My Husband is SO HANDY!!!

Let me update you on the hot water heater situation. Kevin fixed it like a pro! We got the last of the water cleaned up and it is no longer a "situation" at all. In addition, he also hung me a bar to dry laundry on in the utility room, replaced several outlet covers, fixed our garage door, and replaced/fixed the thermostat (which decided to go out IMMEDIATELY after the hot water heater was up and running.

Oh, but that's not all. Remember the iphone he bought me for Christmas? Well we have Tmobile, not AT&T. We needed to get the iphone unlocked to work on the Tmobile network. That was easier said than done. We took it to Apple, who told us that it was taboo to even talk about helping us with that. Then we took it to Tmobile, AT&T, and a plethora of authorized dealers before accepting the fact that no one was willing to unlock the phone because of the contract between Apple and AT&T.

We came home and Kevin got on the internet. He found some instructions on how he could do it himself, downloaded the software, and got to work! That man jailbroke, unlocked, and activated my iphone single-handedly. I was so impressed.

Then the trouble started. My iphone would not sync any applications from itunes; in fact, that was not even an option. I realized that, in order to have apps, you have to be working on the latest version of itunes, 2.2. Without thinking, I "restored and updated" my iphone. That was a bad idea! Not only did it UNDO all of Kevin's hard work, it also locked my iphone into "recovery mode." Yikes. He was so ticked at me, but he searched and searched the internet, diagnosed the problem, and fixed it again! And now I have EVERY SINGLE function that AT&T customers have, but I pay almost $40 a month less.

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Today we raked our leaves. We only made it through the front yard because even that took us hours. We used a mulcher to consolidate the leaves to use fewer bags, and we still filled 10 huge leaf bags! We also filled an additional 3 bags with acorns from our oak tree. I shudder to think how long the back yard will take us, since it has three times the number of trees. Yeah, the front only has the one big oak tree (plus a few other little ones on the side), but that thing is a MONSTER. I kept trying to sneak inside for "breaks," aka to play with my iphone, but Kevin kept catching me and dragging me back outside. On the bright side, I must have burned several hundred calories with all the raking I did!

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Then this evening we did our 2009 budget. It's stressful when you have a large mortgage, two car payments, school loans, and grad school all coming out of a not-so-great joint income, but we always do the best we can, which is pretty good. We've been eating out and shopping a little too much, so we decided to go with Dave Ramsey's envelope plan. For all discretionary categories (dining out, personal spending, lunch, car washes, dry cleaning, hair-cuts, etc), we'll pull out the budgeted amount of cash at the beginning of each month, place it into labeled envelopes, and stick to it. No more credit cards, no more debit card, no more checks - for things like that.When the money's gone, we wait until the beginning of the next month and do without until then. I'll let you know how it works. I think it will help us with our New Year's Resolution of being better money managers.

What's your New Year's Resolution?