New year outlook, one month in...

My brain seems to be on overdrive lately, but in a good way. I just wish the bleak, dreary days of winter wouldn't be so, well, bleak and dreary, making my S.A.D. seem not so, well, SAD. But I still have a positive outlook and waiting and watching for the first signs of spring that will happen in just a couple short months. To bide my time, I have many things I am working on to get more organized and feel like I have a handle on a few things.

Over the last couple of days, I've been working on my kids' homeschool lesson plans for the next nine months, and I'm about halfway through...it's at times stressful, but I am liking the feeling of having it all organized and done so I won't have to do it again until the fall. I'll work on the other half next week.

To help me from going stir crazy and fight off cabin fever, I've been snuggling up in blankets and doing a lot of reading over the last month, and just finished Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. Before that I read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Both outstanding books, and both very convicting. My heart and soul are thirsting for more God-glorifying books like these, ones that grow me and encourage me to be more like Him every day. Mr. Keller has opened my eyes to just what I value, and it wasn't what I thought it was. The Lord opened my eyes to see that there are many distractions in my day that keep me from Him, and I have been working to change that in my life so that I can be spending more time with God throughout my day...not because I am 'supposed' to, but because I want to.

I did also read another book during the last month that was a good read; Glenn Beck's Common Sense by Glenn Beck. I got it for a Christmas gift and it was quite thought provoking.

In my attempt to be reading a lot of books about getting out of debt, I just recently borrowed from our church library Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University CD's to listen to. I haven't started listening yet, but I hope to fit it in somewhere in my already busy days. There are 13 lessons, each about an hour long. That's a LOT of listening!

On the positive side, our debt picture is stabilizing, and we're starting to work our way from negative to positive. I have a spending plan in place and I am keeping track of every single penny that leaves (or comes into) our bank accounts. I am also preparing to sell a lot of homeschool books and other items on ebay within the next week or two. It will be nice to have that extra cash to put toward our everyday expenses so that we can focus on getting rid of debt. In a few months we will have a loan paid off that will help our debt reduction immensely and hoping to be completely debt free (barring no complications), including mortgage, by June 2015, Lord willing. In the meantime I've really tried to put a limit on our spending. We're eating from the pantry as much as possible this month since I have a nice amount sitting on the shelves and in the freezer, and hoping to eat out very minimally if at all. We did eat out the first of February, but we paid less than $1.50 for a meal for all four of us at Burger King with free kids meal coupons. The young man who waited on us was nice enough to let us adults have free kids meals, too! We splurged and I got an apple pie since I don't eat the fries and shared them with Jeff and the kids.

The only setbacks we've had so far this year is our dog Asia (standard poodle) had her ears act up again and had a yeast infection in one of them, and some appliances. Four of our appliances are acting up, but we're going to try to get the parts ourselves and see if we can fix them. It should save us about $150-200 to do it ourselves, and according to my brother, all of the problems are easily fixed...just need the parts. The vet visits and meds have been pretty spendy, so that has taken a nice chunk of change.

I am also still freelance writing to try to bring extra income in. Hopefully I can set a day aside next week to write several debt-related articles for examiner.com so all I have to do before I post them is one last edit. That would help out a lot so that I can feel less time crunches to get articles in.

Overall January hasn't been too bad. We did spend a little more in some areas than we wanted to, but we're working on doing better this month. I got a lot of reading in and it is helping prioritize things better, and I am starting to feel that February should be an okay month, and time to start planning for more spring and summer things like gardening and camping...ooooooh.........camping...... :-)

Wonderful news....

My daughter came to me tonight and asked me at what age I accepted Jesus into my heart. I told her I did when I was 31. She asked me if it would be okay if she beat me to it...my heart skipped a beat...did she mean now??? I asked her if that's what she meant...YES!!! SHE DID!!! We talked....we prayed....we cried. What a joyful day - knowing that she will be going to heaven too!

