The House Your Dollar Built: Peace Out, 2015!

I have never really been glad to see a year go, but this year... well, I'm ecstatic.

January 1, 2015 wasn't a bad day

We watched Auntie Goose do the Polar Plunge!!!

But then...

The twins came 6 weeks early

and we learned how hard it is to be NICU parents

having to take CPR on this creepy baby that Aaron had to blow up through its butt... and then classes on how to use apnea monitors that the babies would need for months...

- which also showed us how amazing NICU staff is!

Lili couldn't wait for her sisters to come home!

her face when she found out Katherine was on the way!

But then... when Mom and Dad went back to work because we were on

Katherine had a fall :(

and she looked like Uncle Fester

And then Mom went to ER the next night and had emergency surgery (okay, I didn't take this one. Actually, I welcomed the surgery because it meant SLEEP!)

Which meant TONS of follow up (expensive) appointments

Then Lili turned 2!!! We had something happy to think about. We used our free educator passes at Shedd to celebrate! Lili, however, wasn't as happy as usual...

and after puking all night taking us back to the ER... we found out she had strep throat and she threw up for a week. We had to isolate her in one room for a day. And it was the worst day ever. It took us demanding a shot in her butt to be cured. Lesson learned on being persistent.

And then

BAM! Dad and Lili got hit when Dad returned to finish the end of the school year and the van was totaled...

And then... Lili got strep AGAIN

(this is not a photo of that moment... I was TOO exhausted to document the insanity)

And THEN

Dad was excessed from his summer school job, Mom got a call that Central Office gave her job away because I went past my 30 days unpaid FMLA, so I "might" not have a job in fall, and we were even more broke than we thought ever possible

(not me, I'm blonde, don't own an adult wallet or fashionable jacket, and would have a lot more tears)

Mom was bartending to make ends meet but had to use that money to pay for the broken wheel hub on the car so Dad picked up an Uber gig but then the car's door handle broke so he couldn't pick anyone up...

Things just COULDN'T get worse, right?

Then our landlords came over and told us we'd have to move :( WE LOVED OUR HOUSE, we loved our neighborhood, we loved our neighbors. Our amazing neighbor had even quit her job to be our babysitter for the year.

We MISS you house

So- that's when I created this blog and the next day we were interviewed by CBS 58 and it was the scariest thing I've ever done... thankfully Sachelle and her cameraman were incredible and made it not-too-terrifying

You all helped us raise almost $4,000 which is AMAZING. It isn't enough to get us into a house, yet... so we moved into a duplex and we get stomped at for being too noisy, left notes for using the wrong items, accused of breaking things we don't touch, and talked about through walls that are very thin.

I took Lili out to shovel while the babies napped, but I used the wrong shovel... :-/. I also left an apology note. Time to move... again.