Last Spring, my sisters, mom, and I decided how special it would be to go on a trip to Peru together. Since, my mom is from Peru and I haven't been there since I was one years old. It's always been a trip tucked away in my heart to someday go and share the experience with my mom and sisters. It would not only be a dream come true for my mom but for me too. To see where she grew up, to witness the beautiful, majestic Machu Picchu, explore the Amazon, to meet some family I have never met, and more. Other times we planned to go it just never worked out. So we all decided to do what it takes to save up the money and to go in the Summer of 2009. I got in touch with my Uncle Walter (who's a travel agent) to help us organize the most exciting trip ever! We all started making plans and everything seemed to be falling into place.
Derek and I knew the only way for me to raise $3,000 without taking out of our family budget and savings was to make some extra money. At first, I personally wasn't very happy about the idea and thought why? Can't we just use our savings? But we have worked so hard at working on a budget, staying out of debt, and building our savings. The more we talked and shared our feelings I realized I would appreciate it more if I would work hard and sacrifice a little bit to earn the money to make this trip possible. My whole life I was always GIVEN everything and took it for granted. Things always came easy and it didn't mean as much to me as it should have. This was going to be an opportunity to appreciate WORK! Derek is always so good at teaching me so many good things about myself and about being a better person all around. Thanks Honey!
So I started looking at possibilities of earning extra cash and had some ideas. But one day I was talking to my friend Camille and she was telling me about her newspaper route that she shares with her sister Natalee (who's getting ready to go off to college). She was going to need to find a replacement if she was going to continue her route. I knew this was an opportunity to definitely consider. Camille gave me the job. The job was only going to be Saturday and Sunday mornings every weekend, for up to 6 months. Derek and I figured this would be perfect because then I wouldn't have to miss out on time with Cassidy. She would be sleeping away and having sweet dreams as I worked through the early hours. Then Derek would let me catch up on sleep in the mornings or take an afternoon nap. He would take care of things at home.
I would get up each morning at 1am and then drive over to the warehouse to load the papers. Which sometimes took 1-2 hours at the warehouse to load up. Camille and Natalee took on two routes, to make it worth their time so overall it was about 2,000 papers to deliver. On Sundays, we would definitely have to have two cars because the papers were a lot bigger (all the ads) and there was no way to fit all of them in one car. Even though I had my Yukon and Camille had her Mini Van. Camille and I would work together to load up our cars and sometimes help other carriers to get started on loading their cars. On Sundays, at the warehouse we would also have to help the staff sometimes put the inserts in the papers and bundle them. So that would take some extra time. We usually got to start our delivery's by 2:45am or 3:30am (the latest).
Saturdays were different it was the only day Camille had off so I would do it by myself but everything was already done and bundled. I just had to load up. So of course I got home earlier than on Sundays. It usually took 4-6 hours to finish our route of delivering papers each day. So on average we would leave at 1 am from our house and be done with our route anytime between 5:30am-7am. Of course some weekends the delivery truck would be late bringing the papers from Denver so that would put us behind too. We delivered the local newspaper (The Gazette), the Denver Post, Rocky Mtn News (recently just went out of business), New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and some other papers. The route was a commercial route not residential. So we would drop off papers at Walmarts, Gas Stations, Restaurants, Apartment Complexes, etc. We also filled up the newspaper racks around town.
At the beginning I would bring my dog Oakley with me to keep me company. But eventually ended up bringing my sweetheart with me to keep me company. I soon realized I was uncomfortable going by myself during the early hours so Derek and I decided for my own safety and for me to feel more comfortable he would join me and we would do the newspaper route together. I was so grateful Derek was so willing to miss out on sleep to help me and be with me. My Knight in Shining Armor, Indeed! We depended on each other for not only the newspaper route but for sleep through the weekend. Cassidy was very understanding and patient with her parents. Since Derek joined me the most important thing to us was to still have fun as a family even if we're dead tired.
So you're probably wondering who takes care of Cassidy? We trained Oakley (our good dog) to lay beside Cassidy all night and watch over her. Cassidy was in good "paws."
JUST KIDDING!!! We asked one of the young women from church to stay the night each weekend, to take care of Cassidy, just in case she woke up. We've known Marelyse for years and she's practically like a little sister to us. She has been trying to earn some extra money and thought at the same time she's helping us we could help her out. It couldn't have worked out any better. Most importantly, Cassidy felt very comfortable with her too. She would tell me, "Mom, Marelyse lives here too!" "I love Marelyse!"
