New Year's Resolution...or something like that

I know it's been forever since we posted. Blame it on Stacy 'cuz I have done all the work so far. (Love ya, babe.) I was just telling her the other day that we should sit down together Saturday nights and do a weekly update. I'd like to call it a New Year's resolution, but by golly, it's March 1 tomorrow.

It's a huge understatement to say that a lot has happened this year so far. I'll try to give a highlight.

In early January we had "Meemaw" (Stacy's mom) come down for week to see the kids and spend some time here.

National Instruments has Employee Appreciation week in January and this year they paid for the family to go to the Children's museum. It's pretty much like having the coolest toys for the kids in a learning environment. Pretty cool.

In early February "Grandma" (Mark's mom) visited for just the weekend (Friday-Monday). On Friday Grandma and Mark spent some mother-son time at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. They have an IMAX theatre inside and we saw a 3D show about the Colorado River. Talk about awesome! I had a hard time not being able to read everything in the museum--nerd heaven, you know.

I finally got to visit where Stacy grew up--Orange, TX (southeast Texas by the border of Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico). The occasion was that her oldest nephew, Ethan (Michael & Bev's son), turned 12 and was being ordained a deacon. We drove up super early Saturday morning, played all day, went to church, and then came back home Sunday night. Saturday was a blast. They have a ton of land and it had just rained so the kids were romping around in rubber boots, loving just making a mess and not getting in trouble for it. That only applies to Saturday, though, as Blake apparently didn't get enough and went out in his church clothes Sunday morning and...yep, headed straight for the mud puddles. We made him wear wet clothes to church. Mean parents! We played on the zip line for a bit and Blake loved that too. They've got a horse, dogs, goats, cats, chickens, pigs, hamsters, a hedgehog, etc. I also got to go with "the boys" to go shooting with my new gun from Christmas. I was pretty excited to shoot it for the first time, so you can imagine my disappointment when we got to the range and I realized that I had left my magazine in the van at their house. Well, because it's a semi-automatic .22, it *can* load one shell at a time, but it was definitely designed to pop 10 shells in with the magazine. But the highlight of the range was skeet shooting with a professional tower setup. There's a high tower to the left and a low tower to the right and seven positions around and one position in the middle. I did the poorest of Michael and "Pawpaw" (Stacy's dad), but I had a blast. We ended the night with BBQ, heart-shaped cookies (being Feb 14, and all), and their favorite multi-layer chocolate cake. Yummy! It was great to be a part of the occasion and even though we were pretty tired at the end of the short trip, we're looking forward to going again.

Stacy suprised me for my birthday (Feb 23) on Saturday, Feb 21 by inviting a few ward friends over to the house for grilled hot dogs and cake. It was pretty fun to have some adult conversation with other parents. (No, we don't get a lot of that.) Thanks, Stacy!

Some of the most exciting news all year came when we were personally affected by the tanking economy and National Instruments decided to give everyone a 5% pay decrease. Whoo hoo! In all seriousness, though, we are so grateful to have a job with a company who believes more in the long-term than in the short-term. A lot of other tech companies have done layoffs as well as pay cuts, and NI really doesn't believe in layoffs. Speaking of a tanking economy, I'm glad that we decided to be frugal all these years and really get a budget working last May. I found some software I really like, from a guy in American Fork. It's called YNAB (You Need A Budget). It's harder to track money with than Quicken, but it outshines other software when it comes to creating and living by a budget. And believe me, without a true budget (telling your money where to go rather than just seeing where it went) I don't know how most people plan for the future. Maybe that's why the economy's the way it is, eh? We're not rich, but we're not losing our house, and we're still putting money away for retirement.