In retrospect

About this time last year, Ray and I were daydreaming of a great year ahead. Who doesn't like a FRESH start? We were happy in our friendship, in love, in our marriage, and in the journey towards parenthood. 2007 was going to be our best year yet. I spent the first month of the new year expanding. Our son was growing and growing and growing. Finally, on February 9th, 8 days before his due date, Grayson Koa was born. He came in to this world healthy and happy, just the way we ordered him. ;) Our 10 lb, 1 oz boy was the most beautiful, wonderful being we'd ever seen before. Not one thing about him was flawed. And neither Ray nor I could believe WE created him. That morning, at 7:56am, we declared it to be the best day ever and the rest of the year with our new baby boy to be our happiest, most complete year yet...and it was. If I could use one word to describe our 2007, I'd say "Family". It was all about me, Ray, and Grayson. And we vowed to continue that practice for all the years to come.

We decided not to have a baby right away. Actually, we waited quite a while. 5 years. It isn't like we avoided the subject during that time though. Here and there, since Day 1, we talked about one day having a family. It was on our minds and definitely part of our plans. We just weren't quite ready. We spent our five years getting to know each other and spending lots of time together. I'm not saying that is what everyone should do. It is what we decided to do and what worked best for us. We didn't wait because we wanted to save for a bigger house, a van, or our child's college education. I guess we did it for selfish reasons. We wanted time to ourselves. But when we decided the wait was over, we put it to a screeching halt.

Like every other parent on the planet, we had NO idea what having a baby was like. People told us stories. We observed others. We read books. But no one or nothing could've prepared us for what was to come - the challenges and MUCH more significant, the rewards. We were told about the expenses that would come our way. We understood all that. Besides, we got a good taste of the expenses as we prepared for a baby. We had a lot of help from family and friends. We are so grateful to everyone for that. But we bought a lot of things too. We purchased the furniture, the bedding, etc. Ray worked hard to get the room painted, the furniture put together, and to tend to me for 9+ months. :)

Needless to say, since Grayson was born, we've bought things we never dreamed of buying like formula, diapers, clothes to fit his little body that grows every single day, etc. Those additional items to buy on our grocery list each week required some adjusting to our finances. We don't complain about it though. If anything, we laugh about it. Those things Grayson needs to add up to be quite a bit, but we don't mind. We knew what all having a baby involved (as far as costs anyway). He is worth every penny we have and so much more. Both Ray and I would eat ramen noodles every day, wear second hand clothing, and sleep on the floor if it meant Grayson could have the best of the best. He's our main squeeze.

It is the other things we were hit with this year that lead us to say that the best thing that happened to us in 2007 was Grayson. Because to be honest, we were hit left and right with expenses and unwanted "to do's". I can't speak for Ray, but I can tell you how I felt off and on this year. I was afraid. I was angry. I grew bitter. And there were many times all I could do was sit down and cry. While the relationships in our house (husband and wife, dad and son, mom and son) were strong and happy, so many other things in our house were falling apart.

The first home repair needing immediate attention was the commode in our front bathroom. It was original to our house, 55 years old. On several occasions it overflowed. Yeah, it wasn’t a pleasant mess to clean up, especially when you are nearly 9 months pregnant. I still find it ironic that out of all the things that would go wrong with our house in 2007, it was the toilet that first needed repair/replacing. Why? Well, because it was a good representation of what was to come in the next 11 months - money (LOTS of money) down the toilet.

Not long after Grayson was born, we had to replace our water heater. Like every other expense, it was one we didn’t plan on. But the great thing was enjoying the benefit of having longer lasting warm water. It was a luxury we learned to live without until Grayson came along. He needed to have enough warm water to get through his bath. And since Ray and I hadn’t ever bathed an infant before and were trying to figure out how to best do it, Gray’s baths were quite lengthy at times. ;) Like I said, once we got our new water heater, we all enjoyed a warm/hot bath or shower. Personally, I depend on a nice warm shower to start my day. It gives me a great start. Standing under a hot shower of water that turns ice cold without warning will piss you off. Trust me.

Oh and I can’t forget that when they came out to evaluate the problem with our water heater, they told us it was a MAJOR fire hazard. We were told it could’ve blown up. That is how bad of a shape it was in. As a matter of fact, we were told not to use the hot water while the techs left our house for about an hour just to go get the new water heater!!!!! It was scary. Yet again, we knew we weren’t replacing something because we thought we could stand doing it. It HAD to be done.

We had several plumbing issues this year - in our kitchen and our bathrooms. The sinks, the toilets, and the drain to our washing machine were all involved. One thing I can say is that we can give great referrals to home repair companies now. In the beginning, we cold called businesses from the Yellow Pages. Now, we have people we regularly use. As a matter of fact, Robert and Fred, make up the plumbing team that is assigned to our house. And as odd as it might sound, they have watched Grayson grow up. Every time they come, they talk about how much he’s grown. They have seen Grayson more than most of our family members.

