The NaBloPoMo November 2012 Prompt today is: What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

The bravest thing I’ve ever done is to be a Mommy. If you’re not a parent, then you may laugh at that statement, but for those who are mommies and daddies know exactly what I mean by this. Becoming a parent isn’t for the weak-minded. You have to have pretty grounding when you step into this role and even then you’re shaken by the many curves which come your way.

One thing I figured out is no matter what you do as a parent, your kids and others think you’re doing the wrong thing. What one set of parents do may be entirely different from another because of personal convictions of how best to handles situations.

I’ve always told my kids “doing nothing is easy, but keeping to one’s resolve or making a change requires a lot of effort.” If you don’t want to be a good parent, then do nothing and cave into every whim. You’ll be popular with your kids’ friends and all those outsiders, but you’ll lose the respect from your children. Okay, the truth is teenagers won’t get it until they are moms and dads that they must respect their parents. In short, sticking to one’s guns about parenting is a brave and scary thing.

This week’s prompt for Tuesday Coffee Chat  hosted by Les is: “Lessons Learned” What’s the most important lesson you have learned thus far in life? Did you “get it” straight away, or did it take a few tries?  

This is an easy prompt. The easiest lesson learned was about debt, but it came a little too late.  In the beginning of our marriage, we paid for everything pretty much in cash. Why we didn’t even have a checking account our first couple of years. DH pay all of our monthly obligations at that time. I was in school and didn’t worry about such things. I remember he had to get money orders at our bank to pay our bills. All I can say is we didn’t have too many to be concerned about.

I’m not sure when we got a checking account, but it may have occurred about the time we got our house loan or it could have been when we bought our first car together which our bank drafted our checking twice each month to pay our auto loan to lessen the burden of a big payment. That was nice and the sting wasn’t as noticeable.

Anyhow, once we crossed the threshold of using credit cards is when things fell apart. We…or I should say I spent more than I should have at times which landed us with some heavy credit card bills. For years, we struggled and struggled to pay them off, but you know how it is if you pay the minimum monthly payment to a credit card company then it’s pretty much like throwing your money out the window cause you’ll never get that card paid, especially if it’s being used and it was.

Children coming on to the scene, medical bills, repeated job loss, and general stuff compiled our debt. The weight of it all encroached upon my sleep and either angered or depressed me. As you may have guessed by this point I was in charge of paying all the bills. I knew precisely where every penny went and how much we had to work with. It was really scary some months.

In 2005, we consolidated every debt we owed into one sum at a lower interest rate for 7-years. I closed nearly every credit card we owned, except one. I took another look at the funds coming in and what is needed to spend, then just decided to do begin paying everything paying everything on time. No procrastination period. I faced reality and just did it. Whatever was left would be for grocery shopping, gas, and entertainment. Let me just say there wasn’t much to work with at this point.

When online banking and bill pay came along this made life more convenient and less frustrating for me. I was able to set up recurring payments toward our consolidated loan, as well as making sure our utilities, etc were not overlooked. It’s happened on occasion where something got overlooked and then we were hit with a late fee, which didn’t help matters. The Internet was/is a huge blessing to us in many ways.

Seven years have come and gone as of this fall. Our once large consolidated loan is now paid-in-full! Our humble quaint house is now ours NOT the banks. We still have the one credit card, but we pay it off every month. We still buy on credit at certain retailers, but again if it’s a regular purchase then it gets paid off once I receive my bill and for large purchases we only will buy it if we can get it interest free for a 12 or 18 months, then set it up on auto-draft of equal payments to make sure that obligation gets paid off with no interest to pay out at the end of that time.

We…I may have not always gotten this right in the beginning, but I can honestly say this has been a valuable lesson to learn which will follow us me throughout the rest of our my years. It’s a lesson we openly share with our kids on an ongoing basis of how to not to do the wrong things at the start of your life by making poor judgments especially concerning the misuse of credit cards. 

 
DS & DH began the tree removal project on Saturday. There’s a dead pine tree teetering dangerously close to the house and I’m certain it’ll come down at some point this winter IF we get some really nasty weather, like as in heavy snow or black ice.

The job proved to be tricky and requires more equipment that DH does not have. He appointed me to find a tree removal service to finish up the job. This is what I wanted all along just so it would be a ton easier on the boys, but…they wanted the learning experience and achy muscles. When will men ever listen?

Before I let you go, I wanted to share my recent DIY stamping project.

I prefer to buy unmounted rubber stamps. It’s far less expensive and easier to store. Let me describe the images beginning from top left moving right.

•  Step one: Here you’ll see, one sheet of EZ Mount Stamp N’ Stor (this is sticky on one side where you will place your stamp and the other side is vinyl cling), Fiskars non-sticky scissors, and my two unmounted rubber stamps for this project.
• Step two: As you’ll see here, I used the entire sheet of EZ Mount Stamp N’ Stor. I placed my two unmounted rubber stamps for this DIY card along with several others.
• Step three: It may be difficult to see, but my now mounted rubber stamps are laying on top of clear acrylic stamping blocks. My newly mounted stamps can be peeled off for storage and reused at any time in the future.
• Step four: This is my completed card. I stamped the phrase “Thank You” with Color Box Cyan and embossed with Ranger Turquoise glitter. I used my Marvy LePlume II markers for coloring the basket of flowers.

This card was made for some very special friends.

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to enjoy a cup of coffee and random conversation with a few of my bloggy friends this morning.

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