The Saturday 7: September 24-30

1. Abby decided her 6th tooth was going to be a molar. She now has 2 top and 3 bottom incisors, and the bottom right first molar starting to poke through. I think that's what's been making her miserable all week.
2. She has been SO fussy and clingy!! I can't get ANYTHING done because she freaks out as soon as I set her down!! (ok she doesn't do it all the time, but most of the time...)
3. She was sick last weekend. Threw up on Saturday evening, and during the night the next two nights, and had diarrhea pretty bad on Sunday-Monday. On Monday all she wanted to do was cuddle. Which I was fine with. We read lots of books and watched some Baby Einstein. She didn't eat much of anything. Just yesterday she finally got her appetite back and holy cow! She'll almost eat more than me the last few meals!
4. It's October, which means baseball playoffs! I don't mind watching baseball throughout the year, but I'm not one of those die-hard fans that knows the ins and outs of their team. But now that the Tigers have been on a great streak, I'm actually wanting to watch their games. Here's to hoping for the World Series!
5. It's October, which means the heart of fall!! Pumpkins, apple cider, sweatshirts, candles... Mmmm... :)
6. Keeping a budget is tough. September was the first month that we've truly sat down and planned out how much we were going to spend in each category, and try to stick to it. I went over our initial grocery budget (but we readjusted things toward the end of the month so it turned out ok) and realized I hadn't bought any meat all month except a family pack of hamburger. :( Grrr how do I make this work?! And we have like NO money for anything extra like a movie or clothes or birthday gifts... Sigh. I guess we'll just keep plugging away...
7. Abby learned a new animal noise this week. What does a chicken say? Cluck cluck cluck! Soooooo cute. :)

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The Saturday 7: Post seven things that happened to you this week. Just a quick summary. Things you might not necessarily write a whole blog post about. Idea taken from Sadie's Lovin' Life with Lucy.

"Stuff-itis"

I've been struggling this week with reading devotions in the morning... Adjusting to a new, non-school schedule has been difficult. But this morning I read this passage from Matthew 6:

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Or as the NLT ends it: "Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be."

I'll admit it. I can be materialistic. At least in my head. I don't often act on it (I was raised with a better understanding of money than that), but I keep my wish lists, and I'll spend time looking at ebay for the best priced cover for the Kindle I don't own.

I know the good Christian answer is to just be thankful for the things I do have. I'm reminded of the Veggie Tales movie about Madame Blueberry - she is a very sad berry because nothing that she has is good enough. She goes to "Stuffmart", where she buys everything thinking it will make her happy. She of course learns along the way that things don't make you truly happy. She encounters a couple of little kids and learns to be thankful for what she has.

I've heard that if there's something you want but don't necessarily need, to wait a couple weeks, or a month or two, and then re-evaluate whether it's still a good idea or not. I really do follow that process. But after those couple of months, I find myself thinking about the object again, wondering how beneficial it would be, is it really worth spending that much money on, but I really do want it...

Maybe if I look at each item on my "wishlist" through the eyes of the verse above... Why do I want the item? Is it just "stuff" that will eventually break and be thrown away and forgotten, or will it somehow help me store up treasures in heaven? Whatever that may look like...

How do you handle "stuff-itis" in your life?

Dave Ramsey would be proud

Well I'm finally taking the time to do it. I used to be so good at keeping up with our finances, tracking where our money went. Then life got busy, and we were doing fine financially, so the tracking got pushed to the backburner.

Then I started buying gift cards through the TRIP program at the school I work for. And I made a new year's resolution to start keeping track again. But the gift cards made things tricky. Would I record when I bought the cards, or when I used them to purchase things, or both? How would that filter through my nifty Excel formulas to tell me how we spent our money? So the tracking stayed on the backburner.

Well today I got inspired. I don't like not knowing where our money is going. If every dollar has a name, I'm less likely to spend it somewhere else under another name. So I made a brand new spreadsheet:

I totaled up the gift cards I have, ones I've bought from TRIP and ones we've gotten as gifts over the years... holy cow we've got a lot of $$ in gift cards waiting to be used! That's encouraging! So we'll see how things go. If I just force myself to take the time to do this, it WILL happen. We WILL find extra money to save for Abby or finish the basement. We WILL pay off our house early. I just need to put my organizing-perfectionist-beaver-type personality into it!

