February 2009:: DaddyMac & Buckaroo in their matching golf shirts at Buckaroo’s Preschool.

March 2009:: Enjoying a beautiful early Spring day on the bay beach…

April 2009:: The kids dying easter eggs…

May 2009:: Buckaroo turns 5!!

June 2009:: I celebrated my 29th Birthday & went to see Rascall Flatts with my sisters & my mom!!

July 2009:: One of our many trips to the boardwalk…we are so lucky to live so close!

August 2009:: Visiting DaddyMac at work on the beach…again, we are lucky to live so close!

September 2009:: Buckaroo’s 1st Day of Kindergarten…(tears…)

October 2009:: Dora the Explorer & Spiderman…

December 2009:: My favorite moment from Christmas 2009–Christmas Eve at my Dads!

Wondering why I am writing about 2009? Click HERE.

After I succumed to anxiety and depression at the end of 2007, I vowed to never again miss a therapy session and to get my mental health back on track in 2008. And I did just that. For the most part. Imagine a buey in the ocean dipping slightly above and slightly below the water in rhythm with the tides. That was how I spent 2008. I did what I needed to do to stay afloat.

In early 2008, DaddyMac & I made a big decision to move. Again. But this time was different. (a) it would be our last and final move, and (b) it was under very special circumstances. As you know, my father-in-law passed away in 2007. My mother-in-law decided she could not longer live in the home in which they raised their family together. But it was a special place and she wanted special people to live there instead. Those special people were us.

Even though we were content in our newly remodeled home, it was a easy decision. It’s a beautiful ranch on wooded property. The home itself was surely an upgrade for us, and it was an ideal neighborhood to raise our children in. And, it was only one town over from where we were anyway, so it wasn’t like we were choosing to relocate miles away.

The first half of 2008 was spent packing and moving, and it was a great distraction for all of us. The June, we moved into DaddyMac’s childhood home and made it our own.

That Fall, we honored the one-year anniversary of my father-in-laws passing as a family. On that very same day, we learned that DaddyMac’s grandmother was ill. We lost her after a very short battle with cancer that Christmas Eve.

2005: Boom!
‘05 was a whirlwind. DaddyMac & I decided to up-and-move to the next town over in early ‘05. His work commute would be, oh, less than a minute and my mom would be less than a mile away. Fortunately, for the sellers, we looked at our soon-to-be new home in a snowstorm. Unfortunately for us, it was a piece of $hit. DaddyMac, Buckaroo, our beagle Elvis, and I moved into my parents basement for about three months while we gutted it to the studs and started from scratch. The hard work paid off ’cause in the end, we had a beautiful semi-custom home that we loved so much. Another great change came in ‘05…I got a job. Well, sort of. I decided to become one of those home party consultants for this direct selling company called AtHome America. I fell hard for their quaint, yet affordable Pottery Barn look-a-likes, and the thought of decorating my new home with my discount while getting out of the house was fabulous! Within months of joining the company, my sales soared and I was the #2 HomeStyle Specialist in the nation! I even won myself a trip to Mexico, though I took the buyout instead, opting to vinyl side our new home with the dough!

2006: Boom!
Another fantastic year…I won myself a nice little getaway to the AtHome America home office in Chicago that year, and it was the first time I ever went away all by myself. It was so hard leaving DaddyMac and Buckaroo at home, but it was only for 3 days, and it was much needed so I bit the bullet, swallowed myself a Xanax and hopped a plane to Chicago. So. Much. Fun.

On Buckaroo’s 2nd birthday, we found out that I was pregnant! It was such an exciting surprise because we were certainly ready to grow our family. Even though I spent that summer hugging the porcelain God, by Fall I was glowing, and showing! My dad suffered from a heart attack early that Fall, but by October, he was well enough to accompany us for a short trip to Disney… which is a story in itself that I’ll save for another time.

I was rather gigantic by the end of ‘06, and ready to pop.

2007: Pow!
‘07 ended up as my least favorite year from the decade. Sure, Miss Mac was born and that was a remarkable time, but the joy of her birth came to a hault just two months later when we learned that my father-in-law had a brain tumor. We later found out that he did, indeed, have brain and lung cancer, and would undergo brain surgery which would only remove a portion of the tumor. One month after his diagnosis, we learned about another illness within our family, but that person was spared luckily and is doing well today. DaddyMac didn’t go to work at his summer job that year. Instead, he spent 5 days a week taking care of his dad, and taking care of his family’s home–he did everything from taking his Dad back and forth to treatments, to mowing the lawn.

That October, we lost him to cancer. To have known my father-in-law was to have known a truly remarkable person.

My anxiety worsened after his death. I witnessed the unraveling of the seven months prior to his death and it scared the living daylights out of me. To make matters of my mind worse, our family lost another aquaintance a few months later–a young mom of two who suffered from a blood clot thanks to a birth control pill. That put me over the edge.

December 2007 is still a blur to me. I remember going through the motions, although I don’t recall much more than that. I was depressed. But, once again, I got help and made it through the darkness. I’ll always consider those my darkest days and I have vowed to never again miss a therapy session!

