Life

Sister Time!

- Melody

My sister spent the night on Thursday! A&M Commerce, where she goes to school, cancelled music classes because of TMEA so she got home two days early! I had no class on Friday so we decided to make the best of it. She cooked us an incredible homemade dinner of crispy chicken and a tomato wine sauce. SO. SO. GOOD. I’ll think I’ll have those leftovers for lunch…

Since she’s going to NYC in a few weeks (LUCKY!) and performing at Carnegie Hall with her choir (DOUBLE LUCKY) we went shopping Friday so she could get some NYC necessities. I budgeted myself $50 and only spent $38. It was really funny how proud of me Jason was. haha! He couldn’t stop raving about me actually staying under budget for once. Yay me! Anyway! Here’s what I got for $38!

maroon tee:  Target $5.50, mint polka-dot blouse: Rue21 $7, blush specs: Rue 21 $5.99, geode necklace: Rue21 $2, black wedges: Target $15

We hit up Target first and I was surprised at how little their sale section grabbed me. This (super soft!) shirt was the only thing I got, but I’m glad I did. That color goes surprisingly well with my hair.

I wanted to go into Rue21 because #1) I’d never been in there and #2) I wanted some fake glasses and my 12 year old sister got hers there. (It’s her favorite store.) Yeah, I found the glasses but look at that crazy awesome MINT blouse! SEVEN. DOLLARS. Lil’ Rudy might be on to something.. Their jewelry was $.50-$2! I scored that awesome geode look-alike for $2. Craziness.

The rest of my weekend looked like this:

Homemade mocha frappes with Jason while he tries to fix his computer. Yippee!

A Story

- Melody

Once upon a time this happened and she came into our lives. A dirty, crusted mess. She woke us up early in the morning, hungry, and never stayed put in her laundry basket.

She eventually learned to clean herself and began to eat real cat food.

She took tons of naps. Mostly on our shoulders and clothes, but her favorite spot was (and still is) nestled up to her best friend Toonces.

When she first met Toonces as a playful kitten, she annoyed him. Toonces sat still while she swatted at his twitching tail and tried to nurse on him.(Hilarious!)

She grew and grew and grew.
She still annoys Toonces.
She still naps near us. (She’s currently sleeping on our jackets on the table. Where she shouldn’t be.)
She’s still mischievous. (See above.)
She’s still silly.

But she’s our Little Bit. And I don’t think we could love her any more!

Red

- Melody

In honor of the month of love I painted my nails a very peppy shade of red! Happy February!

Since Jason and I started taking Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey, we’ve noticed some things:
1. We can seriously become millionaires if we make our money work for us.
2. We need to get some new bills.
3. We aren’t as poor as we thought we were.
4. EVERYONE needs to take this class. (SERIOUSLY. Even you high schoolers!)
5. It’s never too early to start saving for retirement. Never.

By new bills I mean life insurance, renter’s insurance (which we won’t always have, but since robberies have increased at the school–that’s right across the street!–we’d rather be safe than sorry), and identity theft insurance. I had the unfortunate experience of having my bank account hacked into the day before I left for NYC several years ago. Since that was such a hellacious experience I can only imagine what having my identity stolen would be like. Yikes.

When we sat down and put a name to every cent in our money it was really like we had gotten a raise. We made a plan for the whole year! We made a list of things we wanted or needed and made a budget for them. Granted, we weren’t bad off before we did the budget. Jason has done one every month since we’ve been married almost. He knew where the money was going but I didn’t even have a log in to our bank account. Well, that’s changing now since I am involved in the budget and money process.

It’s tough feeling like I have no say in where our money goes because Jason is the one with the job. Out of repressed feelings of no-Jason-you-do-what-you-want-because-it’s-technically-you’re-money-not-mine-even-though-we’re-married-and-share-the-bank-account-and-a-last-name-and-a-house-and-two-cats-so-just-give-me-an-allowance I let him handle the money even though he begged me to get involved. He always wants me to be happy and it bugged him that we weren’t on the same page. BUT! Today I got myself my own log in to our account! I also got insurance quotes from several companies. So now all we have to do is pick one and budget for it.

Last Sunday on our way up to class we rode the elevator up with an older couple. He saw my binder and said, “I should take that.” And I chuckled and nodded in agreement saying how incredible it was. He said, “We retired but have since had to go back to work. The economy is really taking a toll on everyone.”
Now, two things happened in my brain at that moment. Pity and non-pity. Pity because he and his wife left good jobs only to go crawling back to them in their 60s and 70s. Non-pity because it isn’t the economy’s fault he didn’t prepare for his own retirement. Harsh? Absolutely not.

