Revelations

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately....so much so that Tom has asked me to please stop thinking because I'm making his head hurt. But through all this thinking and praying I've come to a few realizations or "revelations" as I call them......

Revelation #1 - My career goals do not end with me running an office at a Recreation Center. One morning, while lying in bed and saying my "good-morning God - help me get out of bed" prayer - it suddenly became clear that I was to go back to school and become a Kindergarten teacher. And when I say "suddenly' I mean "SUDDENLY"!! I have never showed the least bit of interest in teaching. I've always had a lot of respect for teachers...its a job that takes a lot of patience and hard work, without always seeing the rewards. But after a lot of praying...and panicking....I decided this was where I should be heading. Let the quest begin!!! Okay God, now what???? "Well", I thought, "what does it take to go back to school?' MONEY!!! Okay, I've got none of that. Where do I start? This is what lead to my second revelation....

Revelation #2 - I am a financial idiot. I have no idea how to control mine or my husband's spending habits, I love instant gratification and I make stupid decisions because of that. If there were such thing, I would be president of the FIA - Financial Idiots Anonymous. I can now stand up and say, "My name is Karin Condame - and I'm a financial idiot. God works in mysterious ways, when I had finally come to terms that his plan for me was to teach, I got a letter a few days later from my roommate in college. She had just gone through an awful year of buying a restaurant and nearly going bankrupt because of it. She was told about Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and managed to pay off $13,000 worth of credit card debt in just few months. I was interested in how she did that so I went to library and got his book "The Total Money Makeover" after the 1st chapter, I had come realize that if I ever wanted to go back to school I needed to stop living paycheck to paycheck and mostly stop blaming everything else for our bad spending habits. It's not the restaurant, it's not the child support, it's not because our cars keep breaking down - those things don't help, but if we had a sensible plan and budget to begin with those problems wouldn't seem so bad. Taking responsibility and admitting I have a problem is the first step...right? So now were on a road to financial recovery.

Those were my two big revelations. I think that's enough "revealing" for now. Tom can't handle anymore changes. He's truly afraid that tomorrow I'm going to decide we need to pick up and move to Alaska or something. No Alaska for me...I'm too busy staring at excel spreadsheets and obsessing over the $2 I went over-budget grocery shopping last week.

Catch up

It's been so long since I posted that I decided to title this blog exactly what it is....a catch up of little blurbs that will hopefully fill in the gap of the last 3 months.





My awesome husband brought my best friend Kelly down from PA for my birthday. She came down on Friday and was sitting on our back porch with a bow on her head. Saturday we went to the day spa and got manicures and pedicures. Then went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant on the harbour. We then went to see the "Sex and the City" movie. After the movie we went out to dinner with Tom and the kids. The day ended with Kelly and I lying in bed in the guest room watching Harry Potter. NOTHING gets better than that!






We had a great summer. Jeannelle was here for most of it and she was a big help with the boys. TJ spent the summer in "big camp" with Kindergartner's and now believes he should be going in Kindergarten. We spent a lot of time at the pool and I still don't have a tan.

We had so much fun in Ohio visiting my family this year. We piled the whole family, including the two girls, into a mini-van and drove up for a whirl-wind week of activities. Mom said she wanted to keep us so busy that we collapsed into bed at night...and she succeeded! The first half of the week was spent at the Island. We managed to have 14 of us in a 2-bedroom cabin. The Stumps were good enough to sleep int their tent for a few days - while the rest of us managed to find beds...not necessarily in bedrooms - but we're not picky. The last half of the week we went to Cedar Point and the Cleveland Zoo. We had a blast. The only one who seemed to not completely enjoy himself was Chris. His life is pretty much a vacation, so i think he was confused as to why we had to take him away from his comfortable life to sit in a car for 11 hours to go somewhere he doesn't know to see people he doesn't know. He was so happy to be home that he walked around the house singing our first day back. Oh well, some day he learn to appreciate it!

I just had to throw this picture in. We put in a playground set and did our best to landscape our pine-straw back yard. But why did we bother? I think the boys would have been happier with the mud pit. They still found one section of dirt.