Chocolate Chip Cookies

So I made Monster Gluten, Dairy, Soy and every thing free Chocolate Chip Cookies. Look good don't they? I used Lori Bakes Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and because I didn't change a think, well I used egg replacer. I can not post the recipe out of respect for her. But if you go to Amazon.com you can get her book there. You can also get my cheater pans. YES, Dang it I cheated. I used muffin top pans. But hey look at the cookies. Also bought those from Amazon.com. I'm not a big fan for buying off the internet because we don't use Credit Cards, but they do take a check so I gave in. I had to try this bakeware it came highly recommened and I do love it.

Bakeware click here.

Lori Bakes book click here!

Putting it All Out There

OK I'm putting it all out there.

So for the last four years we have been in medical hell. That was an understatement. My husband has had four surgeries in four years. I have had three kids all three c-sections and we have recovered Ethan from Autism. In other words we have a LOT of medical bills. At the height of everything we were looking at 40,000 in medical debt. Nope you didn't read that wrong 40,000.

So when all this started we vowed to always pay the mortgage and everything else would have to wait. We will pay the house bills, but take the house bills and reduce them all we can. And we would take the medical and pay what we could when we could and that will just have to be that.

We got a loan from family for 20,000 of it I said a loan we still owe on but later. We then figured I have to go back to work. Not what I wanted to do pregnant with my third, but it has to be done. I put out applications all over town. And not one phone call. After having Cole I was back out there putting in more applications all over town. I would sit at night and email my resume and NOTHING. I probably applied to over 100 jobs, full or part time doing this or doing that. I didn't care as we needed money. So two months after Cole was born it was decided I would make my own job and just do something I had wanted to do anyway. Real Estate.

I googled how to get my license. I found a Real Estate office that would take me on. So I was set. And with my baby being four months I went to work on my oldest sons birthday.

Dang Real Estate is hard, no one will tell you that. You see it as being easy and believe you me it is not.

But I worked my tail and I did have a good first year. My second year was not so great, but I did change companies as I saw one going down. Although my third year was good. Can't complain. I do need to double my sales for me through to keep me going.

But as I work and juggle and try and make time for it all. We are saving and paying off the medical debt. We took all of last year and every cent we had went towards something. Even through we did all that work we only killed 13,000 in medical debt and our debt load grow by 3,000. Not bad for one year through. So when I sat down in Jan. to do taxes we still had about 10,000 to go in medical debt. Not bad, one bit I will tell ya. Very Do-able.

At the same time I have been having our credit report pulled every few months and I tackle that. I write letters asking for the paid off debt to be taken off. I take about 5-6 lines and call the companies and get them paid. In about six months we have up-ed our credit score nearly 100 points. Now with me "being" in the field I know medical debt should not have an impact on your credit report. I know that is what lenders say. But that is Bull Donkey Doo Doo. Medical debt does impact your credit score. It brings it down so fast and it won't let it breath. We are making a dent but still it's not enough and it's not fast enough for me.

So we are 12 points away (sad right) from re-fi-ing our mortgage to pull out what we need to pay down the rest of the debt. We will then work non stop on our credit report paying off the rest of it. Asking them to remove themselves and cleaning things up. We will only stop when it is a perfect credit report.

Once this goes through we will have one debt our house. After we re-fi hubby and I will sit down and figure out how to pay our house off in 5 years or less. Our goal is to be totally debt free. That would free us up to start saving for retirement.

Last year we went to a cash only system, if we didn't have cash we didn't buy it. We don't have credit cards, but we were writing checks that the bank would cover and the amount of bank fees we had to pay were just plain silly. So cash only. coupons, I google for coupons and print them right before going shopping. But still it's hard. Hubby makes so little a week and sales are not the greatest right now. I am juggling a ton of clients. But they all have time and reasons for not buying right this second. Hoping for a good spring.

But this years goal is to bring up our score enough to re-fi our house and pull out enough to pay off all medical debt. We should know March on this.

Sit down and make out a game plan for the year on how to pay down the house. We want to be house free soon.

Make no more medical debt. (we have crappy insurance)

Be OK with life. I just want to pay the house, pay the house bills and be able to feed my kids.

And before anybody asks. We have been to the state many times asking for help with our medical debt. According to them we have great medical insurance. They won't help in any other ways either. Although if I quit they are more then happy to help. It's like they do all they can to keep you down? Never a hand up?

Updated Goat House

We had Sun today, nearly forgot what that was? So we went out and worked a bit on the goat house. We got one side up, this is the side we got up. We are piecing together wood. So far we have spent a whopping 16 bucks on this house. We have another 2 bucks to go.

This is one side of the house. Poor thing.

This is a front view we got all the walls put up. This will be the front of the house.

This is a side view. We have two doors and one window. I know it looks like we have 6 windows. And a sky light/window. We will get the rest of the siding up as we have time. We so lack on time.

But as we are out working the goats were helping. Eating hammers and nail bags and everything. I know they can't wait. When this house is done we will tear down 1-2 of the current pens. As they have seen better days.