He and his wife worked too hard to expect the government to take care of them once they retired. They worked too hard to retire only to go back to work.

I don’t want that to be my story. I want to retire. For good. And thankfully with this class Jason and I will be able to do that and live well. Really well.

Does anyone else feel slightly overwhelmed with all the grown-up things we have to do? I mean, identity theft insurance? That’s a real thing we have to pay for! Do you ever feel like you won’t ever make enough money to get all that insurance?! Sheesh!

Thanin Duangporn

- Melody

Yes, you read that right. No, it’s not a bunch of gibberish. (And no, I didn’t have a stroke before writing this.)

Thanin Duangporn, from Vietnam, is the child Jason and I sponsor through Compassion International. At Passion 2011 as newlyweds we felt the urge to do something. When we walked past the Compassion booth in the Go Center (a place, up until Passion 2012, where causes from all around the world are represented. Here, you can buy animals for a family, pay for surgeries, loans, houses, and the list goes on! Read more here.) We stepped into the booth to see rows and rows of pictures of children waiting to be sponsored. Feeling so overwhelmed that I couldn’t pick all of them and couldn’t even meet them, I stared at picture after picture waiting for God to point me in the right direction. Thanin, honestly, just kind of happened. We picked him, filled out our information and took him home with us.

Since then, Thanin has sent us several letters. It’s strange because they take three months to get here! But when they do, I get so excited to see what he’s up to. In his most recent letter he had started back to school and was getting ready for Christmas. We, as horrible sponsors, have sent him only one postcard. But I decided, as another new found resolution, that I was going to write this kid so many letters he would always have something to read.
When you get a letter from your child Compassion sends another form for you to write back. So, as soon as I finished reading Thanin’s sweet letter I got to work writing him back. What do I say? I thought. What does he want to know about us? I just started writing random things. About how it rained that day, how we just celebrated our nephew’s first birthday, how many siblings Jason and I had, our cats (of course), what we did for Christmas, what Jason’s job is, what I study in school… some of it was just so mundane. How do you get to know someone who lives thousands of miles away? In our next letter I want to send him pictures of us so he can put some names with faces.

As I was writing I started second guessing some things I wanted to write. Like what our favorite foods were (frozen pizza, Chinese food…). Who knows if he’s even had those things or knows what they are? I mean, we are sponsoring him after all.

Does anyone else sponsor a child? Do you have any tips for writing to them? I really can’t wait to actually respond to him and for him to ask us questions about our lives!

A Few Things…

- Melody

It’s been raining. And I love it.

Random people have been showing up in my Pinterest feed that I didn’t follow.

My Gmail didn’t load all. day. HTML view suuuuuuuucks.

All my hair is getting chopped AWFF ASAP.

I’m backing up my harddrive and it is going to take 2 days. Forrealz.

There is a lot of stupid crap on YouTube.

In my head school hasn’t started yet. This could pose a problem for me.
That is all.

2012 Goals

- Melody

Yeah, I know you’ve probably read about a million of these posts so why not go ahead and make it a million and one!

*Get healthy. Already got a start on this! I started Couch to 5k Monday night. It’s only three times a week and about 25 minutes long. I’m incredibly sore but can’t wait to see what kind of results I get.
*Read. I really love to read. I read a 10 book series within a month and have been known to read a book inside a week. My mom just bought me The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after professing my desire to read it. Thanks, mom!
*Journal every day. I got a Penzu account a few months ago and journaled a lot when I was younger and have several full of stories. I like Penzu, but I like seeing my own handwriting. I just need to find the right journal!
*Less screen time. Being on such a long break from school I realized how much I can sit in front of a screen mindlessly. TV or computer. I want to spend less time in front of a screen and more time reading or talking with Jason.
*Save more money. Jason and I just started Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University with our brother and sister-in-law. We had already been doing the envelope thing** to an extent but we’re excited to do the whole program! We loved our first night.

**The “envelope thing” in FPU is taking envelopes labeled save, spend, and gift (tithes). Each month you take cash out of your account and have a name for every dollar. (Besides bills that are auto-drafted from your account). It really works! We have watched how much (and where) most of our money goes–groceries and out to eat. We have specified envelopes for each of these and we don’t spend any more than that. I highly suggest doing this (heck, do Financial Peace University!) to track your spending!