We’ve been very blessed over the past few years. The only outstanding debt we have is our mortgage and a $500 credit card that is no where near maxed out! Both of our cars are paid off, and there is nothing else requiring a monthly payment (other than our utilities). This hasn’t always been the case! When we first moved to Arizona, we got there at the beginnings of the summer. Working in the hospitality field in Arizona, the summer time is nearly non-existent for business. But because we had just moved in, our mortgage payment wasn’t due for a few months, and we were nearing the fall pick up when the monthly bills kicked in. My husband worked normal hours and many overtime hours so that they could cut the staff during the low time. By the fall and business pick up, we were making quite a lot of money. A mortgage payment and a half in each paycheck. Then…my husband took a job promotion. He moved from hourly to salary, and it cut out all of his overtime. We went from living high on the hog, to not having a full mortgage payment in one paycheck. We were living on credit and were firmly entrenched in a black hole before I was able to find work to help dig our way out. We looked into Credit counseling but found that most of the companies expected a one time payment equal to our mortgage. If I had enough to pay the counselors…I could pay my mortgage!

They were scary times. We clawed our way out of that mess, and moved to Chicago. Life here has been pretty good until my husband was injured on the job and forced to take 18 months off! Now…that was scary! We were getting some assistance from Workman’s Comp, and lived on food stamps, but because we had already gone through the black hole of credit debt, we were much smarter this time around. With help from family and the hubby finally being able to get back to work, we came through this round relatively unscathed. It wasn’t fun…but we survived it!

I don’t think you can consider someone a success story unless they’ve learned from their mistakes. We have a lot to learn, but really are a lot better off than some of our friends who carry as much credit card debt as both of our paid off cars values put together! That would cause some sleepless nights for me! I recently took the BillsIQ test, and I scored 85%! Not bad, but definitely need some fine tuning to get our score up to the high 90’s where I’d like it to be!

Now…let’s not hate the messenger! Don’t believe me…do a search for yourself and see just what’s being said about it!

This evening, around midnight, I headed to Borders to pick up the newest book in the Twilight series. I was about the 400th person in line with 15 minutes to go before the midnight release. I had my two youngest with me, so we blew that pop stand and headed up to Meijer, a 24 hour store much like (but better than) a Super Target. I wasn’t sure if they were planning to release the book at midnight, but if they weren’t, I could always head back down the street to Borders and be about the same spot in line!! So the little ones and I walk in about 5 minutes early…wander around the coloring book aisle for a few minutes and a beautiful (I didn’t look at his face, just his arms) man walked around the corner with the books! And there wasn’t a SOUL around but me! So I took my book, headed to the checkout lane, and was officially the first person at that Meijer to purchase a book! As I drove home, at 12:05, I passed the throngs of people waiting in line for their book! Guaranteed I would have still been standing in line at Borders by the time I got home, tucked the babies in and started to read!

I love those rare moments when I’m brilliant!!

‘They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain’t,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be…

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it’s important to speak English
except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what??

And they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2??

Where were you when he was 12??

Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol??

And where is the father?? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something?

Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?

Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from??

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a thing about Africa .

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different ‘husbands’ — or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.
We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.’

Dr.. William Henry ‘Bill’ Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.

WAY TO GO, BILL !!

It’s NOT about color…
It’s about behavior!!!

Baby gifts have changed so much since I was having baby showers of my own. So many new and quite useful things are coming out…I would have loved a bottle warmer sitting next to my bed. Instead I had to trek downstairs to the kitchen to warm the milk at three in the morning. The gift I got the baby was the cute bathtub turtle. You scoop the toys right out of the bathtub with him and then hang him on the wall. There are holes so the water just drains right out, it’s really cute. One of the Aunt’s made one of those cute diaper cakes. I got one of those when I had Grayson, but they have gotten much more ornate than the little one I got. It really is such a cute idea!

We have so few chances to throw baby showers around here, that I was really excited to get to host this fun event, and I hope someday soon we’ll be able to meet this cute little girl!

Nothing about this birthday is easy! You all know he’s a professional Chef, who likes gourmet food, hates cheese and works way too many hours. The kids and I are going to pick up his gift on Thursday while he’s at work, and then give it to him before work on Friday. The cake will come at the end of the day when he gets home–and voila…Happy Birthday Sweetheart! So tomorrow it is up to us to do something fun.

Now if it were my birthday, I would easily be swayed by these fabulous little Macaroons! I love normal macaroons–but throw in the cute colors and fillings and I’m game! But my man is a little harder. Did I mention he doesn’t like chocolate?? Well, except for Brownies…he’ll eat a pan of those on his own. So maybe the “Brownie Sampler” will do for him. I’ll let you know how it goes!

What a horrendous waste of money!! I have to say, we were looking forward to this one. My kids even wandered the house flashing their best Wall-E imitation voices. From minute ONE—-we get more and more Global Warming NONSENSE stuffed down our throat! From the first scene, humans are the fat, selfish villains who have destroyed the world. PUH—LEASE!!! I am writing this post in red because it is the opposite of green. I am NOT green! I do NOT recycle! During “Earth Hour” when everyone turned all of their electricaI items off—I turned all of mine on, and turned the car on in the driveway with the air conditioner on! OK, so maybe I didn’t go that far…but that is how hugely I am AGAINST everything that the whole Global Warming community hold so dear! In fact, I’m probably the poster child for “Anti-Green”!!

That said…I love this Earth. I am thankful everyday for the amazing creation that it is. I also know that this earth has survived for thousands of years. Meteor showers that can kill off civilization. Ice Ages. Volcano eruptions (including a vocano that hasn’t stopped erupting 1 day of my life). But now you are going to tell me that this earth will be destroyed because I refused to stick my hand in the toilet to clean my child’s cloth diaper and instead dressed all four of them in disposable? Are you freaking kidding me? I throw out my Diet Coke cans instead of recycling them! If the bagger at the grocery store tries to give me ‘paper instead of plastic’…I correct him—how in the heck am I supposed to handle four kids and non-handled paper bags…thank you…NO! I was once asked “Why not recycle, just in case the wacko’s are right”? To which I heartily answered as I tossed my soup cans (unwashed) into my garbage can…”Because if you give these idiots an inch, they’ll take away everything!”

So, about Wall-E…I’m going to continue to shop at Costco…I’m going to continue to pay monthly for satellite TV! And I will continue to tell my children to smile on Earth Day while their teachers try to load their heads with mind numbing BUNK…and to just let the info slide out the other ear! There isn’t a human being on this earth who could do more damage to it than Mother Nature…and if she hasn’t managed to end civilization, my aerosol hair spray isn’t going to do the trick!

Here is one very SMART man’s take on all of this crap! Amen, brother!
***As anyone who knows George Carlin should know…this clip is NOT for children, or the faint of heart!!

This is Barrett boxing Jake on the Wii. I had to capture it because when Barrett wins he jumps and cheers and dances, but when he gets knocked out he collapses face down on the couch. In the video, he just leaves the screen for a bit—but once his guy gets back up, he suddenly reappears and continues boxing. I’m not sure if I shouldn’t have called this “Manic/Depressive Barrett”!!

For this first week we will be sticking around town. Tomorrow we are going to the Monster Truck race at the County Fair. Friday I would like to hit the double decker tour bus (like on The Break Up). Over the weekend we will be heading to a vacation home in Lake Geneva, I’m mostly excited about tooling around town in a golf cart…they are my favorite things EVER!

For the second week next month we will be heading north to Jellystone–I actually wish that one was this week as my 5 year old speaks of nothing else! It would be nice to nip that one in the bud!!

What are your plans???