Cougar B-Ball

For Valentine's Day this year I bought David tickets to a BYU basketball game. The game took place yesterday and we had a fun time! I have never been to a BYU basketball game before, but they put on quite a show. We had some pretty bad seats, they were way up at the top and I thought I was going to sweat to death that high up in the stadium. David was very sweet though and he bought me ice cream at half-time. The Cougars lost by two points. It was a really good game and it was close the whole time. We were bummed that they didn't win, but it was nice to have a day out with no kids. A couple highlights were that during half-time the Cougarettes performed a dance that was choreographed by Napoleon and Tabitha from "So You Think You Can Dance". Another thing was that while we were walking around the stadium to find the portal for our seats, I almost bumped into Ashleigh and Ryan from the same show! After we passed them, David said to me, "Did you see who that was?" I told him I did and I couldn't believe I almost smashed Ashleigh. I wish I had a camera with me! One more thing was that they announced that Carrie Underwood is going to be performing at the Stadium of Fire this year at BYU. That would be a fun concert to see!

On my mind....

Disclaimer: This post is really long and probably boring!

This is our year. For the past two weeks I have been reading Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I have heard hin on the radio before and my parents have read his book and swear by it. One thing that is great about him is the fact that he is religious and he always says to pay 10% to your church (tithing), so it fits so well with what I already believe. I have been wanting to read it for a while now and this year my parents gave it to me for my birthday. They were really worried that I would think that it was a lame gift, but it really has been the best gift so far! David and I have made some DUMB choices when it comes to purchases. Sometimes we just don't want to wait for things, so we use credit to pay for them. I really hate that I am one of those poeple! We always regret it later. I really hate to say that we have credit card debt, so I just pay my payments and ignore it. Well, this month in the Ensign the Visiting Teaching message is all about getting out of debt. David and I have decided that enough is enough and we are committed to paying it all off this year. That is my goal, to be debt free! One of the other motivators is that we can't move out of our condo until all of it is paid off. We want to be able to afford a bigger house, but the thing holding us back is all the stupid payments we have toward debt! That, and the fact that the market stinks right now, so we couldn't get what we wanted out of this place anyway. Our three bedroom two bath home is getting smaller everyday and with baby number 4 on the way, it is a wonder how we fit all of us in this little place.
We just filed our taxes last night and we should be getting enough money back to make a huge dent in our debt and get our $1000 emergency fund in place. We have some money saved, but sadly not enough to cover that. The other thing we have to look forward to is the insurance money we will get back after A.J. is born. We signed up for two poilcies (Aflac and Conseco) a couple years ago that will pay us $5400 when we have the baby. It paid all our medical bills and more when we had Avery and that is one of the reasons her and the next baby will be so close. Most of these insurance companies have discontinued these types of policies because they don't make any money on them (DUH!). But since we still have it, they will have to pay us. So, when we get that money back, we will be able to pay more things off.
It is so amazing to me that there is an end in sight. I slept so well last night knowing that we are finally going to get out from under this boulder. I can't explain how excited I am to not have to worry about debt anymore. This is all really hard for me to admit, I almost didn't post this because I hate to hang my dirty laundry out to dry! There isn't anyone in the world who wants their faults out there for the world to see! But I feel like if I do this, it is one more thing to keep me motivated. Wish us luck! This is going to be a really tough year!

Birthday Weekend

Last weekend was a big one at our house! Abbey turned 6 on the 6th, I turned 28 on the 7th, and Avery turned 1 year old on the 8th!! It was pretty crazy! We had a big birthday party on the 6th and we were all so spoiled. Abbey got tons of new clothes, new Tag books, money, and lots of other fun things. Avery also got tons of new clothes, a baby Cabbage Patch doll, and a busy ball popper (which was the life of the party). We had a great time celebrating with all of our family.

Avery loved her cake, she was really mad at me when I finally took it away from her. She loves sugar just like her momma!

Avery also had her one year check-up last week. She weighs in at a whopping 18 lbs! She is in the 5th percentile for her weight. I forgot to check her height, but she is in the 75th percentile there. She has had a cold, but at the appointment I found out that it is actually an ear infection. We started her on regular milk and stopped using bottles. She has done really well so far. She started to take a few steps on her birthday, but she still hasn't mastered walking. She will just crawl if she wants to get anywhere because that is faster for her. We also bought her a new carseat. She can't face forward yet because they changed the carseat recommendations so that kids have to be 30 lbs and 2 years before they can switch. Usually we buy gender nuetral carseats since we always wanted more kids, but now that we know our next (and last) baby will be a girl, I went with a pink seat.

My actual birthday was on Superbowl Sunday. I was not really happy about that because the last thing I wanted to do was watch football on my birthday. It turned out ok though, we hung out with David's family. We had pizza and snacks and for my birthday cake we had Leatherby's ice cream cake. It was SO yummy!

Discovery Gateway

A couple weeks ago I took the girls to Discovery Gateway. They were so excited and I had a really hard time getting them to leave.