2 Years & Days 3 and 4: I love binder clips

Last month, I washed our shower curtain liner. Apparently, the dirt and grime were the only things holding it together and it fell apart in the washer. LOL. So I had Tom stop at Dollar General and get another one. Within days, one of the holes had ripped out, and pretty soon the next one too. I was annoyed. I didn't want to have to buy another shower curtain liner so soon, but at the rate they were ripping out, I didn't think this one was going to last. Then Tom came up with the idea to use a bobby pin to hold it together. That wasn't strong enough to hold, BUT it gave me the idea to try binder clips. I love binder clips, they're so multi-functional-not just for clipping paper. LOL. Anyway, they seem to be working very well so far. So we get to use our new shower curtain liner for a while longer. YEAH!

2 Years & 2 days and computer problems

BOO! Our computer decided to quit working this afternoon. Luckily we had an extra one here that Tom's dad had given Josh and Josh wasn't using right now so we hooked it up. I just kept thanking God that it didn't happen WHILE I was still taking college classes. I'd have been in absolute panic mode. Anyway, despite that, I've managed to get the parent totals done for 2009, now I just need to get the forms ready for the parents. Because of the computer problems, we didn't go through any books yet today. Don't know if we will or not. But having a computer takes priority! LOL!

2 years & 1 day and the journey continues

Well, first a praise on us! We have done really well with eating at home in the last week. I cannot get over how easy it is to fall back into the bad habit of eating out so frequently. I don't think we were doing it as frequently as before, but we had been doing it too much. Why are bad habits so hard to break and good habits so hard to do?

Di mentioned in a reply to yesterday's post that she knew I had wanted to give up in the last year. And here I thought I'd hidden that really well. HA! Sometimes I wish I wasn't such a transparent person. LOL. Anyway, she's right. Tom had asked me the other day if I'd lost interest in the blog. No, I haven't, but I've been so discouraged that it's been hard to write. People don't want to come here everyday and read my whining. I don't even want to write my whining. A little whining is okay, but I'd been feeling whiny most of the time. So it had been really hard for me to write consistently. Now that we're making an effort to rededicate ourselves to these principles and get back in the groove, I'm hoping I will find hope again and be able to write better.

Last, I need to work on some bookwork this weekend and Tom & I have some other projects we want to work on around the house. My goals for the weekend are:
1. Go through our books.
2. Do parent totals for 2009 to give out for parent's tax information
Those are the main two. In addition, I hope to get some work done in the office and get it looking halfway presentable again. Hope everyone has a super weekend. I'll try to remember to check in and post, but if I don't, hopefully it's because I'm actually getting something accomplished.

Oh, and P.S.: Rather than try to figure out where I goofed up on counting my days, I decided to go from yesterday's 2 year blogiversary and count 2 years + x days. Then next year, I can do 3 years, etc.

Two years ago today...

Today is my two year "blogiversary". I began in an attempt to help us with our attempt to pay off debt. The first year went really well, we paid off over $11,000. The second year, not as good. I haven't done a total yet, but I know it's not near as high. But we just keep plugging along. While the progress might be slow, we're a lot farther along that we'd be if we'd never started this journey. I'd like to ask for everyone's continued prayers for us. Thank you.

Chicken Taco Recipe

In our quest to avoid eating out, I've been looking for some new recipes and resurrecting some old ones. One that I hadn't made in years was this super simple chicken taco recipe:

1 pound boneless, skinless, chicken breast
1 cup chicken broth (I just dissolved a chicken bouillon cube in 1 cup of hot water)
1 package taco seasoning

Place the chicken in the bottom of the slow cooker. Dissolve the taco seasoning in the chicken broth and pour over the chicken. Cook until chicken is fork tender, then shred with a fork. You can use hard or soft taco shells, or in salads. I'm thinking they would also be good used in chicken enchiladas.

2010 goals: Back to Basics

I have been thinking about how to meet our goal in 2010 of continuing to pay off our debt and I think we have to get back to basics. If you've followed me from the beginning, you may recall the 7 Baby Steps by Dave Ramsey. We are going to concentrate on the first two to begin with:

1: $1000 in an emergency fund
2: Debt snowball

We need to get our emergency fund rebuilt. Then we need to get going on our debt snowball again. This month we are focused mainly on getting caught up from December (the income that I lost from some DHS kids that weren't attending regularly and then from being closed at Christmas). So that is my first goal: getting our "four walls" current. The four walls are: home/shelter (house payment, utilities, etc), cars (we don't have car payments, but we do have insurance and vehicle maintenance), clothes, and food. So mainly we need to get all of our utilities and other similar bills up-to-date.

Ugh...frozen pipes

Well, our washing machine pipes froze up sometime in the last day or so. I'm just praying that when they thaw out that they are not busted.

My main goal for this year is obviously to continue on our debt repayment journey. To be honest, I've become really discouraged over the last several months. It seems like it has been 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. But I guess we wouldn't be anywhere now if we hadn't started and we have made progress, however small. Giving up is not an option!