Home with Tracy

Our children are getting older and I want them to start journaling. I want them to write down their thoughts for the day, but I also want them to journal with purpose. Our middle daughter is starting to experience more emotions as she is getting older. I am noticing that she is focusing more on things that went wrong in the day instead of the joys of the day. I came up with the idea of purposefully journaling and wanted to find the perfect journal for her to get started. A journal that would help her focus on joy! I decided to visit DaySpring and to look at their journals. I am so glad I did. I found the everyday joy journal. It is perfect! I want my children to journal with purpose. I want them to focus more on the blessings and joys of the day than focus on the negatives or disappointments of the day. Each day can be (and usually is) filled with both. It is my hope that positive thoughts will be come the norm and negative thoughts and disappointments will be lost at the end...

Grace Ghazarian over at Precious Hearts by Grace has written an ebook called Super Simple CPR. She is offering this ebook for free for a limited time. Grace is a registered nurse who saw a need. She was having a conversation with a friend, a new mom, who said to her "I wouldn’t know what to do if something happened to my baby.” That conversation prompted Grace to start Precious Hearts. Precious Hearts is a CPR class that is held in a home setting. Grace saw great results with her "CPR parties" and wanted to be able to reach more parents with the much needed information about CPR so she decided to write and ebook. Now you can benefit from Grace's knowledge even if you don't live close enough to attend a class. The purpose of this book is to break down barriers to learning the concepts of CPR.  It is still highly recommend taking a class to get a feel for it physically!   I am so thankful that Grace wrote this ebook. I have...

We just completed month two of our journey to financial peace. We did well in some areas, and not so well in other areas. The main area we need to focus on is cutting down on our eating out. We have now paid off a total of over $$92,500 in debt and full established our emergency fund. We received our tax refund and used it to fully establish our emergency fund, as well as pay off some debt. I did not follow Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace advice of paying off our debt lowest amount to highest amount. Instead, I spent several hours calculating what would bring our monthly payments towards debt down the most. We ended up paying off three debts, which totaled around $3000, and lowered our monthly payment towards debt by $255. Next month, I will go back to what Dave Ramsey suggests and add the $255 into our lowest debt payment. Now, for the area that I need to work on most ... meal planning! There were a couple weeks that I had meals planned every night. Meal planning not only hel...