Post of Pictures!

I was told not to do anything embarrassing on our wedding day...

Where Luke TRIED to propose!!

The guys at church looking very springy!

Our zoo has a... Cantelope house?

My two younger brothers weren't cooperating on picture day...

Jumping in leaves at Grandpa's house!

The day we casually hydroplaned off the road in Branson. I only look this happy
 because no one was hurt and there was no real damage!

My favorite wedding day picture

Holding hands with sweet Landon! Love that boy

This is mount cardboard-manjaro. Promptly after moving into an apartment!

Once upon a time I was forced into a choir performance to eat a plate of chocolate pudding and gummy worms. Yuck!

First Valentine's Day Gift... Not Too Wise?

On our first Valentine's day I shed a lot of tears. It was probably one of the least romantic days of my life.

2013 was our first Valentine's day together. Of course we wanted to go out and celebrate. Things were a little hectic around Valentine's day; I was scheduled to start a new job, Luke was just getting into his Co-op, etc. Well just to top it all off, a few months before February 14th I started having a pain in my mouth. I went to see an oral surgeon and he gave me the news: my wisdom teeth are coming! And guess what day they had available for surgery? February 14th.

So the 14th rolls around and I get all settled in, and put under. I woke up in what felt like seconds, thinking they didn't give me enough gas to keep me asleep throughout the whole surgery. They finally got me out of the operation room and took me to sit down in another room.

Apparently, the anesthesia could affect people in different ways. People could be goofy, sad, mad or maybe not much different. My Mom was with me in the room, waiting to see what I'd be like, but she didn't have to wait too long. Next to my chair was a trashcan. I looked at it, and just started to bawl.

I was a basket-case!!

In the elevator leaving the Doctor's office, I said hi to the guy next to us and told my Mom "he's nice". Walking to the car we walked down a sidewalk lined with dead plants (remember, it is winter) and I said the flowers were pretty. I remember feeling like I was acting, I thought I was giving everyone good laugh. But the truth was, I just couldn't control myself.

After picking up my milkshake, we got home and I saw the beautiful flowers my boyfriend had delivered to my house. They sat on the counter with a note for me. I started crying hysterically. "HE GOT ME FLOWERS... BECAUSE HE LOVES ME!" slobber, tears and snot were running down my face, everyone was laughing at me but I was so touched by these flowers. I started to smell the flowers, including the flower pictured on the note card. 

I placed my milkshake on the counter and tried to eat it, I got down on my knees so I was eye level with the shake. "What are you doing?" I just looked at my mom and replied very seriously "I didn't want the shake to feel short"

"How was the surgery? And the Doctor?" my brothers asked. "He was old. He patted me right here" I flung my leg up onto the counter and touched my calf where the doctor gave me a reassuring pat before surgery. 

Then I walked into the living room. You know how girls will steal their boyfriends hoodies and wear them around because the hoodies smell like the boy? I had a shirt I had stolen from Luke, it was a button up work shirt. I had it for so long that I didn't want to give it back dirty so I washed it just before my surgery. I found it in my pile of clothes and put it on. I sat down on the couch. Tears just started streaming down my face. "IT DOESN'T SMELL LIKE HIM" Tears. Uncontrollable tears. This was the saddest thing of all. My little brother tried to comfort me "He'll come over later and you can smell him" I just nodded. That seemed so dumb. 

After a while the real pain started to kick in and it hurt. Bad. I was slobbering so much, my mom decided to change my gauze. "Open your mouth as big as you can" she said. That's not exactly easy to do when most of your face is numb and you have ice packs strapped around your head. "Wider" I was trying! "Wider! No, your mouth. Don't open your eyes wider" Each time she was saying wider I was opening my eyes just a little bit bigger and my mouth was not moving. 

Let's just say we didn't celebrate Valentine's day that year. Or the next year, or the next. It's kind of ruined for us. Oh and did I mention my cheeks got huge? At least it was memorable! 

How to: Live with someone else?

Six. Six is the number of times we have moved in 2.5 years. Four is the number of places we have lived together as a family of two. One was the number of times we lived with someone else, in their home. Until December 3rd. After our adorable niece was born and the job hunt for my husband was not going well, we decided to move back to our home roots. We missed our family and close friends. We would be blindly jumping into dangerous waters. My husband had no job, and I would be quitting mine. We were prepared to live on our savings, if that's what it took. Except, if we were going to rent our own place, we would have very little leftover to live on. So, we decide to take up an offer to live with my Mother-in-law (MIL)!

No matter who you're planning on moving in with, it's always a little nerve-racking. You're not sure if you'll get along after a few weeks, you don't know if your schedules will clash, how will sharing the fridge work, etc. And even though I love my MIL to bits, I was still nervous, and embarrassed! 

The first or second week after we moved in, I decided we needed a few groceries. My Husband took on a temporary job, which really lifted the burden of money, so one afternoon while he and his Mom were at work, I hit the grocery store. I picked up a few basic things: eggs, milk, yogurt. You know, simple stuff for lunches and such. I got home just before MIL and was putting my things into the fridge, when she got home, also with grocery bags. It was at this moment I realized we bought almost the exact same items. Boy was I embarrassed! For some reason, I felt like I was invading her space. This was the first lesson I learned about living with someone else: communication. 

