Sayonara 2009!

As 2009 comes to an end, all I can say to it is " Goodbye and Good Riddance!!" I hate the feeling of only remembering the bad things that come rather than the good, and that seems to haunt me about this year. I feel like Jake and I just can't catch a break. The past few months have been SUPER stressful with bills, money and it seems that something has terribly gone wrong each month! Lets take a look at the highs and MOSTLY Low's of 2009.
January: We celebrated the New Year in the boons, while I was pregnant, and surrounded by drunks. Maybe that was a sign of what was to come in 2009-- Misery. I did then celebrate my 23rd birthday. Whoo Hoo I'm getting old.

February: My husband turned 25 and our insurance premium went down. Hallelujah! I spent the most romantic night of the year babysitting my nephew and niece! That's okay, they gave me plenty of love and I made some $$$ doing it. Geesh, I kind of just made myself sound like a..... ANYWAYS

March: Had a 400 year old man, from H & R Block charge me $350 to tell me that we owed $2000 to IRS. Hell, I could of told myself that for free.

April: Went to a butt load of showers, 2 baby for myself, and 2 bridal. Bring on the gifts!! Jake and I also celebrated our 2nd year of marriage! So, April wasn't bad!

May: THE BEST THING OF ALL TIME, AND WHICH MADE MY YEAR, my son Peyton Michael Motley was born May 12, 2009 @ 9:53A.M weight 7 lbs 3 oz 19.75" long. Beautiful healthy baby.

We can fast forward through June and July because I stayed home with the baby boy, lost about 100 hours of sleep, pulled out a little bit of my hair and loved every minute of it!

August: Got back in the groove of working, only to discovere daycare IS NOT CHEAP. We took a trip to the ER for Jake, which we thought was appendicitis or kidney stones. Turned out it was neither, and we have still yet to know what was wrong with him. He took many tests the doctor couldn't find what was wrong. After this, the Medical bills started rollin' in. Let's just say we could purchase a pretty nice vehicle with the amount of medical bills we have accumulated!! At least they won't go to collections, am I right? $10 to you, $10 to you.....

September: SURPRISE! You have a new pool! Oh wait, that's a leak under our driveway. $1000 later we fixed one leak only to find out we have a 2nd leak. Awesome. Which we still haven't been able to afford. Double awesome. That means we have 2x higher water bills than we should. We started taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Class to learn how to save money and pay off debt. It's a great class but when you can barely pay your bills, I'm not worried about saving just yet. Good tool for the future though!

October: One of my good friend's baby was born, Cayden Wise. Peyton was a very Furrocious lion for his first Halloween.

November: What do you do when times get tough, you need more money but can't get a second job because you already work full time and have a 6 month old baby????? YOU GET A ROOMMATE!!!! Thats exactly what we did to help out on the bills. Too bad we haven't actually been able to put that money towards paying off anything because again, something always goes wrong. The first check we had to pay off the remaining balance we owed to the plumbers. Oh yea, a great highlight of this month.. JAKE GOT A NEW JOB!!!! Things are looking up... NOT

December: This month is definitely the icing on the cake for one of the hardest years ever. We had to fix our heater [$130], we were stolen from, I had "Fat Bitch" etched into the hood of my jeep, and THEN our family was involved in a car accident on Christmas day. We slid on ice and hit another car pushing them into a wall. Thank God everyone in the car was safe, and no one was hurt, but there was some damage to Daisy, my tank of a jeep. I go today to get her inspected to see how much damage was done to her.

As you can see, this was a very hard year for us. I feel that if Jake and I can make it through this year... we can just about make it through anything!! We're hoping for things to look up in 2010. Full of health, wealth and happiness. oh, and to be debt free! Psh! Hope everyone brings in the New Year safely!!

Much Love

I survived Thankmas!!

