Inspiration

I love taking pictures and editing them. I've always loved taking pictures since I was little and my grandpa gave me my first camera. I've loved using photoshop since 2008 when I married my husband and moved to NC. I hadn't found a job yet and didn't know any other people yet so all I did was play around on photoshop and make myspace layouts and graphics for military wives. While I don't do the graphics/layout part anymore I have come to LOVE editing pictures in photoshop. I love seeing how I can bring the pictures to life even more.

Out of any job that I could have in the whole wide world, I really want to be a professional photographer one day. I just enjoy how happy it makes me. I try to think of other jobs (I sort of want to be a sonographer) but I just don't find that same joy when I think about it. Aren't you supposed to LOVE your job? I have days where I go back and forth saying I can or can't become a real photographer but when I see other photographers post their amazing images it makes me want it SO much more. I want to inspire people through images. If my house was on fire and I could only take one thing (besides my family and dog of course) I would choose my photographs. I love having those memories to look back on and I would be really upset if I ever lost them. Each photograph reminds me of that specific moment and it takes you back to that day and I love that about photography and I love having those images there for me to look back on.

So here's to hoping I can learn as much as I can and practice practice practice and one day live out my dream of doing what I love as a career. What job do you have/want? Does it make you happy when you think about it?

Loves the Grass

Well I took Reid to the park again to day so he could swing, and then I let him sit on the open grassy area next to the park and he loved crawling around and playing with all the leaves. He was a happy boy! Our inlaws are coming up to visit this weekend yay! I still haven't met any people here. I'm hoping we can go to church Sunday and maybe we can meet people from there! I'm not sure where we will go, there are so many around here.

I am almost done reading the Dave Ramsey book I bought (that I saw suggested on Jessica H's blog) and I must say I LOVE it! I love to write budgets though and I like doing the math to see when something will be paid off :] We are going to pay off Steven's truck with the tax money (as long as we get the amount we're expecting; I low-balled it in our budget plan)...because they are oh so tricky sometimes. Then we are hoping to have my school loan paid off in October! Then we will be completely debt free and we'll still have a nice cushion in our account. Then we'll save up 6 months of expenses and then I'll have to figure out the investing thing. I read it in his book but I'm still a little confused by it. It makes me really excited though to know we can be out of debt in 10 months!! :] Then we'll start saving for a house somewhere in there! I would LOVE to be able to pay 100% down but I'm not sure how realistic that is for us right now. We won't be buying a house anytime soon though, so we will see. It is possible! Is anybody else doing Dave Ramsey's 7 baby step program? How are you coming along? Does it make you excited to think about your future?:]

I registered Steven for his classes today (it wasn't working last night when he was home, so I registered him today to make sure he got a spot for the classes he needed). Now we are just waiting for the VA to do their thing and get his benefits approved and send payment to the school by the deadline in January..or else they will drop his classes. Hmm....we will see how this goes.

Well that's all the news for today! Hope everyone is having a fantabulous week :]! (I know that's not a word but I still like it).

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! We just got back from Dothan and visiting family. That is always fun! I have been reading more of the Dave Ramsey book and we have paid off Steven's school loan :] We already have baby step 1 complete which is to save $1,000 as a baby emergency fund. Then you're supposed to start paying off all your debts from smallest to largest. So one down, two to go! We are going to pay more on the truck each month now and hopefully have that paid off around tax time...assuming we actually get some money back this year...we've had to pay the previous two..yuck! It will get rid of a lot of stress if we can get his truck paid off though. Then we only will have 1 loan left and the payment on that isn't too high and we can manage that. Seeing if Steven's stuff gets approved for school and if so and we get the BAH that will help us pay things off faster which will be great. I would love to be debt free! Our cell phone contracts are almost up too so then the only thing we would HAVE to pay each month would be our rent...and we can totally do that.

We got Reid a few toys for Christmas this year. We figured he won't really remember this Christmas so he doesn't need 100 toys. He already has so many toys and mostly only plays with 4-5 on a regular basis. We got him a little toy helicopter that makes sounds and has balls that you put inside. We got him a shape sorter cube where it has all the different shapes and you place them in the correct hole. Then the last thing we got him is a little musical table. It is just a small table that can sit on the floor or on the legs and it has a few things he can play with on it. Steven's parents got him a wagon so I'm really excited to be able to take him for walks in it. We haven't got any picture of Reid with Santa. They are just too expensive and Reid probably won't even like Santa anyway lol. He has stranger anxiety now and only likes to be around people he knows.

