To the future!

Apologies for my lengthy absence.  Debt repayment has been taking small steps forward and large steps backward in the last year and it has frustrated me to the point that I haven't wanted to blog about it.  I should blog about it though, because this is how debt repayment goes.  You think you're making great progress climbing out of the hole and some unforeseen circumstance knocks you back down into the chasm. It has happened before and it will very likely happen again.  I need to prepare as best I can and handle these things as they come.

Kindergarten expenses took a huge toll.  The initial plan was to split the girls' $8,000 worth of kindergarten tuition expenses 50/50 with their dad (he would pay for one child and I would pay for the other), but I found out with just a few weeks left of the school year that he hadn't made any payments.  I scraped together enough debt to cover her $4,000 tuition and promptly filed the child support modification request that I had intended to hold onto until after the wedding.  We'll see how that turns out.  I read through it a dozen times making sure I was being objective and fair in asking for a modification.  Ugh... I hate drama.

So, on to happier things!

We've got less than six weeks to the wedding!  We've managed to cash-flow everything.  We've shopped around and found deals on things we love.  We've asked to borrow things rather than buy them.  We've DIYed a LOT.  We've recruited a team of friends and family to help us make our wedding happen.  Will our wedding be featured on a wedding blog for other couples to fawn over?  Probably not.  But we're going to get married and celebrate and we're going to start our marriage without any wedding-related financial stress. I'll give up all the short-term fuss in exchange for meeting some long-term goals, thankyouverymuch.  We're not fancy people and I'd rather not fake it on such an important day.


All three of the kids have finished kindergarten and are excited about the wedding.  They've had a great summer so far.  It is now clear that putting the girls in separate classrooms has been good for them because they're getting really tired of each other already and can't wait for school to start again so they can get some time apart.

It's sometimes strange living in our little sociology project.  Reagan was diagnosed with ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder partway through kindergarten.  We suspected the ADHD long before, but put off having her screened by a professional.  We've learned a lot about how her brain functions differently than our other two kids (and our own) and she's doing just fine most of the time.  All three kids have their own bedrooms now and I think having her own space where is free to be alone if she so chooses has helped her immensely.  She is also responsible for that space and takes a lot of pride in organizing her new desk to make room for drawing.

Cow in a Thunderstorm - by Reagan

We have issued a reading challenge for the kids this summer.  We've asked them to read at least two hours per week.  Every week that they meet their goal, they each get to choose a new book to buy for their personal library.  At the end of the summer, provided they have met their challenge consistently, we are going to go to a theme park as a family.  They've really taken to it.  Those weekly trips to the bookstore are a lot of fun.  Kieran picked out Mercy Watson to the Rescue when we went book shopping on Sunday and she has already read it twice!