>
You are here: Home / Archives for marriage
May 21, 2013

8 Amazing Years!

May 21, 2013 By 2 Comments

I cannot believe that it has been eight years since I said “I do!” I am so incredibly lucky to have such an amazing husband, partner, best friend, and advocate!

Eight Wonderful Years of Marriage
When I was in college Donna Douglas (you may know her as Elly Mae Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies) came to speak at our weekly chapel service and she said, “Before you go get kissy-faced with some boy, you need to make a list of qualities that you want in a husband and pray over that list. Add what needs to be added and take away what needs to be taken away. God will bless you with an amazing partner when you follow Him.” I went back to my dorm room and created my list and John fulfills every quality that I was desiring in a husband and more. God is good and He is faithful!

When I walked down the aisle eight years ago, I had absolutely no idea what the future was going to hold but I was excited to be starting the journey with my best friend! It has been a wild ride and I doubt that will change but I look forward to every minute of it!

 

Filed Under: marriage Tagged With: ,
Jan 14, 2013

Creating a Spoonie Savings Plan – Review Your Spending

January 14, 2013 By 5 Comments

Developing a Working Budget by Hand
Let me just start off with a disclosure that I am far from a budget guru! I am a newbie and hoping to create a manageable budget as we consider disability. Hopefully as I research and share my journey,  you may be able to learn a thing or two as well!

As we are preparing to create a Spoonie Savings Plan for our family, the first thing I wanted to do was review our spending and see where our money was currently going. We no longer receive paper statements so I went online and printed off the last three months of transactions and grabbed a handful of highlights and went to work. Some banks may have the option to export the transaction data to a spreadsheet like Excel so that may be an option as well. I’m a paper-and-pen gal so I printed everything off.

I color coded all transactions by type – gas, groceries, eating out, etc – and created a simple spreadsheet so that I could tally the numbers by category and by month  and then I passed out.  What an eye-opening experience! After I regained my balance, of course.  It is amazing how quickly small purchases can add up. A soda and snack here. A couple of simple but unnecessary “bargains” there. At the time, it doesn’t seem like a big deal but it can really add up!

A 20 oz Coke at most gas stations is now $1.60 (with tax) and if you purchase one every day (I have a soda habit instead of a coffee habit), it equals $11.20 a week or $44.80 a month or $537.70 A YEAR! Holy smokes! 7 day passes at Disney for the 3 of us will be $846 so to think that giving up a daily Coke will cover over half of the ticket cost is CRAZY!

Then there are extra subscriptions we can consider cutting like Netflix ($7.99) and Spotify ($9.99). Cutting each of those would save an additional $215.76 a year – which would bring the savings total to $753.36 just by cutting out those three! I am floored that taking the time to review our spending could yield such results!

This was a general pass over our spending and the next step will be to dig in and go back through these reports and formulate workable numbers for our savings plan and see where else we can cut spending and still implement ways like couponing! I have totally been stalking the blog Couponing to Disney) to save for our Disney vacation! 326 days to go!

 

photo credit: kenteegardin via photopin cc

Filed Under: chronic illness, family, health, marriage Tagged With: , , , ,
Nov 4, 2012

Disclosure: What Is Off-Limits

November 4, 2012 By 11 Comments

NHPBM with WeGo Health

 

I’ve been blogging for over five years now and one of my goals with this blog has been to maintain a certain level of transparency about my life with chronic illness, infertility, and adoption – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I try to keep the atmosphere positive and encouraging but I also want to be real about tough topics as well.

However, there are some things that I am dedicated to being off-limits when it comes to blogging:

1- My Marriage. Obviously I am very open to discussing how chronic illness and infertility impact marriage and my husband has even guest posted and I think it is an extremely important topic to talk about as the impact of illness and infertility on marriage is huge and the divorce rate is high and we need to be aware of that. However, this will not be a place where I come to air my dirty laundry or bad-mouth my husband. The details of our marriage are private and out of respect for my husband I plan to keep it that way. For example, I will continue to write about how illness affects marriage and relationships, with the support of my husband, but I will not write about the specifics within our marriage (such as detailing our conflicts, etc). The same rule goes for other family relationships.

2- Abby’s BirthMom. I could talk to you about adoption all day long and the crazy, hard, beautiful journey that it is. I will gladly talk about the benefits about open adoption and what it means for us as we have an open adoption with Abby’s birthmom but I will not share details about her specifically, such as why she chose to place or her history, as it is not my story to share. There are certain details about the adoption that we have not even shared with our families as they are her story and a part of Abby’s story that we do not feel like we have the right to share.

These are the two big ones but I think there is always that search for balance when it  comes to blogging, especially when you focus on personal topics such as health and infertility, so I do believe you really need to be aware of boundaries and find what is comfortable for you and your family.

If you are a blogger, what do you consider off-limits?

Filed Under: adoption, blogging, chronic illness, health, marriage Tagged With: , , ,

© 2010-2013 A New Kind of Normal All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright