Inspired By...

Can I just tell you how cool my husband is? He is always trying to further develop himself and learn new skills, and as part of learning to better utilize Illustrator, he offered to "redesign" my blog based on my favorite scrapbook page. Well, it's hard to decide on just one, but this is one of my recent faves... didn't he do a fantastic job of capturing its essence on my blog? I totally love it. Thank you, honey!

Michael has also been up to some other great stuff at work, one thing being his personal budget software. We're trying to budget very consciously, especially since I am no longer bringing in an income. However, it was very difficult to do because I kept forgetting to right stuff down. (SORRY honey!) But he wrote a program that is very simple to enter data into, and it always updates so there's no math involved and I know exactly how much money I have left in each budget category. For example, I have exactly $7 left in my retail budget for the month! (Thank heavens it's the last day of the month, right?) Anyway, you should download it, try it out, and give him some feedback. It's FREE! If you budget, it's worth giving it a try. And if you don't budget, it will help you do so if you want to!

We've had way too much going on lately... in fact, tonight is the first night in 9 days that I've just been home. It all started with last week's date night. (Which was fun, don't get me wrong!) Then we spent the next two evenings with friends (Happy Birthday, Carolynn!) , and then traveled to the lake with Mops and Pops. Michael returned home, and Phoebe and I stayed on for a few more days for some R&R. Phoebe got to meet Aunt Kathleen (my favorite great-great-aunt) and spend lots of time with her grandparents. I returned Wednesday for birthday dinner with the girls, then last night was date night again. PHEW! Finally, we get to rest tonight. I'm itching to create some things... we'll see how it goes!

Mops and Pops will arrive late tonight, so we can go to cheer on our Tide tomorrow! (Phoebe will sit this game out, hanging out with Nandy and Boompah instead.

We've also added the title of Sunday School teachers to our plate, which means I need to get preparing for our lesson on Creation with the sweet Lilies (4-year-olds). We're so excited about this fall quarter, and it's our prayer that God can use our meager hands to accomplish His purposes with these little ones... it's exciting to think that we can be a part of the "stories" of these sweet little children. I'm a little nervous, since I'm used to either a much older (3rd grade) or much younger set (infants); but since the threes went great a couple of weeks ago, I know we'll be fine!

More later, I'm sure!