Good morning, everyone!   Hope everyone is having a good work week, as you transition back from the long weekend.  It’s pretty easy for me to transition back, since I’m not working right now!   Ah, the joys of working for a school district!

Birthdays

I told you yesterday that Brandon and I were taking his parents out for ice cream last night to celebrate his mom’s birthday.  And that’s exactly what we did!

After Brandon got home from work, he quickly changed and we drove to his parents’ house in Lima, which is about 20 minutes from our home.  But before we took off, Brandon made sure to test one of the cupcakes I made for his mom… you know, just to be sure they were safe.

And I’m happy to report that he gave them two thumbs up!  Yay for another successful day in the kitchen!!

Brandon’s mom seemed pleasantly surprised by her cupcakes and card.  Her real birthday celebration is going to be later this month, when Brandon’s brother and his family are in town, so I don’t think she was expecting anything last night.  So I’m glad that we could surprise her!

After chatting for a few minutes, we hopped back in the car to head over to “The Creamery” in Delphos.  Delphos is a super small town where Brandon’s mom grew up.  And it boasts the best ice cream in the area!

This place really is awesome.  Their prices are extremely reasonable cheap…

…and their portions are huge.

this is a SMALL sundae

I got a sundae with vanilla ice cream, caramel, marshmallow cream, and Oreo crumbles.  It was incredible.

all gone.

And yep, I ate the whole thing.

The Creamery is also neat because everybody seems to know everybody else in Delphos.  So Brandon’s parents kept running in to people they knew.

howdy!

This was also the first time that we’ve hung out with Brandon’s parents since I started writing the blog, so they got a kick out of my picture-taking obsession.

He loves when I take pictures while he's eating

All in all, it was a very nice evening.

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Blogs

Now it’s Wednesday morning and I have a whole list of things that I want to get accomplished today.  But quite honestly, I want to ignore that list and just figure out why I’m currently having issues commenting on other blogs.  I just don’t get it, and it’s driving me a little bonkers.

my "stop the madness" face works in this situation, too!

For those who don’t blog, just a quick explanation.  I’ve quickly learned that blogging is really a community of people who support each other and each other’s blogs.  So throughout my day, I will frequently read other girls’ blogs who write about similar things and make comments on them.  And in turn, many of those bloggers visit my site and comment.  It’s just a nice support system, in my opinion.  And although I’m very new to the blogging thing, I’m already enjoying that sense of “community” out in blogging-land.

So the fact that I suddenly can’t comment on other blogs is frustrating.  But many thanks to the bloggers who are still checking out my site.  According to my “stats,” I had over 500 views on my blog yesterday!  That might not seem like much to some people, but it’s exciting to me, since I just started last week.  So thank you all so much for continuing to support me… I REALLY appreciate it!!

Budgets

One of the things I need to do today is balance our checkbook and put all of our receipts from our Chicago trip in to our budget.

I’m a bit of a nerd and I actually love budgeting.  I enjoy keeping track of our day to day spending and paying our bills.  And I get super excited when I see that we have extra money that can go in our savings that month.

I learned about budgets and other financial tools when I took a class at my church a few years ago called “Financial Peace University” by Dave Ramsey.  I really learned a lot and took lots of tips with me.  I would recommend the study to anyone who is interested in learning more about personal finances!

So here’s my question for you…

Do you have a specific monthly budget that you use?  Or are you more “go with the flow?”

And one more question (completely un-related )…

What’s your favorite type of ice cream?