Hosanna!

Did you know Hosanna means save me now? I learned that at choir practice on Wednesday night. I thought it was another praise term...like awesome, holy, etc. Can you imagine being in the crowds the first Palm Sunday? Imagine standing in the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus on coming down the street, knowing without a shadow of a doubt in your heart that he was the Messiah, no matter what other said, shouting to him "Hosanna! Save me now!" Those people knew Jesus was the Messiah. They knew he was there to save them, to save us! We have their experiences in the Bible to tell us Jesus is the Son of God, our Messiah. They had prophecies, but they KNEW it was him. Learning the meaning of the word made me look at the story and songs with Hosanna so differently. I know I'll be singing them differently as well!  Praise the Lord I can say He HAS saved me!

My husband rocks!

My husband is AWESOME. Seriously, he is so amazing. We have this little problem. Whenever he wants to surprise me with something, I call him and ask him to pick it up without knowing he was planning to to surprise me. Well, yesterday he finally succeeded. Oh my word. GOOD surprise! He was later than usual coming home from work, so when he called, I asked where he was and why he was so late. He said he had to stop for a couple emergency vehicles. I didn't think anything more of it. We live near two hospitals, so there are always emergency vehicles it seems. When he got home, he said he had a surprise for me. He had a walmart bag but I really just assumed he used it for something else till I saw what was in it. He got me a laptop!!! It's a Toshiba. He was going to buy a purple one, but they were all out, so we call the two closest stores, and they were out as well. No biggie. He tried to get the one I wanted, but the fact he still thought about it and got me one was so sweet and so awesome. You know, we have our days that aren't so great but in the end, he's pretty wonderful. We're not perfect, we're perfect for each other. I'm trying to adjust to typing on a laptop now. For the past five and a half years, I have used nothing but an ergonomic keyboard, so going to something that's not is weird! I also keep hitting the mouse pad with my thumbs as I type. If there are random letters mixed in with words, that's why. I tried to proofread. I love it though. I love that he was so thoughtful.


I love tax season!  This wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  =)

Blizzard 2011

We got our blizzard.  It only dropped about 11 inches on us.  In some spots it looks like it hardly snowed, but the drifts certainly make up for it.  We have a drift in our driveway that is at least four feet.  I'm sure the kids can't wait for quiet time to be over so they can go out and play in it with daddy, who's employers closed down for the first time in 13 years!  We are thrilled to have him home!

Drift out the side door

This is our side door

Apartment across the street.  I'm sure the people in the lower left apartment can't wait for some of that snow to be gone.

It's almost time....

Bears vs. Packers showdown

GO BEARS!



Soccer Mom

It's official.  I've had the minivan, now I have a soccer player.  I am officially a soccer mom.  Kylee had her first soccer game last week.  To be honest, I know next to nothing about soccer.  I know that only the goalie can touch the ball with his hands.  I know that they have to kick the ball into the goal of the opposite team.  That's about it.  Turns out, it doesn't matter all that much for a team of four and five year olds!  They have their goalies and then just run.  They all chase the ball and try to kick it.  It is seriously one of the cutest things I've ever seen.  I'm glad my kids get the opportunity to participate in a team sport as early as four years old, and through the church which makes it even better.  It makes me excited for Elijah to be able to play next year.  He says he's not going to.  He wants to play football with the Bears.  We'll see....  I also can't wait to get her back into gymnastics this spring, and try Elijah out in karate.  It's exciting to see how they like different things.



A Budget Family

We've always said we were on a budget.  I suppose I should put the word budget in quotes.  We've tried and tried and never followed very strictly.  Our budget consisted of paying the bills and whatever else was free for all.  Things just went from bad to worse financially and we finally hit our rock bottom and found a budget that works.  I've always hated budget meetings.  I dreaded even looking at the budget.  Now I look at it every single night.  Some things come out of the bank account, some things come out of envelopes.  I'm not sure if anyone else out there has at least 20 envelopes in there system, but we do!  I'm adding one more after today too.  We've finally found something that works for us, and we've stuck to it, and found we have had a little more money than we realized because we've been so diligent. 

