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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Potty Training the Twincesses

I have taken an entire week of vacation so that I can potty train the twincesses. I plan to plan no projects, no extra cleaning that must be done, nothing. Except for potty training. Girlfriend is ready, Little Miss I'm hoping will follow suit fairly quickly and easily. I will let you know how progress goes!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Progress - or changes?

I can't post specifics, but things are happening in the girls case. Things that will mean changes...of course we knew eventually one of 3 things would happen: 1. the girls would go home (this is and should be the goal of foster care - to allow children to be raised by their parents as long as it is safe) 2. the girls would go to a family member or friend (kinship placement) - this allows the children to remain in their biological family - I used to support this, I'm now building a real opinion that is more detailed than I would like to go into today. 3. the girls don't go anywhere - this may mean adoption. Foster care is hard, regularly the hardest part is the up's and down's of visits (more downs than ups it seems but I digress), but then once in a while, pops up questions about the girls future, and an always pending "other shoe", and you know it's always there, like a shadow in the room and sometimes that shadow is an elephant. Elephant days are case reviews (once every 3 months), homevisits (every other month), and when mom or dad really do something big (good or bad). That's when things get hard....because it means change is coming. And right now, change is coming. Maybe not for us, or our girls...but it's coming and it will affect someone. We just don't know who all is under this umbrella of change. Well I wrote the above post on the 20th but since I was posting about debt on the 20th I decided to hold this post in drafts until today to post. Turns out, that was for good reason. More information has developed and OH MY! I have a private blog where I am writing specifics. But I just pray for the girls Mom and Dad, for salvation and above all else, for God's will to be done!

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

My Desire to be Debt Free

I have consistently been in debt for the last 12 years. Mostly vehicle loans and credit cards, stupid decisions! So a few years ago I decided I was done with this mess! This debt is out of control! It never got bad, never even half of the national average but bad enough that it made me angry! So when Todd became a student, the year Ryan was born (actually within a month of Ryan being born) I decided that if it hadn't been for the debt, maybe the it wouldn't be such a blow when someone is laid off, forced to take medical leave, or any other emergency that may come up! So for the last 2-3 years I've been working on being debt free. It's been a struggle (especially with a husband who's a student in a college that's an hour away). So we made a plan and we stuck to it. Until we didn't or couldn't. Buying the suburban right in the middle of this great plan of mine hurt. set us back. But that's ok, we readjusted our spending AGAIN and set a new plan. One we will stick with. and soon we will be debt free (except for our mortgage). We paid off the credit cards and most of the blazer with our tax return, now we're snowballing everything we have at the remaining balance on the Blazer, taking the monthly payments that we were putting towards the credit cards and applying them to the Blazer. We will then take the pell grant Todd should be receiving and putting that towards the Suburban. and then snowballing the blazer and credit card payment towards the suburban. and May 2 we SHOULD be 100% debt free save the mortgage! Paying off $16,000 of debt in 4 months! I will try to update again in mid-May to let you know if we made it!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

God Speaking

So today as I'm driving to work (I have to take the girls 10 minutes out of town, swing back into town to drop Ryan at preschool, then across town to drop off the bigs then back across to go to work), after dropping off the bigs, I turned on the radio and was going to change it but didn't...it had background static and was a little hard to hear but it was a man speaking. And he spoke about how when we fall into trials, as Christians we are not being tested but that's our chance to shine. That when we have cancer, or a wayward child, it's not that we have done something wrong it's that God is giving us a chance to show the world the difference in how we handle situations, the difference between Christians and those who don't have Christ in their life. It was an AMAZING "sermon" and I thought "man he is talking to me" and all those who are going through tough times or have gone through tough times. then I went to find what station I was on. Somehow the radio had been switched from fm to am and was on a station like 72...but I couldn't find the station again after I had switched from it. He really was talking to me

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Moving Ahead

Todd and I don't see ourselves as movers but I guess we are. We seem to move more often than most. We lived in Texas then moved to the farm. We stayed there from 2003-2007. We moved to our current home in 2007 and already we're thinking of moving. We want to be back in the country (really regretting selling our farm if we're just going to move again). We need something with enough land to have a garden, a couple farm animals and a decent sized yard, we need enough house for our family of 7 (5 when the girls move on), and I'm in a place in life where I'd like it to be pretty. We aren't finding much by way of houses in the area we want, meeting all our needs. There is one property we've been watching for years. literally...over 3 years. The house at one time was in decent shapte, 3 outbuildings, over an acre and a half. The house has since been ruined (no longer has any siding), and the property has just really taken a hit. In one of the out buildings is an apartment. 4 bedrooms, 1 bath. Has a lot of potential. So with this property we would have fix up the apartment, then move into that while selling our current home. After selling our home, we would build a new house on that property, and tear down the house that's no longer any good. Then there's this other property, it's listed for $72,000, 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, 4 car attached garage. Lots of potential, off the beaten back, 1.16 acres, and one small barn. This house has been empty for 2 years or so, the kitchen is gorgeous! The downstairs bath is...going to need updating....blue toilet, bath, shower just don't do it for me. The living room is big and has this HUGE stone fireplace, and a small office just off it. The downside? upstairs are 2 skylights. that are leaking. the house will need a new roof before anyone can move in...and a few new windows. and the laundry room will need to move to the 1st floor since the one upstairs is gross...and small. but that's fine. I'm becoming more invested in this property as time goes on. So the plan for this house would be to replace the roof and window before moving in, then make the big living room into our bedroom and the small office would be an office. the dining room would be our living room for now and the breakfast nook would be the dining area. Ethan would have his own room, the girls the middle size room and Ryan and Lane Michael the biggest room. Make the laundry room into a closet and the pantry into the laundry room. Move into it, sell our place, then when we've sold our current home, we would remodel the 4 car garage into a 2 car garage and in the small storage room, put a mud room with a shower and toilet (it shares a wall with the kitchen so that's doable). So we would still have a 2 car attached garage and Todd would add an additional building out back as a work shed. update they just lowered the price from $72,000 to $64,800. Hope it stays on the market till we're ready to buy!