money matters

Chris and I have been talking about doing better with our money for a while now but have decided that we would try harder this month to control our spending habits.  Although we have a budget, we rarely use it.  I admit that I haven't been tracking our spending like I should and used to do more regularly.  Earlier this year I created an excel spread sheet which I enter in all our spending each month to track how much we spend in different categories.  It was quite a shock how much we spend on eating out and other misc things.  It just goes to show that if you don't pay attention, you can quickly spend yourself into debtors prison.  It'll be interesting to see how we do at the end of the month now that we are recommitting ourselves.  Unfortunately Chris has told me that I can't buy anything for the house for the next 2 years.  When I gave him an angry fist he told me it was now 4 years and would go up if I continued to shake my fist at him.  I guess my trips to Ikea were a little out of hand.  Bummer.  Although Chris is being a little more obnoxious since he started reading all his financial books, I must admit that it is better to have a husband that is good with money than one that is horrible with it.  I thought it was funny when he brought his book over and pointed at a line in bold that said "Don't let the monkey pull you down."  I guess this was a financial metaphor but I laughed at it since Chris' nickname I call him is monkey.  And what do you know....... he owes the family money from his golf habit.  What a monkey indeed!

Here's the quick low down on the holiday weekend.  Friday we had mom, Nephi, Steffanie, and the kids come over for a barbecue.  I had told Teo earlier in the week that he could come over and ride the 4 wheelers and apparently he couldn't stop talking about it.  As soon as he come in the house he looked out the back door and said "Oh my heck!  The baby 4 wheeler!"  He says "Oh my heck"  a lot and it's pretty funny because he says it with such enthusiasm.  After we ate, Nephi and Steffanie took Teo for a ride on both the 4 wheelers.  The kid loves to go fast.  At one point during the ride he had to have them stop to come back to the house to get his sunglasses.  What a silly kid.  He was so sad when it was time to put them away because it was trying to rain.  Afterward we played Guitar Hero, Nephi and Steff haven't ever played before and I told them they needed to practice rocking out.  I'm pretty rusty at it, maybe I'm the one that needs to practice.  We lit a few fireworks that they had left over from last year.  We never buy any because they're so expensive and we don't really care.  Teo kept wanting to help light the fireworks and it was hard to get him to stay back.  Threat of getting his arm blown off was not enough.  Gee, I guess that's a little too morbid to tell a 4 year old.  Can you tell I don't have kids?  Nothing eventful happened the rest of the weekend.