "Life Succs Without You" succulent kit to the cutest "Movie Night" pack, Gifts By Grace was quickly becoming a thing. It has been amazing, that is until she broke into the corporate gifting market.
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I was suddenly accepting pallet deliveries in our driveway.

Here I am, mindlessly working at my standing desk on video calls all day and I hear the doorbell. After fending off the dogs I open the door to see a truck driver frowning at me, asking, "Is this Gifts By Grace? I have a pallet for you, but I think it's a mistake, this is a residential address."

Let's start there. Thank you, Mr. Delivery Man for pointing out the obvious concern here. We live in a cute little townhouse in a cute little neighborhood outside of Chicago. We don't have a loading dock. Or a pallet jack. Or a warehouse. We have a teeny tiny driveway with a garage that doesn't actually fit a car. What on earth was I going to do with a pallet?

Well, too late now. He backs in and drops it off in the driveway blocking the car, and leaving me stranded with a giant stack of shipping supplies. Luckily, I was wearing my handy-dandy crocs so I was able to stack everything in the garage and drag the empty pallet in. This was a one time thing, nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong. Suddenly, pallet deliveries became a regular. Grace was no longer selling a few boxes a week, it was a few boxes a day. Sometimes in bulk! If you have been wondering, no, suburban garbage services will not pick up empty pallets. This isn't an industrial park so they give a quick and cool "no thanks." As I write this, I can see a stack of pallets in our back yard covered in snow waiting for a big super bonfire. If I get arrested in April, it's because I probably broke a town ordinance and got in trouble for having a fire as tall as our house.
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One thousand eight hundred and sixty five.

That's how many boxes have been shipped from our house since Gifts By Grace started. Countless Sundays typically reserved for football and crying have been spent screaming the Buffalo Bills' Shout Song and taping boxes like an assembly line. Not the typical honey-do list one would expect leading up to a marriage, but as I've said, we're not super normal.

Just ask the neighbors. We're clearly treated as the weirdos running an empire out of our townhouse - getting glancing looks as we march around the neighborhood with our dogs.

So that's us. The crazy kids that don't just take on every opportunity we see, but get erratically excited to see what happens when we get to take the opportunity of a lifetime, and spend it together. But if you were ever looking for a pair more devoted to their passions and to supporting each other's, you won't find one.