Our third child's first violin recital

I haven't blogged in a long time, and this may just be the motivation I need.  One of our children started taking violin four months ago and had her first recital last night.  I actually got to accompany her and her teacher which was fun, but I was the one who messed up.  Go figure.

The Stealth Bomber

This past Saturday night my oldest daughter (one of those people that you must always think two steps ahead of)  must not have been able to sleep.  Sunday morning as I was practicing an offertory for church my son came in and sat on the couch behind me and started talking.  "Mom, I had to go to the bathroom at 3:00 this morning.  When I was washing my hands and looked in the mirror, this is what I saw."  When he said that, I turned around to a dejected looking eleven year old boy with a blue handle bar mustache on his face.  WHAT!  Come to find out, she also got one of her other sisters.  As I sat there and lectured her, I started laughing because this was just too funny.  I could totally picture myself doing this to someone.  I just wish her timing had been better. Trying to get rid of blue marker before going to church is not fun.

We're Debt Free!

This actually happened in April of 2011.  I'm not sure why it got saved as a draft in my blog instead of a post. I know it was a post before.  For those who have not read our story before, here it is.

I remember when my parents got out of debt. I was about six or seven years old, and they never looked back. They used only the money they had from that day on. Fast forward many years, and I was debt free too. I even graduated from college with money in my pocket to help me get started in life. For some reason though, I took a credit card just in case of emergencies.

A couple of years later I got married and stayed at home. Staying home took a lot of sacrifice on our part that most people would not even consider taking on, but we thought that our kids were worth the sacrifice. The only problem was that we burned through our savings and began using the credit card to make ends meet. (If only we had known then what we later learned...like not having so much taken out of my husband's check for taxes so we could make ends meet every month.) Every year with our huge tax refund we would pay off our debts and start the whole cycle again. A couple of years ago, I got really tired of this cycle and began praying that God would change things. I was really irritated with my husband for what I thought was irresponsible spending. The funny thing was that when God answered my prayer, I realized that I was just as much a contributor to our financial tightness as my husband was.

One day my husband came home talking about a new guy named Dave Ramsey coming on the local talk radio station. After a couple of months of listening to him, we began working on our baby steps, and my husband decided to order Financial Peace University. Because of the price, I was hesitant about ordering the class, but didn't voice my concerns because I was excited about my husband being excited about learning how to manage our finances. I'm so glad I didn't say anything in opposition to him. The class helped clarify questions that we had about the baby steps. Twenty-two months after we began the class, we have paid off $30,ooo--mostly vehicle loan debt. (During this time, the Lord gave my husband a pay raise, and provided a couple of at home jobs for me.)

I didn't realize how much it meant to our kids until we went to make our last payment on our vehicle. As the payment was going up in tube of the drive through line, my husband and I heard a spontaneous chant from the back. "We're debt free. We're debt free."

Not only are we debt free, but we plan to stay that way this time. Financial Peace University taught us how to do that. We learned how to start off with a baby emergency fund to keep us from having to crack out a credit card for emergencies. We also now know to save up for a 3-6 month emergency fund now that we are debt free. Not only that, but we have also learned how to prepare for the future and have a plan for our money instead of our money having a plan for us. Oh, let's not forget the budget and learning how to work together as a team was also something else we learned. We are now on baby step three and looking forward to getting a larger house for our family of six.

As a side note, the first baby step is $500 for people who have an income of $25,000 or less. Also, much of the same information used in Financial Peace University can be found in the book, The Total Money Makeover (also available at most public libraries.)

Our New Year

They say how you start the new year is how you will spend the year.  I surely hope not!  We went to bed early New Year's Eve and couldn't go to sleep....not good.  We woke up running late for church the New Year's Day...not good.  Our son put on a pair of pants two sizes too small on him, and one of our daughters could not find shoes that fit her...not good.
We finally made it to church about five minutes before it was supposed to start....not bad unless you are the pianist and song leader.  We stepped in the church building only to realize that our son's pants that he had changed into were one size too small...not as bad as the first pair.  They had looked better in incandescent lighting than they did in fluorescent lighting. I got up to the piano and was playing away before the official start of services when our two youngest daughters came up to me.  The very youngest had tears right under her eyes, and the next to youngest informed me that we had locked them in the vehicle....not good.   Evidently my husband, oldest two children, and I had jumped out of our vehicle and hastily headed for the church building.  My husband locked the doors with the remote without ever looking back.  The two younger girls said that they unlocked the doors, and the alarm went off, but they locked the door back after they got out.  Poor babies.  Good thing our church is small, and the parking lot is too.

On the bright side, we all stayed up late that night, having a great time watching Roy Rogers movies.

Pictures Taken Recently

Trial Run

Cinnamon and Cumin

My children love to have toast with sugar and cinnamon for breakfast.  The best and worst part is that they make it themselves.  One day they informed me that we were out of cinnamon, and I told them to remind me to get some the next time we went to the store.  Sure enough the next time we took a trip to Aldi, my son grabbed some cinnamon and threw it in the cart.  The kids were happy to have their cinnamon back on their toast.
 Fast forward about a week.  Imagine my surprise when my husband asked where the cinnamon was.  I told him it was right there in the spice cabinet.  "All I see is cumin," was his reply.  I got up to check, and sure enough that brand new bottle of cinnamon was cumin.  What I want to know is why didn't the kids taste the difference?

A Child Converted from Her Crush.

The other night our six year old got embarrassed about a crush that she had on a waiter at a local Mexican restaurant. Today we found this video she made of herself and her new take on boyfriends.