Definition of Thankmas: The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when my Iowan crazy family gets together to celebrate the holidays. Whelp, we survived this year! I didn't think it was going to happen, but we did. Jake and I haven't seen my family since our wedding, which was almost three years ago [yikes!], nor have we been to Iowa in almost 4 years!! We flew this year instead of driving the 14 hour trek. Whoo, thanks Peyton! He was really the only reason we didn't drive! So yes, not only did we survive Thankmas but we survived Peyton's first airplane ride---- barely!! The trip down there wasn't THAT bad, but coming back was terrible. Not only was Peyton EXHAUSTED from the trip, but he's also teething, so you know this made out for a fantastic trip. He cried/fussed for the last hour on the plane. Yes, we were that family that had the screaming kid on the airplane that everyone loves. UGH. Peyton didn't want to sit still. He wanted to stand up, look out the window, stand up looking the other way, stand up holding onto the seat in front of us and almost grabbing the ladies hair, lean over to daddy to hold him then immediately want to come back to me. I mean, my arm muscles start to ache just thinking about this tragedy. Then... the worst of the worst happened.... he took the biggest poop of his life right when the doctor had put the "fasten seat belt" sign so we couldn't get up and change it. Then they decided to descend which made his ears hurt and he cried some more. Luckily we made it out of there alive, clean and with no hearing loss. On a lighter note, it was great to see all of the family. It had been so long and so many people have changed and grown up. It was sad to see how much my grandmas had aged since the last time I saw her. I didn't realize she was that bad. Makes me not want to grow old. It was great seeing all my aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins' children! It was definitely a full house full of delicious food, laughter and tears [good and bad.]

Before I end this I just wanted to give you an update on Jake and Pey Pey! Pey Pey is so close to crawling. He actually took a few paces crawling the other night in order to get his toy. I wanted to start screaming but I was afraid that I would startle and scare him. He can say "mama" but doesn't associate me with that word. Soon though. He waved to my mom when we were in Iowa. Cutest thing ever. We officially lowered his crib since he has started pulling himself up on the bars. I can't believe he's 7 months old.
Jake had orientation last week and is in a training class all this week for his new job. He had a small glimpse last week of what he was going to be doing and he/I think he's going to really enjoy it. Plus, when there is an incentive [commission] it makes you work harder! He looks so snazzy dressing up in a button down and tie. I dont know why we didn't think of this before!! I've enjoyed being the modern June Cleaver. Waking up early in the morning, fixing our lunches, breakfasts, bottles, all the while getting myself and Peyton ready for school/work. Cooking dinner 5 days a week is definitely going to be a new step for me. We've started planning out our meals for the week and going shopping for those items. Wow, how we've grown up in the past year. Well, thats all I have to say for now!!

Much love

Ho Ho The Holidays!!!

Wow! What a Thanksgiving this year was. I'm still stuffed from all the turkey and ham I could eat. ACtually, I'm still eating off of it thanks to my mom sending me home with some!! Probably should throw the rest away since its about a week old! :) We had three Thanksgiving dinners this year, and we're going to add one more to the pot when Jake, Peyton and I go up to Iowa for "Thankmas"! WHOO WHOO!! Wednesday night we spent Thanksgiving with Jake's mom and brother. Thursday morning off to the Leonard household, and that evening to Jake's dad's house for yet another feast. This year was full of food and family! Very enjoyable! I'm sure Peyton enjoyed his first thanksgiving as well. He was sure pooped after a long day of being passed from family member to family memeber. Jake and I did the unthinkable and headed to Walmart, Black Friday, at 4 am! That was complete and total madness and we loved every minute of it. We stood in line for a little over an hour to get a 32' TV for $250... even though it wasn't for us. We were nice enough to buy that for my dad --- with his credit card of course! :) Jake and I were more than prepared to throw some 'bows [elbows] if we needed to in order to get that TV. Sure enough, at 5:25am we walked away with a new TV. We also did some Christmas shopping for the family and Peyton.
The Motley Crew is sure excited about the next few weeks. WE're going Iowa to spend time with my mom's side of the family; "Thankmas". I'm sure you can figure what that is. [Thanksgiving/Christmas just in case] I haven't seen my family in almost three years and this will be the first time for them to meet Peyton! WE're so ready for our journey up there. This will be Peyton's first plane ride and first experience with COLD WEATHER!! Thats okay, check out the new coat his Maw Maw bought him!




I'm pretty sure he's ready to take on that cold Iowa weather!! Such a cutie! Peyton is growing like a weed. He's almost 7 months old, 19.7 Lbs and 27 1/2 inchese long. WOW. Time for a new carseat. He's sitting up, turning in a circle on his bum, scooting backwards while trying to crawl and trying to pull himself up on things. He loves to grab and rip things! I have a feeling he will do just fine with his Christmas presents this year!!

Much love