We're getting close to the end of our home study. Of course, Abe still has to finish his autobiographical questions. We have to do our online training, have the fire department come to our house, get our fingerprints and birth certificates, and then its on to the home visits! Once that's done we'll owe our big giant payments to both agencies and then more paperwork! Once our dossier is finally done, it'll be off to Ethiopia and we'll finally be waiting! I hope that God will provide all we need (especially time!) to get all this done by the new year.
We are working hard recently on budget control! We're getting really thrifty and trying to find creative ways to save money and live more simply. Here's the commitments were making:
1. Cutting back to not really eating out, meal planning and good ol' home cookin'! It's been delicious!
2. We've made a commitment to not buy anything new so long as we can help it. This excludes things like shoes, cause I just have a deep seated fear of foot fungi.
3. We're going to make our own cleaning products: laundry detergent, dish soap, and surface cleaners.
4. We're going to quit using most paper products, except toilet paper of course. We're going to cut up old sheets and make cloth napkins and use old t-shirts to increase our supply of re-usable bags. No more paper towels or plastic bags. We already cloth diaper.
That's our start. We're also going to use the "snowball" technique to pay off our debts. We don't have any consumer debt, only student loans, a car loan and our mortgage. But still, way too much - our student loans make me cringe. So, if all goes as planned (which you know, is rare, but still) we'll be completely debt free, no mortgage or anything in 13 years. I'd say that's pretty good when you consider that our mortgage is a 30 year loan and our main consolidated student loan is 30 years as well. So, by the time I'm 40 - I'll be debt free. Now, if you're already debt free that may mean nothing to you. But to me, it sounds like sweet victory. :-)
