A Sweet Goodbye. And Some Pictures.

Today we said goodbye to something that we've had for our entire marriage, in some form or another. It's something that was always there, looking over our shoulders, sometimes going down, sometimes up. We always wanted to get rid of it someday, though it's something that most people have.

What is it that we said goodbye to today?


.
.
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Our debt.


All of it.

Yesiree, as of today, for the first time since we've been married, Mike and I are 100% completely debt-free. Forgive the horrible grammar here, but we don't owe nobody nothin'! Now granted, we don't have a house. But we have two cars (albeit used) and we have an associate's and two bachelor's degrees between us. We've worked hard to not carry a credit card balance whenever possible, we've paid off car loans as quickly as we can, and we've paid off a heck of a lot of student loan debt in the last year or two since we've graduated (we've never gotten grants, and I only got a scholarship one semester, so we were loans all the way, baby). We are so happy to have accomplished this, because we hated having that monkey on our backs.

We consider this an incredible blessing that we have been able to do this. I hope I don't sound braggy, I'm just really excited about it. I realize this is not an easy thing, and not something that's possible for everyone right now (we both worked through college, and for the first year out of college, both had full time jobs and no children). But if I may, I encourage everyone to do their best to stay out of debt, and pay off debt, as best you can, because this is a fabulously peaceful feeling.

So what are we going to do now that we're debt-free? Why, we're going to go out and make the biggest kind of purchase you can make and get back in over our eyeballs, of course. It's the American Way.

I'm sort of kidding. We are going to look into buying a house, which is Debt with a capital 'D', but our plan is to buy something sensible that we can actually afford. I'll keep you posted as that whole adventure pans out.

And now some Rachel pictures. We took pictures on Easter, but they are on Mike's mom's camera, so those will have to come later, but there's a couple post-Easter shots at the end here.

Happy baby.

Lounging baby.

Staring baby.

In her "Pooh" sweats, complete with adorable ears on the hood. It's 12 month size, so I was worried she'd never wear it - but the weather was nice and rainy today. Perfect for Pooh.

Rachel loves sticking her finger up people's noses. It's her way of saying hi. Not sure where she gets it, since neither Mike nor I say hi that way...

I think she's on the verge of crawling... we shall see

"Hi Dad!"

I let Rachel have a go at a chocolate bunny today, just to see what she'd do...

This is what she did. I had to fish the poor bunny's ear out of her mouth because she bit off such a big hunk.

So many choices...

These jelly beans look good...

But they taste like plastic wrapper!