Alecia Jacobson doesn’t believe in using the “b” word. Not that you’d blame her, though, if she said she was busy. She and her husband Joe are parents of six kids ranging in age from eleven years to just two months old.
But instead of getting sidelined by hectic days, the blended family focuses on staying centered, rolling with challenges and — sometimes very creatively — making memories together.
Alecia describes it as being intentional with her marriage and kids — Zoey is eleven, Finley is ten, Beckett is eight, Aven is eight, Grace is two and Hannah was born in October. And she’s honest about what that can entail.
“I’m okay failing — we’re actually really good at it,” she says. “I try not to plan out too much and I don’t feel bad about canceling. I’m good at saying no.”
Alecia brings that same positive but grounded approach to GYM 608, which she opened in early 2016. It’s become a place where women find empowerment and support through fitness as well as the ups and downs of life.
“It’s a really nice place for people to be,” she says. “It’s normalizing life and walking through it together. Exercise is a side part.”
While she serves up inspiration to her clients, Alecia is adamant about being transparent — about showing that no one is perfect, no one can do everything and some days are just plain challenging.
Take, for instance, a Monday earlier this month. Alecia was up at 2 a.m. nursing her baby and never got back to bed. Her son called from school later that morning because gum got stuck on his pants, one daughter didn’t get on the bus after school and another threw up on the way to the Katy Perry concert Alecia took them to that night. “And there was a ton of other stuff in between,” she says with a laugh.
But it was a fun adventure, one worth any accompanying stressors. Alecia and Joe have found holidays to be similar, and they seek out and create special moments for their kids.
“We don’t have as much consistency as some families,” she says. “We kind of come up with our own fun things. We try to celebrate in different ways, at different times.”
The family isn’t all together on Thanksgiving day, so Alecia and Joe started a tradition a few years back of taking the kids to a waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells later over the holiday weekend. And knowing they’d be apart on Halloween, the kids decided to go trick-or-treating a few days early in October.
Christmas festivities kicked off this year with a post-Thanksgiving trip to the tree farm. The giant pine they chopped down ended up being too big for their house, and too tall to decorate to the top, but that doesn’t bother Alecia.
“We will never forget this,” she says.