John and I met in school. He was a year ahead of me, but we had always gone to school together and knew of each other. My Junior year we had PE together, and that was the first time we talked. We dated for a couple of months and went to prom together, but both of us had recently gotten out of high school romances gone bad and neither of us were looking to jump into anything. We kept in touch and occasionally went to the mall or out to eat, but it wasn't until my senior year, after he had graduated, that we were in an actual "relationship."
John was able to find a decent job out of high school, and I went to college for a career in education. We got engaged and moved in together. I decided to become a speech pathologist and he stumbled into a career in welding. He worked to pay all of our bills, and I did what I could to help out while in a competitive, demanding program in school.
In the spring of 2008 we had a wonderful surprise when we found out we were expecting our first child together. Money was not in abundance (to say the least) and so we had to put off having a wedding until after the baby was born. Halfway through the pregnancy we had a reality check that babies are expensive, and that money was not going to get better until I finished school. So one Monday, we randomly decided to go to the court house and get married. It was July 28, 2008 to be exact.
In December our first son was born, Carson. 2 weeks later, John's work unexpectedly shut down, filed for bankruptcy, and his last 2 paychecks became tied up in their legal trouble. We thought we were broke before, but we had no idea! I started working another job on top of going to school full time and John unintentionally became a stay-at-home dad while he looked for work. Fortunately, only 5 months later he found an amazing job which paid twice his previous salary. Things started looking up, and soon after we found out we were expecting our second son, Austin.
In March, 2010, Austin was born. I finished graduate school and we bought the perfect house on a dead end in a quiet area. We had the perfect family and the perfect life. I found a job in a school, which was exactly where I wanted to be. And soon, life became even better than before when we found out we were expecting our third child. Sure enough, it was a 3rd boy. We thought we were prepared for what was to come and knew what to expect, but we were very wrong
In June, 2012, Landon was born with Hirschsprung's disease. He was not diagnosed until he was 2 weeks old after we almost lost him, but that is a story in and of itself which can be found under the link "Landon's Story." Since then things have been complicated, which inspired me to start writing about our journey- through the good times and the bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment