Goodbye 2009

What a year? Newlyweds, homeowners, and...parents?
When we set our New Year's resolutions last year, it was the usual; get in shape, pay off debt, save money for a house, blah blah blah. We never anticipated the life changing events 2009 would bring us.
We began the year paying some credit cards, paying more than just the minimum on credit cards. There was money starting to accumulate in our savings, including the tax return from 2008. The $8,000 stimulus came a long and instead of waiting for the end of the year to find a house, we decided to look and get the first house we looked into in April.
As we were getting ready to move into our new home Marcus' car floods in rain that no one saw coming for Jersey Village (the rest of the city, a tiny bit of raining). So, now a new car. A car that we could afford, was 2 years old, was on Marcus' list of dream cars, and we knew would take more to maintain than a non-sports car. We were fine; the monthly payments were even less than the other car.
Probably about a month after moving in and getting a new car, we find out we're having a baby. We never planned to get pregnant, and at first there was worry and anxiety. What would we do with a child when we don't have any saving b/c we used it for the down payment, the stimulus money would be used for furniture we really, really needed, and even though we had money left at the end of the money we knew it would be used on household items? Lawn mower, vacuum, fixing the a/c unit, any other things that came up as home owners, and now medical bills.
At least we had 8 more months to get used to the idea and adjust to having a little one to take care of.
Meanwhile, no stimulus money until mid-September b/c of the dumb post office. Oy, the government has red tape. No savings being accumulated b/c it's being spent on the house and on me. Insurance is crap once you actually use it and find out that even though you make monthly payments that end up being around $3,000 by the end of the year, there is still a $1,000 copay for 2, you still have to pay 20% of all the crazy blood work you get when you're pregnant, and 10% of any other procedures that insurance partially covers. A lot of talks of how our future will change with a baby coming. Through the year we talked a lot of speeding up our professional goals, decided on how we would raise our child since we come from different cultures and were raised differently (not too different; thank goodness), and adjusting our budget.
Now we are a little less overwhelmed with the idea being homeowners and becoming parents. Since we married at the end of 2008, we've also had to adjust to married life, and this has been difficult but wonderful.
I love my husband, I love my baby, I love my life, and I love where our future is going.