Down another 1.5 lbs. for week four. Now that my soreness has subsided and our fasting is over, I’ll get back to Jillian next week.

Things are looking good for next week. I’m still praying that those girls will be in our arms by the weekend. I’ll know more on Thursday or Friday. Please keep praying!!

Josh and I have had an excellent, kid-free weekend. Worship Friday night with Lindell Cooley was awesome. He’ll actually be at church with us this morning because of the massive snow and ice in Nashville, so that is exciting. Josh and I had a great day together yesterday. We slept in until 10:30 (holy moly!!), had a very late breakfast and went to the mall. We almost NEVER spend money when we go to the mall. We just love to window shop and walk leisurely through all of our favorite stores.  Last night was Josh’s company’s annual party.  It was at a cute little place downtown called “Casa Blanca”.  It’s cute because it is in the lower section of the old White’s Building and now it’s called Casa Blanca (white house).  We had a fun time with his boss and coworkers.  What a blessing it is to work with people you like and love what you do and actually enjoy spending time with your coworkers outside of the office.  Indeed, we are blessed.

We pick the boys up this afternoon and have one more little sha-bang before our weekend ends.  We’re going to a couple’s house from church this evening after our Financial Peace class.  There will be other young(er) adults and married couples there and we’ll have finger foods and lots of laughs I’m sure.

Thank you Lord for weekends of intense worship, refreshing laughter, and sweet times with ones we love.  You are a good, good God!

~audrey

I have several friends who have gotten into hard core “couponing”. They head to the stores, armed with their wads of coupons and knowledge of where the best deals are, and they check out with 37 items and a grand total of $2.49 due out of pocket. I’m not there yet.

However.

I have begun.

Last week, I bought not one, but two, Sunday papers and saved the Smart Source and Red Plum inserts. I will be doing that weekly. Then, last night, I realized we were really needing snacks and breakfast items, so I went to SouthernSavers.com and found that Kroger had the best deals for what I was looking for. I pulled some of my coupons from the Sunday paper and printed some from the internet (Southern Savers tells you which coupons you need and gives you links to the online coupons that you can print). I made my list strictly based on what was on sale. This was my bounty:

$46 worth of groceries for $24.

Everything I purchased was ‘name brand’ and, divided up evenly, it came out to $1.71 per item. That’s excellent! Chex mix alone is over $3/bag. That big box of popcorn was originally $5! See? I’m getting more excited just telling you about it!

I had to call my friend Mary to make sure that I really had scored a deal. She confirmed that you should ALWAYS shoot for 50% or higher in savings, so my 50% savings was indeed a successful coupon-using shopping trip. Yay!! To be honest, I was quite intimidated. But come to find out, it was SO easy and now I just can’t wait to find more deals and go buy more cheap groceries. Southern Savers suggests stocking up on items that are at rock-bottom prices (like your favorite box of cereal for $.75).

It is definitely going to take a little work and effort to get some momentum going, but I feel like I’m off to a good and encouraging start. I really need to make a list of things that we use most often and also a running list of things that we need as I run out of them so I know what to be looking out for.

GO to SouthernSavers.com. They spell it out for you in the simplest terms. They even have some video tutorials on how to get started. BUT, wait until the kids go to bed or down for a nap, you’ll need a good hour to rummage through all the great info.

Potty Training Boot Camp: Day Four. Owen is doing great. Second morning in a row that he has woken up dry. He still won’t tell me when he has to go pee-pee, but he does hold it until I take him to the bathroom every 45 minutes or so. Progress, I suppose. A weekend at Nana’s should be interesting. I’m sure he’ll do well.

Tomorrow is Friday!!

~audrey

Last Sunday was our third Financial Peace University class. I’m really enjoying the classes and the books, but most of all, I’m SO thankful that we’re learning these very important financial principles while we still have time on our side. We still have over thirty years before ‘retirement age’. However, if we do exactly what Dave Ramsey says, we can put our middle class money to work in our favor and be millionaires a few times over by the time we’re 55….not to mention having lived most of our adult life completely debt free. That makes me very excited. Even more exciting: we have the privilege of teaching our children these principles NOW so they don’t make the same mistakes and bad choices that mommy and daddy have.

