Easy does it

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Today has been a much more laid back day than the ones we’ve been having lately. The only thing noteworthy we’ve done is signed a new lease for our apartment. We’re locked in for another year. Even though I didn’t want to stay in Phoenix, I feel this is God’s plan for us right now. And with that, I have peace.

Next on our agenda (probably tomorrow) – close out our old checking account and transfer the money into the new checking account. Find hubby some new work shoes as he’ll be meeting new clients on Monday and his current dress shoes are ratty looking. Make sure Cingular actually closed our account. I’m still getting calls on my old phone…

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Apparently I accidentally disabled commenting. I’m finding pieces of Disqus in my HTML for Blogger, which is messing with the ability to comment on my posts. Maybe now everything is worked out with commenting.

We’ve been living month to month in this apartment complex since our lease expired in March. Now that hubby has a local job lined up, we decided that it was time to sign a new lease. We talked to the leasing consultant this morning and she offered us a lease renewal with monthly rent of $699. Right now we’re paying $795 a month. Savings! I’m really excited about it as that means we’ll have extra money to throw at the credit cards each month.

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Changes – lots of them

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What a crazy day. I’m kind of reeling from the suddenness of it all.

Hubby received a job offer! He starts work on Monday. This is with the contract employer that he’s been working with for the last couple months. We’re very excited about it.

We also signed a new cell phone contract, picked out new phones, and I changed my phone number. Hubby’s employer will be paying a cell phone subsidy so we picked out a plan with a HUGE amount of minutes as it will be hubby’s business and personal line. We’ve never had this many minutes before.

AND we signed up for a savings account with a new bank. A couple months ago, we opened a new checking account with this bank to handle hubby’s unemployment. The state picked the bank for us. We’ve had a really good experience with them so we decided to switch all our finances to them. We added me to the checking account today and opened up a savings account for our soon to grow emergency fund.

Whew. After all this, we decided to skip grocery shopping and just came home. I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the sudden changes. Happy, but overwhelmed! I probably shouldn’t have changed our banking and my cell phone number in the same day because now I have a ton of work to do to update phone numbers, banking information, bill pay, etc.

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Kitchen woes

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We somehow really managed to clog our kitchen sink. On Friday, the sink drainage slowed drastically. Rinsing dishes caused both sides of the sink to fill up with several inches of water. Jeff tried to fix it and we ended up with a wet floor for our troubles.

Hubby notified the office on Sunday but told them it wasn’t an emergency. The sink would drain, albeit very slowly. One of the maintenance guys showed up this afternoon and started working on it. An hour later, there are now two guys trying to figure out what’s wrong with the sink and/or disposal.

Oops.

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World Builder

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World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

This video is amazing. What incredible love this man has for his wife, that he would build something like this! Every time I watch this short video, I cry. I cry because I am overwhelmed at the ability to love, to pay attention to the small details, to provide enjoyment for a loved one.

This video reminds me of God’s love. If a man can love his wife enough to build her something that’s only going to last minutes, how much more love did God have for us to build a world to last for an eternity? I wonder if God created a calla lily and saw a bride walking down the aisle to her husband holding a bouquet of flowers. Maybe He spoke a tree into existence and pictured a father building a tree house with his son. Perhaps, as he created cats and dogs, He smiled and thought of a mother laughing as her child plays with the family pet. God loved ME so much that He fashioned man’s body with His own hands and breathed into man His own breath. It’s wonderful. It’s love.

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Links

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I want to share some great links I’ve been saving. My open tabs (67 of them!) are spiraling out of control and my browser is crawling. I tried to upload a picture of my crazy tabs but everything runs together in a giant blob.

The Ugly-Beautiful Story – I love this story. “Because, somewhere, underneath the grime of this broken world, everything has the radiant fingerprints of God on it. With Jesus eyes, we have the astonishing opportunity to daily love the unlovely into loveliness.” I want to love like Jesus does. I want to see the fingerprints of God on every human being. If I could learn to love like God does, if everyone could learn to truly love, this world would be beautiful.

Dark Waters – An encouraging post about persevering life’s trials.

Free mini-workouts – These mini workouts with Jillian Michaels are sure to be good. I probably shouldn’t be posting links to workouts I haven’t yet tried, but Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred DVD is fantastic.

66 All-Natural Cleaning Solutions – One of my goals this year is to switch over to natural cleaning. I despise the chemicals in commercial cleaning solutions. As we finish each of our current cleaning products, I’m going to switch over to more natural solutions.

Refried Beans recipe – I tested and discarded four recipes before finding this one. The beans were actually the consistency of refried beans, though they tasted a bit different that store bought (I actually like canned refried beans). Now that I have the consistency down, I need to find the right balance of spices to make them taste good!

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Goings on

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Hubby’s working today so I’m at home by myself. It’s so quiet when it’s just me here! I can tell the cats are hot during the day because they sleep on the tile for hours at a time. I’m hot too but it’s not too bad.

So far today I’ve washed the dishes, cleaned off the kitchen counters, picked up the living room, washed a load of laundry, vacuumed the apartment, and opened yesterday’s mail. I don’t think I’m going to tackle any additional housework today except cleaning out the catbox before hubby comes home.

Yesterday, we visited the Sunflower Farmers Market. They have some great sale prices! We brought home some apricots, nectarines, apples, tomatoes, lettuce, and bell peppers. We also found that Sunflower carries the entire line of Simply Asia products. We used to buy them at Sprouts but they have since stopped carrying them and Walmart only carries two varieties. Sunflower had them on sale plus each box had a coupon for saving a dollar instantly. We bought four boxes! My favorite variety is the Soy Ginger noodles, though that may change once I try the new flavors.

I’m plowing through my library books. Between hubby and I, we currently have 48 books checked out. The library allows 50 books per library card (we have two), so we could bring more home but I would never be able to finish everything. Sometime this week I’m going to post about a couple of the books that I thought were exceptional.

My brother and I are making plans for my mother’s 50th birthday. That’s all I can say, just in case my mom happens to read my blog between now and this weekend. 50 years old! I can’t believe my mother is going to be 50 next week…

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No more, I promise!

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I am so full of cheer these days! This is my last negative post for awhile, honest.

Awhile back, I came across a site that hosts blog commenting. I really liked the concept they were pitching and decided to install that method for commenting on this blog. After awhile, I realized I preferred Blogger’s commenting. After many emails back and forth with this comment host, I was finally able to delete my account with them. Unfortunately, I also lost all comments for the last couple months.

So… if you commented on my blog in the last two months, I unintentionally deleted the comments. I’m pretty upset about it but that’s ok. I had read them all. 🙂 I don’t think I’ll be making any layout changes for awhile, though I would like to tweek the text and link colors.

If anyone’s reading my blog, I hope you have a great evening!

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Saying goodbye

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My grandma died this morning. Praise the Lord she died peacefully in her sleep. I knew it was going to happen soon but I still grieve. She was the most Godly woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never seen someone live and breathe Christ’s love like my grandmother. I know I’ll see her again in heaven but I’m going to miss her.

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Down but not out

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For some reason, I’ve been feeling down the last couple days. I’m really tired. The cats will not let me sleep past 6 or 6:30. I’ve had nightmares almost every night for the past two weeks, insecurities rearing their ugly heads and confronting me in my dreams.

Hopefully Bible study tonight and church tomorrow morning will energize me for next week. Hubby has four days of work scheduled – Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. God has been providing for our every need.

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