Left, Left, Left, Right, Left

Adler got to march in the Grape and Fall Festival parade this past weekend! He is in the middle on the snare drum with red shoes.

Happy Father's Day!

Joe and his boys
My Dad 1967

I am thankful for all the great guys in my life!

Moving on to Baby Step 3

I recently read Dave Ramsey's response to someone else's question and it made me wonder if we should be paying off a HELOC in Baby Step 2. I found out that if your HELOC is more than 1/2 your income (which ours was barely over)then you should move paying that off to BS 6. So, we are getting to skip BS 2! That will really make us feel like we are making progress. Now our next step is to get 3-6 months of expenses in savings. That amounts to about $10,000. That will take a while. It really is amazing though how we are much more relaxed about money and have the money for the things we need and can step back from frivolous "wants" and keep focused. We hope others will be inspired to try this plan or another one to get out of the debt cycle.

Pirates of Penzance

We just wrapped up another great production with Fine Linen Drama. It has been so much fun to work with such talented people and learn so much. We even had fun! The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
General Stanley's daughters

the Policemen

The Pirates

(Joe is in the center, standing on the floor)

The full Cast

Baby Step 1 complete!

Well, it took our tax refund to do it, but we got Baby Step 1: Save $1000 for a baby emergency fund, DONE!

Baby Step 2 is Pay off Debt Snowball. I feel very fortunate that the only thing we have in this category is a HELOC. It is not a small amount, but we are going to get it paid off before its maturity date of July 2021.

All of this is going great. Not perfect or we would have had our $1000 by Jan 31, but we still are making progress.

YEAH!!

Real snow!

We finally received some REAL snow here. Having grown up in MN, I just can't hardly stand being cold with out snow, and lots of it. We got between 4 and 6 inches in the last 2 days and it is a logistical nightmare for those who have to clean it up or anyone who has to get anywhere, but I love it!

The view out the back door
Out the front door

Miss Daisy

Erik was asking if we were getting more tonight, or how long this would last. It looks like temps won't get too high till Saturday, so we will have it at least a few more days. Joe is coming home from work a little early today to go sledding with the boys. Since my motto is "There are no 'snow days' in Home school," I have been generous and let them sleep in an extra hour the last two days and come to school late. We haven't heard yet if the public school will be in session tomorrow or not.

Promise of a great year ahead

We were driving home the other day and this rainbow was over the whole interstate. It was so bright and we could see the whole thing. Joe snapped this picture of it when we got home.