Baby Step 1 COMPLETE!

Through a series of fortuitous events (getting paid more than expected, some bills being less than expected), we have officially completed our first Baby Step of our Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover! (Baby Step 1: Create a $1000 Emergency Fund) And we even managed to do it a month sooner than we expected!

Unfortunately, we won't be able to start Baby Step 2 (start Debt Snowball) until the end of March because Nathan's mom bought us tickets to see Wicked in Portland on March 28th (that's not the unfortunate part, that's the exciting part) so we will need to use the money that WAS going into our emergency fund, and WILL be going towards our debt snowball, for gas and food for that trip. But hey, we got the first step done!

Other than that, things have been fairly insane here, for various and sundry reasons. On Monday, we celebrated both of my parents' birthdays by going out to Earth & Vine, the new wine shop that was opened here in town by our friend Mary, and then to Barley's for dinner. My mom's birthday was on the 9th and my dad's is on the 12th. Yes, they're literally only 3 days apart in age. Several of their/our friends showed up and good times were had by all.

Last night was Homebrew Club, where we uncorked a bottle of the Pinot Noir wine that I made and had our first 'public' tasting of it (not counting Nathan, my parents, and I). While it didn't receive exactly rave reviews, everyone did say that it tasted good, which is a far sight better than the vinegar concoction the first bottle tasted like about a year ago. So I was pretty dang excited! The rest of the past four days have been spent running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

But the good news...Nathan's best friend Johnny, and his new wife Laura, are coming to visit us and will be here Saturday through Tuesday! And even better, the house cleaning that my mom gifted me for Christmas begins on Friday, which means that I don't have to clean my house in preparation for guests!!!! All I have to do is tidy a little bit, which is no hardship.

And that, in a nutshell, was our life for the past four days. Exciting, no?