I almost forgot!

With all the resolving of things in keeping with the tradition of the New Year, I almost forgot to mention some exciting news.

First, and most exciting, we are credit card debt free. I'll say it again: WE ARE CREDIT CARD DEBT FREE. Woo hoo! I've been working at this for the last 3 years and we're finally DONE. My advice to people who are trying to get out of debt: keep on keepin' on and take advantage of every little thing you can. I've transferred balances to cards with no interest. I've spent every last extra cent we had on paying off debt. While not fun for my husband, I got a bizarre thrill of seeing that balance go down. We also stopped using credit cards unless there was some extenuating circumstance. And then, we shopped around for the best card. I don't care about points or miles. I'm all about the interest free stuff. Finally, we were very fortunate to receive some money on a few occasions. Once was our wedding. Once was my first bonus at work, and finally, what got us down to $0 was the money from our homeowners insurance because of Home Invasion 2010.

Secondly, we're finally redecorating our "game room". I might have mentioned this before. Can't remember. When we moved into our house, we agreed that room would be used to house all of my husband's White Sox stuff. He has tons of it and when we lived back in Illinois, we had nowhere to display it. So now that we do, he sure displays it. Anyways, the walls are RED. Like red red red. We decided to leave them as-is. The flooring was cream carpet, same stuff we have everywhere else in our house. My mom and Diane stained the concrete in their "game room" and it came out looking awesome. We decided to do the same. Now we have a hideous black concrete floor that is uneven and looks awful. We decided that since we're credit card debt free, we're using the rest of the homeowners insurance money for paint and using my bonus for flooring. I am super excited because when we had Ryan, he preferred the sunlight of our formal living room. It has since become our family room and we're anxious to get back to our "game room" digs and have our nice formal living area back.

Thirdly, my bff Kelli keeps me on my toes. Always has. She makes sure that I'm on top of my shit by being on top of her shit. So when she mentioned that she had started thinking about ideas for her son, Aiden's birthday (who is younger than Ryan), I decided I had better get on it. I know it's still 4 months away (well, next Monday it will be 4 months) but you only get one First Birthday. I don't remember any of my birthdays except for my 10th birthday (bowling alley) and maybe my 14th (beach, Padre Island. I slept in). I know Ryan won't remember his first birthday, but how awesome would it be for him to see pictures and think, "wow that looked cool, my mom worked hard on that". So I checked out some websites and have some super cute ideas.

So tomorrow, reality sets in. It's the beginning of peak season at work in my specific sub department of HR and I'm pretty sure I won't be seeing the light of day until April. I always think the holidays last from Thanksgiving (wasn't that just yesterday?) to the time you go back to work after New Year's Day. So tomorrow, the New Year starts. I guess it's now or never.