2009 Financial planning, natures vacuum cleaners.... and deers in trees...

.. I don't pretend to remotely understand how Josh's mind works.... we gave up along time ago and simply hang on for the ride.... trust me... its nothing but fun.... so the other day when we were sitting in the yard talking it didn't surprise me when in mid conversation Josh stopped and said "Look Mom!!, there is a deer face on the tree!"... sure enough the knot holes and limbs form a deer face.... our very own woodland creature in the tree...I swear this guy would be the one to see elves under toad stools!!  when he was in Iraq we received a call from the boy when he had just gotten up and was ready to head to Sadr City for the day... ( now Sadr City is the armpit of the planet..just to set the tone here)... and he said he was faced with the most beautiful sunrise... If I can get him to forward the picture he took I'll post it here.... how wonderful to be able to pick out beauty like that!! 

....Now when I went to snap the picture of the deer in the tree I was startled by a bunch of movement over head.... Vultures  I have a real love hate relationship with these birds.  First of all they totally freak me out... at one time there were something like 40 or 50 roosting on the well house and tree waiting for  something to die ( they eat carrion, eggs & newborn animals), we all felt fine that day ~seriously~ but what I didn't know when I went to scare them off was the fact their defense mechanism is to puke... in unison... so not only was there 40-50 vultures... there were 40-50 piles of vulture puke.... lovely... I went back int he house and played The Adams Family for the day.Ever have a vulture with a 5 ft wing span sun themselves on your roof before????  However, as much as these birds disgust me, they are nature's vacuum cleaners.  They eat tons of yuck that can spread diseases and so I just grit my teeth and let them do their job... in a couple of days they'll be in the back woods again until they are called elsewhere ( can you hear it now.." clean up on aisle three ')

Money Saving Mom  has her financial goals up for 2009 and links to several other folks who blog about their savings journey.  Chris and I have a few concrete and several more abstract goals for 2009.
With Chris in the construction industry first and foremost we pray for jobs to come in so we continue to have a paycheck coming in.  While financially we could make it if he was laid off, insurance is a must for us and would be harder to come by with my health record this past year..

* we do want to try and pay off Chris's car this year.  His expense checks go towards that goal .. I'm not sure of the exact pay off but I do know its doable if we tighten up a bit here and there.

*  invest in things around the stead to be more self sufficient  this includes the things I wrote about in an earlier post  of slowly converting to solar, putting in a larger garden, and we are considering raising chickens again.  I love having chickens but there have been some county expansion projects with in a quarter mile of us that has pushed chicken predators further into our woods so we would need to really beef up the coop so to speak to make this doable.

* by Aug  we need to firm up with Christopher his college game plan so we know how to adjust with that

* hopefully this spring Chris and I will make a decision about what line of work I'll do now that Christopher will be turning 18 and won't need so much of my time .  I'll return either in the fall or spring of 2010.

...do you have goals???

.... a good news bad news here.... They found Jeremy's car yesterday at a car wash. It was abandoned and had been completely hosed out on the inside  to remove finger prints...They think the electrical system was shorted out in the drenching process so he is waiting or the insurance ...

  Our family will be praying about ow to help  our friend Jimmy over at Woodshavings  return to New Orleans for some hard work in a much needed area.  We ask you do the same.

Pray for the troops.... tomorrow Bev Perdue will take office guarded by North Carolina's finest .. pray for the newly elected everywhere...and have a fine day... all day long