Sunday already?

Another week has flown by....the calendar says that February is almost over! Wow! Time for a recap on the previous week and how I did in working on my 2012 goals:

1. Finances - I'm totally geeked this week! Lots of things to celebrate!!! We had $2 to spare on our budget for the week!! I calculated our State of Michigan tax liability for 2011 and found out that we only owe the State of Michigan $29. The reason we owe them any money is from the "Use Tax" -- purchases that we made via the Internet that didn't collect Michigan sales tax. On Thursday this week, we will pay off a credit card balance in full!!! Over $1000 in credit card debt reduction!! YEAH!!!

March is a multiple-birthdays month for our family. It will be a challenge to purchase birthday gifts and continue to stay within our discretionary budgets. Plus I plan to do some traveling in March. Grandbaby #5 is scheduled to arrive so I'll be taking a trip to Chicago to introduce her to Grandma Eubank. Can we minimize our weekly discretionary expenses, such as gas and groceries, so that these extra expenditures will not cause us to go over our budget? That is the challenge facing us!!!

2. Spiritual -- Ephesians 1 is complete. It's fun to think about how amazing God is and to reflect on His grace to me. I'm looking forward to another week of study in Ephesians as I work on Chapter 2. I didn't work on my memory verses at all last week. Here we are in the tail end of February, and I still need to learn the verses. Apparently, having them at the top edge of my computer monitor is not good enough to remind me to learn them. I'm going to have to move them to the middle of my screen so that I can't ignore them! Three days to go -- thank heavens for Leap Year in 2012! Otherwise, it'd be just two days to go!!!

3. Personal -- My writing is officially published! Both of the news stories that I have written as assignments for my Basic Reporting college course were published in last Friday's edition of the college's newspaper, The Echo. Unfortunately, the headline that the copy editor wrote for both articles was poorly done. On one headline, there was a misspelled word. On the other headline, the content of the headline was not addressed in the article at all!!! Speaking of writing, three more posts were added to the blog this week.

I've been questioning this week the value of continuing to pursue my bachelor's degree. At the rate I'm going, it will be several more years before I finish the degree. Should I bother continuing? What's the point? I'm 50 years old -- do I really think that I will change careers in my mid- to late-50's? Then, this morning, a friend asked me if I was done taking classes. I told her I still had years to go, and jokingly told her I was trying to be Olivet's oldest graduate. She laughed and then commented positively that it was a good goal. That was encouraging to me -- thanks, Lord, for her affirmation and encouragement.