We're Debt Free!!

Apparently there was a bunch of stuff to blog about right away. Mine and Lonnie's great announcement is that we are 100% Debt Free. We paid off $32K in student loan and tax debt in 21 months. Plus I paid my older sister back (5 years later) the $550 that she lent me for summer school. It is just so incredible to have actually accomplished this feat. Now we are free from being any slaves to any lenders. This process all started not long after we got married. We were introduced to Dave Ramsey. I would recommend his books for reading if you want some solid information on handling your finances in a way to honor Christ. We mostly just paid minimums while I was in nursing school and really started attacking the debt once I started working. We had to work really hard, live on a strict budget and put any and all extra toward the debt. God has blessed us so much, much more than we could have imagined. We were thinking that this would take until the end of the year to complete, but because we've been so blessed we were able to finish it before. We are hoping to call the Dave Ramsey show on Friday and shout "We're Debt Free" so that everyone can know and celebrate with us.

This last weekend we went to Crater Lake for our fourth anniversary. We needed to take a vacation as we really haven't had anything but short stints to Portland ever since we moved here. We initially were going to stay at a KOA campground in Klamath Falls, but our first night we didn't sleep well because it is situated in the middle of the city and there is traffic and sirens and all kinds of annoying things around. We were headed up to Crater Lake on Thursday anyways and so we decided to take a look around and see if we could find anything closer. As we were driving up we stopped at a camp and they had openings for tent camping. We were able to get a refund from the KOA for the rest of our stay and moved camp up to the new place called Crater Lake Resort. The campsite was beautiful and situated right next to a creek. There wasn't anyone else around so we had our pick of spots.

Since that day was our anniversary we decided to go up to Crater Lake and go to the Lodge for Dinner at the restaurant. Good food, just really expensive. We got our first look at Crater Lake that day and for anyone who hasn't seen it- it is beautiful!

For most of the rest of the trip we just hung out at camp or we drove up to Crater Lake to hang out. On Sunday Lonnie hiked up to the top of a mountain there at Crater Lake. I couldn't go because I had some mosquito bites on the back of my heel that got blistered when I wore shoes one day. I had to hang out at the lodge and read while he was hiking. We came home Monday and had to get everything put back together. It was a wonderful vacation in a beautiful place!

Opening Blog Note

This is just an opener for the new blog. The intention with this blog is just to update folks on what we are doing around here. We don't have anything in particular like a pregnancy to blog about so hopefully we can drum up some interesting stuff for you. We will probably mention funny stories, or situations or just commentary on life here in the small town. There will likely be mentions of Lonnie's confused grandpa as well.