Baby #4 is on the way!!!!

Just had to announce the pending arrival of our newest addition to our family! Yay! I am so excited! I've been waiting for my husband to say, "OK," for nearly 2 years now, so this was a long-awaited gift. We give thanks to God for His gift of this new life. The girls are SO excited! Lydia's our little Mommy-in-training, so she insists she's going to help change diapers and hold the baby. Rebekah is excited but not exactly sure what to think as far as what it will do to her status in the family. Abigail has no idea what's going on, but she does know "baby Mommy tummy." :P She's so cute. Not everyone has quite figured it out yet, or even seen the announcement in their emails, but fortunately, no one checks my blog, so it's not a bad thing. :D

Anyway, so I am tired, hungry, and cranky (husband says "very cranky" but I don't agree), sometimes crying or on the verge of crying for no apparent reason, and my back aches occassionally. That and I have to pee a lot... LOL But it's all worth it. Yippee! I love being pregnant, and while I don't like the pain that goes along with birth, I actually do love that, too. Just seeing (and feeling) the tiny miracle emerge that God has graciously put into our hands to love and care for, the trust that He has in us that we can do this (and with 4, I'm a little nervous), it just makes me think, Wow. He really loves us and creates us exactly how He wants us to be for our whole lives, exactly perfect for what He has in store for us here on earth, with a soul that is ready to serve Him. He trusts us to lead this child, to teach him/her the way he/she should go, so that he/she will not turn from God. That's a big responsibility. We are responsible for our childrens' faith.

OK, anyway, I must be tired. I'm babbling and my eyes are closing. Bedtime for me!

Dumb finances

I hate balancing the checkbook. It's tedious to enter in the receipts, it's a pain to go through and check off everything from the bank while you make sure it's entered in Quicken, and I absolutely hate when I'm off somehow and we're in the hole. 2 days in a row this week we got overdraft charges, and we couldn't figure out why. After getting all the receipts entered, checks entered, bills entered, automatic payments entered, and balancing the checkbook from our bank statements, we finally determined this must have been snowballing since before we began the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover, and we never did have as much to work with as we thought while we were planning the budget. So when Matt gets paid on Friday (mind, we still have to get groceries for the week and gas, and we have around $50-$60 in cash to last us until Friday, plus a $100 gift card from T-Mobile), we have to somehow figure out how much we're in the hole, subtract that from our income for the month, and then budget based on those numbers. It has me very worried, because I'm not sure we'll have enough for groceries and things like TP and laundry detergent. But, we somehow make it through all the time, and things get back to normal. So... I guess I'll just work the numbers some more, start in on our next budget, and try even harder to make this work. I think we're going to move the SAM storage unit (about $100 a month) over to our checking account and get it off the credit card once his raise starts going through. We're not sure if that will happen with this paycheck or the next. Somehow, it will all work out. I have confidence that the Lord will see us through and make sure we have food to eat, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs. I just have to learn to trust Him.

So other than that, I did about a half a load of dishes and that was it today. I slept late, then I took a 2 hour nap this afternoon, and I have a headache and I feel like I got WAY too much sleep. Well, I did. :-/ Now I'm yawning while listening to my toddler scream at me that she's hungry. Too bad it's bedtime... :)

Have a good night!

Feeling low :(

OK, so I'm feeling down in the dumps today. We've been doing the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Baby Steps since about May, and things have been going pretty good. We've got money in the bank, plenty to fall back on, etc. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, yesterday we get hit by an overdraft notice and a $10 fee for them to transfer the money from our savings account. Totally took me by surprise, because we haven't been stepping outside of our budget. We've been doing very well. Then today, bam! Another one! What the heck??? So now I'm trying to figure out the receipts and going through the bank statements trying to figure out the error. It didn't help that Matt's company "screwed up" 2 paychecks ago and gave us extra and then "fixed" the error by giving us less this last time. I'm thinking that's what messed it all up, but then again, how could it if I'm still within all the budgeting and all the numbers for the month added up? I'm really confused. I was at the $1000 emergency fund, ready to start snowballing every extra penny into the credit card and then our student loans and car loan, and then this happens! My entire $1000 is wiped out (well, just about, we'll see what happens tomorrow). It's so frustrating! This always happens. We feel like we're on track, watching what we spend, being extra careful, and then suddenly, all the money is gone, and we have no clue how it even happened. SO frustrating. I am so depressed tonight, I don't even want to look at the receipts anymore. I've got them all in order and ready to enter into Quicken (granted, I haven't done it in a while, but I was on vacation at the time I normally would have done it, and then when we got home I've been homeschooling and showing the house practically every day since), but I just don't have the heart or ambition to do it. I don't want it to be my mistake. I don't want to have missed something that I forgot to put into the budget or something dumb like that. I am so bad with these numbers. I can't even balance a checkbook without the aid of Quicken or Money. Go figure, I can do calculus in my sleep... So anyway, that's that, I guess.

Oh, and then Matt has the audacity to suggest that he go to a movie tonight! "But it's only Budget, and it's only $2! I can get that from the change bucket!" So here I am by myself, with 3 little girls who absolutely refuse to go to sleep, with all these receipts staring at me and no one to help me with them or the kids. So anyway, I guess we're just going to be stuck in debt forever, because evidently someone doesn't want us to get out of it. I just have no idea what to do anymore.

And that's my rant for the evening. :-/

It's so hot...