What about you? Do you live on a budget? How do you track where your money goes?

One month in...

Ok so one month into our new year's resolutions... how have we done??

1. Daily Devotions - C - This one started out well, but slowly I started doing other things at the beginning of my day instead of being in the Word (aka Facebook...). I'm on a roll this week though, both yesterday and today I started out with some of my "homework" for the Esther Bible study I'm doing with some gals at church.

2. Exercise every day - B - I actually haven't been doing too bad with this one. I found out about the 100 pushups challenge and started working on it a few weeks ago. And I've been trying to do some situps/ab exercises every day. I'd like to do more with this one, but most will have to wait until it warms up outside enough to take Abby out for walks. In the meantime, I'm just trying to stay consistent with doing something - especially since Abby really likes watching me and laughing at me doing pushups and situps. :)

3. Read to Abby every day - A - This is probably the one I've done the best at. There has rarely been a day all month that I did not read to Abby. Sometimes we'll read in the mornings, sometimes in the afternoon before a nap, sometimes it's a bedtime story. She likes to try and close the book on me before I'm done. But at least we're making an effort.

4. Meal plan - B+ - Not too bad. Some weeks have been better than others. Some weeks are much easier to plan than others. I'm working on meal planning over the weekend so I can grocery shop accordingly on Saturday mornings or Monday evenings.

5. Keep track of finances - I - (that's an I for Incomplete...) With trying to organize my schedule into a routine and work on all of my other resolutions, this one got put on the back-burner. And I'm ok with that. Two days ago I put in the time to create a new Excel file to track our income and out-go, so this resolution is really starting in February.


So there we go. Definite room for improvement, but it's only been one month. I realized I did NOT make a resolution to blog every day (and I thought I had!) so that's a relief... since in the past 31 days I've blogged 8 times. Sheesh. 

Happy New Year

Ahh, New Year's resolutions. Something to be made every year, and broken a few weeks later... Everyone always starts out with such good intentions and valiant goals. I've read anywhere from 75-92% of people actually keep their new year's resolutions. So why even try? The odds are against me. It's a whole lot harder to actually do something than to just say I will.

Well I'm actually going to try. I've been making a couple of lists of things to do weekly and things to do daily. Most of the weekly stuff involves cleaning, etc. around the house, and most of the daily stuff is for my own personal fulfillment. So I'm going to list a few things here, and hope that by blogging about them I can keep up with them!

1. Daily devotions. Even if it's just reading a short page from a devotional book, I want to be in the Word every day. A former pastor of mine just launched a new video devotional called 30God, which I think will be a great jump-start to helping me think about God every day.

2. Exercise every day. I'm sure this is the most-often-named new year's resolution. Ok, maybe "lose weight" is the MOST common, but I'm more interested in just being healthy. It will be so much easier once spring comes and Abby and I can get out and walk again, but in the meantime I want to make a conscious effort to do something every day - even if it's just some sit-ups.

3. Read to Abby every day. I love books, and I want to encourage Abby to love to read too.

4. Meal plan. Ideally this will be something I'll do once a week, and plan what we're going to have for dinner every night for the next week. Then I can plan my grocery shopping accordingly, and not get to 6:00 at night and wonder hmm, what am I going to do for dinner? I at least want to have that day's dinner planned by noon so I can get any prep work out of the way or meat out of the freezer etc.

5. Keep track of finances. I've done well with this off and on, keeping track of what we spend and such, but never for a whole year. We've always been ok with our spending, etc. and I've never truly created a budget to work from each month, but I know the simple task of recording where our money goes does help us not spend as much.

So there we go. Five things, all very doable. Some daily, some weekly (I won't bore you with all the weekly cleaning tasks I want to accomplish). Can I stick with it? Be part of the 8-25% who actually stick with their resolutions? We'll see...

Do you have any resolutions for the new year?