Dave Ramsey encourages the envelope system and it’s really quite simple for children. They have three envelopes: Give, Save, and Spend. Anytime they receive money, they put some of it in all three. We’ve decided to start them out at 10% in their giving envelope, 10% in savings, and the rest in their spending envelope. Joshua is almost seven and he already has a clear understanding that he is responsible for his first vehicle. That is what his “savings” envelope is for. However much he has saved by the time he is 16, Josh and I will match that and he can use it to purchase his first car. Ramsey said his third child really grasped the fact that Dad really did match what the children saved, so by the time his youngest turned 16, she had saved $8,000, and was able to buy a $16,000 car WITH CASH at the age of sixteen!! How awesome is that!?

Joshua emptied his wallet and counted it all up.

Grand Total: $5.49

He created his three envelopes.

And placed $.56 in “Give” and “Save” and the rest went in “Spend”.

I had to go to the grocery store, so Joshua asked if he could bring his spending money with him and buy himself a “Color-Shifter Hot Wheels” car.

I knew they cost about $3, so I said ok. Ramsey says it’s very important to let them purchase things by themselves, with their own money. It just doesn’t quite have the same effect when you allow them to give you their money and then you just throw their purchase onto the counter with yours and you pay for it all with your money. It affects them differently when they hand their hard-earned money to the cashier in exchange for what they chose to buy. Joshua LOVES games. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that before. My kids are GAME FREAKS. After Christmas, we re-organized the game closet and tallied a total of 26 games. Well, Joshua found a ‘travel’ Battleship game at the store, for $5.97. I specifically told him, “You have tons of cars at home. Why don’t you wait until next week, after you’ve had a chance to “work” for Nana and Grandpa and earn a few more dollars, then you can come back and buy Battleship instead of a $3 car.” He decided against it and I had to accept that.

He’s completely satisfied with his $3 hot wheels car. They are pretty cool.

On another note:

OOOOUUUUUUCCCCHHHHH!!! I am SO stinkin’ sore this morning!! I was so incredibly out of shape the first time I did my Jillian Michael’s video. I took so many breaks, I don’t think I did enough to even get sore. BUT THIS TIME. OH. MY. GOODNESS. It hurt to get out of bed this morning. The muscles in my back and surrounding my ribs hurt, so it hurts to take a deep breath, laugh, or even cough. On top of all that, our church is fasting this month. Everyone has chosen different ways to fast. Our pastor said, a “true Biblical fast” is giving up food, so Josh and I have worked gradually into our fasting. The first two weeks we gave up breakfast, the third week Josh gave up breakfast AND lunch, but I stuck with just breakfast. However, we’re in the final week and we have a big worship event coming up on Friday with Lindell Cooley.

So we’ve both taken the FULL plunge this week. I haven’t had a bite of food since Monday. I think I’m getting over the worst of it and have been drinking lots of Naked Juice, so that has helped with the cramping and hunger pangs.

All that to say, yesterday was probably NOT the best day for a hard core workout. I will rest today and work out again tomorrow. My lunch meeting at noon today should be interesting. It is with ladies that I go to church with, but obviously they plan to eat lunch because we’re meeting at a new restaurant in town. I’m afraid if I eat even a salad, it will make me sick. I’ve had some intestinal issues **IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN** as a result of the fasting. Clearly I’m in a serious detox mode right now and I’d rather not make it worse, so I will bring my little bottle of Naked juice to lunch and hope they don’t make too much fun of me.

I’m SO excited about this weekend! The boys are heading to my parents’ house on Friday. We have Lindell Cooley Friday night, a day in the country on Saturday, Josh’s annual company party Saturday night, and dinner with friends on Sunday night. We haven’t had a weekend this exciting in a long time.

Eight more days until we find out about the girls. Please keep praying!

~audrey