A house of Order

i am not sure what it is about having things organized and being prepared, but it just feels so good! I just finished figuring out next month's budget and it was like a weight came off my shoulders. I love knowing where every one of our dollars go and making sure that everything for that month will be taken care of. I love making the puzzle pieces fit!

I was introduced to Dave Ramsey's total money makeover by a friend (thank you Cristin) and lindsay and I implemented the plan about 4 months ago. We have hit a couple of rough patches but overall we have done way good and are making progress. And best of all it has been fairly easy. The hardest part has been limiting some of our spending habits, but when we see small steps being accomplished towards our big time goals......it makes it worth it. Ramsey's motto is "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else." I have to remind myself that sometimes when I get caught up wanting to get lots of things but overall it hasn't been too bad. And it's also easy because we do everything that we can in cash. So each category has it's own envelope and we live off of cash all month. It makes it easier to see how much we have left and since we physically see it diminishing I feel like I make more thought out purchases.

I'll admit it was scary the first couple of times I went grocery shopping with cash. I have always spent around the same amount but still how embarassing if I went over my cash limit. I just make sure I always have a menu planned and a written list that I strictly follow and it has never been a problem.

I guess I am just telling you all that it feels good to have a plan and to follow advice that we have been given for years through leaders of our church about having a house of order and being prepared, because even in the tight months we can get a couple of extra cans of something and keep adding to our food storage while also adding to our emergency fund.

How do you all prepare? I am always up for suggestions or other people's experiences!

like a weed

Can our little man get any bigger? Looks like we will be putting him into the bigger car seat this week as his little piggies hang over and his head is above the top. Sad, sad day I tell you.

I am actually looking forward to the car seat that stays in the car, because he is waaayyy to heavy to carry in this car seat anymore. The other day I weighed him and he is already 20 pounds! Crazy! But sad that the little man has outgrown another item of infancy! The moon babe isn't no babe anymore, he is little man moon now!

so many things

Wow, the past month has been super busy and thus I have fallen behind on the blogging front. I don't know about you but once I start falling behind I feel less motivated to catch up. But here I am and so I will give you a brief update of some of our fun adventures.

The Air Force needed Lindsay for a day of work in Vegas and so Erik and I hopped along for the ride. The day of travel was long for Erik. It wasn't just the drive to vegas that day, but driving to go see Daddy at work and play there and then traveling to Vegas. It was especially hot in the desert that day and he was pretty pooped by the time we got to the hotel. As you will see in the picture below, he was completely content to just relax against the nice fluffy pillows. We couldn't even get him to turn his head......he would only move his eyes to look at anything.

The above picture also shows how our little man is filling out all nice and round. We thought he was going to be a string bean forever, but he loves solid foods and eats well!

Next my mom and sister in-law Wendy came down with Wendy's two little ones. We had a fun weekend. That was the weekend we had originally planned to have Erik be sealed and blessed because the adoption was supposed to be finalized but that hasn't worked out yet, so they came for a visit anyways. Erik met his cousin Isaac for the first time and people kept asking us if they were twins while we were out and about.

Little miss Ahnna couldn't be much cuter! She is great at conversating and loves to play dress up, the whole visit she was stealing shoes and wearing them around, then I gave her a bunch of accessories and turned her into a cali girl, adorable!

Labor Day weekend we decided to take a vacation with the little man into the great outdoors. We went camping up by bishop, ca and planned to do a dayhike with him in the backpack to see how well he would do and how much gear we would be able to take on the trail. He loves outside and couldn't have been happier on this trip.

Lindsay and Erik relaxing at Long lake during the break in our day hike. Elevation didn't seem to bother Erik, he is such the little outdoorsman.

Tryingto take a nap in the tent while I read a book. Not to successful but he was pretty happy for not napping well!

The Moon Family on the trail. Funny thing is, almost exactly one year ago, Lindsay and I did a loop on this exact trail having no idea that 5 months later we would become parents, let alone that we would take our child out on such a grand adventure one year later.

It was bright out that day and the sun seems stronger up at elevation so while I fed Erik, he happily wore my sunglasses and my pant legs (yes I have sweet zip off pants!) while he indulged in some formula!

The night of our day hike we were planning on continuing to camp but a thunder storm came through that afternoon. It was awesome, we played and slept in the tent while the storm came and passed, but then it was freezing and everything was soaked and Erik had a bit of a cold, so we called it good and stayed in a hotel in Bishop....so fun!

We took a stroll around Bishop the next morning and put Erik in his pack, the trip tuckered him out, not to mention the fact he loves his pack!

Next Lindsay went to Dallas to escort the brand new F-35 fighter jet to Edwards (our base of station) where they are doing tests on it before they actually use them. My husband seriously has such a cool job! It's hard that his job takes him away from home but he loves his work and it has provided us with lots of positive opportunities and helped us create some awesome relationships with people. Being a part of the military is a very unique experience and not for everyone but it is great! Some day I will write a post just about being a military spouse and a part of the soldier's world.

And lastly, well for this post anyways, we saw the space shuttle land. This was such a crazy cool event. Edwards is the secondary landing location for the shuttle and so it doesn't happen often, but we were able to witness the event live and it was breathtaking. We were a little worried they wouldn't be able to land because there were clouds out (the shuttle needs clear blue sky). Usually there are no clouds in sight, but that day there were. Luckily the shuttle had it's handy dandy jets that fly around giving live updates to it found a hole in the clouds. We drove out to a field right by the runway and waited. The anticipation was cool. There were cars lined up outside all of the gates of the base and people just pulled off all around the base to watch. All of a sudden we heard two sonic booms and then everyone's eyes were searching the sky to see where it was going to come through. Finally we spotted it....it looked like it was nosediving and going to crash into the Earth, it was free falling almost it was going so fast. Then it started to plane out and it was getting larger and larger.......then finally in came in for the landing and seriously the most smoothest landing I have ever seen. No bounces or jiggles whatsoever. The parachute came out once all the landing gear touched down and slowed it down (the shuttle has no breaks) to a stop. The parachute was way smaller than I imagined a space shuttle would need, but it worked!

Shhhh, don't tell anyone.........rumor is when the doors open to the shuttle and the astronauts come out it is gag inducing stinky! Just a fun tidbit! I guess if you hadn't showered in weeks and kept waste in baggies you would stink too!