I saw this about a year ago and it just wound back up in my email box again. It makes me laugh every single time I see it. If you haven’t seen it, that is ONE BRAVE bunny!! hehehe

Oh and if you are looking for my SATURDAY PHOTO HUNTERS - skip the post after this one and its right below that one! Have a great Saturday!

I am sure you are thinking ‘how so?’. Well, my frugal little self has figured out what a difference owning rather than renting saves!!

Obviously mortgages can be a lot of money every month, but putting your money towards something you own rather than rent, is oh so much wiser. You get nothing back for that rent money in the end. Trust me, I was there for years and years and years. At the end, you have nothing to show for it. All that money down the drains, wasted on a place to live when it could have been spent on a beautiful home for your family.

There are so many different options available to first time buyers, buyers with poor credit and even people who already own a home. It doesn’t seem budget friendly to me at all, to waste money every month on rent. Instead, put that money into a mortgage payment and own what you pay for instead.

In addition to the many valuable programs and offers available for various types of potential or current homeowners, there is also new programs that offer lower interest rates, a newer program known as a Tracker Mortgage, and several others. These programs are designed to help homeowners save money, invest wisely and not go house poor which so many people do.

My advice for you my friend, is to be sure that if you do get a house with a mortgage, you are sure to pay it on time each month. There is nothing worse than having THAT on your credit when you go to refinance or do other things. And the last thing you want is a foreclosure on your record. Do everything you can to keep that house payment on time, it will make such a difference when you are ready to move, upgrade, sell, etc.

This was a fun one to find a photo for. I got the entire family involved and we voted on our favorite pictures and why. (that was cool!) We wound up deciding on four pictures because they tell a story.

Here was our favorites for the theme of High, and why.

This is the stairway leading to the top of Cahokia Mounds. We were just out driving around one day and suddenly decided to attempt the big climb. It’s a blast and a huge rush when you reach the top. This is about halfway up!

When we got to the top, the view was absolutely breathtaking. Even the kids enjoyed it!!

I loved that I was able to zoom in and get this photograph of ‘home’. You can see it from the photograph above, how truly far it was from where we were standing. Yeah, good zoom lens!

My precious kiddos at the top! Just before we made the long trek back down (which was easier, but not by much!)

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It sucks because for a long time now, there have only been one or two places to go on the Internet to look for a comprehensive list of job openings. Jobs are getting harder and harder to find, no matter how qualified you are. In fact, unemployment rates are extremely high right now, and our economy pretty much sucks.

Enter a new website known as realmatch. It is awesome. They have designed features to search for skills and for prospective employers to find them based on this. Job seekers can input enough information to truly define themselves making it easier for companies to find them, and for them to seek out jobs. Extremely large companies have gone from using search engine keywords and other job sites to using Realmatch. WAY better in my opinion. I loved it. I have used another EXTREMELY popular job seeking website, and got nowhere. However, the features found at Realmatch are outstanding. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008 (yeah that’s today!), Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

It is one hour of your time, to learn more, visit Google’s page about it at: Earth Hour

Do you ever have trouble embeddding a Youtube video? I am having a heck of a time embedding the video in the post below. Any ideas? I am guessing its the video itself that is the problem, but I cannot make it stay up “in” the post, and it keeps going down to the bottom of the page because of size, yet if I change the size, it only changes the size of the item. UGH! I’m so annoyed. I have no idea how to fix it. If you have a suggestion, let me know.

EDIT: Never mind. I took out most of their code, and just used the “embed” function. MUCH better!!

The stickman videos that help advertise Kettering University are so funny. They are incredibly creative and were obviously created by some very talented people.

I think my favorite one is this one, but it was truly hard to pick a favorite (in fact there are TWO that are my favorites), because they are all honestly very funny, and creative.

I love that they are targeting the true audience they are interested in. No boring college commercials with pretty pictures of the campus, people looking engrossed in studying and to be completely honest, boring pictures and music. This is far more fun to get these kids interested in college! My kids thought the videos were fantastic and they didn’t get bored watching them at all.

There are a few others that are totally worth taking a look. Plus if you have a college bound kiddo, be sure and have them with you, because they are awesome. Kettering University is awesome anyway.

It is important to mention that Kettering isn’t all about silly comedy videos to encourage enrollment. The US News and World Report has ranked Kettering University as “the #1 University in the nation for Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering” in its annual “America’s Best Colleges Guide for 2008″. Read about the US News Best Colleges, and learn about how great Kettering is. It is pretty incredible that they received this rank and gives me a lot of confidence in this educational institution.

There is a wide variety of course of study at Kettering University, from Business Management to several different types of Engineering, example: mechanical engineering, there is truly something for everyone.

In this day and age, a good education is the key to a good future. Start planning now and check out Kettering University.

I do. We probably all do. What is a system abuser? Typically this is someone who works the system in their favor to get anything they can for free, with no work, no desire to work or get help for themselves and become better people.

Before anyone gets offended, I am quite aware that there are people who truly need this help, who truly deserve this help, and those that are being honest about it.

However, there are plenty that are not. I know a family that is totally system abusers, in every way they can possibly be. They recently went through a court case, instigated by them, and during the court case, the question was posed to the legal team, “How much can we get from them?”. Was it odd about it, is that the case had nothing at all to do with money. Had nothing at all to do with the parents, it was actually in place because of something that had to do with the kids. Yet, the woman wanted to know what kind of money she could milk out of the people. Unbelievable. I am happy to report that the outcome of the case was in favor of the people that deserved it, the people that do not system abuse. The people that pay their bills on time, that make sure their mortgage payment is made on time, that parent to the best of their ability and don’t rely on other children to take care of the kids, etc. You get my point. Thankfully it was a good thing, and no money was had by anyone. It wasn’t about money anyway.

System abusers make me so incredibly ill. You might be interested in reading this discussion on system abusers. I found the various opinions quite interesting, and would have loved to have taken part in it. LOL I have plenty to say, but I will end for now. Food for thought anyone?

Oh my sweet friends, I have obviously been well missed, because I keep getting all these crazy emails from you. Thank you. I didn’t mean to blow off blogging or anything, but life got a little out of control for a few days but it is SO back to normal, and all I can say is God is Good.

For anyone that reads this that knows what my family has been going through, thank you so much for your prayers and support. We are doing great. God works in wondrous ways.

Sorry to be so cryptic to those that don’t know, but it is nothing I feel as if talking about anymore. I do not wish to air my problems on a blog for the world to read, so all I can say, is that remember that God is always there for us in our time of need. My family is doing awesome, we are so happy and life couldn’t be better.

I’ll be around a lot more!!