Time for my yearly post..

Updating my status on Facebook has me wanting to blog these days, since I can only fit so much in a status update and I just know the world is dying to hear what I have to say. So here I am with the once-a-year update on our lives.

We're having dinner together these days. It's sort of an unexpected side effect of our new budget. We've gone to the envelope system, meaning there's an envelope with my grocery money in it, and when the money's gone, there's no plastic to swipe. I think Dave Ramsey talks about it, and it's a good exercise. We were using a debit card before, but for some reason having the cash (and handing over the cash) makes a dollar seem a lot bigger.

So, I'm making bread and homemade meals. A lot. I think we've eaten out a total of twice in the last three weeks. And even though I thought we were eating dinner together as a family before on a regular basis, we are now doing it every single night. And each night the kids tolerate sitting still that long a little better. And now they hold our hands patiently while we say grace, and there are tiny little voices echoing the Amen. It's not something we're trying to work on, and honestly I didn't realize it wasn't happening until it was. And it's just really sweet.