Trying to be a little more regular in my blogging and thinking of a subject, I realized this morning that I forgot to announce on here that WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Many of you who know us well know we have been following Dave Ramsey's financial plan for several years now and it has made a world of difference in our finances. In March we finally paid off the last of our debt which was our student loans! Woo hoo!! It is such a great feeling to not be slave to anyone. We really believe the bible passage that talks about the borrower being slave to the lender. I felt like that many times with all the debt we incurred. Now we just have to work on paying off the house :). Actually right now we are in the process of saving an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses. (We're shooting for three right now).
Anyway, thursday night on tv we came across Dave Ramsey doing a 'Town Hall for Hope'. He discussed everything relating to our troubled economy as it is. He really put things into a good perspective and made us once again feel as though we are headed in the right direction with our finances. I really encourage you to go online and watch it. He had viewers all over the country calling in, texting, emailing, facebooking, twittering in with questions about the economy and where he sees it going from here and what we as Americans can do to protect ourselves, and look ahead to brighter times. The website is here and you can go there and click on 'watch event'. It is really encouraging with all the gloom and doom that the media puts out there to realize that we are collectively and individually going to be ok and pull through this and be better and stronger than we were before. Let me know what you think!
I know these pictures are oh so exciting, I just had to document our first official lawn cutting...ever. We've never had a lawn before so it was kind of exciting. So exciting today that after purchasing our weedwacker, Ian decided to cut the neighbor's lawn as well. So fun, I know. I decided I had to be in on the spring action as well and planted my first couple plants, hoping we are out of the woods for frost. I just started with some must have herbs: lavendar, dill, parsley, tomatoes, and red peppers. I already have my mint and basil (started from cuttings and seeds) indoors and will bring those out when they're a little bigger. I actually feel like I finally have somewhat of a green thumb! We still have plans to plant a tree and/or new bushes out front. We came home one day last week to find all our dead bushes gone, new mulch and the pansies planted all over our lawn! It took us awhile to figure out who the mystery gardeners were, but we were very thankful as it saved a lot of time and energy. Now we just have to disguise the ugly satellite dish with a tree, and I hope do have a mini lilac bush next to the front door and some mini crepe myrtle bushes and we should be good to go! Our other landscaping project that will happen soon is in our back'yard'. I say that because we have no grass, its a planter about 4 by 6. But we are going to put up a trellis to semi-enclose our patio and grow some clematis. I am so excited!! Hope you all are enjoying a wonderful spring as well!
Here are the overdue pictures from my parents visit last weekend. We had a blast and traveled all over the DC,MD, VA area. Our trip started on Weds, went straight to the Cherry Blossom festival and we walked the whole tidal basin admiring the cherries. Even though it was a cloudy day, there were lots of people there! We walked over to the WW2 memorial since my dad had never seen it as well. We went down to Alexandria for lunch and had our first dose of seafood, we all had oyster rolls and they were very yummy! We walked around the Torpedo Factory art center and just enjoyed being outside. We made a quick stop at my work so my parents could meet all my coworkers and see what I do every day. We then hopped on 270 just in time for rush hour but we got to breeze by since we were in the HOV lane (high occupancy vehicle) I took them to my favorite seafood place to pick up some fresh scallops for dinner and we went home and made some incredible crabcakes with a yummy chili mayo and bacon wrapped scallops (not to brag, but I think it was our best meal of the trip!) Thursday we went to Cunningham Falls State Park and hiked around a bit. The weather was perfect. We went into Frederick and went to the Civil war Medicine Museum which was quite interesting (to me at least) I was intrigued to find out the drugs they used back then to treat people. Oftentimes the treatments killed the people vs. actually helping them! We went to Ian and my favorite bakery for lunch, Proof. We all had yummy lunches and then went back home and went hiking around Lake Linganore. We discovered that there are a lot of wild chives growing near the lake (that I might just have to borrow and bring back for my collection of herbs). We came back and made a yummy dinner of Goat cheese and sundried tomato stuffed chicken breasts with spicy broccoli. Of course not able to neglect dessert, Ian and I introduced them to my new favorite place in the world, Jimmie Cone. Its no Kopps, but it is pretty darn good soft serve.
Friday we made our way down to Colonial Williamsburg and checked into our hotel and started wandering around the historic buildings. We toured the Governor's mansion and a couple other little houses. We went to Barrett's for seafood and had some good raw oysters which we got Ian to try and like!! And I think everyone had crabcakes in one way or another (but we all agreed that mine were better :) )
Saturday we spent pretty much all day touring Williamsburg which was fun. Everyone is dressed up in the traditional clothing and actually doing the jobs that they did back then. The shoemaker actually was making shoes for all the people that work there. The blacksmith was making stuff for a building they were renovating. For dinner we went out for hibachi and had some yummy sushi and hibachi. Ian was excited because he got to catch the shrimp in his mouth. Our chef was really funny and kept making jokes like, soy sauce, Japanese ketchup! :)
Sunday we made our way to Chincoteague and on the way stopped at Virginia Beach. It was really pretty. We walked up and down the beach for awhile to stretch our legs and then continued on our way up to the Eastern Shore of VA/MD. We went to Assateague Island Nat'l Park in an attempt to see the wild ponies which we discovered are not so wild. They get vaccines and the cowboys kind of chase them into certian areas so people will see them. So as you can see from the picture we got pretty close to them and they were pretty tame. We weren't about to go touching them though. We walked around a couple hiking trails and just enjoyed being on the ocean. We went back to our hotel on Chincoteague Island and found a good seafood restaurant (of course). We again had some raw oysters from Chincoteague which tasted different and were really good. We tried to introduce my mom to oysters rockefeller but she chickened out. I think my dad's meal was completely oysters. We found Mister Whippy's soft serve on the way and decided we couldn't not go, just because the name was so awesome. It was pretty good, but second of course to Jimmie Cone.
Monday we started driving back towards DC to take my parents to the airport. On the way we stopped in Annapolis and went to Buddy's for our last chance at seafood before they left. We found a yummy seafood buffet set up for us and couldn't resist! We made it just in time to drop them off for their flight and head back home. I think I can speak for all of us and say we had a great time and saw a ton of neat things! Can't wait till you come back again! I think Shenandoah is the next trip! :) Thanks for coming again! :)
