Update

Well, a lot has happened since my last post! First...we bought a house!

We actually bought it in May, so over a year ago. It's a bit of a fixer upper, but we LOVE it. The location is perfect, it's a quiet culdesac literally steps from a park. Nick takes the boys over there all the time to play baseball, and it totally melts my heart :). 

We also bought a new car! Well...not new, but new to us!

This purchase was a necessary one because...I'm pregnant!

I know what you're thinking. Why did we need a new car? We could easily fit 3 kids in the back of our accord you say?

True...but we can't fit 4!

We are having boy/girl twins and could not possibly be more excited!

The babies due date is September 9th 2016, but we are told they will probably come early. Can't say I'm sorry to hear that...twin pregnancy sucks. I mean, it's amazing! I'm am in awe of what my body is doing, creating two humans at the same time! But...oh my gosh, this is the most physically challenging ordeal I have ever had to endure. Here I am at 32 weeks, at least 4 more weeks to go....possibly as many as 8. I seriously don't know how I'm going to do this, I get through each day by focusing on their movements and smiling at their growing personalities :). I can't wait to hold these little squishes, and I am So excited to see how our family is transformed by these little spirits :). 

Bad turn...

This day started out so good! Nick left at 5:40 this morning for work, and I got up with him to make breakfast. We had a fun chat, and when he left for work I stayed awake. 

I got to listen to the birds wake up, watch sunrise, read my book and shower all before the boys even woke up. 

Eventually they did wake up, so we had a nice breakfast together and they got dressed as we prepared to head out to the store.

When we opened the garage, what did we discover? So many worms! And landon decided that he wanted to rescue them all so that they didn't get squished when we pulled the car out.

Cute right? I thought so too.

Until "the great worm rescue" turned into "let's chase mom with worms"

And then things went downhill...

I ran right into the stupid basketball hoop. 

Pain. All I feel right now is pain. So dizzy. And such a flaming headache.

But landon feels horrible and he is trying so hard to spoil me, and that I find adorable :). 

I really do have errends to run today thou...but at this point I'm afraid someone will lovingly chat me up searching for signs of domestic violence.

I can't even put a bandaid on it, I'm too scared it will pull out my eye brow hairs.

How long does a giant goose egg/bruise/cut take to heal? I have cabin fever just thinking about it...

Our journey to financial freedom ;)

Can you tell by the title that we read the Dave Ramsey book? Lol

I'm going to be totally open and honest here...since no one reads this blog except for me anyway ;). I might appreciate this information one day!

Once upon a time, we bought a house! And we LOVE IT!! But in order to afford the down payment...we ended up putting all of our living expenses on a credit card for a month, to free up our cash. It worked, lol. But may not have been the smartest plan. After we moved in, we fell into the new home owners trap of wanting to make this our dream home RIGHT NOW. Cue, many trips to Home Depot a week, most of those amounting to at least $100. Many times it was much more than that. Before we knew it, we owed about $1200 on one credit card, and $1200 on another and just COULD NOT get those numbers down. We had a "loose budget" but it wasn't working well, still...we weren't terribly stressed because we knew that all it would take is one paycheck with some good over time on it and we would be fine. 

When all of a sudden, we decided to go on a trip to Biston to see Nicks sister and the Fam for the Fourth of July.

(A totally amazing trip by the way!)

Anyway. On our way home, we got bored and decided, on a whim, to listen to the Dave Ramsey book (Total Money Makeover) with an extra audible credit that we have. And we were forever changed...haha. That sounds so dramatic! But appropriately so. The biggest thing that we walked away from that book learning is that it doesn't matter how much money we make every month, if we're in debt..we're broke.

So, we determind that we were totally broke, and committed ourselves to following his baby steps. 

So on our way home, we stopped at the bank, pulled out some cash, and switched to the envelope system for the remainder of the month. And in just THREE WEEKS of totally cracking down on our spending and following Daves "Baby Steps" we have almost paid off both credit cards AND are prepared to pay cash for Dereks unexpected tonsillectomy from last week, which is going to be costing us about $1100. Not bad for a months work! 

It has been a bit of an adjustment, we have about $10 of free spending money a month for the whole family worked into our budget. And have cut our food budget from about $500 a month, to $360. This all required extensive planning, which sometimes feels like a part time job, but seeing the debt disappear makes it all SOOOOO worth it. Once we're  done with the credit cards, we'll be tackling our student loans. We have a plan to be completely out of debt (except for the house...which we'll tackle later!) in about 16 months. $43k in 16 months! Wish us luck :)

Poodle.

Well. Something happened. And despite my embarrassment, it must be blogged about.

But let's start at the beginning. Once upon a time, I had long awesome hair! But it was also incredibly damaged...so I cut it off. It looked awesome! The girl that cut it was an artist! It looked so good that I thought, HEY! I should go shorter! Since I look so dang hott with shortish hair, I would probably look AMAZING with really short hair, and imagine how EASY that would be to do in the morning!