I have been looking on pinterest a lot lately trying to find cute things that I can make on my own for our apartment to make it feel more like home. The walls are all bare right now because Steven's toolbox (and hammer and nails) are all in Dothan lol. I just need to decide on one idea instead of 1,000. Everything always looks so neat on there that I want to try everything..but just can't.

There is a zoo here in Montgomery and I want to take Reid really bad. He loves animals and I think he would LOVE the zoo. It's $10 though for every visit to the zoo. They have year passes but I'm not sure how much we'll actually go so I don't know what to do about that. We'll see. Well that's about it for today. :]

Family Time

Well we drove to Dothan this weekend so we could hang out with family. It's always nice to get to see everybody especially since I don't know any people in Montgomery yet. We've had a nice fun day. Nonny and Grandpa got Reid a radio flyer wagon for Christmas. We went to go pick it out today. I'm excited. We will enjoy pulling him around in his new wagon and I'm also looking forward to taking pictures of him in it for his first birthday. I can't believe our little baby is almost 1! He's been better lately. I think it had something to do with the formula we had him on the past few weeks. We changed him to a sensitive formula though and I think that's helped Reid with his gas. Plus you can buy it in the HUGE cans for not much more and that's very helpful since we don't have WIC yet since we've moved to Alabama. I need to go get him set up for that. Reid had cheerios for the first time today. He's been offered them before but never really knew he was supposed to EAT them lol. He's been eating puffs for a month or 2 now though so we gave him some cheerios again and he gobbled them up. Well we're about to go to eat with the family, visit my family tomorrow after church, then head back to Montgomery tomorrow afternoon. Hope everyone else is having a great weekend!

Cloth Diapers

I guess I never mentioned before but Reid wears cloth diapers. I've been slack with it sometimes though like when we moved and when we go visit Steven's family for a week or more at the time we sometimes use disposable because I don't want to hog their washing machine lol. BUT I love using cloth diapers and I think everyone should look into it. They aren't hard or disgusting like many people think. Cloth diapering is also very addicting! Once you buy some you just keep wanting to buy more. They make them in so many cute colors and patterns these days. All I do for mine is I snap him on Reid, take them off once he's gone to the bathroom, put them in a wet bag (it's a bag that you put all the dirty diapers in and it locks in the smell), then once the bag is full I put them in the washer. I do a cold rinse, hot wash with detergent, then an extra cold rinse and ta da!!

Steven is in the process of signing up for his schooling. He has been accepted to Auburn Montgomery and went to orientation a few days ago. He is working on getting his VA benefits so he can use his GI bill. The GI bill will also give us BAH money which will help SO much. He only gets it while he's in school so we won't get it during the summer months or when he's on spring break, Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, etc but any extra money will help out a lot!

I have a plan to pay off our loans and truck, but I want to make sure everything works out with his schooling first and that we don't end up having to pay any of it out of pocket. If everything works out, then I plan to have his school loan and the truck paid off by next October :]!! Then we'll work on my school loan. Hopefully by next tax season (year 2013) we will have everything paid off!

Reid has been pretty cranky lately, sleeping a lot, then not sleeping at all, eating a lot, then not wanting anything. I've taken him to the doctor and they say nothing is wrong...so who knows. Maybe he is teething. I had a dream his top 2 teeth came in last night lol. Still not there though. I am taking him to Books A Million this afternoon to walk around and explore all the books. I will probably pick out a few to read to him and if he just REALLY enjoys one of them, I may get it for him for Christmas :]

Hope everyone is having a fabulous day!

Dave Ramsey

Hey everybody! It's a dreary Tuesday here in Montgomery, Alabama. I was reading from a friend's blog how she had just purchased Dave Ramsey's book to help with their finances and to pay off debt and I have checked the book out and I think it's a great idea. We just got out of the military and we're getting paid less than we were while in the military so we're going to have to be on a tighter budget. I am hoping we can pay off our debt. Luckily we didn't go crazy with gaining debt but we do have Steven's truck loan, my school loan, and his school loan. We have NO credit card debt and I am super proud of that :]. Dave Ramsey's plan talks about paying off your smallest loans first, so I think we will try to tackle Steven's school loan since it's the smallest. After that, Steven's truck loan and my school loan are almost even at about $6,000 each so I think we will tackle his truck loan after that since it has a higher monthly payment. Then finally we'll go after my school loan. I would love to see us totally debt free, that would be awesome! I just have to be careful because I'm not working at the moment and Steven's not in the military anymore so his job is not guaranteed :/ It does make me nervous, but he enjoys his new job and if it makes him happy, then that makes me happy! I just have to figure out how to budget better for food and come up with some cheap but good things to do for meals. We are about to switch our phones to prepaid phones that pay by the minute because we have a home phone that came free with the internet and cable we have. So we don't really need smart phones since we already have internet at home. Since we have a home phone line we don't really need fancy phone plans either. I just would like to have them incase of emergencies, so we will do the prepaid pay by the day plans, so we only have to pay if we use our cell phone on that certain day. Seems like a good plan, so we'll see how that turns out. I'll keep you posted on our progress of everything! Reid is awake from his nap so now we need to figure out something to do until Steven comes home for lunch. I LOVE that he gets to come home for lunch now :] He never got to come home when he was in the Marines because they were always so busy.

