On this day....

On this day- 12 years ago- Joel and I married! So blessed to have come this far together, and so excited about going on more!!

Financial PEACE!

Joel and I have decided to go through Financial Peace with Dave Ramsey this fall. We have learned soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much already.

I want to share more here on our site because we think this concept Dave Ramsey is on could change many more lives out there! And bring financial peace over lots more families! So stayed tuned for my weekly installments called "Strickland FPU"

STARTING LINE: With the help of our FP Counselor Tricia, we were able to lay all our finances on the table and make a plan. We are now week 4 in the FPU classes and have implemented that plan. And it started with this.

This is our money exchange center, better known as our envelope system.

Ours is the little blue one. It has 12 slots where we budget our spendings. Our tithe, groceries, bills, clothes, ect all get budgeted out each paycheck and put into these slots. When the money runs out- it runs out! This isnt such a new concept- we have been a cash only family for a long time.

But we have been able to make our money behave a little better this way. Its a really detailed system. We also now have some savings!

Our two main goals right now is to maintain the budget, and build up an emergency savings fund.

The yellow box is the girls envelope system. They each have three envelopes: Giving, Saving, and Spending. At each pay period, when daddy earns his commission-the girls also earn theirs. Just like their parents- they divide all their money up. Its been interesting in seeing who takes joy in saving!

And the boys got the girls old money jars. Now DJ and Taylor are saving their own cents. Dylan gets cents when he helps around the house too. He gets paid instantly though-he has such a short term memory and needs that instant gratification.

"THANK YOU LORD for all we have learned thus far! May You continue to grow us and show us ways to have financial peace so we can live like no body else!"

Boys...boys...boys!

I LOVE my boys! All three of them!






















Here are a few pics of my boys and their latest happenings.

DJ and his bud racing on the Wii!!











I think these boys went on a sleeping strike! Whew! Im ready to do whatever I must to get them to sleep! (Lots of spankings lately during these bed time battles)
































Dylan and his cousin jumping happily on the trampoline..in the rain! These two seem to be alike in alot of ways!

A ROCKIN' good time.

Notice Kayla climbing down on the left and Emily climbing up on the right. We had lots of fun with our friends at our KEEPERS meeting.

Time capsule- buried!!

We had lots of fun burying our time capsule today.

We put lots of interesting things about us inside, to reveal to the person opening it our story.

The girls documented their weight and height, we traced all the kids hands and feet, wrote bio poems, drew a map of the world, put in one of our favorit...e things, took a test of the things we will be learning all year- (they didnt get one answer right), and lastly we made predictions and goals for the year.

Burying it was the best part! FUN FUN!

We measured and mapped it all out so we can find it the end of the school year!