I think this has been my longest absence from blogging since I started, well over a year ago. Things have just been keeping us very busy lately, both with the holidays and the stomach bug that took out every member of my immediate and extended family for a few days.
We had a wonderful Christmas, celebrating on the 23rd (ds2's 2nd birthday) with my aunt and cousins, on the 24th with my in-laws, and on Christmas with my family. We will have one more party this coming weekend at my SIL's house with all the cousins from DH's family. I was able to attend one work party, but missed two others due to illness. I haven't looked at the numbers yet, but I know we were over budget on Christmas spending by the $650 cc bill. OUCH. Not all of it was on Christmas, but a good chunk of it was. That, combined with a big drop in our investments, dropped our already pitiful net worth by $2000, making it still in the black, but barely. We also have two big expenses coming up - my annual real estate dues ($400) plus MLS access ($114), and we should be getting the fine soon for DH's speeding ticket (probably $100-150). We don't have the money for these, so it's back to the EF we go. I am still toying with the idea of taking $2k out of the EF (bringing it to $5k) to catch up the Christmas cc, pay off my dues, and pay off DH's car. Then we could start off the new year with only one cc at 0% and our student loans.
So why am I not crying right now with all this bad news? There's some good news to balance it out. DH has been on four substitute teaching interviews. All have gone very well. I guess it's true that male elementary/special ed teachers are sought after. Anyway, he has to be approved by the school boards before he can start subbing. One board has met and approved him - the others meet in the first 2 weeks of January. We have heard from multiple sources how desperate the schools are for subs, so we are hoping for steady work. At about $70 per day, that would add another $1000-$1200 monthly. That will help us dig out from under the tuition debt much more quickly. DH calculated that he should be able to recover the lost wages/tuition costs of going back to school in about 2 years from when he gets steady employment. Let's hope!
I have a lot of projects on the back burner that will be coming to the front now that the holidays are over - organizing and ordering a few months of digital pictures, helping my mom organize her 30 years of pictures, transferring over my parents tapes onto DVD for them, taking up scrapbooking again with all the cool things I got for Christmas, general organization and cleaning, etc. As much as I hate to say it, I can't even get started on those things when I spend an hour a day on here. For now, I will be a little more scarce 'round these parts. But I'll still be checking in on y'all.

Later.