I was near breakdown yesterday and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. However, I won't see the other side until next Tuesday. The worst is over, though, and it's all downhill from here or you could say it's all old hat. I wonder how many phrases I can use? I'll stop now.

In other news, I finally broke down and allowed the two oldest kids to purchase Heelys. It actually worked fairly well because I only spent $20 on each pair with Anna and Jeremy paying the balance on the rest. We finally found some reasonably priced Heelys and they were willing to spend their own money, so that is why I finally relented. Of course, Jeremy didn't have as much as he thought, so he is learning a lesson about debt. But he's working very hard to pay it off quickly.

I'm very proud of Anna because she's always been a spender. As soon as I would give her any money, she was ready to buy something. But for the past few months, she has done a great job of saving money. D and I've talked about buying the kids these banks that are divided into spending, saving and charity -- or something like that. But I don't know that we necessarily need to spend our own money like that. I think they kids are getting the idea so far. They even seem to listen when we talk about tithing. So hopefully they'll do a lot better with their finances than we have. We're not broke, but we could've made better choices over the years. And that's what you always want for your kids -- better than what you had and to make better choices than what you did.

One last note about the Heelys, poor Jack wanted a pair so bad, but his foot is too small. Plus, I don't think he's quite ready for them. I was trying to comfort him with thoughts of the birthday presents he'll receive soon when Jeremy tried to cheer him up by saying that maybe he'd get Heelys for his birthday. Yeah, that really helped.