This is going to be our year....


Shortly after midnight on January 1, 2013, I declared this The Year of the Pokrzywas and I thought it might be fun to keep a journal of the steps forward and the steps back so at the end of 2013 we will know if it was really our year. 

  A little background info on us.  The Pokrzywas consist of Dan, Lisa (me), Billy, age 16, James, age 14, Ella, age 10, and, of course, our dog, Benji.  Needless to say 2012 was NOT our year; far from it.  It was just plain bad.  It started out okay, we were living in Gainesville, Florida in a nice neighborhood but we were far from our family in Wisconsin. The good lasted until February when the transmission in our only car decided that it no longer wanted to work.  It was a struggle everyday to do basic things as  there was no busing in our area.  It was especially hard to get Dan to work.  Well once April rolled around, this was no longer a concern because Dan lost his job.  To recap, we lived 1200 miles away from our family with no car and no income.  We quickly decided that we didn't like Gainesville enough to stay so we decided to relocate to Southwest Florida. We spoke to the landlord and let him know we would be vacating our Gainesville house. Dan took a temporary job in Southern Florida for about 6 weeks. we found a place to live in Cape Coral, Florida.  We went to pack up our house in Gainesville and it was almost completely empty; we had been robbed.  It was ugly.  So here we sat with minimal money, no car, very few belongings and no employed adults in the household.  It was at this time during a heart to heart in our moving van that we decided that coming back to Wisconsin was the only reasonable thing to do. Our kids needed stability (and beds) and our parents would help us with that.

 We made it back to Wisconsin where Dan and I currently reside in my mom's basement.  We got here and thought, well it can't get worse, we have done the hardest part.  It got worse because four days after we arrived in Milwaukee, I had a stroke.  A minor one, thankfully, but a stroke nonetheless.  2012 was absolutely not our year.

So on this 9th day of January, I think this is definitely our year. My kids are excelling in school, job prospects are coming through for Dan and my health is pretty good.  We have even started car shopping.  Yay us! 




 

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