We still exist, too :)

I post on here pretty often about Joey, but now that he's a year old and I feel like I'm a little more caught up on our life, I'm going to try and post more than just my monthly updates on Joey.

So, here's a little bit about Neal and I right now.

At our church, I teach and help with the 16 and 17 year old girls, and I am loving it.  I'm super excited to go to girl's camp with them this year.  I went to every year of girl's camp that I could when I was a young woman, and I loved it.  Our theme for the camp this year is "Anchored."  I think it's going to be an incredible year, that's for sure.

Neal and I are working super hard at getting (and staying) completely out of debt.  A few months after we bought our house, we had over $4000 in car repairs come up that we just flat out didn't have.  We were pretty stressed out about it.  For our wedding, someone gave us a copy of Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover."  Our friend's had used it to get out of debt, but we had kind of ignored it because we hadn't been in debt our entire marriage.  When we had to put the car repairs on credit cards though, I picked up that book and started reading.  Fast forward a few months, and we are now taking Dave Ramsey's class "Financial Peace University" (thanks to our friends that I mentioned earlier).  We are learning SO much.  I think one of the coolest things is that it lines up with the counsel our prophets and apostles have given about debt and finances.  We are really excited about this, and look forward to when we are done with paying off our debts.

After over a year, Joey finally slept a long time last night.  He went from 7:30 pm to 4:30 am.  Hallelujah.

Even with the sleep issues we've been having (which I've finally accepted are mostly my doing), I'm seriously baby hungry again.  We have a plan, and I keep telling myself that, but it doesn't stop my ovaries from jumping every time I see or hold someone's new baby.  It's interesting this time around.  When we first talked about trying to get pregnant with Joey, he really struggled with the idea - he was pretty slow to agree it was time.  This time around, he seems pretty excited about it.  I think he truly enjoys being a dad, and after seeing all of the joy Joey brings to our family, I think he's looking forward to adding to that joy.

Neal's job is going very well.  He has received many compliments from tenants and from supervisors about the work he is doing.  I'm grateful for his assistant technical director, who has made his job much easier to do because he can focus on his job instead of having to worry about his ATD.

We love our house.  We are currently working on starting a garden in our back yard.  We're moving a section of rock in our back yard every year - we have three sections total.  We moved one this year, and we're planning on moving one more each year until we are done.  After that, we are going to replace the other half of the rock along the back fence with a play area for Joey and any future kids.

Life is going really well for us right now, and I'm incredible grateful to Heavenly Father for that.  While we do work very hard, Heavenly Father has sent an amazing amount of blessings our way!

In other non-Joey news

Most of you have probably been keeping up on Facebook, but I want to post some pretty important things that have happened to us over the last four months or so.

Neal got yet another promotion at the Union Colony Civic Center.  He's now the "Technical Services Coordinator" aka the Technical Director for you theater folks.  It was a HUGE leap of faith for him to apply for and accept the job.  It comes with a lot of responsibility, and he had a LOT to learn in a very short amount of time.  Now that we are a couple months into it, he's really enjoying the job, and he's learning a TON of stuff that he didn't understand before about budgeting, managing, and much, much more.  I can't express in words how proud I am of him for taking the leap.  I am so grateful everyday that he takes providing for his family seriously, and that he strives to do his absolute best at his job!  I know it will give him so much more understanding in his career field.

We bought a house, and moved to a little farm town!  It's a pretty blue house, about 2100 square feet (700 of which is unfinished).  It sits on about a quarter acre so we've got a good sized back yard.  Our neighbors are super sweet and helpful.

We got to meet the local volunteer fire department, and figure out where the closest urgent care was to our new house.  I was getting a sandwich made so I could sit down and eat while I fed Joey and then put him to sleep.  While making said sandwich, I was cutting some delicious colby jack with a cheese slicer (that I never ever use, so don't ask me why I used it at that moment) and slipped and just about took the tip of my thumb off.  It was pretty gnarly.  The firefighters seriously freaked Joey out, so he screamed pretty much the whole time.  The only time he calmed down is when a specific firefighter of the SIX firefighters that showed up at my house picked him up and started playing with him.  I'm guessing that firefighter was a recent new dad because he seemed to know exactly how to calm Joey down.  I'm so grateful Neal works close to home so that he was able to come home and take me to Urgent Care (where I got three stitches).  I am grateful that my in-laws were able to come over afterwards and help me get ready for our housewarming party that was that weekend.  I am grateful that my cousin was able to take my stitches out so we didn't have to spend the money on even more medical bills.

 I LOVE staying at home with Joey.  He brings so much joy and happiness to my life and I am so glad we made the decision to take that road for our family.

Well....that's about it!  :)