Praise God!

Amazing how faithful God is to us! After 14 months of battles with insurance, Cherokee Nation, and OU Medical, John's $1200 genetic testing bill was written off! I didn't even have to ask for it to be done! I called to check the status and the lady told me he had a $0 balance!!!! Praise God!

ALL OF OUR MEDICAL BILLS ARE PAID FOR!!!!

A few months ago I posted this...

"Just about an hour ago, John dropped another bomb on me. He told me was was thinking we should sell his car and go to a single car. It would allow us to pay off a tremendous amount of our debt, and free up monthly funds to spend our money as God would have us spend our money. Again, I nearly fell on the floor when I read his email. I said there is probably no way we can make that work logistically. He said why.......? Umm... Uh.... well, I really didn't have an answer for him. So, tonight we are going to really sit down and talk about having a single car would look like for us and see if we can't make it work!"

Since then a lot has changed! We have sold John's car and now have our one car! It has been awesome! I just wanted to share a little about our financial journey since I am so open about another type of journey we have been going through.

Growing up my mom was a spender. To the max! Us girls were of the school of thought that after we went shopping we would only bring in half of the bags until dad left and then we would bring the the others! To balance out my mom, my dad was a super saver! He would hoard money like no one's business! However, when the car broke down or we had an emergency dad always had the cash stored away to cover us. (literally stored away... like in the ceiling, etc... :) )

When we were going through marriage counseling we talked about how we would spend money together. The bad part if that John and I are very much alike in our spending habits. We are emotional spenders. Happy = new clothes and dinner out. Sad = new clothes and dinner out! ha! It's funny how the two extremes are so much alike!

Any way. Long story, short after our first two years of marriage (Summer of 2009) we had accumulated a large amount of debt. How much?

• $11,000 car loan
• $12,000 John Student loan
• $4,000 Amy Student loan (even though I had a full ride... that's another story!)
  
• $8,000 credit card debt (Mainly from taxes owed to IRS, ski trip, and a few little here and there items. This number actually went up due to medical bills.)
• Plus we had just bought a new house
• I had also calculated that we had only given 2% of our income to the church that year
  

I sat down one day and was figuring up our debt and was floored when the total was over $35,000 not counting our house! Eek! Then we started this whole baby life and the bills just added up between my tests, surgeries, and doctor visits. John and I decided we certainly needed to change our lives!

Since then (about 20 months) I am happy to report that we have a paid for car and no credit card debt! Also in the past 18 months we have given 10-15% of our income faithfully to the church! Now we are hacking away at the student loans.

To accomplish these things we have only made a few lifestyle changes. We canceled our satellite ($100 per month), sold John's car to pay off the remaining balance of my car ($300 per month loan, and $50 per month saved on insurance), and starting tracking our spending using the Home Budget App. This app allows both John and I to enter our spending and it syncs between our two phones. All of these have allowed us more financial freedom to pay for more important things. For example all of our doctor's fees have been paid for in advance for this pregnancy and we are now saving towards the hospital bill so we can pay cash when we have the baby. Also we are saving towards paying cash for a new "family" car after the first of the year.

Being faithful with our money has eliminated a tremendous amount of stress in my life. I know that I am spending how God wants me to spend! I am no Dave Ramsey, but I think we are off to a pretty good start!

21 Weeks

(This is a horrible picture I know! It was taken late at night in the dark with John's I-Phone!)

I'm 21 weeks!

Pregnancy Highlights:

How Far Along: 21 Weeks

Size of baby: He is around 1.3 lbs

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Gained 11 lbs

Gender: It's a boy!

Movement: He is very active. However, he refuses to let daddy feel. Every time John tries to feel him move he is perfectly still. Then the moment he go away he kicks up a storm!

What I miss: After a crazy few days at my office, strawberry daiquiris! :)

Cravings: Braums! In fact I could go for a chocolate shake and fries about right now!

Best Moment this week: Getting a good report at our ultrasound and doctor's visit!

BOY OH BOY!

Here we go! It's a boy! Everything looks great! Thanks for the prayers!

Big Belly Post - #1 Here we go!

After losing our three babies, we started with our fertility doctor. We just wanted to cover all of our bases and make sure we weren't missing something. She looked at all our previous tests and suggested a few more. When everything checked out clear, she gave us the go-ahead on trying again. This proved to do more harm than good. For a few months I had everything down to perfect timing. Schedules and all! No more "spontaneity"! When we didn't get pregnant the first 2 months I was so mad. I had gotten pregnant twice without really even trying, and the third on the very first try! I was getting so antsy! So then we threw the schedules out the window!

I started feeling really crappy around Thanksgiving. So bad, that I almost made John take me to the ER on Thanksgiving in OKC because I thought I was having a heart attack! I was a mess. Before I went to my regular physician, I wanted to just check to see if I was pregnant even though it was 5 days before my missed period. There were two lines instantly! I went to my family physician who thought that I was having a gallbladder attack. I was so upset. I was pregnant and they might have to take out my gallbladder! He told me to relax and gave me some medicine and told me we would take everything in strides. Looking back now, it was just hormones going hay-wire and early sickness/heartburn.

A few days later I went into my fertility doctor and she was shocked at how high my HCG hormone levels were! Whoo-Hoo! But then she said that my progesterone levels were a little low and prescribed me a supplement. We were also blessed to see this little heartbeat at 5 weeks!

Then we went back two weeks later and got to see this!

Then or fertility doctor gave us the boot. She said we were ready to move on to an regular OB. I was so excited, but so nervous at the same time!

Then two weeks later we went to our first regular OB appointment and much to our surprise we had another ultrasound and got to see our little bean jump and flopping around! It was incredible!

Here we are at 9 weeks.

We are 19 weeks today, so more belly pictures to come!

In case you missed it...

We are pregnant! Yay! 17 weeks today! I have a ton of stuff to post. So I will be updating shortly!

Great Deal for Moms!

I was reading some of the blogs I like to read and you may want to check out

www.christianpf.com

Today they were talking about saving money on diapers, wipes, etc.

Just FYI for my bloggy mom friends!