Day Twenty-Nine, Gift Twenty-Nine

Today was an easy gift day, it's my mom's birthday!  She's turning the big 55 which means next year she gets to retire.   I feel so blessed that she is retiring when she is...Abigail will be starting her Kindergarten year and Dakota will be in 5th grade.  The Kindergarten year is the hardest with homeschooling because your child has to learn absolutely everything!  They can't read independently, write, or anything yet.  They need one on one teaching the whole morning.  This makes things difficult when you are homeschooling more than one child.  Not to mention, Dakota is moving at such a fast pace who knows what grade level we'll be working on when he's in 5th grade!  My mom has graciously agreed to home school Abigail and help out with all the kids after she retires.  This is a huge blessing.  My mom has thirty years of education under her belt and I think I will learn a lot from her and I know she will love homeschooling too!

Since my mom and I have been working hard on her retirement plan I decided to get her the budgeting software that I use for her birthday.  It gives her a one year subscription to the service and it's online so what is great is that her and I can be looking at it at the same time as we discuss plans, etc.  This software has helped  Tim and I see where every penny of our money is going.  We found we were spending more than we thought in certain areas and it has really helped us go back to one income.  Recently we lost around $3500 a month of my income, but with watching every penny and this software, we have been able to continue to pay down debt at a fast pace and really not change a whole lot about our standard of living.  I can't wait to share this gift with my mom!  I know she will be as thrilled as I am to watch her savings grow!  The program is called mvelopes...the setup can be frustrating and time consuming.  However, once you've got it all figured out it is quite simple to use and very efficient.  One of my favorite features is the debt planner.  It shows you the quickest way possible to pay down your debt and gives you a specific time line.  One financial advisor I was watching says you have to give an exact date that the debt will be paid off if you want it to be a "goal".  If you don't, then it's just a dream.  That made a lot of sense to me.

I was feeling pretty great today, obviously I needed some rest and the multivitamins and iron...I won't forget those again!  A lesson learned.  It was my day to make meals.  I made Pork Chops Parmesan and Garlic Bread, the group loves my whole wheat garlic bread!  I was so blessed to have energy and not be dizzy today and was able to make 38 pork chops without a hitch.  I've come to love cooking and especially when you only do it once a week, it's fun...if you are not sick!  So I made my five dinners and placed on in the fridge for us and delivered the others to my close friends.  My family is still recovering from colds, I still haven't gotten it, so Justin and Abbey have been especially clingy.  I spent a lot of my day holding and rocking them and then took a long late afternoon nap.  For the past several days, I have not been too hungry so I was able to serve dinner and sit with them.  Tim and the kids really enjoyed the meal which made me so happy.  I'm still going strong on my diet, not cheating, I've hit a plateau at ten pounds...hoping I'll start losing more soon.