My boys love to wrestle! I’ve learned that I can’t lay down on the floor any more. If I do, Samuel sits on my legs to tickle my feet, and Caleb just tries to climb all over me. It’s almost to the point where if I just sit on the floor, they come to get me.

I love having boys!

This is our new van – a Chevy Venture. It has everything I wanted in a van, and so many more extras than I’m used to. I absolutely LOVE this van!

We bought a new van last night! It’s not brand new – it’s a 2000 Chevy Venture in excellent shape. I absolutely love it. But what I love even more about it is that we paid for it outright. I really wanted to pay cash for it, but Stephen got off work late last night and couldn’t make it to the bank before it closed. Either way, the van is completely paid for. But I really need to give God the credit for it – because He is the One who worked it all out.

First of all, I am NOT bragging. At all. I wanted to share that to show where we were, and what God has shown us while He has helped us get to where we are now.

This post is going to be a long one because there’s a lot of history to explain. It’s about finances. The way we view money has really changed over the years. God has used a lot of things and circumstances to change our views too. I want to share our story, because I’ve learned SO much along the way.

Shortly after we were married, we found a “work from home” plan and bought into it. We thought that in a few months’ time, I could stay home and I would be able to supplement Stephen’s income from home. Unfortunately, it was more of a scam than it was for real. Sure, they pushed you to sell product, but they pushed you to build your downline more. The more people you could sucker into working for you, the more you would make. We are NOT good at that type of thing, and while we liked the product well enough, it just didn’t work out for us. Unfortunately, the end result was debt that we thought would be paid off quickly. It wasn’t.

Fast forward a few years – Stephen was laid off from a job he loved, and we moved across the country and back. I found a copy of Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover at a garage sale, read it, discussed it with Stephen, and we decided to do what we could to get serious about our finances. Our hard times weren’t over, but we were at least learning about how to handle our finances better than we had been.

What God was teaching us was about faith, trusting Him, and using credit cards. While some people can use them wisely, I believe there are many more out there who can’t. And when Christians have them – it is entirely too easy to use plastic instead of trusting God. We cut up our credit cards completely almost two years ago. It was really hard at first, but then we started noticing something. God did indeed provide. Right when we needed it. Always. It wasn’t always how I imagined He would, but our needs were met and He showed Himself mighty time after time after time.

How can I say I’m trusting God to meet my needs if I pray He’ll provide and then charge it to a credit card? How is that God’s provision?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not faulting someone who has a credit card, uses it, and pays the balance responsibly. But the temptation can be so great. “We’re a little tight this month – I’ll just charge it and pay it next month.” But then next month comes, and it’s tight then too, and the card balance never goes down. I know. I’ve been there.

By the way – tithing IS part of that faith. I’ve looked at bills that total more than our monthly income, and wondered how in the world we’d have enough money to pay bills if we tithed. But that first 10% is God’s. We have had MANY months where things just don’t add up on paper, but we gave God His portion of the money, and our bills always got paid. Those were some HARD months. That was when Stephen was bringing home $200 a week and our mortgage payment was over $700 a month. You do the math. God did a lot of miracles during that summer. But while it was unbelievably hard, that was when my faith grew the most too.

Fast forward to now. I’d love to say that we’re completely debt free and have 3-5 months of living expenses in the bank. But you know what? We’re not there yet. We’re still working on it. God has allowed us to see progress, and to be able to finally see what looks like it might be the end. :O) It’s been difficult at times, but it has been worth it.

Another reason we’re working so hard to become debt free is because Stephen answered God’s call to preach two summers ago. We want to reduce as many of our expenses as possible so that if God ever does place him in the position of a senior pastor, we won’t have extra bills hanging over our heads.

While we were looking for a new vehicle, we started looking and prayed that God would provide what we needed. We were ultimately able to buy this van by combining our tax refund with money we already had in savings.

To be honest, we did consider financing it. I know, there’s a lot of debate out there about whether or not vehicle debt is “smart debt” or not. We really didn’t want to finance the van to start with, but wanted to consider all our options. Interestingly enough, the bank wouldn’t lend us the money because the price the seller was asking was too low for their vehicle loan requirements. I’m thankful that God didn’t allow us to get the lending because it would have meant more debt for us to pay off, even if we did plan on paying it quickly. While paying for the van outright makes the next couple months tighter, in the long run I believe it’s worth it.

