Today will be productive???

There is something about this baby coming that has made Seth and I decide to change a few things, and I have made my own "resolutions". First and foremost is our budget. We have made these new rules for ourselves:
1. No more Starbucks
2. We can only eat out once on the weekends, instead of 3-4 like we usually like doing
3. No more movie rentals
Number three kinda just got resolved because I discovered (thanks to Josh and Lisa, the ones who were so nice to let us stay with them) that the library on post has a plethora of movies that I can check out for FREE! Granted, they aren't first run, but they have a lot of movies that are still on the new release walls at Blockbuster!
We have also decided on some other things to help keep our spending down.
1. Keep our heat set at 68 degrees (this was suggested by our electric man!) Sometimes it gets a little chilly, but that is when I go put on my big robe and slippers!
2. Turn the water heater down.
3. Cut back on how much laundry I do a week. I could get used to that one, haha. But really we are just waiting until we get full loads of wash before doing it.
4. Keep our fans on. This one was from my dad. There is a switch on the light part of your fan where you can have the fan spin clockwise or counter clockwise. In the summer you want the air blowing down on you, but in the winter you want to switch it to the other direction so that it blows the hot air down. For our fans, that means they need to spin clockwise.
5. Unplug everything that we don't use on a day to day basis. This includes our toaster and coffee pot. I just plug them in when I need to use them.
6. Buy our meat, cheese, toilet paper (sorry to group the toilet paper with the foods, haha) and a few other bulk items from Sams club. We were very careful before we made this decision. But after comparing, Sams meat was way less than the grocery store! I paid $2.88 lb for hamburger meat and $1.79 lb for chicken breasts. It was a big chunk of money to pay at one time, but I have enough meat for the rest of the month!!!
7. Keep all lights off except for in the rooms we are in, and then we only use lamps which we have switched all the bulbs out for high efficiency ones.
We will see how this works when we get our bills next month. Hopefully it will make a difference. Do you guys have any money saving ideas? I am up for ANYTHING!

I also have decided to cut back, way back on the amount of time I spend on the computer. I have become addicted and have found that I can't get everything done in the day that I would like to, all because I can't pull myself away from the computer. Therefore I have limited myself to 1 hour on the computer a day!!! Unless I am doing etsy or ebay, but other than that, I get one hour!!! It is like torture right now,but I will get used to it. PLUS, I have a feeling in a few days here I will not be able to get on the computer very much anyways. But do not worry, I will still be keeping up with my blog.

Now for the baby update. I went to the doctor yesterday. She said I was 60% effaced and that it didn't look like anything would happen in the next few days, but that babies have been known to prove her wrong quite often. That is fine though. I still have a small list of things to get done and since this past weekend was so crazy with the weather, it would be nice to have at least one more weekend with my Sethy before the madness begins!!! Plus, my parents really won't be able to come until after Friday. My mom has a tooth to get fixed and my dad has a timber sale. So little baby, it would be nice if you could float around in there for about 3 or 4 more days at least (haha). However, if he did decide to come before the weekend, I would be ecstatic!!!

Okay and lastly, I took these pics of our office a few weeks ago but forgot to post them. I figured I should go ahead and do it now. This is the room that was FILLED with boxes. I mean filled so much that I could only take about 3 steps in the door and that was all the floor space we had. This is where I will set up my sewing machine when I get it and this is also where I sit in the floor and do all my crafting. It is nice to have a room just for school and crafts :) The room is nothing spectacular, it is just the accomplishment of getting the entire room finished!!!

Falling in Love. . .

with prayer.





Since we finally finished the office, Seth and I decided to go and spend some time up there tonight enjoying our new, open space and reading our devotions. We have both really struggled here lately with spending time with God. It always seems like when things get busy, our quiet time is the first thing that gets neglected. I didn't plan on making a new years resolution, but this seams like the best time than any other to re-devote time each day to reading my Bible and praying. I found a few books while we were organizing the office that I had been wanting to read. The one I chose tonight was "Falling in Love with Prayer" by Mike Macintosh. I decided to share with you some things that were inspirational to me. Just maybe I am not the only one who struggles with my devotion time.

"Isn't is interesting that it is our choice whether to establish that link between us and God, and between God and us? We can decide to speak with God and hear from him or to reject any dialogue with him."

"Like me, you may look back on your childhood and adolescence as a time of excitement, fun and endless anticipation of what might happen next. For most of us though, the adventurous times of our lives begin to fade when we finish school and start to establish families and build careers. Eventually we all "settle down." Soon we find that a sense of monotony, predictability, and repetition has begun to creep into many aspects of our lives, including our spiritual lives. Prater becomes a religious activity, a ritual, something that only old folks enjoy doing because they probably don't have anything else to do. Or so we rationalize."

I don't know if that hits the nail on the head for any of you, but it really did with me. I am very interested to read this book and I hope to share more with you from it as I learn new things about prayer and God. As Dr. Falwell would say, "Nothing of eternal importance is ever accomplished aside from prayer." And as Billy Graham would say, "Pray unceasingly." Two great men who accomplished great things.

Tonight Seth and I made our 2 year timeline, filled with goals that we have set for ourselves. Our first timeline ran out a few months ago and we surprisingly stuck to it and accomplished the goals from that one, now we are looking forward to doing the same with this one. We named it "Operation: Our Plan Needs Prayer." We realize that aside from prayer, our goals will never get accomplished. I have self-diagnosed A.D.D. so now I just need to paste the words "REMEMBER TO PRAY TODAY?" on my bathroom mirror, car dash, fridge, computer screen, TV and forehead. I might should just have it permanently tattooed to myself :)