WE DID IT! WE DID IT!! WE DID IT!!!

What did we do? We paid off $2200 of debt in 6 months! We made a challenge for someone to join us in this endeavor, but no one came forth on our blog. If anyone was apprehensive about it, I hope we can inspire you. PHEW! What a relief from the stress of all that debt just hanging around us. It’s amazing how much we were challenged in our pursuit of eliminating this debt, although most of the challenge came from ourselves and our immaturity with money. We did have those unexpecteds like some major and minor car repairs, but we made a commitment and stuck to our guns.

God has been good to us. We have a long way to go in being good stewards of our money, but we are trying. It’s amazing how much you want things when you are trying to save your money and be responsible. It’s so unnerving to have to time it just right so the mortgage check doesn’t get to the bank before you get paid. I hope we can get past that for good now. We have a lot of resolutions now.

Of course now we have to really watch ourselves and live like we were living when we had to make those payments. Now it is time to save and give to God as we have purposed. It is so exciting right now for us—we highly recommend this feeling to anyone else who wants it.

The Da Vinci Code: A Call to Creativity

My beef with the prevalence of The Da Vinci Code church discussions is the lack of originality I hear for the titles of these classes. Regardless of the fact that we have a class aimed at debunking fiction, I am more concerned with the title of the classes. Decoding the Code, Decoding the Da Vinci Code, Debunking the Code, and similar ones all wreak of a lack of creativity. I am calling for more creative titles for these courses. Here is my list so far:

1. Da Crack for Da Code (getting there, but only a C+)
2. Dan Brown: The Code Cracker (funnier in certain cultural regions)
3. The Da Vinci Crap or The Da Vinci Commode (only a community church could pull these off)
4. Da Only Way to Get You to Come to Wednesday Night Church
5. Da Usual (for Catholic churches, get it?)

6. Da Reason Da Vinci Code is Da Fiction
7. Opus Pocus (Subtitle: The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei)
8. Searching through the Smoke of Da Vinci's Crack (my favorite, but only a B for making sense)

Please feel free to add your own creative titles!

The Hamburglar is on the Loose

Tuesday night I (Ben) answered the phone and it was the Mt. Moriah Sheriff's Department. The recording went something like this: "This is the Mt. Moriah Sheriff's Department and we are calling to warn you that since May 1st of 2006 there have been an increase of break-ins in the area that you live. The perpetrator is coming in back doors and windows, even forcing his way in. These break-ins are happening between the hours of 1 AM and 6 AM while people are at home. He is stealing mainly wallets and purses."�

Thanks and no thanks! Now, for my main sleeping hours every sound will now be somebody breaking into my house. He probably goes by the name Hannibal and seeks to eat my face off. Do I bring my wallet and Monica's purse in the bedroom, or does that mean that if somebody did break in they would come looking for it? Do I trust Cali to scare the perpetrator away? Am I just a wimp (I AM scared of a bike in my yard at 2 AM)? All in all, I think I am glad to know someone wants to break into my house. I have now taken some measures to make it harder to break in, but I had no idea how expensive it was going to be to keep a moat with alligators up and running.

Go here for some home theft prevention procedures.

I HEART MY WIFE

I was driving to work this morning and saw a truck with a bumper sticker on the back windshield that read, “I HEART MY WIFE.” For some reason this just hit me as a REALLY nice gesture.

I’m not used to seeing bumper stickers that say anything besides “W The President” or have Calvin peeing on something - especially in Memphis. It just really got me thinking that such a simple gesture says so much about that husband driving that truck. Sure, his wife could have ‘given’ him that sticker or even put it on there herself, but I’d like to think that it was his idea & that he truly does love his wife & wants the world to know.

I’m not sure if Ben would go for putting one of these bumper stickers on his pick-up truck because his friends would probably make a lot fun of him, but I know that he loves me. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my own, “I HEART MY HUSBAND” sticker for Bonneville:)

You can get your own I HEART MY WIFE bumper sticker here.