I'm Still Here!

39 weeks and 1 day pregnant. It's ok.

So there's a hurricane that might be headed our way this weekend. That could make life interesting! We'll see what the doctor has to say tomorrow.

I'm in this wierd kind of nesting phase. I can't really "nest" like normal people because I'm not in my house, so I just clean and organize what I can. I have been spending a lot of time lately reading and doing research about ways to maximize your money (I know, shocker, right?). If you've been reading for very long, you know that I get a wierd kind of high from "cheating" the system and saving money. It's very, very important to me--but it's not important to me because I want to have x kind of car or a house by x date. It's important to me because I want to be able to provide for our child and be a SAHM every day that I can squeeze out of our bank account. I want to not rely on other people and to feel like a competent parent that can provide for her child.

So anyway, I've been re-reading Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover and reading the testimonials on his website. It gives me SO MUCH encouragement to hear stories of other people who are making life work with one car, or are living with family, to provide themselves with a brighter financial future. I have been using a fabulous website (Mint.com--I recommend it highly) to track our budget, but I hadn't redone our budget since we moved (which obviously changes your expenses). So, I've also been "nesting" by revamping our budget and making a more hardcore plan to pay off the debt we have from Mr. ABC123's student loan and the car repair we had to have back in October. It might be the laziest form of nesting ever, but it makes me feel proactive and accomplished. I've also been working on getting us signed up for programs like Upromise to help with the student loan and reading couponing books to get more tips. We hadn't been doing much grocery shopping because the arrangement of buying a seperate stash of groceries just doesn't work, and my couponing before we moved stocked us with all the toiletries we needed for awhile. Now that the baby is coming any minute, we'll be visiting the store again more frequently for diapers and wipes, so I'm starting to coupon again--not only for those, but toiletries are easy to stockpile and we KNOW they're going to get used. My current read for that is Pick Another Checkout Lane, Honey, written by the Krazy Coupon Ladies. It was loaned to me by a new friend. =)

Finally, I've been promoting my Scentsy business like...well, nobody's business--and it's working. This is the time of year business starts to pick up anyway, but I've been booking parties more consistently and I even have one more person interested in joining my team! That means that just days after getting out of the hospital, I will be getting a nice bit of commission when I was expecting a very slow month.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. I've been hard at work at really nailing down a plan so that I can be with this little baby as long as possible....every cent we save on groceries can go toward debt, and then saving for a new car. I am not, not, NOT willing to give up my dream of staying at home for as long as possible without fighting tooth and nail. Luckily the hubs supports that....so I just have to make the plan and do the research now, and hopefully while I'm in a just-delivered-a-human haze, he'll be able to carry it out.

That's my non-nesting nesting phase, if you will. I've been kicking butt and taking names because, well...

time is running out.