I didn't forget, I swear...

...about this blog that is.  I realized that I haven't posted in awhile and thought I'd post an update on us. You may have noticed that I now refer to the kids as M & K.  I read some interesting articles on other blogs recently and decided that I want to keep their names half-way private.  I'm sure someone with enough time and interest could easily find them other places, but I'm going to make them work for it.

M has just a few weeks of kindergarten left.  She is excited to have a summer break but at the same time I think she is a little confused on how it all works.  She thinks it's like a couple days off and then back to kindergarten.  She doesn't quite get the concept of 1st grade just yet.  So far the only plans we have for the summer are swimming lessons but she wants to play soccer in the fall and maybe some dance or cheerleading classes. 

K is 16 months now and pretty much the complete definition of a boy.  Getting into everything, climbing on whatever he can, torturing the cat....  He went right from learning to walk to running and moon-walking all around the house.  He is slightly behind verbally, he doesn't say much, but he knows just enough to get himself in trouble. 

We  finished up our garage sale a couple weeks ago, what a relief to have it done!  But yet we are already talking about the next one, possibly this fall.  It feels so good to get rid of junk (and even better to make money at the same time.)

We also started ourselves on Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, thanks to input from lots of friends and another good friend that sent us copies of the books.  It really is a great program and I highly recommend it to everyone.  Even if you don't have a lot of debt, I'd be willing to bet that most people don't have enough money set aside for retirement.  Since being on the plan, we've paid off two debts.  Before the plan we anticipated having our credit cards completely paid off in about 18 months.....but with the plan, and our dedication to getting it done sooner, we now think they will be paid off in 9 months!  We'll still have massive student loans and a hefty mortgage, but that will be it for our debt. We don't have car loans, no personal loans, 2nd mortgages, etc.  With me not working, I've been really worrying lately about not having a retirement plan for myself.  Our goal is to get the debts paid off and just throw tons of money into retirement funds so we can live nicely when that time comes.

So right now that is pretty much all that is going on with us...other then my slight addiction to Animal Crossing for the Wii.  :)  I will be better at updating, I promise!

The results are in!

So I found out the results of the craft contest today.  I mentioned it earlier in one of my posts but was pretty vague, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to give details.  Anyway, it's over now, so here goes!

The first 100 people to respond to an iVillage wall post on Facebook was sent these.  A 36-pack of Bic Mark-Its.  They are like Sharpies but have a wider variety of colors.  And the ones I had were fine tip.  The first thing I noticed was that they wrote on glass, which sounded fun.  I rummaged through my garage sale pile and found an old picture frame that I was going to sell for $1.  I took all of the backing out and turned the glass part into a calendar.  I used the permanent markers for pretty  much everything except to number the squares.  I did that with a dry erase marker so it could be changed every month.  Here is what I made.

If you want to see all of the entries, including the winners, click here.  I did NOT win the top prize of a $400 Michael's gift card.  I still think mine was the best though ;) but I did win the 1st runner-up prize, a $50 gift card to Michael's.  Oh yeah, and of the 100 people sent the markers only 14 decided to actually submit a craft item!