Since our last post . . .

I would hope that the people who follow this blog are people that we are in regular communication with and therefore know what has gone on since our last post, but for posterity's sake I will update the blog.

Daniel made it home from the hospital in time for Joshua's first birthday. We have yet to do a party for our children's first birthday so we weren't going to start with our third child. We just stayed home, and Joshua got to eat his first cupcake. He made a fabulous mess and really enjoyed it. His Grandmama Hipps (Grandaddy was sick so he couldn't come) came up the next day bearing gifts. Just one example of how sweet and generous their grandparents are is the "un"birthday gifts that they bring for the other grandchildren. One of Joshua's gifts was Fifteen Animals by Sandra Boynton. He loves this book. We have read it hundreds of times to date. We already had a CD with this book in song form so we will read it and then sing it, much to Joshua's delight. Two weeks after Joshua's first birthday we recorded his first steps on our flip camera. He is now walking all of the time. It is so neat to watch the transition of a child taking his first steps, to walking some of the time but crawling most of the time, to walking more than crawling, to walking all the time.

A few days after we captured Joshua's first steps, Daniel had an appointment with an allergist. We found out that he is asthmatic, allergic to peanuts (which we already knew), cats (we suspected) and dust mites. We also found out that he is not allergic to strawberries as I had once thought, so he has since tried one strawberry. He liked it alright. So now Daniel takes Advair for his asthma in addition to his daily Zyrtek for allergies. He was fine until Spring sprung (although he didn't test positive for seasonal allergies) so he has had to use his inhaler a couple of times since he had a slight wheeze and some coughing. I have done a good bit of dusting and vacuuming to get the dust mite population under control. We also just had our air conditioner serviced since it wasn't working great and the allergist had said that dust mites like humid conditions so climate control is important.

Shortly after this I pulled Maggie's front two teeth. It was a bit traumatic since the second tooth didn't come out with the first yank, but we successfully got it out and she hopefully won't need another extraction anytime soon. Whereas Daniel lost a tooth just the other night after we put them to bed. He had apparently been wiggling it with his tongue and it fell out. Thankfully he didn't swallow it.

On February 18, 2010, Davis and I paid off our last credit card. We sent a payment for $2893.63 to Chase to pay them off. The Chase card had been a Washington Mutual card that we had transferred the balance of our MBNA card to. That MBNA card was my very first credit card that I got as a freshman in college with a $1000 limit. Before we started to pay off our debt it had a limit of $18,000 and we had $16,000 charged on it. I can't tell you how thankful we are for Dave Ramsey and his book The Total Money Makeover. We haven't been as "gazelle intense" as we could have, but once we decided that we were done with debt we have moved in the right direction ever since. It's been quite the journey. On March 15th, we paid off Joshua's hospital bill (from his birth), and we will be paying off Daniel's hospital bill next month! Then we can move on to baby step #3, which is to fully fund an emergency fund of 3-6 months living expenses (we will do 6 months since I don't work outside the home).

That about brings us up to date. In less than two weeks, Daniel will turn 8 years old. It is already hard to remember when he was Joshua's age. We recently watched some old home videos, and it was so sweet to hear Daniel's little toddler voice. I am really proud of the young man that we are starting to see take shape in our eldest son. Next month, Maggie has her first dance recital, and after that we plan to have some summer vacations. Hopefully, we'll remember to post something before then.