The Friday Five

1. A book a day...

     Owen's Christmas book advent activity has been going really well. I love giving him a book each day to unwrap and reading to him. And even though he's been unwrapping something every day, he hasn't been tempted to unwrap every present under our tree. Thank goodness. He definitely prefers some books over others, but I figure his favorites will change each year as we do this activity. His favorite so far is "Room for a Little One" because it has lots of animals in it. He seems to love having all the new books to look at though and I frequently find him in his room looking through his new books that I place in a basket in his room once they've been unwrapped.  

2. Oh Christmas tree

We decorated our Christmas tree the other week and as you can see in this photo, we also painted our living room. (Because the best time to undergo a big job like that is during Christmas...) The color is Benjamin Moore's Moonshine, a really light gray. You can also see some of our presents. I have about three more to wrap and then I'll be completely done with Christmas presents for this year.  

3. Run your family like a business

I read an article in my January issue of Parents magazine and I found it really interesting. It was basically about how to run your household like a business to make it more organized and less chaotic. HERE is a link to the article that I read. Obviously, I don't really believe every aspect of our family should be run like a business, but the idea of having a weekly "business" meeting sounded like a great idea to me. So Tim and I are going to have a weekly standing meeting where we discuss what's going on in the coming week, talk financials, and whatever else we need to get on the same page about. For example, today we will be talking about what we need to get accomplished before we go out of town for Christmas, what are plans are for the week we are in our hometown for Christmas and who we plan to get together with while we're there, and begin talking about our financial situation and starting a new plan for working together to save more and pay off our debts (see below). 

4. What I'm reading now...

I have started rereading The Hobbit this week because I am hoping that Tim and I will be able to have a movie date while we are visiting our family for Christmas and have someone to look after Owen. I can't remember the last time that I read this book, but I am fairly certain that it was sometime back when I was in school before college. So at least 10 years ago or more. Tim and I both really liked the Lord of the Rings movie series and The Hobbit looks great too from what we've seen of the previews. Do you plan on seeing it. 

5. Total money makeover

After having a lot of unexpected expenses in the last couple months (and around Christmas, of course), Tim and I are wanting to get a better handle on our finances and replenish our savings account after paying Owen's hospital bill and our property taxes and various other bills we've had lately. We have previously completed a Crown Financial course with our church when we were first married, but I felt like the information was very overwhelming and hard to implement all at once. So I bought this book earlier this year and we are finally getting around to checking it out. A lot of people have had success with Dave Ramsey's system and I really like how he divides all the concepts he teaches into Baby Steps. I think being able to concentrate on one thing at a time and accomplish little goals one at a time will really help us to get our finances under control and keep good habits for the rest of our lives. Have you done Dave Ramsey's program before? What do you think?