Joshua's Story

Joshua has been spending all summer drawing and writing with Hannah. Hannah loves to write stories about her baby piggies, so Joshua started doing it too. Here is Joshie's very first story. Nothing has been changed (Well, his letters were a mix of upper and lower case but that would take too much work to copy. But no added punctuation, no change of spelling, it's all completely his own work. He doesn't even ask for help with spelling while he's writing.)  Pretty good for a barely 5-year-old!

The Pigs

The three pigs wanted to g play outside. But dad said no

It was winter

It was cold

And that nhgit it snowd

Evrythig was berryd

And toys had iceicls on them

And wen pigs went outside the pigs got cold

The end.

Pics from Joshua's Birthday

Joshie turned 5 years old on June 19. We had a whole month full of celebrations, which is typical for us this time of year. Joshua wanted to go to the science museum for his birthday, so we took the kids and Joshie's friend Nicolas and enjoyed the day at Balboa. When we got home it was time for his birthday dinner (macaroni and cheese, pizza, and bell peppers), presents, and cake. I was pretty proud of the way his Angry Birds cake turned out :) He liked it too.

 This is my typical snuggly boy. He loves to rub his face all over mine. I didn't know you could snuggle with faces til I had Joshua. He looooves his mama! (Lol...As a side note, Seth recently said that when he sees Joshie snuggling with me he feels like he's watching a Greek play.)

Earlier in the month we took the kids to Ikea for their free monthly bday party for kids having birthdays during the month -- so all the kids got to go, and as birthday boys, Joshie and Eli both got presents. Eli got a stuffed doggy, and Joshie was given a big package of paper and markers with stamps on the end -- perfect since he had just recently gotten on a drawing kick. Hannah and Joshua loved getting their faces painted and watching the magic show, and Eli pretty much ran around the whole store (which is a big, big place!) during the party, and would only sit still when it was time for cake. Of course.  

(I know it doesn't look like it, but I promise they are having fun.)

Debt Free!

We paid off our last debt at the beginning of July, so we are now officially debt free!  It's a great feeling, but we still feel like we have a long way to go.  The next step is to save 3-6 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund which is going to take quite a bit longer (almost 2 years!) than paying off our debts (which took about 4 months).  So before we go all out on saving up for that emergency fund, we're going to use some of our tremendous "debt snowball" next month to go on a mini-shopping spree.  This is mainly just a way of rewarding ourselves for being disciplined for the last 4 months and to recharge our batteries for the next step.

One thing I might have done differently with step 2 is not stop our retirement fund contributions at work.  In order to pay off the debt faster, we put a hold on our retirement fund contributions.  Since I receive a matching contribution from work, we essentially passed on free money for retirement.  Oh well, lessons learned!  On to step 3!