One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

That is about how I feel.

Financially speaking anyway.

The past few months have really shown us the importance of saving and being prepared for the unexpected.

For starters our dryer went out. My handy man husband did his best to fix it, but to no avail. It was old, I think about 11 or 12 years. We had a good run.

Our van needed some pretty hefty repairs...to the tune of several hundred dollars.

We did pay off my husband's car...YEAH!!! BUT at some point we deferred a payment. I thought it just extended our loan.

NOT so much.

When our loan matured, we had to pay what we deferred. I really wish I could remember why we even did the deferrment, but I guess it really does not matter at this point, does it? At any rate, this month's payment was more than what we had budgeted for.

To add to our woes our beloved dog Rusty required an unexpected visit to the vet and even more unexpectedly he passed away.

Oh and in case you did not realize...

It's Christmas time

and

we have four children that sure are expecting to be surprised Christmas morning.

Thankfully we serve a God who is faithful and because of that we managed to pull it together and guess what?

I have a new dryer that I totally love!! I know, right..who loves a dryer??

Yup. This girl does. It is one of them fancy high efficiency dryers. We chose a floor model allowing us to purchase it at a hefty discount.

and

One month and two mechanics later our van purrs like a kitten. We can do all of our holiday runnin' around and have no worries of a break down.

Well, hopefully.

The van will be paid off in just a few short months too and with all the work we had done our prayer is that it will last us for awhile.

And the car..well, like I said it is paid off!!! WOOT! WOOT!! It may have pained our pocketbook this month with the extra money we had to pay, but come January making that monthly car payment will be a mere memory!!

Losing our beloved Rusty well, that was just plain hard, probably the hardest thing that our children have ever faced so far in their short lives. It brings tears to my eyes just writing this. He is gone, but he will never be forgotten.

We knew that we wanted another dog. We knew that this time we wanted a Rottweiler. My husband and son said no to another German Shepherd, it would remind them too much of Rusty. Unfortunately, we also knew that we did not have the money to purchase one at this time.

However, my mother-in-law brought Christmas to our family early this year and we now have our beloved Schatze (shot-z) It means "sweetheart" in German and a sweetheart she is.

And as far as Christmas goes..well, it will come (and go) and our kids will still be surprised on Christmas morning.

So while we may have taken a couple of steps back financially speaking, I think that we have made great strides in being financially responsible and that is a BOOYAH feeling! We are finally in a place where we are actually making "for real" plans and working on a schedule of when we can turn our dream into a reality.

True story.