The only problem with our first month is I didn't take into consideration when I find a really good deal on something we need or something we've been looking for.  We're going to start miscellaneous envelope for things like this.  We only have on set of sheets for our bed.  I have to wash them immediately when I take them off so we can put them right back on.  Today, Target had 700 thread count sheets for 75% off!  Fifteen dollars for sheets that were originally sixty dollars!  I also found a shopping cart for my kids for $7.48, also 75% off.  We've been looking for a cart like this for a long time but refused to pay thirty bucks for a toy.  Thankfully, when we did our budget, we estimated extremely low on Nick's tips, so the money was there.  If we weren't budgeting, I might have spent money we didn't have.  If we weren't budgeting, I wouldn't have known that we are further ahead on funding envelopes this month than we anticipated.

I used to HATE budgeting with a passion.  Everytime my husband said the word budget, I could feel myself making a face.  Now, as much as I hate to admit this, I look forward to looking at it each night, and I enjoy putting the cash from tips into each envelope.  I love knowing exactly where our money is going.  I don't have to look at my bank statement at the end of this month and wonder where all of our money went.  I can look through our budget and envelopes and know that we paid our bills for the month, funded all of our envelopes, and one of those is even a Christmas envelope so we're prepared when it's time for that next year!  This was one of the most important things on my goals for the year, and so far, January is looking good.  I hope the rest of the year is just as good.

This one has nothing to do with the budget, but it's just cute.  She was sick (ear infection but didn't know yet), and she was snuggled up watching Dora. 

The new shopping cart

Is this not the cutest thing ever?  Pretty sure I have the cutest kids on the planet.

Is it really 2011?

I didn't realize how long it'd been since I wrote anything!  There really isn't much going on.  Christmas was great.  We stayed home rather than traveling to Michigan this year.  I missed my Michigan family so much.  I love our family parties, and I always feel like I'm missing out when we aren't there, but I know we have to be fair and stay here and have holidays with my in-laws too.  My family is just so huge, and there is something about being around my aunts, uncles and cousins and my kids experiencing the traditions I experienced growing up.  It's still so weird to me that Nick's family is so small, but I've realized that is more the norm.  I don't think most people have family reunions that consist of 100+ people, and that was just my dads siblings and their significant others, all the cousins, and their significant others, their kids (and their significant others), and even two of the great-grandkids now have kids!  While I don't ever want to move back to Michigan, sometimes it'd be nice to be close to everyone.  I just miss them when I'm not there.

New Years Eve/my birthday came and went without much partying.  My husband attempted to plan a surprise party, but eveyrone always has plans on New Years Eve.  It didn't matter because I ended up sick on my birthday anyway.  Not that fun to spend half your birthday in bed with the room spinning like your on one of those crazy rides at the fair.  Blech.

Now we're into the new year trying to get into a new groove.  My daycare kids, Joshua and Sylvia are back after a week and a half off, Nick has been back to work for a week after being off since Christmas Eve, and next week all of our normal activies will be back in full swing.  We've got some goals for the year, but I hesitate to share them all because some are more personal than others.  One is to tighten up our budget and stick to it.  We've had a budget for a long time.  But we didn't stick to it like we should.  I know we're only 9 days into January, but so far, we're doing pretty well.  Nick comes home from Monicals and we go down the budget and start putting his tip money in appropriate envelopes, see what has to be paid from the checking account, and we are even ahead of what we thought on some things.  It's really a great feeling.

Now I have some cleaning up to do, and I need to make Nick's lunch for work tomorrow, but I'll leave you with pictures of my three favorite kids from Christmas!

Another goal I have is to read 6 non-fiction books a year, not including my moms group or Sunday school books.  I used to read a lot.  Now when I have down time, I watch TV.  I want to read more, I want to learn more.  I want my kids to see me read.