Cassidy stayed alseep all night long and we could get in an hour of sleep before she woke up. But several times before we got home she would wake up having to go potty or would have a bad dream. We left the stair light on and taught Cassidy that if mommy and daddy weren't in their beds to go downstairs and wake up Marelyse. She was very good at her job getting Marelyse, Cassidy was even polite and would knock first on Marelyse's bedroom door. But that didn't happen too often Marelyse would already be at Cassidy's side if Cass woke up.
A funny story: The first couple of nights (before we taught Cassidy what to do if she woke up) Cassidy woke up very quietly and Marelyse didn't hear anything on the baby monitor. So we came home with the house smelling like raspberries, it was a yummy smell. We walked to Cassidy's room and saw her bedroom light on. When we opened her door she had a huge smile on her face and said, "Look I'm painting!" She had gotten into my yummy lotions and was painting her dollhouse with lotion and some other things. Then I turned around and saw a funny sight, she had gotten into my bag of pads, took the wrappers off and had stuck them on the walls. We had to laugh.
The newspaper route turned out to be a wonderful experience with Derek by my side. We shared that "quiet" time together, it was like we had extra "date time." We had a chance to talk a lot. Of course in the beginning, we had to figure things out and come up with our own system on how to deliver the papers and work together, with little or no sleep. The first couple of weekends were pretty stressful and frustrating. Everything that you could think of that could go wrong, did. We would lose our special keys and tools that we needed for the route, go the wrong way,.... We made some mistakes. We both realized we would never be able to be on the show "The Amazing Race" together (at least not yet). But with time we became a great team and figured it all out and now laugh at how we almost bit eachother's heads off those first two weeks. We even came up with our own tradition of stopping at our local grocery store at the end of our route (before heading home) and would buy a couple of freshly baked doughnuts. It was a highlight of our Saturday mornings to celebrate completing another day of our newspaper route.
You can see the newspapers on Sundays would fill up our Yukon top to bottom, all the way to the back with the seats down.
At some of the stores we would use their shopping carts to pile 20 plus bundles for the drop off.Well this last weekend was our final weekend in the life of Newspapers. We look back and talk about all the fun we had: driving in snow and ice, the chance to talk and talk and talk.. about our future dreams, giggle at all the cute things Cassidy does, watch police handcuff shoplifters at Walmart two nights in a row (different people each time), smelling the cinnamon rolls baking at Albertson's, getting very hungry half way through and going through the drive-thru at BK, meeting interesting people, making new friends, bagging newspapers if it was snowing, getting to know our city better, finding new places to eat, building muscle strength lifting papers each weekend, seeing foxes and deer, getting a ticket for running a Red light (me Angie, that's another story for another day), having a bloody nose that wouldn't stop, making people happy with a day's old newspaper for free, and just being together.
We definitely built some memories and shared many laughs over these last 6 months. I learned hard work pays off and that you can accomplish anything you set your mind on. We gained an appreciation for all those "jobs" that we take for granted. Like every time we pass a newspaper rack we now know someone loses sleep for those early risers that depend on reading their morning paper each day. Derek and I have been blessed with this opportunity of a way to earn some extra money. We reached our money goal and endured to the end. I think part of us will miss it. Thanks Camille for the opportunity you gave us! We will never forget it!
So a lot has happened since first planning the trip to Peru and while talking with family we thought it would be best to postpone our trip to Peru for good reasons. Hopefully some day soon, I will still get to make mine, my mom's, and sisters dreams come true.
Derek and I talked a lot about what we should do with the money. We still wanted to take a trip somewhere since that was the original reason why we took on the job. So we decided we will now use the money to celebrate our 10 year anniversary in Cancun, next month. We are looking forward to having another honeymoon and to know we have the money to spend stress-free.
As a family we made a paper chain to help us count down the days till our trip. Cassidy is just as excited because we get to drive to Arizona where she gets to stay with her Aunt Sara, Uncle Scott, cousins, and Grammy for a week. She is so excited to sleep with her cousins in a big girl bed, and play, play, play. She of course will tell you that mommy and daddy are going on an airplane to Cancun and will say, "I will miss my mommy!" "But have fun mommy!" Then she'll talk about how excited she is to spend time with her cousins. We know she'll be in good hands. And even though it's our first time being apart from our little girl and that it will be hard. We will look forward to being together again.
Our Family chain for our Countdown... to when we jump in the car and start our vacation.
