My first entry...

I will start out by telling you a little about myself, my husband and my family. I am 40 years old and I met my husband when I was 14. I fell in love instantly as most 14 year old girls do! My husband is Sam and he is 43. He was 17 when we started dating. He truly is the love of my life. We have 4 children but they are not all biologically his. When I was 19 we broke up and I met someone else. I was never really in love with the other person and I always loved Sam. We continued to keep in contact over the years and even spoke of marrying a couple of times after I divorced, but the timing was never right. Finally in 2005 we were able to reunite and soon marry. I have never been happier in my life and my children love him as their father.

I have a daughter who is 20, another 15, a son who will soon turn 13 this summer and another daughter who will turn 4 on Tuesday. We are truly blessed. But, we have had our fair share of problems in the almost 5 years since we have gotten married. The first happened on August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina. We both lost everything (6 ft of water in his house and mine was gone) and the insurance did not come through for us just like it didn't for most people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But we took out a loan and rebuilt his house and got married. Since we found out we were expecting a baby we decided to add another bedroom on. We did not have a chance to finish that addition and had never raised our insurance because we wanted to wait until the appraisal was completed after the addition. On April 26, 2007 our house burned down to the ground and we were about $85,000 under insured. We are still living in an unfinished home. It took a couple years for me to find a job. I was self employed and lost my business in Katrina. I finally found a job in November 2008. After 17 months working, my job came to an end. I have now found myself unemployed yet again for the past 4 months. My husband is supporting a family of 6 by himself. He is just a blue collar worker trying his best to make ends meet. I love this man more than I could ever put in words and my next post will be more about the tragedies and hard life my husband has had.

This is just a glimpse into our lives. We are happy. We try to pay our bills on time, but we live paycheck to paycheck. We have wonderful friends and a loving family. I just want to give my husband something to show him how much he means to me so this blog is just being created to try to give me ideas on how to save and earn money to surprise him with a really great vacation for our anniversary in February.