A Decade in Review

It's so hard to believe the first decade of the 2000's is over. I remember so clearly as a child thinking about the year 2020 and how that sounded so futuristic and "out there". I was CERTAIN we would be using hovercrafts as our main source of transportation by then. Now we're at the advent of the decade that leads to it. Bizarre.

This past decade was the first I spent entirely as an adult. And yet, I still don't feel grown up. Still so much to learn I guess. I was trying to remember what life was like 10 years ago. So much has happened. I decided to settle on a little summary of the highs and lows. So, here ya go:

2000
Highs: first year of marriage, graduating from college, moving away from "home" and starting out in a new city so hubby could start grad school, meeting our first great "couple" friends.
Lows: getting sick with mono the last month of school and battling it for about 6 months, getting a "real" job and discovering that money doesn't stretch as far as it did when I lived with mom and dad.

2001
Highs: getting our first "baby" - a pug named Max, discovering on Christmas day that our second baby and first princess was on the way, moving into our bigger 2 bedroom apartment.
Lows: juggling life as a fulltime employee in a "put food on the table" sort of job, while hubby worked hard as a fulltime student and parttime employee, seeing each other often only in the early morning or the wee hours of the night, worrying about the state of the world following 9/11.

2002
Highs: welcoming Princess #1 to our little family, selling our little two door Beretta (that was a pain in my arse by the end!) and buying our 4 door "family" car.
Lows: struggling with hyperemesis during the early part of my pregnancy and missing nearly a month of work, thus using up all my paid vacation time, going back to work fulltime when Princess #1 was 10 weeks old.

2003:
Highs: hubby finishing his graduate degree, entertaining job opportunities for hubby, my last day at work.
Lows: having several job leads for hubby not pan out, worrying about the future and how to provide.

2004:
Highs: finding the "right" job for hubby and starting a new adventure across the country, meeting new friends, discovering Princess #2 was on the way and 9 months later on Christmas day holding her in my arms for the first time.
Lows: hubby passing out the night before we began our cross-country move resulting in an overnight hospital stay and bills that swamped us for years later, beginning to wonder if the "right" job for hubby was really the "right" job, missing being close to family.

2005:
Highs: taking a God-directed leap of faith and moving back "home", having a job fall into my lap that more than provided for our family while hubby was looking for a job, hubby finding a job.
Lows: battling fear while taking that leap of faith, hubby being out of work for a few months, having to give up my stay at home mom status to work fulltime again, wondering what in the world we were doing with our lives and what our purpose was, my grandfather passing away.

2006:
Highs: getting involved with Northview Community Church which forever changed our view about what a church should be/do, hubby working his way up the ladder at work, surprising him with a positive pregnancy test - Princess #3, buying our mini-van.
Lows: my boss getting fired and subsequently my job become more inflexible and less accomodating, juggling being a fulltime (pregnant) employee and mom and feeling like a failure at all of it.

2007:
Highs: the birth of Princess #3, job promotion for hubby which brought a change of city and an opportunity to me to work only parttime, buying our first home.
Lows: realizing owning a home is a huge responsibility, learning to deal with the demands of hubby's new job, balancing three children - we are officially outnumbered.

2008:
Highs: learning how to balance three children and figuring out hubby and I pretty much rock at it (most of the time), getting the shock of a lifetime when we learned Princess #4 was on the way, Princess #1 starting Kindergarten.
Lows: wondering if this was "it", had we arrived at where we would be forever, because we weren't sure we were where we wanted to be, hubby's grandfather passing away.

2009:
Highs: welcoming Princess #4 to our family and officially parking the baby train, discovering a true peace and contentment about where we are in life, getting to quit my parttime job to stay at home with my babies and help a friend out by watching hers too, celebrating 10 amazing years of marriage and knowing it's only going to get better.
Lows: Princess #4's traumatic birth and my healing process, my grandmother passing away, discovering that money REALLY doesn't stretch once you're a family of 6.

Out with the old, in with the new. Here's to the next 10 years!