12 Days

Over 20 years ago, I began my formal education. In 12 days, I will finish it. A long way from my striking performance of "Red bird, red bird, what do you see?" at my preschool graduation, this one will feature a visit from my parents, a grown-up party (we are serving appetizers!), and the satisfaction of never doing homework again.

Don't get me wrong, I am not done learning by any means. I would love to take more classes, but because I want to. Photography, art, theatre, maybe even a theology class here and there. But the mandatory, life-controlling aspect of attendance, papers, and group projects will be a thing of the past! Somehow I managed to 3 vacations this summer to make up for the past 6 years of being in college. I looking forward to spending time with my friends. But most of all, even if I am not on a Caribbean island or the east coast, I get to finally see Jason again!!! After a handful of hours a week, we will actually have the time to jsy watch a movie, actually go when people ask us to have dinner with them, or just do nothing, because we can! Now Jason will still have classes next semester, but the chance of us being home at the same time will rise dramatically since just one of us will be mentoring, attending two college campuses, trying to do homework for all those classes, and oh, yeah, working full time! He is such a hard worker and I am so proud to call him my husband. 

This is only a season and it has been and educational one (not just because of school either..) I think we have learned to depend on each other, but most importantly to depend on God to be everything for us. Marriage does not complete you as a person and it was never intended to. It enhances your strengths and teaches you to improve on your weaknesses, so that you may serve God even more as a team. 

And that's what I think about that...

Money Money Money

Dave Ramsey just finished up a 3 week money and the bible series at church. It was a really good series and I am sure it gave some great guidance to thousands who watched it. Stemming from the series Lifechurch is now offering Financial Peace University which is Dave's "learn about saving, getting out of debt, inversting and giving class". I began going last night. It will be a 13 week class held every wednesday night. It looks like a lot of it will be principles I have already been exposed to and am currently following. I need direction with investing and budgeting every month.

I set us up with Dave's online budget program and it looks like it will work well for us. It will just be a matter of us following it by planning ahead for all purchases and using cash instead of the debit card. I just set up a couple money market accounts and opened up a Roth IRA for Lindsay so now we have a couple of good savings vehicles and we both have IRA's.

I am really excited to get going on this budget and investing. I am tired of being so non-organized with our money. We will now be able to be very purposeful with our spending and giving. It will be a little more work, but definitely worth it.

Everything else is going pretty well. I started getting a sore throat yesterday and it is worse this morning so that is not looking good. I am taking my final test for my pilot application. It is the TBAS. It is basically a computer/simulator game to test my hand eye coordination and ability to multi-task. I am pretty confident about it. I will be taking that tomorrow around 1300 and would appreciate any prayers you could toss up on my behalf. Thanks.

That's it for now. I am off to go make some breakfast and get ready for school.