Stay tuned, 2008 was pretty great.

Wondering why I am writing about ‘05, ‘06 & ‘07? Read HERE!

That basically sums up my life from ‘02-’04.

My parents threw me a graduation party on January 26, 2002. Everyone important in my life was there to help me celebrate my accomplishment. Little did they, or myself for that matter, know that they would witness something big happen to me that night, something that would lead me into the next chapter of my life.

That’s right, the gym teacher proposed!! He got down on one knee in front of all of our friends and family and asked me to marry him. A handful of people knew, and it truly explained the extra hustle in my moms steps that day. Soon after our engagement, we set the date: March 29, 2003.

The rest of ‘02 was busy….busy planning our wedding, busy adjusting to engaged life, and busy trying to figure out what exactly I was going to do with that life. I graduated with a degree in Communications, but only survived 2 months commuting to a nearby city to work as someones slave in an Advertising firm. I. HATED. IT.

DaddyMac & I decided to buy an embroidery business that my aunt ran for many years. She was getting ready to go back to work and built herself a nice, little home-based business. To me, there was no job more ideal–being my own boss, working from home, being creative with the actual work, and yet taking care of everything from the books to the customer service. After hiring a flatbed to move the ginormous machinery into our basement, I was officially in business (with a few extra “odd” jobs along the way–substitute teaching, and coaching a local high school cheering team!).

For the rest of ‘02 and straight into ‘03, I did what any normal bride-to-be does: workout, diet, and workout some more. Life was great, and we were happily married on March 29, 2003 (and I was happily 108 pounds to boot!).

The months following our wedding and honeymoon were elating. And on October 31, 2003, it got even better. On a whim, I took a pregnancy test. We weren’t trying, but we weren’t preventing, and I was a few days late. That test was positive! I was a wreck–every emotion went through my entire body in like .5 seconds. I had to wait to tell DaddyMac ’cause he was at work, and since I couldn’t bare to keep the secret, I called my stepmom & a close friend of mine right away.

I didn’t have the easiest pregnancy, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. And even though Buckaroo spent 10 days in the NICU because he was born 6 weeks early, I brought home a healthy, handsome baby boy in the spring of 2004.

Adjusting to life with baby was exactly as you’d expect–no need to elaborate there! We got the hang of it, but it took some time. Getting decent sleep took time. Getting back to a routine took time. And getting back to my pre-baby weight took a lot of time. Heck–that really never happened! But none of it mattered because being a MOM to Buckaroo was all I could ask for.

The fall of ‘04 is where my hypochondria veered its butt-ugly head. I always knew I was a worry wort, but being a Mom sure brought out the “best” of it. I started to worry about all sorts of stuff, all day every day. Obsessing over things. Mainly my health. I just wanted to live forever to spend every waking moment with my bundle of joy. I didn’t want to die of a heart attack, or cancer, or some other fatal issue that an otherwise healthy 24-year old could suffer. I went for big time blood work, echo cardiograms and stress tests to rule out all the “crazies” in my head. And when they all came back normal, and my anxiety was still there, I had to turn to professional help and even had to go on medication.

But, you know what? By that Christmas, I was feeling much better and was certain that ‘05 would rock!!!

Want to know why I am writing about ‘02-’04? Read HERE.

I had survived “Y2K,” was swept off my feet by the gym teacher, my anxiety started to subside, I turned 21, settled into my college commuter lifestyle and prepared to graduate with my bachelors degree in Communications at the end of the year–and for those of you keeping track, that would be 6 months shy of 4 years!

My relationship with the gym teacher was most certainly at the next level since we were living together by the end of 2001. To ring in the new year, we escaped to Montreal for a long weekend. I was certain this would be the weekend he’d propose.

Montreal was like no other city I had ever visited. Everyone was so polite, the streets were immaculate, the buildings filled with character. It was freeeeezing. We walked hand in hand throughout the city for hours. It would be the perfect place for him to ask for my hand in marriage–maybe shortly after we kissed to ring in the New Year.

The first night we were there, I got insanely drunk at the bar. Somehow, our conversation went towards marriage. The gym teacher totally blew off the topic every time I brought it up. Finally, when my drunken state of mind could no longer handle the dissing, I started crying my eyes out–no, bawling to be exact–telling him how I was certain he was going to propose to me that weekend and how I was wrong and that he’ll never ask me to marry him. He shook his head, and said that, no, in fact, he was not planning to ask me to marry him that weekend but that he did love me very much.

Before you start having sympathy pains for me, just know this….he already bought the ring and had a plan to propose less than one month from that exact date that my drunk a$ was whining in the bar. Of course I didn’t know this, and luckily I didn’t scare him away that night.

Despite that great let-down, we had a fantastic weekend in Montreal and rung in the new year in an Irish Pub watching Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve. I would have had it no other way to ring in the next remarkable year of my life.

**I am choosing not to touch upon 9-11, though I realize it was a significant part of 2001. Like hundreds of thousands of people, I can tell you my every move, and every detail about that day. But I am going to choose to keep that private.

Why am I writing about 2001? Read HERE.