Living with my Husband's parent is HARD. Not for the reason you might think, but because she wants to spoil us! My Husband installed one new sink faucet for her, and she insisted on paying him. A lot. And did I mention she won't let us pay her for utilities or extra groceries she provides? She probably enjoys it, but we feel like we're invading. So this has turned into a back and forth game of seeing who can do something special for the other person first. She gets us giftcards for doing small tasks, which we try to refuse and she gives us the Mom eye. So then I cook dinner and insist she eats some of it instead of peanut butter. Or I clean her house while she's at work (she still doesn't know about some of things I've done hehe)

Living with another person in a three bedroom house and sharing most of the space can be difficult, and even awkward, but learning how to live with someone else has taught us a great deal of patience. It also gave us the freedom to pay off our debt faster, and grow back our savings! Who knows, maybe move number 7 will be into a house? 

How We Got Out Of Debt By Graduation Day!

Everyone is talking about getting out of debt. People who are dedicated to getting out of debt so they can "owe no man nothing" have a good mindset. But what about people who can't find a job in their field, and have to work temporarily in a factory? They aren't making the big bucks their degree promised them. How can they work to get out of debt? This is a possibility for everyone-you are not guaranteed a job upon graduation, so what's your plan? Let me share what our plan was, and how it worked, not once he got a job, but by Graduation day!

Our plan:

We were married at the end of my Husband's third year of college at a five year school. While planning out our whole life (as most young, inexperienced couples do), we already determined that I would work while my husband focused primarily on being a full time student. I had no degree, which meant our income would be very low, probably just enough for us to live on. We really wouldn't have much extra cash to pay for semesters of school, so it was going to be on loans. This made us very aware of every penny we had, and every penny we were spending. We were dedicated. And that's what you have to be to get out of debt. We didn't want to have to be paying off loans until we were 40. So here's what we did:

1. Set a Budget

It's very easy to get a paycheck use it to pay all your bills, go to the grocery store and spend however much you want, and use rest of it to go shopping or hang out with friends. What's difficult is limiting yourself and gaining self control. Creating a budget can be intimidating, but it really is easy once you sit down and work through it. One thing that we learned is to start with the things you know for sure. Know the exact amount of your cell phone bill each month? Then that's your budget. Know how much your car insurance is each month? Etc. And for the things that are unknown, start with a low number and try to stick to it. If you absolutely can't, you know you've set an unrealistic goal and can change it. And, each month you'll get better at budgeting! Once you get into a groove and really get the hang of things, you can continue to challenge yourself with budgeting less and less. Even today we eat on only $180/month-- and we eat organic!

2. Have a Separate Savings

During most of the summers my hub found work or did internships. As an engineer, he always got paid for his interns, and we never needed much to live on, so we put it in a special account and didn't think about it. If he did part time work on someone's ranch for a few months, we set that aside too. Each month we tried to look at that special account and apply most, if not all of it to loans. Some times we would go months without having anything extra to put in that separate account, and that's okay. If you leave the extra money in your regular checking account, you'll probably get used to seeing the money. If you put aside money in an account you don't use or check as often, it will be much easier not to miss it when you put it towards your debts!

3. Learn to Say NO!

Look, shopping really adds up. If you've lived your whole life without this cool thing you found at the store, don't you think you can wait until after you reach your out-of-debt goal? The greatest thing I learned how to do is shop with gift cards. If I really wanted to do some shopping, I'd wait until a holiday or birthday and use my gift card on what I'd been eyeing for months. You need to learn how to see cute or cool things at the store and leave without them. This might mean staying clear of your favorite store to avoid temptation!

4. Use Your Unexpected Cash and Scholarships as Loan Payments!

Depending on your situation, you may not be able to afford to do this. However, if you've completed step #1 you may know what your monthly expenditures are and can use the rest of the money towards your loans! If my husband or I got a lot of birthday money, some of it would always go to loans. And same thing with Christmas money. When we got money we weren't expecting, as long as we weren't in a bind, we wouldn't keep it. We'd give it right to the people who we owed 10's of thousands of dollars. When he got extra money from scholarships, we never kept it. It would have been nice for our savings account, but we knew that money was meant for school.

5. Find Creative Ways to Make Extra Cash

One of the great things about my husband is that he is not afraid to work. Even though he was focused on doing well in school and graduating on time, he worked to make extra money when he could. He was constantly asking his friends, classmates, professors and even people he just met, if they had work. He would make a couple extra bucks this way that really helped us get by when my work wasn't cutting it. But after I got a better paying, full time job, we put his extra income in the separate savings account, and put it directly towards school. We were always rummaging through our things looking for things we could sell for extra cash. Even selling his old notes and textbooks really came in handy. There are plenty of ways you can make extra cash without a lot of work involved. Especially in a college town!

My husband got his degree at a five year school in Engineering Management. It took plenty of hard work and dedication but we are officially out of debt! There were a lot of times I passed up on the opportunity to buy something I "loved" and was "heartbroken" but now I can't even remember them! If you really, really, really want to get out of debt, you can learn to take your budgeting and saving skills to the next level! Just think what a 'loan' off your shoulders it will be in the long run!