Randy got his tonsils out last Monday morning. He's in better shape than I thought he'd be. Nonetheless, he's drugged up and sleeping all the time. He's also saying incomprehensible things and can be a little slow at times :) I'm enjoying taking care of him and bringing him popsicles, applesauce, soup, ice cream with chicken nuggets in it (yuck but at his request), and taking care of things that Randy normally would have taken care of. Here's to a speedy recovering!

Do you remember this car in my previous post? We bought a 2008 Honda Accord last month, in January. We got a really good deal on it and ended up with some equity. However, it had bad gas mileage, was uncomfortable, and we weren't completely happy with it. So...we traded it in for....

this car! 2007 Toyota Highlander. 45,000 miles. V6. All wheel drive. We love it! It is so much more comfortable and drives great. One big reason why we got this is because it came with the optional 3rd row seat in the back that folds down when unused. So instead of the standard 5, we can now fit 7-8 people in. We wanted to have a car that will last us 10+ years and will grow with our family. We're very excited for it and anticipate many trips in it with family and friends. I mentioned we had equity in our Accord. A dealership here was having a Presidents Day sale- if you trade in your vehicle, we will give you trade-in value price plus 125%. So that meant more for our Accord and we used $4,200 equity into the Highlander. After some bargaining with price, they gave in and we drove home with it!

I read an article the other day about student loan debt. The average student loan debt for just an undergraduate college student is between $20,000 to $25,000 depending on the loan. That does not include graduate school, law and medical school. This made me think about how blessed Randy and I have been with finances and paying off his loans. I was blessed to have scholarships pay for my entire schooling. Randy was blessed to have to only pay for half of his schooling through loans. When we got married, we made it a goal to pay off his student loan within 3-4 years. He had a total of $13,500 to pay off. Starting last August, we started paying it off. Now it's February. We have only a little under $6000 to pay off. That's truly amazing! We have paid off over $7,000 in the last 6 months. Are we lucky? Nah...we're absolutely blessed! I think we'll reach our goal far before 3-4 years. We hope to get it all paid off before September. :)

This winter has been UNBELIEVABLE. This winter has broken all records that DC has ever had- it broke the all-time record of 1798. Our first blizzard before Christmas brought about 15 feet. Our second blizzard in end of January brought 30-40 feet of snow. A week later, our third blizzard brought another 20-30 feet. If we were living in Utah, Idaho, MN, those places, there'd be no problem. But here in DC, they really are ill-equipped for snow. Businesses were closed, schools were closed, people couldn't get out of their streets, shovels were sold out at every store within a 1oo-mile radius, and all capitol and government meetings were canceled, even those in session at the capitol. VA and DC are exceeding their budget for snow and now dipping into emergency funds- they did not predict the amount of money that would be used. Needless to say, we have had people protesting on Capitol Hill in regards to Global Warming, or Global Cooling, as they say.