And no one talked me out of it.

Well, Nick tried. Bless his soul.

So I got a hair cut. Worst haircut I've ever had in my life.

And then I got another one in an attempt to fix the first one. She made it worse. That took some real talent...I guess I must concede that she was also an artist.

As I lay there one night in a coma induced by short hair/ bad haircut pity.

I asked myself WHY I cut it to begin with. I loved my long hair! But I did hate how damaged and tangly it was.

So I got up with a profound desire to have long, beautiful, healthy hair. (Is this post getting vain enough for you?)

According to my research, one of the main things that I could do to ensure long healthy hair, is STOP USING HEAT.

so I did. I quit heat cold turkey. I even turn the water down when I wet my hair in the shower. No heat for those babies! That was Christmas Day, so it's been almost 2 months. 

And you know what I've been missing? Curls. I MISS Curley hair! I considered hair curlers, but my hair is so freaking short, that I didn't think I could actually wrap my hair around those monstrosities.

That is until one day I was walking around Walmart, and what do my eyes behold!

Little teeny tiny hair curlers!

SOLD. I was so excited to try them out. I used the whole box...

In retrospect, perhaps that was a few too many. Still, I woke up way early this morning in the gushing excitement of having curls to style!

What I was not expecting was...

An Afro.

I started frantically trying to brush it out, and applying argon oil in an attempt to make it CALM THE HECK DOWN. 

it was no use.

But at least landon got a good laugh..

In the end...this is what I walked out of the bathroom looking like.

I sent that picture to Nick, and he said "you look so pretty!!"

Oh, amazing, complimentary, biased husband. WHAT would I do without you :).

Ooooh Landon :)

landon did something today, and I just have to write it down because it was hilarious! And I never want to forget it!

I was just brushing Derek's teeth, and landon walked up to me, wearing his green hooded cloak. And we had the following conversation:

Landon: mom, did you know that I learned some snake words?

Me: no....what words have you learned?

Landon: paaaasaaaaaaaaw

Haha! You had to be there? Maybe.

He's definitely my little Harry Potter boy, in case anyone finds themselves in need of a parslemouth! :)

My kids are so adorable!

The last year has been so crazy, lots of changes and things to get used too. All completely worth it, and most of the time awesome! But still. One thing that we all had to get used too was sleeping in the same room for a whole year. Whether it was in a hotel room, or in the room that we rented from Debbie's house, it was an adventure making that work for everyone. Part of that adventure was figuring out where to put the boys, consequently, they shared a bed all year. Oh boy did they grow to love it! 

They were not happy to hear that they would be getting their own room once we moved here to PA. and in the end, nick and I decided to continue letting them share a bed, to help them with the transition.

Well, on our second night here, I heard derek wake up and start scream-crying. I was startled awake and was on my way to their room when I heard landon say "it's okay Derek, I'm here. Don't be scared. Lay down and I'll scratch your back". 

I'll admit that I teared up a little bit when I heard him, that's my wonderful, protective, empathetic, Amazing boy!

Derek settled right down, and I didn't hear another peep from him all night.

These boys of mine <3

On another note! Derek has started doing something rather hilarious with his prayers. He'll say his normal, adorable, heart melting prayer. But when he says "Amen", it's more of an exclamation as he throws his arms WIDE open. Nick says he's releasing his prayers to the heavens, lol.

They have been doing so well with all of the space here, I can't help but smile when they thank the Lord "for this house" every night.

Fingers crossed that some miracle will happen and we find ourselves able to buy it!

First week in our new home!

It has been such a good week! The boys have loved having their own room, and all of their toys at their disposal.

We reinstituted quiet time, so the boys have been in their room by 7pm every night, which means that Nick and I have had some time together in the evenings!

How have we been spending this time?

Harry Potter. So much Harry Potter. We only have one movie left! The War :). Oh how we look forward to evenings filled with Harry Potter and popcorn (coconut oil and salt is the BEST popcorn flavor eeeeever!)

The biggest downside to this week is trying to get on a good sleep schedule. We've managed to get everyone waking up at 8...which is two hours earlier than when we got here! But we still need to push that wake up time back one more hour, because we are all still staying up too late.

I guess that will come with time though!

On another sad note...Derek's fish died. The stupid thing made it across the country and decides to kick the bucket right after the bowl change.

Here's hoping Davy gave him a warm welcome!

There he goes!

Derek didn't take it too well..

We shelved our books! We still have a couple of totes full of books in the garage, so we need one more. But it's really exciting to finally see all of the books that we've collected! I've started ER-reading all of Jane Austen's work. And once I finish that, I have great plans for the complete works of Charlotte and Emily Bronte...so so so excited!

Nick and Landon made an igloo, which was hilarious to watch, and they had a ton of fun.

And Nick and I have had a couple of very peaceful dinners when we couldn't manage to pull the boys in from the backyard when dinner was ready

I still can't believe we have a backyard! It's like a dream come true :).