Psalms & Proverbs

One of my personal goals for 2015 was to read the Bible every single day. I didn't really want to attempt a "Read the Bible in a Year" plan because I've tried those in the past and not had a lot of success. I start off really gung ho and Genesis is a really interesting book. So is Exodous. Right around the third chapter of Leviticus, my mind starts to wander, and you can pretty much forget Numbers. By Deuteronomy, I've completely abandoned the quest.

So instead, I decided to try to read whole books, a little at a time. I found study using the YouVersion app (PS - this is the GREATEST. APP. EVER.) of the entire books of Psalms and Proverbs in 30 days. I Facebooked a bunch of my friends from church to see if anybody wanted to go through the study with me in the month of January. Several did, so we started on January 1. And it was awesome. I've never read these two books together, but doing so was a nice way to revisit familiar texts. When the study ended, I knew I needed to do another. After browsing the plans, I found one that took the reader through all four of the Gospels in 30 days. I notified my group, and we set a course to read all four Gospels in the month of February. We've been meeting on Sunday mornings in between services to discuss, and now it looks like we may be offering a similar study as a Connect Group this summer. That has me really excited, because I love the idea of doing a complete study on the Bible, rather than marriage, or finances. That's not to say that studies on marriage and finances are not extremely valuable, I just like the idea of digging into and reading the Bible as a whole text. It also keeps my task-oriented mind focused with a to-do list!

Money Update

So I haven't blogged about finances in almost a year because, well, it's been rather depressing. Just to spare you all the terrible details (and myself having to remember and rehash it all), here are the high (low?) points:

• Rick's car was slated for payoff by the end of last school year.
• It didn't happen because of car repairs.
• And then we got bats.
• And then we had to rip out the ceiling to get rid of said bats.
• And then we had to redo the ceiling.
• And then, because of the shoddy job the people before us had done on the room in the first place (think compressed sawdust wood, and no insulation), we ended up redoing the entire room. 
• And then my car needed new tires.
• And then Rick's car needed new breaks and a new flusher or something.

And that, as you might guess, has set us back-tracking, and the whole thing has been a long and very discouraging process.

So why did I decide to blog about finances for the first time in a YEAR? Because there is finally something to celebrate and not just more news to shake my head and feel sad about.
HERE IT IS, PEOPLE:

1. Establish an emergency fund of $1000 CHECK
2. Pay off Loan #1 - car.GOAL: Paid off by September 2013. CHECK
3. Pay off Loan #2 - credit card. GOAL: Paid off by Christmas 2013 CHECK
4. Pay off Loan #3 - other car. GOAL: Paid off by end of school year, 2014 by end of summer, 2014 by February 2015 CHECK!

That's right! The car FINALLY got paid off this weekend! WHOO-HOOO! WE NOW OWN BOTH OUR CARS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2007!

That said, we still have work to do. We have the rest of the reno to fund and we we have Rick's undergrad loan. But now we can start chipping away at those and bring ourselves closer and closer to becoming debt-free!

Keurig

I am not a coffee drinker. The idea of drinking hot, bitter liquid with a propensity to stain my teeth and make my breath stink has never been particularly appealing to me. But while in grad school, my husband discovered a cup of coffee, regardless of its ill taste, would give him a boost of energy that would help him stay sharp, focused, and awake in the wee hours. This lead to semi-frequent coffee drinking. We had no coffee maker, so he would usually just stop and grab some at a fast-food place, claiming again that he wasn't drinking it for the taste, so cheap fast-food coffee was just as capable of doing the job as the expensive stuff. But when he started drinking coffee 2-3 times a week, it started to add up. So when I saw this on sale in one of my FB selling groups:

I got really excited and sent Rick a text. Obviously it was not something we were planning to buy, but it was cheap, his mom has one (which even I love because you can make hot cocoa and cider), and it sure would be convenient to make your own coffee at home. So we sprung for it. I drove all the way out north to retrieve it. We brought it inside and crowded around to watch the magic. (Charlie thinks lifting the lid makes the machine look like a spaceship, so there truly was some magic involved.)

Only...it didn't work. Like, at ALL. Lights flashed and it made noise, but nothing worked. We tried turning it off and back on. We tried pressing various buttons and sequences of buttons. Rick even took the thing apart to make sure something wasn't clogged. In the end, I sent a message back tot he girl we bought it from asking if she had any tips to get the things to work. Bless her, she didn't, but she was mortified that it didn't work and assured me it had worked for her and that she would NEVER knowingly sell something defective. I told her I understood and would try the number in the manual.

At this point, I'm pretty irritated. It's taken up more than two hours of my weekend to retrieve and mess with this thing and it doesn't work, and now I have to CALL AN 800 NUMBER which I try to avoid at all costs. I waited until Sunday afternoon when the kids were in bed and called. I spent 40 minutes on the phone flushing water, rinsing, rattling, shaking, clearing, etc. to no avail. I started to lose hope because when the guy asked where and when we bought it, I of course had to say we didn't have a receipt and we hadn't even bought it from a store but gotten it used. I was sure he was going to tell me sorry, there's nothing I can do.

But instead, he said: "Ma'am, if you give me your address, we can have a brand new brewer shipped to you within the week. I'm sorry for your trouble."

Seriously? That's it?

That's AWESOME.
CUE HAPPY DANCE.

It came on Thursday and this morning, Rick enjoyed a cup of Kureig coffee and declared it delicious. :)