Problems already!!!??

I should have known! Of course as soon as I say we are going to give up spending money I mean the very hour after I ask Kjell if this is ok and we decided to go for it, I remember I have a party this weekend. I won another house party and I get to spend my Saturday morning with a lot of little kiddos and their parents learning the "potty dance" guess it is supposed to help with potty training. The packets the parents get are pretty sweet. Each kid get a little blow up guitar and a DVD to learn the dance. Plus coupons for a lot of Huggies pull up products. Anyways I forgot I hadn't gotten food, or napkins/plates for this yet. I so would have gone out and bought them before like the DAY before but I didn't. Then I remembered that some friends had given me their formula coupon checks to sell on ebay and I had earmarked 12 dollars in my paypal account to use for one of my parties. I had planned on minimal snacks (we are talking 18mo -2 1/2 year olds I don't want clean up to take five hours) so I think I can handle it. Then we wanted to charge our camera and after searching for literally five hours we still can not find it, and it's like a flat square only in sony camera's batteries. So we decided we would look for one on amazon (yes from surveys I have over 50 dollars in "gift cards" on my amazon account.) Who knew we could get a cheap one for under five dollars.

I am still trying to figure out how these two events have shown much of a growth or more communication with God (although I was praying hard we would find that dumb battery charger) but I know we still have a lot of days left. I have had fun cleaning out the freezer so far with meals. That too though I am wondering how long it will all last. We have enough but we could be pretty bare when we are done. That is fine some of our food probably needs to be eaten as it has been in our house for a LONG time.

Don't forget to comment on my facebook post with the blog or on here with what you gave up for lent- if nothing just put "nothing" as your comment to enter! I will draw three winners tomorrow afternoon!

Lent

Ok first off I am not Catholic- second I have never given anything up for lent, but I do really value the true meaning (from what I have gathered) of what lent means. Giving something up so that there is more time to spend with God. I think it's not supposed to be so much about losing something and thinking about it all the time but giving up something that is pretty important and see how God works through you not doing it for forty days. With that said Kjell and I are giving up something for lent. I had the idea today and I have been praying about it and since I was woken up by fear and worry at 5:15 I have had a lot of time to pray and think about this. We just changed the loan on our house to get it paid off in six years rather than seven (which means we have to pay more per month but we will be knocking a year off of the loan) we need a new van and since Kjell and I are both going to Sweden we need over 4,000 dollars and he sent his support letter out before we knew I was going! So yeah so yeah I'm worrying about the 70K I do not have.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like to spend money. I'm not the fun one at the party you are hosting who spends a whopping amount of money. I dread the thought of girl scouts coming to my house. I only shop when there are sales and I still wear most of the clothes my mom bought me in highschool. Most (basically all) of my kids' clothes are handmedowns, or gifts from either my mom who is the queen of store sales or Kjell's mom who is the queen of the garage sales.

With that said I am planning on a 40 spending freeze. We have done spending freezes in our family before. We usually do it January because we just came through Christmas and we don't have any family birthdays until mine in April. But our freeze goes something like this. "oh we can get General Mills cereal for 1.50 a box that is SUCH a good deal." 20 bucks later we just ended our spending freeze but stocked up on some items we always use in our house. Nope this time it is all hard core. The credit cards will cover GAS only. Which there will be need since Kjell drives over 40 miles every day. I will probably end up throwing most of the sale ads away so I am not even tempted. I will give us 25 bucks cash each week because there will be some groceries we will need that won't last that long (yogurt) Some people may wonder how we can do this. I do want to say that we do qualify for WIC so we will be having those groceries to get us through the month (milk, eggs, cheese, cereal beans) without this we would probably need more for groceries. However that being said minus the milk we could probably make it without because of all my stockpiles from good deals. Plus we have about 30 gift cards that would like to be used so if we need to we can use them.

So that is it. We will still be paying all of our normal bills plus tithing it's not like there will be no money leaving our account. We will still be doing the usual things, but there will be NO extra spending. How do I tie this money break in with getting closer to God. 1) I will have to trust Him more and I won't be as focused on stuff. 2) I want to be a good steward of HIS money- and I hate having debt. If we know someone in need I want to be able to help them however I can but we can't since we have a loan. I know most people would disagree with me but I HATE having a house loan even if it's a "good loan" anytime I owe someone else money I can not see that as a good thing even though my mortgage company is the best.

So in honor of this I am going to do a giveaway. I have three coupons for a free bottle of Purex all you have to do is leave a comment on my wall saying what you are giving up for lent. If the answer is nothing reply with the word "nothing" Sound good? hope you guys remember what the meaning of this season is. Can you imagine being back in Jesus's time and getting to spend these next 40 days with him. WOW. Easter is the most important holiday we have because if Jesus never rose from the dead- it was just a good story.