Holman in double digits!

I love my oldest son, he is such an amazing little man. He is kind, smart and respectful when not at home :) at home he is a nut! He is so funny and very unpredictable. He is constantly thinking and evaluating things. He likes to test his older sisters and likes to protect and play with his younger siblings. He is our middle child that is not forgotten, because we are all laughing too much at what he has said or done.

We went to the park in the evening, played tag and then went out for ice cream. It was a nice easy going night to celebrate our easy going kid. Holman is a great athlete and student. he wakes up at 5:30 most mornings to do his homework. He would much rather wake-up early than to do it at night. For whatever reason his morning ritual really works for him and he is proved he can balance his school work and time nicely. He has taken up running and is running on his school cross-country team (just like he mom, so proud!).  He loves his science class, music, mandarin and humanities classes, not too thrilled about engineering but he still does well.

I love you Happy Jack! A hug from you does so much to make me smile. The fact that at 10 you still hold my hand makes me so happy( remember you promised you would always hold my hand!).

Adrianna my Thanksiving miracle!

My baby girl turned 5 on November 27th Thanksgiving day! Oh I love my little side kick. She is funny and smart and loving. She loves being the youngest and having 4 adoring siblings. She is in both my preschool classes and tolerates learning the same thing every other day. She goes to kindergarten next year so this is her last year chilling at home 24 hours a day. I have been teaching preschool since she was less than a year old so I hope she can learn to love her new teacher, she loves her primary teachers at church so that is a good sign.

The other day I was listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio he was talking about giving to others and how God wants us to have giving hearts and that why we are asked to tithe. Anna said, "Mom is Dave Mormon?" I said, "No, but he believes in God and Jesus Christ, like we do." She said, "Oh so his not a democrat then." So funny, my little republican daughter :)

Anna you are my survivor my angel here on earth, we love you so much and are so glad you are the caboose in our family, it wouldn't be complete without you!

Going radical 11th month

November arrived with no pressing debt looming over us! We have the 401K loan, thank goodness we could borrow form our own savings and not have to involve a bank. If we wanted to just take out the money we could but then we would have to pay a large tax amount because the money you save for retirement plans are not taxed, so once you use it then the government can tax you. So we opted to use the money and pay ourselves back with interest into our own account, which we pay automatically every two weeks from Benjamin's paycheck. We plan to pay aggressively on it once we have saved six months worth of expenses.

We cheated slightly this month. Once our last loan debt was achieved the thought of waiting to buy a second car until after the first of the year was going to break me. I know once January comes we get a boost from preschool tuition. So we cheated and used a credit card that is tied into our checking account to float the needed funds to get the car. Not radical but I figure we could have two months of car independence and a car paid in full in January or we could have two more months of mooching rides and a car paid in full in January. We went with the first option. I don't think Dave would approve, but we did it anyway. I think mostly because its a slippery slope. Once you start allowing exceptions your right back to where you never wanted to return. Normally I am the hard core radicalist in our relationship but this time I was the one wanting to make an exception. Let me tell you now, we are almost two months into car independence I couldn't be more happy about it!

The hardest part of this month was knowing when it is ok to buy things. For 10 months of very little splurging it has been hard to let go a little and be ok with buying things .


Lesson learned in November:
1.Keeping a budget is an every day experience. Keeping out of debt is an everyday experience.