Learning to Live with Hope

    So the title of this blog post suggests that I’m doing something a little different. Amy is still, and will always be, my inspiration for living life differently. I just made a decision to challenge myself by making small changes that may result in big results.     At the beginning of the year I made the usual New Years resolution, just like everyone else. And guess what? I failed within the week. Big surprise there, or not. I did keep the ideas fresh in my mind and continued to tell myself I would pursue them. Today I did it.     First I made a HUGE commitment to have a “No Spend” month. The author Ruth Soukup wrote several books on budgeting. I have owned one “Living Well, Spending Less” for years. The pages have barely been turned! Since I had yet another month of poor budget choices I decided ENOUGH ALREADY! So I’m doing it. Freeze on the frivolous spending. Only necessities. I’m hopeful this will put us in a position to payoff all debt and get ba...

       Wow, it's been 180 days since you left us Amy.  Its been 178 days since I've taken the time to write. I hate to admit it, but once all of the formalities of losing Amy were over I didn't make all of the changes I promised I would.  I went back to work, got overwhelmed, and let the daily items take over.  Ugh.       I didn't necessarily plan to pick TODAY as the day I would get back to writing.  I have been thinking about it for quite a while.  I did decide that instead of allowing the day to take over with my work to-do's and distractions that I would take the time to do it.  So here we are.       Last night I dedicated my time to tucking my kids into bed, praising them for an awesome job on their 1st grade program and gave them a few extra minutes of snuggles.  When I crawled into Macy's bed with her I knew something was up.  I asked her what we going on and at first she...