Happy New Year!

Our holidays came and went, it seems like we were planning and shopping just the other day and now it's gone. We just stuck around here, which was nice, I had no desire to travel, although I would have loved to see all of our family.
The new year is here, with all the hopes and desires that comes with it. I'm working on being more happy with myself, which includes changing my body. I'm kicking up the amount of time I'm at the gym, and trying to be more careful of what I eat. I figured if it was out here in blog world and people knew I was going to try harder to do better, it might be easier to achieve. I also want to try new recipes. Today I made homemade bagels, which turned out ok, the kids liked them, we'll see what the hubby thinks. There was no added fat like oil, shortening, or butter, which is great and I used half regular flour and half fresh ground wheat flour. Another one I've been wanting to try is making my own yogurt in the crock pot, so hopefully we'll try that in the next few month. For the last 5 months I have been couponing, and I enjoy it and want to keep it up. I went to a free class about 6 months ago and learned an easier way to do it than I have ever seen, and have started getting newspaper and going full force. My food storage is building while getting great deal and feeding my family. I want to keep on being frugal and build my food storage this year. To help me stay on my budget I've started just using cash at the grocery store, which requires more planning but I should be doing that anyway. I feed my family of 5 on $200 month, which makes me do a lot more meal planning and plan meals based on what's on sale and what I have, for the most part. So hopefully with keeping this up we can eliminate our debt more quickly.
With the new year brings all of us getting a year older. I can't believe my "baby" (Stir Fry) is going to be 7, I can't really be old enough to have a 7 year old can I? He loves school and does well in all the subjects, learning seems to come easy for him, I just hope it stays that way and he continues to enjoy learning. By the way he gets braces this month, is that crazy or what!!!!! My little Baluga will be 5 this year and I'll be registering her for kindergarten in the next few months. She is learning to read and seems to be really good at it. It's funny the things we learn after the first one, I'm sure we could have challenged Stir Fry more, but I don't think we knew we could. I'm glad we moved so Baluga could be at a better preschool, I didn't know I wasn't impressed with the last one until we went to this one and she challenges the kids a lot more. Speedy is still keeping up to his name and keeps me on my toes. He is still a very happy kid, but when he is upset he is upset, but luckily he is more happy then upset.
The hubby is still liking his job that he switched to in the summer. We are very happy with the change and glad to be where we are. We have learned a lot of lessons during the last 7 years with his owning his own company, which we will never forget, which has helped us and will continue to help us.
I hope this new year treats you well and you treat it well return. May we all work hard to achieve our goals!