Day 62 and Security

What makes you feel secure? If you don't have it, you start feeling nervous and anxious? For me, it's having plenty of food in the freezer and pantry. I'm not sure why, but if we start getting low on stuff, especially meats, I get really nervous. That's why I get so excited when I find great bargains on food, well that and I have no life. LOL. Last night, I found 3# bags of boneless skinless chicken breasts for 3.99 at Jumbo's in Enid. That is an awesome price! I normally pay $6-6.50 regular price at Aldi's for those. I bought 5 of them. They also had ground chuck for 1.59 a pound. I already had some hb meat, but I went ahead and bought 4 packages, a total of about 18 pounds. I brought it home and browned up 3 packages of it and put it in the freezer last night. It was so lean that I was able to get 17 baggies out of that; I usually put about 2 cups of the browned drained meat in a bag, that is about equal to one pound of meat. Obviously, the higher fat stuff doesn't go as far as the leaner meat. I'm probably going to make meatballs with some of the last package. Oh, and they also had boneless pork chops for 1.49 a pound so I got a couple of packages of those to freeze.

I wish I knew the deep reasons behind my issues with this. But I think at least part of it is that if I run out of what I bought on sale, then I have to pay full price for the meats and that makes me crazy. A few weeks ago when I ran out of hamburger meat, I had to pay 2.09 a pound to get some. Hamburger meat, for crying out loud!

I woke up this morning with a bad headache and a deep cough AGAIN. Gosh, I am so sick of this crap. I took some medicine and went back to sleep and thankfully the headache let up and the cough isn't as deep, but I am still coughing. I hope to be able to do something with the rest of that hamburger meat today, plus work on our taxes. Then of course, I have tons of homework to work on too. Such is life in my house! LOL!

Oh, and a victory story. After I made my bank deposit last night and went to the grocery store, I wanted so bad to stop at Sonic. I called Tom and he talked me down and I came straight home.

Day 61 and Temptation

Spring break is next week and I took two days off: Monday & Friday. I also have a very light week, kid wise the days that I am open which will be nice. I plan to use the time to work on homework and hopefully get taxes finished up. I still have to get financial aid paperwork filled out for Serenity, Josh, and myself! We're going to have 3 family members in college next year! Isn't that unreal?

Remember when I talked a while back about how my biggest temptation is stuff for my child care program? Temptation has struck in the form of Baby Signs! One of my friends calls me last night as I'm on my way to a meeting to tell me that she has 4 Baby Signs beginner kits for $25 each. She is a Baby Signs instructor and she is selling them at her cost. The set includes 4 board books, a DVD, a parent book. I WANT IT! LOL! I am going to be doing a Scholastic book order soon because I have 4 child care birthdays coming up in April & May and you just can't beat Scholastics prices for books. I am going to try to resist the temptation to order anything but exactly what I need.

I cannot tell you how happy I am feeling about our finances right now. It is just a really good feeling to know that we are making progress, even if it's slow.

Day 60 and counting my blessings

One of my favorite hymns is "Count your blessings". I remember singing it in church when I grew up and we sing it in the church I go to now. I'm going to burst into spontaneous song now (some of you will get what I mean by that LOL). "Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God hath done." Anyway, counting my blessings is not something that I do near often enough. When there's trouble (and there's always trouble, LOL), I tend to focus on the negative and forget all the positives in my life. It is a conscious effort to make myself focus on positive. I'm going to get sappy for a moment. One of my blessings is of course my sweet wonderful husband. Tom loves me as much (or more) as he did when we got married. Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have that, and of course I love and adore him. He adopted and loved Serenity & Josh just as if they were his own (and of course, they are). Then there's my kids. They are all three such unique and wonderful people in their own right. None of them have been in any serious trouble, they do well in school, and they make me proud to be their mom everyday. Then there is my dear friend DB. DB has been through so much in her life: fell off a roof and broke her ankle several years ago, has fought cancer 3 times, and is currently getting ready to go through a divorce. She is one of the truly happiest people that I know. She always has a smile and is a great listener. I think if she can have a good attitude with everything she has gone through...then well I need to work on mine!

On another note, today is the 2 month anniversary of starting the blog and the new FPU classes. When I look at all the changes we've made in our life in the last couple of months, I am amazed. That is another blessing. I've had the prayers, help, and encouragement of friends and family reading my blog and offering their support.

My licensing worker came for a visit this morning and that went well. Best of all, it's over for a while. Since I have several kids who will be gone next week during Spring Break, we are having our Easter party this afternoon. Should be an exciting time!

Day 59 and the waiting is killing me!

This has nothing to do with saving money or our journey, but I feel the need to spill my guts and gripe to the world in general, so I am. I just finished my first humanities class (ancient humanities). The guy was horribly slow on grading-as in I still don't have a grade on my work that was due 2 weeks before this past weekend. And of course, I don't have a grade on my final paper in there, either. It's making me crazy!

On a happier note, I do have my grades for my social ethics class and from my figures, it looks like I got a 99.2% for the class. Hopefully I'll pull an A in the humanities class, too.

Day 58 and the Glorious Weather

Isn't the weather great today in our little corner of the world? I just love days like this where the kids and I can get out in the mornings and let them run off some of that energy.

Well, we did finally get the forbearance form for Tom's student loan mailed last week. Now we just wait to hear back from them on whether it is approved or not. The gas bill check made it in plenty of time before the due date-the check electronically cleared our bank this morning. I'm always a bit nervous when I mail things like that, but the gas company charges $3 to pay online and I would rather spend the 42 cents on a stamp. Another way I save a bit of money is that I do pay all the bills that I can online, since it's quicker and it saves me postage. For example, I pay our cell phone bill and our cable bill online. I also use the Bill pay feature through our credit union where we can set up payments to go out on certain dates, and they will issue the check out of our account and mail it (or pay it electronically in some cases). It sure has cut down on my stamps.

Day 57 and More on Socks

Talking about my holey socks the other day got me to thinking about one of the little things I do to save money in the long run on socks. When I buy a package of socks, I buy ones that are all the same and of a neutral color (usually white). Then if one gets a hole in it, I just throw it away, and eventually another one will get a hole in it and I'll have a pair of socks with no hole. If I buy packages with different colors of socks, then if one gets a hole in it, the other one is pretty much useless, except as a sock puppet.

How is everyone enjoying the time change? May I just say that I hate the time change? I hate having to readjust my body and 7 little kid's bodies every few months just because some politician somewhere thinks it's a good idea. What state is it that has rebelled and doesn't change their clocks? Arizona, I think? Maybe I'll move there someday. It would probably be good for my asthma anyway. LOL.

Day 56 and not much to say tonight

Well, today ends our 8th week of this journey. It has been amazing and I think we're doing well. We still goof up and make mistakes, but we just keep trying. For Valentine's Day I had given Tom a coupon book that I found online to print off for free. One of the coupons was for a special dinner out, so we went out for lunch together yesterday.

Tonight in FPU we watched the same lesson as last week because so many people missed last week due to the nasty storms that moved through.

Hope all my friends and family have a great week this week!