Christmas

Christmas... A time for gift giving and spending time with family. A time to show people how much you really care about them. That is what I was taught growing up. From what I have gathered that is what most people were taught. 

In our house I try so hard to keep up with the caring aspect of it all, I try to show everyone how mug I care for them with the gifts I have typically made for them. Yet as the kids get older it seems to be more and more difficult to do this. They seem to expect everything from everyone. It's not even noon and we have already had 2 different "is this all I'm gettings" on top of that we have had a child that didn't care about anything they received. They literally opened their gifts and chucked them to the side. Typically this would be followed with a super excited time of playing with said new things but this time it's not happening. Our ungrateful children decided that Christmas was the perfect day to be total asshats. The trashed houses, asked fathers the rest of their present were, told people that they hated the things that they were given. They were fucking awful. Never in my life have I been so embarrassed of these kiddos. Normally they are awesome. Christmas. Nope not fucking happening. 

I used to lie Christmas so fucking much. Now I fucking despise this shit. Seriously despise this shit. I'm dread Christmas morning more than anything else in the world. All I can think is that when we wake up in the morning these kids are going to rip through all this shit and then ask for more or say they hate it. Why bother with this shit. I'm so done with this bullshit. 

Christmas Stress

Who else gets super stressed around the holidays? I know I do. I get really stressed. Like flip out and slap someone for no reason stressed. Growing up I never understood the stress of the holidays but now as an adult, a parent and a wife I totally understand it. 

You are expected to just pull all of this extra money out of nowhere and buy people things you normally wouldn't even buy yourself!! Add to that you have the few people that can afford it buying their kids iPads for Christmas and then people like me feel awful because they can't even afford to buy their kid a generic tablet :/ 

I guess what I am getting at is that this so called holiday season has changed. It's become a show of money and power. The more money you have the more power you have. I used to be such a grinch around the holidays and to be honest I still am I hate feeling like I am failing my child because I can't afford to buy him a fucking iPad. I hate that because everyone else in the world that is doing so well for themselves and can provide more than enough for their children on Christmas that I am left feelings worthless and like I am a bad parent. 

I am not a bad parent by all means. My child has everything he could ever think he needs to live. He just doesn't have the luxuries like an iPad and a new bike every year or name brand clothes. He does however have a mother who loves him more than anything. A Mother that is willing to do just about anything to make sure he has Christmas presents under the tree. 

After everything that has happened this winter we were faced with the worth thing ever. We were flat broke. Nothing in savings, no extra cash stashed anywhere and no payday in the near future (because although my husband works he does not get paid until the day after Christmas). So there I was panicking about making sure the kids had Christmas because hubs kiddos will be ere for Christmas too. You know what I did? I manned up and went to the pawn shop. I pawned my computer just to make sure the kids had Christmas and that we would have money to live on for the next few days. 

That is what this world has come to. It's a time for desperate measures. A time where you literally work your ass off so that you can barely scrape by. I just don't feel like that is living. It's barely surviving. 

So there you have it. The cold truth. Our family is considered middle class by our income but in reality we are in poverty. We are broke so broke that at times I will lock myself in the bathroom crying because I am just not sure how I am going to feed my family the next day. Can you imagine having that feeling. Just feeling totally worthless because no matter what you do it's not good enough? No matter how hard you try there is always something that comes up?  

I can I live with it everyday. 

So I went to the bar and met found my forever...

So I went to the bar last summer with a few friends.. In reality I didn't even really want to go, but Kadence was out of town with family and I really didnt feel like spending another Saturday at home alone so after a ton of "BUT YOU HAVE TO GO's" I ended up going.. I am so happy that I went! I found my forever at that bar! 

 See all those pictures above? The first one on the left is me happy as could be at the bar that I didnt want to go to! It was a paint party! And it was a friggin blast! The one in the middle is me and the best friend right as I got paint in my mouth! That was not so much fun! The picture on the bottom is Me and new HUBs dancing with each other with both our other bestie that were dancing as well 

 This was our first christmas together

 Here's New Years

And then we get to the fun stuff! He proposed to me I believe February 12th, 2014. It's a ridiculous story actually, I was trying to smother him when he pulled me off of him and asked me to marry him ;) 

From there came the planning! I tried on sooo many dresses! Below are some pictures of SOME of the ones I tried on, not even all of them! 

^^ I really really like that dress but the beading and the lace made it really really itchy! That is why I am walking like I am a beefy mofo in the first picture!

 ^ That dress was ok but it just wasnt doing it for me

 

^ I was actually far from thrilled with this dress I only tried it on because HUBs niece picked it out

 

^ I actually loved this dress, except my favorite part of it was that it was really soft and fluffy on the bottom, I couldnt sell the dress to myself just for the texture but I still had a blast in the dress!








^That dress was gorgeous and I loved everything about it except for the extreme itchyness of it! Comfort was super important to me!

And then there was this dress ^^^ I really really loved everything about this dress! It was gorgeous and comfy and super light weight! That was really important to me! We were having an outside wedding and my dress couldnt weigh a billion pounds!  Only catch was that everyone around me didnt like it. They said it was far to simple for me.. :(  SO I continued to try on dresses

 ^^ I found this dress and was in love with everything about it except the price! I knew that this was going to be the dress that I wanted to get! I was just going to buy it somewhere else!


But that did not stop me from trying on a few more dresses :)

I really didnt like that ^^ dress! I thought that it was the ugliest thing in the world but the sales lady insisted that once I got it on I would fall in love with it and have to have it! I tried it on and guess what I still hated it! 

So there I was ready to buy my dress but refusing to spend $1000 on a dress that I would only being wearing once!  I had every intention on buying it online from China, I had it all mapped out as to when I had to order it by so that it would have plenty of time to get to me and then if something happened I would still have time to go out and get something different. 

One day I was invited to a bridal show... I didnt really feel like going to it but I figured that I might as well. It was 3 months until the wedding and I still had somethings that I needed to figure out. I took bestfriend with me and when we walked in and looked up the stair case we saw this gorgeous dress on display! I went up to look at it and was asking about it only to find out that it was being raffled off.. So best friend and I went on to buy some raffle tickets for it figuring why not might as well try... We bought a total of $15 worth of tickets and went on about our day.  Guess what? I won that dress! It was a $1500 Maggie Sottero dress,and it was mine!!!!

I have a feeling that the lady drew my name on purpose, I had been talking to her and told her our story about how we were trying to pay for everything on our own and that I needed to work some extra hours at work to make sure I would be able to order my dress in time because the wedding was in three months and I still didnt have a dress! 

 

 

 Either way that dress was GORGEOUS and it was MINE! 


The date was set, I had a dress and a location I was good to go :) 

We had our ceremony out at my grandma's house and it was gorgeous! We walked in the rain, it rained during our ceremony and amazingly enough stopped as we were saying our vows!


After that we had our reception at his mom's house, who by the way is absolutely amazing! I adore her! She was so much help! 

All in all it was the time of my life but I am so happy that I will never have to do that again! 

I changed into that awesome little dress for our reception because my big poofy dress was surpisingly heavy when it was soaking wet!

On a side note though I wanted to share with you what I had originally planned on wearing for my dress, I even had a lady that was going to make it for me! 

Also we barely spent any money on our wedding so if you have any wedding planning questions feel free to ask away! I will give all the advice I possibly can!