The secret to life.

I often find myself thinking that Eric and I are two of the most unlucky people in the world. Then I realize, that individually- before we met, we truly might have been.

Together, we are probably some of the luckiest people out there!

The truth is, I'm learning that it is all in your attitude. Sure, some crappy things happened to us growing up but when I think about it, who doesn't have crappy things happen to them? A lot of those things I either brought upon myself or I chose to be a negative nancy about it and made it out to be worse than it really was.

When Eric & I first met, we did a lot of stupid things like spend our entire paycheck on booze and fast food before the weekend was even over, or park ilegally because we were too lazy to take the time to find a real spot. Granted, those times were some seriously fun and carefree times...we also had some serious consequences. You know, like not being able to pay rent or bills or even have bus money for that matter, getting over $3000 worth of parking tickets or getting woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a tow truck...the list goes on. We always felt like these things were happening TO us, not as if we had done them to ourselves.

I remember one morning we were trying to figure out how to get to work (all money had been blown and there was no gas in the car and no money for a bus) when finally we just realized, we're idiots.

Well, the good news is! we finally realized that we were idiots.

And we started making some changes. Since then, we have made tremendous progress. We've had some set backs but we've managed to get through it.

We have been blessed with such a great love that I know we can conquer anything that comes our way as long as we are together.

One of our biggest conquests has been money matters. We are truly retarded when it comes to handling our finances. Eric wants to be able to go out to lunch with the guys at work, and I want, well everything...and Tristan needs, well everything and the bills...well, those are just in the way. Even though Eric's hours are probably the worst work hours on the planet, we're lucky that he has a good job and has the opportunity to work so much overtime, or else we would have been flat broke a long time ago.

Anyways. The point of all of this is to share with all of you, that we have finally learned the secret to life. At least, thats how it feels anyway.

We went to our Bishop for help with finances and he agreed to teach us what he knows.  The first thing he did was hand us Dave Ramsey's, TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER. It is our very own copy to keep :) ( I know my sister is going to be so excited when she reads this) We have started reading together and I swear to you, I am obsessed. I made an account with Mint.com and we've been living on what some people call, a "Budget" for about a month now and I just can't stop obsessing. I suffer from a bit of OCD. Which in this case, might just be the best case of OCD that ever happened to us.

I have this image in my head. It looks something like this:

It is a warm sunny day (so maybe...the setting is not Washington? Cross your fingers that it's not) and Eric is dressed nicely and so are our children. They have no sticky fingers or fingers up their noses, and even I managed to apply a little bit of mascara for the day. We are holding hands and laughing as we pick out the countertops and paint, and even carpet to our new home. And Eric even agrees that I should get an entire room for my clothes.

This is the image I have in my head when I am tempted to roll through the Starbucks drive thru for the 2nd time that day...or when I see an awesome deal at Target. Must stay focused.

Wish us luck! :)