Broken Connections

This week's theme for MCP 52 is "Connections." We have a portable dishwasher that hooks up to the faucet. The night before the photo theme was announced, the washer was going, but then I heard a WHOOSH and the sound of water splattering everywhere. The hot water handle had flown off and water was shooting out of its hole like a geyser. I got brave enough to take a picture the next morning although it is quite a tamed down version.

About 7:15am near my house

Hill Billys

Last month my husband took a day off work and decided it would be fun to take the kids somewhere. The weather was in the hundreds so we decided to take them to some unique stores in Raleigh where the heat would not be so bad. The first shopping center we stopped at is one that had really become run down until a few years ago when they revamped the whole structure. Evidently it is now the richy rich area of town complete with upscale living spaces above the shops and a two story grocery store connected to them. (Here's a link.)When we got there, I noticed that just about every shopper was dressed up and their children were too. That was the first time I've ever felt out of my league at a regular shopping mall. We took the kids to a really neat toy store and candy shop. As we were looking at all the neat items, Zach added to my discomfort by saying over and over quite loudly, "MAN! I wish I lived in Raleigh. Man, I wish I lived in Raleigh! Don't you, Mom?" My response was, "Don't be so loud, Zach."

After shopping, we enjoyed a wonderful lunch a the Q shack, a place I would highly recommend. It has delicious food and if you buy the child sized plate, it has wonderful prices. Don't worry the child plate has more than enough to eat. As we left the restaurant to head back to our vehicle in the parking deck we got on the escalators where my humiliation was made complete. I had my two youngest daughters with me and my husband had the two older children. The two younger ones were scared to death to get on the first step, so I took both of their hands and took the plunge. When I stepped on, they jerked their hands out of mine and stayed at the top yelling, "Mamma! Mamma!" I then had to turn around and run up the down escalator to rescue them. Just one more little thing to keep me humble. I was relieved to note that the next shopping center we went to was full of non dressed up children. Lesson learned. Put church clothes and a hair bow on my kids the next time we go to North Hills Mall.

Practicing

Happy Birthday

This past Sunday was our oldest daughter's birthday. We asked the grandparents to come over for lunch after church. She was thrilled with all her gifts of money, shoes (she's a shoe connoisseur), items from Bath and Body Works, and even a pink 22 gun. Here are some pictures of her day.

Another Answered Prayer

At the beginning of the summer season, we had some really warm weather. At the beginning of the summer season, our air conditioner decided that it didn't want to work. My husband and father in law identified the problem and fixed it. Well, there was this tiny glitch. The air would come on for fifteen seconds, turn off for thirty and come right back on for another fifteen seconds. As a last resort, we called the air company to come out and take a look. In the back of our minds we were pretty sure the motor was going bad. We took enough money out of our emergency fund to cover the new motor, and my husband was pretty disheartened about the whole deal. Every time we seem to get a little step ahead, something comes along to push us back. So, I prayed, "Lord, if it be your will, please help it not be the motor and help it not to cost much." The repair man came out and tested the air out for an hour. It ran perfectly the whole time, and has ever since. We only had to pay the cost of the service call instead of the cost of a whole new motor.

Hidden Objects

The theme for photography this week was Hidden Objects. I took pictures of several things, but finally decided on the china hidden in the china cabinet. One of my dear daughters took the key outside one day, and it has never seen the inside of the house since. We actually did eat off that china too. What are we going to do when we move?

Need for Speed

Silly Answer to Prayer

Yesterday was soccer Saturday. During our oldest daughter's game, I had received a phone call on the cell phone and stepped away from the crowd to talk. While I was talking on the phone, our six year old daughter took my camera (with permission) and took MANY pictures of the game. During one portion of the game our oldest daughter got tripped and flipped in the air. I wished that I had had my camera and had been able to capture the moment. Much to my delight, as I was going through the pictures that my six year old took, I came across one she captured of my older daughter as she was in the air when she got tripped. I went ahead and deleted all the unneeded pictures off my SD card. As I was in the process of deleting pictures, I somehow deleted the one picture that I was so excited about. I was sick. I prayed, "Lord, is there some way you can get that picture back for me?" Then I thought, there's no way that you can recover a deleted picture on a SD card; almost at the same instant I felt regret that I couldn't trust the Lord to do a "little" impossible thing but then thought I was just thinking silly and went on to practice piano for a church offertory the next morning. As I was practicing, the thought popped into my head, "Why don't I look up on the internet and see if I can some how recover a deleted picture?" I told my husband what I was going to do. Since he's more computer savy than I am, he did all the work for me, and I'm happy to report that I have my picture back after he got the free download from this website. Thank you, Lord, for answering my prayer in spite of my unbelief.

Here's the picture

Window light

The theme this week was to use only light from windows to light a picture. Here's my little poser girl lit by the light coming from our sliding glass door.

First Thing in the Morning

The little boy that I babysit and I water my flowers every morning before my own children get up.

Princess for a Day

The theme this week was Princess for a day. My daughter loves the princess Rapunzel. If you've seen the movie Tangled, you'll understand the frying pan.

Amazing Grace

I used to think that the song "Amazing Grace" wasn't so applicable to me as it was to the "down and out" person who had accepted Christ as their personal Savior. The more I travel down the road of life, I realize how applicable the song really is to me. It's only by God's Amazing Grace that I've never been down and out. It's by His grace that I was reared in a Christian home. It's by His grace that I had parents that loved me. It's by His grace that I am where I am today. One of my favorite sayings is "But for the grace of God go I."