Steve and I have been really tight on money lately (as usual), and were worried we wouldn't be able to do some very important things because of lack of money (like visit my family at Christmas). But some very wonderful money-related things have happened lately making us so incredibly blessed.

1) With Steve bringin' in the bacon for the whole family, and with me joining the Y, their monthly membership fee is no easy task to come up with, so I applied for assisted membership. You just have to have this meeting to discuss how much money you make, and how much you can afford to pay for your membership every month...basically convince them that your po' folk. I hadn't been looking forward to it all month long. Earlier I had filled out a sheet to tell them our monthly income as well as expenses, all broken down into specific increments. I had to prove all this in my meeting yesterday, with pay stubs, bills, bank statements...sheesh! I was sick to my stomach going through and highlighting stuff yesterday on my bank statements, just because this whole process is so freakin' invasive. If I didn't want to get back into shape so badly, I would've skipped out on my meeting altogether. But, the meeting was much better than I expected, and she had basically already approved me before I even walked in the door. Now I have a very affordable monthly membership, and I can work off this baby fat stress-free!

2)We weren't sure if we could make it home to see my family for Christmas because Steve got a new job only a month ago. He gets a week off at Christmas, but it is unpaid because he is a new employee. This means we have to be able to afford presents, gas money and bills, without a week of pay. Not easy to do with Steve being the only workin' one around here. We really didn't want to go into debt for Christmas this year, so we had actually been saving!...the sad thing was our savings wasn't going to cut it, and we would have to skip out on the trip to see my fam. Then yesterday I get this wonderful phone call from my old boss saying a mysterious check had shown up at work for me. I told her to open it, and low and behold!...a years worth of vacation pay they forgot to give me when I went on maternity leave 5 months ago! So our savings did pay off, and this lil extra bonus means Christmas with my fam.

So we feel incredibly blessed.