Life after Debt

For Spring Break, we made it all the way down to Waco, TX and back again.  Let's just say, as lovely as Chip and Joanna Gaines may be, I do not have a desire to go back to their home town. 

With 9 kids in our family, things are crazy around here.  I feel like the more kids I have and the longer that I'm a mother, the less I know about being a parent. 

The last two years have been a crazy ride.  We paid off our mortgage in the fall of 2016.  Woot, woot!  We even went to Nashville to do our debt free scream on the Dave Ramsey show.  It was a wonderful experience.  My sister, Ruth, and her family even met us there to cheer us on.  We treated them to lunch at Blaze Pizza, and let everyone pick what they wanted from the menu.  It was fun to treat them. 

Before our house was paid off, I thought we would be able to do so many things with our money.  As it turned out, we didn't have as much money as we thought.  Part of our extra money we had to put into retirement savings, and then we had lots and lots of medical bills.  Having a child deal with depression, anxiety and identity issues is very scary, heart wrenching and just plain tough.  If it's not one thing, it's another, right?!  We were so thankful to be able to take care of things as they came along and pay those bills and not have to worry about any kind of debt.  We saved up and paid cash for a trip to Disney World at Christmas time.  It took a lot longer to save up for this trip, but it was worth it.  We promised the kids that after our house was paid off, we would go to Disney World.  It just took over a year to save up for it.

Can you imagine making 11 pajama pants, and customizing 33 t-shirts (cutting vinyl/tie dying??  I surely can now.  Two of my sisters and my parents, and all of Mike's siblings and parents came with us on this trip.

Take care, and have a great day!  If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. 

~Lena

Update

We are long overdue for an update.  Yikes!  It's definitely been awhile.

The family and kids have grown a little bit, or a lot, depending on your perspective.  We have a 10th grader all the way down to a 17 month old.  Hello Nursery!  We have someone new for you next month!  This post is to actually get me started down the blogging road once again.  Obviously I have a lot of catching up to do.  But if I take a note from the Flylady, I don't need to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.  And that's okay too. Until next time, have a great day!

Family Portraits

We called in our friends and got some pictures!  The kids did great when they had someone to look at. 

 

We also got a cute kid picture after church the next day.   It's hard to believe that they are all mine.

 So a funny story-I (Lena) was out walking the other day with Keith, Lillie and Sally (our mini schnauzer).  I heard some people walking behind me and figured they would catch up and pass us by, since I'm not the fastest pushing the stroller.  A couple passed us and said hello, but there was still a group of ladies behind us.  One of them ran up and looked at our little group and said how amazing I was to be out walking with 2 kids and a dog!  She made a couple comments about how amazing I was.  I thanked her, but I wanted to say, "you should see the five other kids I have, who are at school right now."  But I didn't.  Walking with all of them would have been amazing, but 2 little ones in the stroller and Sally the dog?  That's a piece of cake.

Can you believe it's been 14 years since we got married?!  We still look good together. :) Back in the day we were the cutest couple on the BYU campus.  Or so we were told.  Age seems to agree with us.  I think we look better now than we did then.  

 We were sealed for time and eternity in the Manti LDS temple.

 Image from lds.org

We had a nice lunch date at home to celebrate. 

Pumpkin soup with bread and butter on the side, a peach mango smoothie to drink and peanut butter cookies for dessert.  (The tablecloth is to celebrate my parents return from their mission to south Texas).

~Lena

Family pix

We tried to take family pictures today.  It didn't help that we missed the "golden" hour.  Which lasted for about 5 minutes.  We resorted to the shade.  It was a less than stellar performance by all of our models.

 

Then we tried to get a picture of all of the kids.  It didn't work too well outside. And our light was fading fast.

 The back of the couch wasn't so hot either.

 On the stairs in their pajamas was also difficult. 

I need new pictures for our walls and have coupons that I need to use right away for the house party I'm hosting.  I have a totally awesome party pack from HP.  How do you get 7 kids to cooperate?  All for the length of the shutter speed.  I just need 3 good pictures.  That's it.  How hard can it be?  Just ask Mike.  But he probably would prefer not to talk about it.  Ha ha. 

Sweet Baby

 Lillie is growing so fast!  We had fun taking pictures today after church.  She is such a sweet baby.

 Love those baby blue eyes.

Her smiles and laughs are the best!

Halloween Fun

 Here's our crew ready to go trick or treating!

 Jon made his own costume-Gandalf.  We were very impressed.

 Rebecca is a lady in waiting.

 Ethan is a Munchkin (from the card game, not the Wizard of Oz).  He also made his own costume.

 Kirsten is a famous dancer.

 Alyssa is a fairy Cinderella (with a sword).

 "Soup-Man!" aka Superman with a sword.  But don't be deceived by his sweet good looks.  Apparently if you have a sword (according to Keith) then you are a bad guy.  We tried to tell him that good guys can have swords too. . .but he was not to be trifled with.

 Our little pumpkin Lillie.

 Trick or Treat.

 Lillie was out cold before the first trick or treaters made it to our house.

We even made the front page of the newspaper.  How about that?!

 

For Mike's work we made a frosty pumpkin pie.

Mike was the Invisible Man.  That's why you probably can't see him very well in our family picture above.  He was standing between me and Rebecca.  Here he is dressed up and ready to go to work.

 He decorated his office as an old-time radio studio.  Do you like his old radio?  He made it himself. We even have a sponsor--Lux laundry soap, 5 cents a box.

Mike won first place for the costume contest.  The contest included the costume, decorated office and dessert.  Usually he places 2nd or 3rd.  We were glad that he placed 1st this year.  Way to go Mike!

Safari

Alyssa and Mike went on a fun safari for school. 

 There were 350 animals there.

 Elvis the camel came right up to the safari group.

 Lots of variety.

And proof that Mike was there too!

Ridin' in Style