"real" post

ok, so now that i did my mandatory book review, i feel compelled to at least come up w/ some sort of a real post. whew. where to start....things continue to seem to run in high gear around here. which is good but it's sorta making me tired right now. things at church are going pretty good - phil's youth group continues to see lots of new kids, which is awesome. next weekend is a ladies retreat that i have nearly single-handedly thrown together - i'm excited to see how it goes, there are going to be around 25 women. (by the way, if you feel so led, i would appreciate prayers for that!)

we are in the middle of dave ramsey's "financial peace university" which is a 13 wk. course on, you guessed it, finances! he is really good - i highly recommend any of his books, etc. we feel like we are getting a better handle on things and learning a lot - and thankfully, learning that we are in a lot better position than many people. i am so thankful that we have not let credit cards rule our life! anyway, along those lines we were extremely blessed this week as we got our taxes done and due to various factors (one being the new adoption refund - praise Jesus!) we are getting a large chunk of change and will be able to finish off our 6 month emergency fund as well as upgrade my car using cash! i can honestly say that getting our budget under control has already strengthened our marriage and taken a lot of anxiety/stress away from me.

you see, i don't think i have issues trusting God to provide for us, yet i still let myself get caught up and worried day in - day out about all the money stuff. it's really silly. but now that we are doing things differently (we are actually using the cash/envelope system for a few of our budget categories) i know exactly where we're at and where the money is going. it is really freeing. in our early years of marriage we were better about this, but in the last several i think we just got a little lazy....along w/ having some major stuff happen in lives, like, oh i don't know, adopting a couple kids, buying a house, getting a new job!

well, i guess that's about all for now - just thought i'd let ya know that the benners are doing pretty well. life is good, God is good - all the time. :) maybe i'll add a few pics of those crazy little people who live w/ us.

i think ari will take after her papa w/ the artistic flair!
i am glad he thought being stuck in the box was so funny so that i could take the pic!