Dave Ramsey

I just finished reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. He's amazing and his plan is perfect! I would suggest this book to anyone. It's more geared to those in debt, using credit cards like nobody's business and feeling out of control of their money. But it's good for everyone to read (even newly married couples, or empty nesters) and understand those principles and the myths that he busts. It's a book on how to get control of your life and build wealth.

He uses the motto: If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

He takes you through "baby steps" like on What About Bob? You must do them in order and you must be completely committed to the whole program!

Anyway, I got these off his website.

"Baby Step 1

$1,000 to start an Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is for those unexpected events in life that you can’t plan for: the loss of a job, an unexpected pregnancy, a faulty car transmission, and the list goes on and on. It’s not a matter of if these events will happen; it’s simply a matter of when they will happen.
Baby Step 2

Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball

List your debts, excluding the house, in order. The smallest balance should be your number one priority. Don’t worry about interest rates unless two debts have similar payoffs. If that’s the case, then list the higher interest rate debt first.

Baby Step 3

3 to 6 months of expenses in savings

Once you complete the first two baby steps, you will have built serious momentum. But don’t start throwing all your “extra” money into investments quite yet. It’s time to build your full emergency fund.

Baby Step 4

Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement

When you reach this step, you’ll have no payments—except the house—and a fully funded emergency fund. Now it’s time to get serious about building wealth.

Baby Step 5

College funding for children

By this point, you should have already started Baby Step 4—investing 15% of your income—before saving for college. Whether you are saving for you or your child to go to college, you need to start now.

Baby Step 6

Pay off home early

Now it’s time to begin chunking all of your extra money toward the mortgage. You are getting closer to realizing the dream of a life with no house payments.
Baby Step 7

Build wealth and give!

It’s time to build wealth and give like never before. Leave an inheritance for future generations, and bless others now with your excess. It's really the only way to live!"
Anyway, it's great and Todd and I will be starting on Baby Step 1 once we get to Texas or get our tax refund back, whichever comes first.

Teething TJ

Poor poor TJ. He's teething. He's getting the two middle bottom teeth.

It all started Friday morning. Todd and I had a church activity to go to and needed to find a babysitter. My old roommate Brooke stepped in to help and her boyfriend Travis came too. I almost decided not to go to the activity because TJ was fussy and had a runny nose and all that bit. Brooke assured me that she had babysat since she was eight and she would be ok. Plus we were only 2 blocks and a phone call away.

It ended up being a good night with spaghetti and live entertainment. An older woman in our ward sang a bunch of songs for "our generation" and I had only heard of one. And then we have a professional opera singer sing a few Easter songs. He was amazingly good! I could listen to male singing voices all day long.

The first two days of teething were pretty bad. He wasn't very fussy but compared to how he usually is, it was bad! If I complained to any parent about how fussy TJ was being, they would look at me like, "WHAT!? THIS is fussy???" He's such a good kid.

The rest of the weekend the symptoms died down and he seemed pretty normal except for the nose.

But this morning he wasn't doing well. He was moaning and whimpering and super cuddly (he's not a cuddly baby). He couldn't get comfortable and would just veg, zone out and cry. He wasn't eating anything, not even breastmilk. He's just wanted to sleep most of the day. After some Tylenol, he got a little better and more like himself, but after that wore off, he was a mess again. I hope those teeth break through soon. Here are a few pictures I took on my phone today.

Cutest personality and such an explorer

He loves being thrown in the air. He always smiles and sometimes laughs.



Classic! Probably a wedding video pic. He always cocks his head like that.

I see a lot of my dad in this picture. Wasn't my dad such a cute baby?



Funny that his shirt says, "Born to Explore"

His new favorite thing to crawl to, the chair legs! He smells like metal when I pick him up.

Definitely getting ready to crawl, easily gets on all fours

Pico de Gallo

Todd and I have made two batches of pico in the past week. This batch was for a big party we had with his accounting friends and their wives from school. This is a large mixing bowl it is in.

Perfect proportions of everything

We used Calista's recipe and it always tastes so good.

Here it is so everyone can enjoy this salsa!

4-6 roma tomatoes

1/2 onion

1 green pepper

1 jalepeno, without seeds unless you want spicy

1/2 bunch of cilantro

~1 T vinegar

Lime juice to taste

Salt to taste

Cut everything super fine, as small as you can. Add the vinegar, lime juice, and lots of salt. It won't be very juicy but you just need to let it sit. The acid in the vinegar and lime will bring out the natural juices of the veggies for a great juicy mixture. Eat with yummy chips and enjoy!

Birthday Cakes

I've always enjoyed decorating cakes for mine and Todd's birthdays. My mom always did really great cakes for us kids growing up. She did Spongebob, a fighter jet, TMNT, My Little Ponies, a dinosaur, etc. Really great cakes.

But ever since Kristin started being interested in cake decorating as a cluster for school, I've been more interested in it too. Kristin and my mom took a cake decorating class in the community and did all sorts of fun cupcakes while I was there.

It would be fun if Kristin moved down to Texas with us and we could do a wedding package with me doing the flowers, and Kristin doing the cake and we are both amateur photographers so we could maybe do that too!

Anyway, my past cakes haven't been very eleborate or creative like this one I did for Todd's 25th birthday, this last August. It's cute but didn't take much skill.

So Todd's grandpa's birthday and his dad's birthday were both in the beginning of April. They were both going to be down here for different reasons and I wanted to make birthday cakes for them.

This is the one I did for Todd's grandpa. He really likes golfing.

Then I couldn't think of anything super special for Todd's dad. He likes motorcycling and snow skiing but doing either of those would be really hard. Calista came up with the idea to do a Speed Limit sign with a "no" symbol over it. He turned 55 so this is what I came up with.

Pretending to blow out 55 candles since we didn't have any.

I'll keep working on them and I'm excited to do TJ's 1st cake in September. It'll come sooner than I think!