We don't have central air. A window A/C unit resides in the living room, which makes the living room nice and cool. As for the rest of the house, it's quite warm. Upstairs is horrible. There's no window unit up here, where our office is and where the kids sleep. We have fans, but they just mostly blow the hot air around. Nice, huh? I can't wait to move. We will hopefully be buying a house with central air, and if it doesn't have it, we will get it before the hot weather arrives again.

Speaking of a new house, I NEED A DISHWASHER!!! It's driving me nuts to not have one. I get eczema on my hands because I'm allergic to... something. Not 100% sure what, but I think it might have something to do with triclosan, an antibacterial agent. It's in most dishsoaps and antibacterial handsoaps. When I wear rubber gloves to wash the dishes, my hands don't itch nearly as much. Also, when I am out and about and need to wash my hands, it's almost always antibacterial soap, the vast majority of which have triclosan in them. But if I rinse my hands for a long time (like at least a minute or more), my hands might not itch so much. Maybe. To further the proof against triclosan, a brand of deodorant I had never tried before has it in it. I just happened to read the ingredients before using it. When I saw that, I'm like, "Hm, this could make a pretty good experiment." So I used it for about 5 or 6 days, started breaking out in the all-too-well-known rash, and said, "Good-bye!" So I am pretty sure it is the triclosan that I'm allergic to. Someday I will go to an allergist and get my solid proof. :)

Anyway, my kids were sick all weekend and today, so no school today. :( Too bad, too, as I had a great day planned. But tomorrow should be beautiful and a little cooler, so it's not all bad. We'll just be a day behind this week. Oh-well. One week from today my 4yo starts 4K. I can't believe she's 4! Just today I noticed that she actually looks like a little girl instead of a toddler/preschooler. I remember when I noticed that in my oldest. Ah, how the years fly by!

So I guess there's not much else to talk about today. So I'll close for now and maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow. :D

Welcome to my blog!

Well, this is my first entry in my first blog, ever! For the longest time, I didn't even know what a blog was, let alone wanted to try one out. Ha! Guess the idea just grew on me. Now that I have a blog, I wonder if I'll keep up on it... Well, time will tell.

OK, had to come back and add a thought I just had. :) I'm a member of Flylady (www.flylady.net), and she just wrote an email about labels and how they can be bad and used as a crutch, to whine, etc. Well, all my life I've felt looked at as lazy, unable to control my life (ie, clutter, keep up with the kids, etc, etc, etc). I found Flylady, and things are definitely TONS better than they used to be. I am a SHE (Side-tracked Home Executive) as much as the next SHE, and I always knew that, deep down. I never really learned how to pick up after myself, keep up with chores, etc. So now that I'm learning how to do that, I am realizing that Flylady gives us the term SHE and helps us work through that without calling us lazy. She helps us change our attitudes from one of defeat to one of pride in who we are to gain peace.

Fast forward to her essay from this evening. I have recently figured out that, yes, I am lazy. Period. End of story. BUT! While I am lazy, I have learned what makes me feel lazy, and I am beginning to use that knowledge to change my attitude from one of laziness to one of "get it done now, because your kids might get sick tonight and you won't be able to do it tomorrow" (OK, I used that example because my kids DID get sick last night, and I spent this morning running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to pick up and clean before our Realtor came over and had a showing). Anyway, I digress. My (and my husband's, I should add) attitude has been changing a lot lately. We used to just agree with whatever was decided, take what came, blah, blah, blah. Now, my husband has a new job that he loves, we are able to upgrade to a new house (would never have been able to do that before the new job), and because of that, we both are feeling a new attitude come over us that we want to make life happen for us, not wait for it to happen to us.

So, now we are homeschooling our oldest, next daughter will be in 4K just for this year since her sister got to (you can't tell a 3yo she can go to school, then retract that when her sister got to go and she's been waiting for her turn for a year), and our youngest will be homeschooled completely. We are getting a new house on our own terms where we want to live, we are cooking/eating healthier (OK, so we fall off the bandwagon a lot and go out to eat, but we're trying), we're working through our debts using Dave Ramsey's guidelines (www.daveramsey.com), and we're just plain cleaning up our lives and changing for the better, doing what WE want to do instead of what people EXPECT us to do. It has been met with some resistance by our families. We are reminded many of times of the lack of social interaction our kids will face by not attending traditional school (we sign them up for a few city-offered classes, so they get their interaction times, plus we have been searching for other homeschoolers in our area - this will be easier after we move and know where we will be living), they wonder how they will compare to traditional students academically (most homeschoolers are ahead of their peers), they wonder how this will affect college (many colleges are seeking out homeschooled kids because of the diversity they bring to a campus and because their SAT and ACT scores are very high), and they just plain wonder if I can do it. Well, I am proving that I can do it. OK, so it's been 3 days. :P But we already had a meltdown, and my husband and I talked it over and fixed the problem. As other problems come up, we will face them head-on and figure out how to overcome them. I know our teaching and learning styles will change with time, the schedules will get readjusted a million times, and there will be countless obstacles to learning, but the most important thing is that I WILL make this work. The fact that people think I will fail and just can't do it makes me want to prove that I can do this. That and getting the new house, keeping up with some church work, my friends and family, and everything else I have going on in my life. I just want to prove everyone wrong, that I can be "as good as them." Yeah, I'm not perfect, but neither are they, and sometimes people act like they are and that I'll never be as good as they are.

Anyway, this took my my whole evening to set up (I played with a lot of settings :P , so I guess I should get to bed. Church tomorrow morning, and 3 girls to get ready besides myself and a husband. :D Have a great night!