God has done some really amazing things while teaching us (ok, me) to trust Him. It’s been an interesting process, but I wouldn’t change it.

Last year when we ordered chicks, we ordered some Araucana/Ameraucana chicks. They lay colored eggs, and I wanted some. Well, here it is, a year later, and the only hen that survived is now laying eggs. They’re the prettiest shade of light blue.

I tried to take a few pictures this morning to post here, but somehow a little helper of mine kept putting a toy lizard in the pictures.

This morning I placed an order for 15 more Araucana/Ameraucana straight run chicks. I would prefer almost all hens, but ordered the mix so that we could have a few roosters too. I just hope that we don’t get all roosters and only 1 or 2 hens! We have an area where we can put the two together for some “purebred” eggs to incubate. . .in our own small efforts to perpetuate the breeds we prefer without having to order more each year. Since these are a cross breed, I’m not 100% sure how it it will work out, but it will be fun trying.

I had to laugh though. Stephen’s love of animals has corrupted rubbed off on me. I used my play money to order more chickens! We’ll probably place a bigger order later for more birds, but I wanted to order the “fun” birds while I had the extra money. The idea of being able to sell colored eggs by the dozen is nice too. :O)

The neighbors are burning something behind their house. Samuel decided that if there’s a fire, they’re probably eating “mush-mellers” too.

I love his logic. Campfire-gooey marshmallows sound pretty good to me too!

Sunday – leftover pizza
Monday – turkey burgers
Tuesday – crockpot chicken taco stew
Wednesday – tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches
Thursday – cream cheese chicken spinach, brown rice
Friday – ladies’ prayer band meeting at church for me, hot dogs for the guys
Saturday – no sure yet. Maybe leftovers.

Breakfasts – oatmeal, eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits, etc.

Lunches – sandwiches, soup, leftovers, etc.

You can read more menu plans over at Organizing Junkie.

Here’s a picture of the mints that I made last week for the wedding.

You can find the recipe at allrecipes.com. The only change I made was I used half the food coloring called for so the green would be lighter.

Oh wow. The cheesecake tastes SO good. All I did was add about half a bag of melted chocolate chips to a basic cheesecake batter. I didn’t make a crust for it, and baked it in a heart-shaped pan.

The chocolate hardened more than I would’ve liked, but it’s a nice flavor contrast to the butterscotch. Overall, the flavor is wonderful.

I get about .001 points for presentation though – even though I buttered the pan, it does NOT come out easily. It comes out more in bite-sized pieces than a nice slice. Next time it would be better if the pan were lined since I don’t have a springform pan.

Here’s the recipe I used: Philadephia 3-Step Cheesecake.

Good thing it tastes good, because it sure does look funny!

Maybe I shouldn’t call it a flop quite yet since we haven’t tasted it yet.

Stephen absolutely loves cheesecake, so I thought I’d get creative today. I experimented with a basic recipe and added melted butterscotch chips to it. Once I took it out of the oven and it cooled some, I melted chocolate chips to drizzle over the top.

The chocolate chips weren’t melted enough though so they ended up globbing instead of drizzling like I envisioned. It looked pretty silly. I spread it out with a rubber spatula. It doesn’t look as good as it did in my head, but hopefully it’ll still taste pretty good.

We’ll try it later after it’s completely cool. It smelled good baking. . .

Let me preface this by saying that I do NOT mind staying home. I love being a stay-at-home wife.

This is strange for us though. My van died a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t a problem. We still had the car, so other than sharing a vehicle and planning errands more carefully, it really wasn’t a big deal.

We took the car to the mechanic last week to get it ready for our trip to the mountains. He couldn’t get the part we needed, so it stayed there.

My in-laws thankfully have an extra vehicle, and they work together, so they graciously allowed us to borrow their minivan for the week. I know it inconveniences them to let us use it, but I am SO grateful that they did.

It is so strange to have both our cars out of commission at the same time. What’s even funnier is that we’ve even put a down payment on a new van. We’ll pay them the rest of the money next week when our tax return arrives – YAY for Dave Ramsey’s Money Makeover! But I digress. I just think it’s funny that both our cars need repairs at the same time, and that we’ve started paying for a new vehicle (well, new to me), yet we still have to borrow one for everday life. Oh well.

I’m thankful they let us borrow the van. We’d be in trouble without it!