MCP

Hey everybody hope you've had a great day. We just got our internet back so I went around to some of my favorite sites so I could catch up on getting some freebies and I saw that MCP was holding a giveaway for a free Canon G12 which is an amazing point and shoot camera. I entered for the giveaway and just wanted to share their site and spread the word! :] Enjoy!

We have internet!

We have internet, cable, and phone now! Lol. It's been 2 weeks since we've had cable and I missed it but could do without it if I needed to. I mostly missed the internet. I have internet on my phone for now but it's so slow and I like to watch my shoes online because I'm always busy when they come on during the night and my phone doesn't handle tv shows well. We are about to drop our current cell phone plans because they're just too expensive. We're going to go with Verizon's pay by the day plan. It's $1.99 a day but only if you use the phone to make a call that day. Otherwise you pay nothing. You can also text for 2 cents a message....SO my plan is to have everyone call the house phone if they need to talk or email me or facebook me or whatever and then only use my cell phone for emergencies when I'm not home and need to contact Steven or if someone needs to talk to me and I'm not home. BUT I think I'm just going to text rather than call since it would only be 2 cents a text instead of $1.99 for a call...so I think that will save us a LOT of money. I just can't be texting all the time like I do now lol. I'll rely on email I suppose. Or even text someone from the internet...since you can totally do that these days. Crazy huh?Okay I think I'm done talking. I've already posted three posts today lol.  Have a wonderful day!

Tummy, ears ,who knows

Today I took Reid to the urgent care because for the past 3 days he has been crying from pain in the middle of the night. He was grabbing at his ears and wasn't eating as much so I thought that maybe he had another ear infection. The doctor said he has some fluid in his ears but didn't see any infection so who knows. We switched him from soy to regular formula a couple weeks ago because we are trying to get WIC and WIC makes you have a drs note to get soy formula instead of regular formula...and we won't have insurance for a couple weeks until Steven's insurance from his new job kicks in...so i didn't want to have to pay a $100 copay just to get him a note....so we just switched him to see if the regular milk still bothered him like it did when he was younger so we wouldn't have to pay an extra $100 if Reid did okay on it...but I'm not sure. I'll give it the rest of this week and if he's still acting funny I'm going to switch him back to soy. So it could be his tummy hurting him...OR it could be teething...or it could be his lip. He was standing in his crib when I went to get him from his nap a few days ago and he got excited and smacked his jaw on the crib bar and must've bit his upper lip because there was blood everywhere :[ Scared me SOOO bad! I learned how to get blood out of clothes though. His lip was swollen that night but its not anymore so I have no idea if that's bothering him or not. I figure if he's still like this by the end of next week for sure (and he hasn't cut any teeth) we're definitely switching him back to soy. Well that's all for this post. I can ramble all day if i needed to lol.

Hello there!

I see everyone starting to make blogs again and I decided I would join in on the fun. I used to have xanga way back in the day and loved posting on there, so maybe I can keep up with posting on a blog...we'll see :] Well I guess I can introduce myself. My name is Ashley and I'm married to my love, Steven. He's my best friend and I couldn't imagine my life without him. He helps me grow as a person, makes me laugh, makes me happy, and just makes my days better. He was in the Marines for 5 years and we were stationed in Cherry Point, NC. He just got out of the military so we are having to adjust to civilian life again which is a little tough. Together we have our sweet boy Reid. He is 9 months old (they grow SO fast let me tell you). I can't believe he has come so far and learned so much in such a short amount of time. He is sitting, crawling, pulling up on things, letting go of things, and working on his balance. I think he will be walking in no time! I love watching him grow and learn and get so excited as he figures things out. I love cuddling with him although he thinks he's Mr independent now and doesn't stay still long enough to be cuddled. Always on the go! We had some really good friends in North Carolina for Steven, myself, and for Reid. Now we live in Montgomery and we have no friends. We're losers lol. We've only lived here for 2 weeks though, so maybe we'll meet some good friends one day. We're trying to find a nice church around here. I'm also trying to find a good daycare for when I need to find work. That makes me so nervous. I've read reviews about some of them here and they aren't good. Well that's all for this post. Happy December!