Let’s see - what next?! We had to call out heater/air conditioner repair guys all throughout the year. They replaced this part and that one, made this adjustment and that one, and of course, always presented us with quite a bill before leaving our house. 9 times out of 10, the repair they made or the replacement they did was either a temporary fix or did not fix the problem at all. Of course, when the problem wasn’t fixed, we had to call them back out to look at the problem again - or even worse, the original problem plus new problems their work created. It was a sucky situation. Grayson and I grew so tired of our routine (particularly his feedings and his nap) being so interfered with. The running joke in our house became Grayson saying, “Dad, Mom invites so many strange men into our house”. When you’re so stressed (and when you have silly personalities) like ours, you have to find a way to laugh when all you want to do is cry - or punch a wall.

Finally, when the Texas heat began to break through the coolness of spring, we had to call the a/c guys out again. That lead to more bad news. We needed a new external a/c unit. BAM! Another slap in the face! Translation: Thousands of dollars coming out of our wallets and into someone else’s yet again. Unfortunately, when something goes so horribly wrong with your house, making the repair or replacement needed can’t wait. We knew the parts of our air conditioner inside our house (the ducts and such) could stand updating or replacing, but we figured (and were told) having a new a/c unit would make a huge difference. I suppose it did. When we sat in our living room, the old unit sounded like an old cranky piece of construction equipment. The new unit wasn’t an annoyance at all. It also saved us a good bit on our electric bill.

But even after that huge expense and getting that new shiny silver machine in our back yard, we still had problems that required us to call the repair techs back to our house. It was a never-ending nightmare. We quickly realized the techs were most likely screwing us over. And if they weren’t, they sure made us feel like they were because they were JERKS. If we had to spend all this money, FINE, but giving it to them came to an end. We cut ties with those guys and said we’d call someone else the next time we had an a/c or heater disaster…and unfortunately, that wasn’t too far off.

I have no idea of I’m going in order here…and really, it doesn’t matter. The next related problem was with our heater. We discovered it when the weather turned cool (of course). When we had a baby in our house (that doesn’t have the best insulation) and we needed to run the heat, the heater wouldn’t work. Can you guess what I’m gonna say next?! YES, our furnace needed replacing. When I got Ray on the line and handed the tech my cell phone, he told Ray our furnace was actually emitting some carbon monoxide in our house. It was another job that HAD to be done. It cost us quite a bit of money (that we weren’t planning on spending). But once it was done, we had piece of mind that we would go to sleep that next night and definitely wake up the next morning.

Here recently, we had to replace our thermostat. Our heating unit would run 2-3 minutes, click off, and cut on 2-3 minutes later - only to run another 2 or 3 minutes. When the tech (from the new heating/air conditioning company we found and love) came out, we were told the mercury in our old thermostat had become quite lazy. It was causing our unit to become very confused. And get this - our thermostat was about 6 degrees off! We were so glad to get it replaced. Now our heater doesn’t kick on as often, and our house holds the temperature well. We don’t get that hot/cold/hot/cold feeling like we used to.

The problems we had this year weren’t all with our house. We had problems with our cars too, which are not that old at all. I can’t go into details because I don’t remember what all went wrong with them. I don’t remember much from the Auto Repair course I took in college. ;) Let’s just sum it up by saying the repairs cost us about 2 grand total.

A huge hit to our checkbooks was a problem I had with my body. An umbilical hernia my doctor discovered while I was pregnant became a HUGE problem. Fortunately, it didn’t bother me much when our 10 pound baby was inside me. What a blessing huh? It was after his birth that the problem started. At first, I noticed how sore my stomach was. Then after a few kicks from Grayson, the pain became UNREAL. Within a few days, my doctor referred me to a surgeon, and the sucker was removed. The recovery was nothing compared to the pain I experienced until the hernia was removed. Since our insurance isn’t that great, we had to pay QUITE A BIT for the surgery out of our own pockets. Again, not an expense we could avoid. Besides the pain I was experiencing, I couldn’t provide Grayson the care he needed. I had the physical pain of the hernia and emotional pain from not being able to pick up and hold our son the way I wanted to. It was just a bad deal.

FINALLY, we had enough. We put our house on the market before and had talked about doing it again several times throughout the years. After all we had been through this year, we decided the time to sell our house was NOW. The bad thing is that the real estate market had recently taken a big hit. There were plenty of houses to sell, but buyers were freaked out. We didn’t care. It was worth a shot. So, for months, we worked hard to put together a list of what house repairs/improvements we would like to do and what repairs/improvements we had to do. I’m proud to say we did all the jobs that HAD to be done and a few that we wanted to do. The entire process required lots of time and hard work. Oh, it involved MONEY too. But here we are, at the end of the year, with our house on the market. We are realistic but are feeling quite hopeful about a sale in our future. We have our fingers and toes crossed as we daydream of a home that gives us a little more room, that puts us near a good school for Grayson - and most important, a home that doesn’t cost us so much money. Please wish us luck in our journey towards a new home and a life with less stress and heartache.