Transplanted in Texas

Yancey Lane has been helping me with lots of things these past few weeks. Laundry, dishes, cooking, and cleanup. So today, here is a photographic record of the little man's accomplishments while helping me. Oh. And he learned a new word on Sunday. "Cracker"! July 20 - licking the fork after helping me during multiple stages of making brownies This is only a sample of what he's been doing. He's been throwing away trash on command for us for a long time now, as well as putting away his toys before bed and assisting me with cooking and laundry (and putting away clean laundry!) many times over the past month. His department in the laundry is to haul small items to the laundry room - and put whites in the white hamper, since it's the only one he can reach right now. For clean laundry, he puts folded socks in the basket and helps me carry baskets of folded clothes to the appropriate room to put away. And for dishes, his job is to put the clean silver...

Warning: I might offend some people with this post. That is not my intention. I am simply showing y'all things my husband and I have discovered in our journey to being debt-free. In early-mid May, 2017, D went to a Dave Ramsey Entreleadership 1 day course, paid for by his employers. D and I grew up on Dave Ramsey - me more so than him - and were familiar with his work. We had pulled out a loan for the house (a balloon note? with cattle as collateral) and also paid off a much smaller loan for his gunsmithing school (which he never finished, but that's another story) by then, and were floating comfortably. Or so we thought. While the $4k loan had been in the works for being paid off for a couple of years by the time we finished it in August 2016, the $25k+ loan had been pulled out the January before we got married - so we briefly had two loans during our marriage. Unlike the smaller loan, this one had no regular payments - it just needed to have the interest paid every year...

On June 1, I enrolled as an ambassador in the Plexus world. Our first priority: get healthier. So far, so good. Our second priority: earn money. Through this company, many have boosted their incomes or even become entirely self-employed because of it, and since we are wanting to become self-employed, we're going to try this out and see what it takes. We already know the company - my family takes various supplements regularly, and friends trust the products - so it's not like we're going in blind. And if it proves not to be helpful to us health-wise, we will discontinue advertising the products. This post is only to inform you of our first major step toward self-employment, and will not become a regular occurrence - don't worry! I will go back to regular posts after this! In the near future, I will set up a Facebook page to advertise with, and only  rarely discuss it on this blog. Plexus is a company built around helping people get healthier and lose weight, and is c...

My husband and I have been married for two years and two months (and ten days, but who's counting.... 😄). When I think about that, it feels unbelievable. Has it really only been twenty-six months? It feels like we've known each other and been married forever! In the short time we've been married - this whirlwind adventure that never seems to stop for a moment - I have learned many things, and matured and grown as a woman, wife, and now mother. I married when I was just a crazy, starry-eyed eighteen year old. Now, I'm a crazy, madly in love twenty year old, but hey. I'm growing up. Even though growing up never seems to end - you just keep on growing mentally in one way or another. So. I fell in love at seventeen, married at eighteen, was a mother at nineteen, and baby number two will be here while I'm still twenty. And I couldn't be happier. I have always admired my man. He is my rock in this world, and it is an honor to be so trusted and loved! I...

With the Triple Crown season in the U.S. now at an end, I thought I would make a post about the impact A.P. Indy has had on the Crown. A great-great-grandson won the Triple Crown this year, becoming only the 13th horse to win it in 100 years. A.P. Indy, a 1989-foaled son of Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, was out of a winning daughter of the famous Triple Crown winner Secretariat. In turn, he was an early betting favorite for the Kentucky Derby of 1992, reflecting his superb racing record at two and three, but had to scratch due to injury shortly before the race. The injury had him miss the Preakness, but he rebounded to win the final leg, the Belmont Stakes. His half-brother, by Storm Bird (who also sired champion sire Storm Cat), won the 1991 Preakness Stakes. The striking bay stallion was retired after a victory in the 1992 Breeders' Cup Classic, and his first foals were born in 1994. He was retired from breeding in spring 2011 after failing to get any of the mares he bred...

...now what do we do with this extra money? Hehe. For thirteen months, we've been pouring out the thousands of dollars needed to get our loan paid off. And finally, on Wednesday, my father-in-law, who could do this because he had to co-sign the loan, handed them a signed blank check. Signed by my husband, from our own account. And with that, we became debt free. It is an enormous weight off our shoulders, for about 30 cows were riding on that loan. If we hadn't paid it off - or if we hadn't been able to keep up with paying interest off every year - they would've been taken as collateral. Today that worry is gone. So. Now, what? Well, we've got a few things to buy, like air conditioners (the two window units we have can't keep up), and other miscellaneous items we've been holding off on. We need to pay the midwife. And have her completely paid by October 30 (36 week appointment). Not too big a deal, but just something we definitely need ...

Well, Dingus won't be ridden for another few months. He won't take the saddle (to be honest I don't blame him, but he's handled everything else with such ease that I was surprised), he's actually starting to thicken and grow wider, and his height seems to be improving. He reaches his second birthday on July 24, and with all of his bodily changes and this roadblock, I've decided to reduce work sessions to twice a week, with a turnout with the saddle in the round pen on weekends to let him become accustomed to it. We did do some work with him last week, turning him out in the round pen for a couple hours with the saddle hanging on a panel for him to investigate. One day he was really shy and spooky so we also worked him individually, my husband and I did, and once his mind was a bit better had him stand parallel with the saddle and investigate it. It's the noise the large piece of equipment makes that throws him off. Squeaking and clanking and banging is qui...