I have been silently praying since the moment she left the room that I can be a good discipler to her, and that my life can be even more Christ-like than before so she has a good role model. The song from Phillips, Craig, and Dean keeps running through my head now..."Lord I wanna be just like you, because he wants to be just like me, I wanna be a holy example for his innocent eyes to see...Help me be a living Bible Lord, that my little boy can read, I wanna be just like you, 'cuz he wants to be like me." I of course am singing with she in place of he, but I also pray, pray, pray, that my son will realize his need for the Savior as well.

What an awesome day! What a Savior! God is good, all the time.

Lurking on my own blog...

I apologize for not being around in a while. I've been here, but only to check up on other blogs, so yep, I've been lurking on my own blog! The holidays have kept me extremely busy, and I have just not had time to consider writing (other than for examiner.com, and even that's been limited).
We started back to school today after a nice three-week break, and the kids actually did pretty well. My son wanted to buck the system a little bit, but once he realized Momma wasn't going to budge he decided to do what I was asking. This evening he gets to play his dad's xbox360 while big sister and Dad go on a date. It's nice because it gives me a bit of breathing room, too, and I can catch up on a couple of things I've let go by the wayside.

Things are going alright here otherwise. I will try to update my health blog with the latest on me as there have been some developments on my longterm health issues, but the doctors are still trying to come up with a diagnosis. I've also been very busy updating our spending plan and preparing to upgrade our old Quicken to the 2010 version. I still am smart shopping and our storage room and freezers are looking good as well.

A fun thing my daughter and I just did before the new year is do the Pantene Beautiful Lengths for Cancer hair donation. I had 11 inches cut off, and she had 8. You can see the pic below. It's been taking a bit to get used to the shorter hair, but it was for a good cause, so more than worth it.

Life is never boring...

A couple of major things have happened in our household over the last few weeks. I've already talked about one of them...my new job, and that's been a lot of fun already. I have 3 articles published, and hoping to get in a pattern that I can be writing 4-6 articles a week. That is the hard part because between homeschooling, smart shopping preparation, smart shopping, chores, doctor appointments, and life in general I don't have a whole lot of time left. I'm hoping that once the holidays are over and there's a lot less going on in January I'll get myself into a pattern.

Anyway, other things that have been going at our house: first my son got sick with a cold, then my daughter, then they so lovingly shared it with me. During that same time I became VERY ill and had to have Jeff bring me to the ER at 4:30 in the morning a couple of weeks ago. I had nasty stomach cramping caused by something going on in my gut which caused other problems as well (I won't mention how really bad it was because to me it just sounds gross!). They did a lot of testing, but all the tests came back inconclusive. I still seem to be having some issues in my gut, but for the most part we're all back to healthy here.

Along with the new job and writing about debt reduction, these last few weeks (when I wasn't in bed sleeping due to my health issues) I have been putting together a plan for eliminating our debt. I am so excited as I work on it, and can't wait for us to start implementing it. I started some of it already, but we won't have everything in place and all the kinks worked out until after the holidays. How good it will feel to watch our debt amounts go down!

I cannot believe that we are already coming up on the holiday season. Christmas will be here before we know it. Next week I need to plan our homeschooling for the three weeks in December...we always do a lot of more fun-oriented things and a lot less bookwork during that time and the kids always look forward to it.

My new job

Here is where you'll find me at Examiner.com. So excited!

I got it! I got it!

I got the job! I get to do some freelance writing for www.examiner.com! The pay might not be much, but it will be worth every penny. I can't wait...it will be so exciting! I had to send in my pic and bio today, and then I go through some background checks and setting up 'my page'. I have the title "Debt Examiner", and my expertise will be in debt reduction. I thought it was perfect for all that I've been learning lately and trying to do to reduce our debt. It should be up and running with my first article by early next week! I'll be sure to post. :-)

Sigh of Relief

I just applied for my first online writing job! As excited as I am, I feel huge relief that my first article is written (that needed to be included with my application), and that the nervous jitters are now over with as well. It took me several hours and constant rewrites, but it is done, and I feel very good about it. Now the waiting part has come, however, and that could take up to a week! I am excited about the possibility of doing this kind of work. I think it will be rewarding, and the extra income will be really nice. I just hope they like my article and my resume is acceptable! I will be sitting on pins and needles until I hear from them...