I have a testimony of DI!

I can't believe how long it has been since I have updated my blog. You would think that after such a lapse in time I would have something seemingly more exciting to update you all on. Well for me, this is the most blog worthy event of my life the past few weeks.

I assume anyone who reads this has either been in this situation, or soon will be. Brent and I have found ourselves in a bit of a financial pinch the last little while...since...oh...let's see...oh, wait, we have been in a financial pinch since the birth of our first baby 5 1/2 years ago. So anyway, we are poor. Why you ask? Aren't we out of school, and Brent has an awesome job, and he was just made partner this year? That is exactly what we keep asking ourselves. Then we remember that between the government, the church, ALL of our student loans, our car, our home, Dr. bills, and a few absolutely necessary expenses (like water, electricity, garbage, etc.) we have no money left for entertainment or enjoyment. This month as it has been getting warmer we realized that it is time for some new clothes for Will. I also was reminded that the end of the summer last year I cleaned out my closest and finally got rid of any thing I have owned since High School. Believe it or not that pretty much wiped out all but a few of my summer clothes. Brent also ripped through 2 of his suits in the last couple of months and he is now in need of 2 new suits for work.

Feeling a bit excited about the idea of going and buying a few new things for myself and Will I went through the closets, storage room, and all dresser drawers figuring out exactly what our needs were. I came up with my list. I was very careful not to add my "wants" to the list, only "needs". After making my list I got an ad from JCPenny announcing their semi-annual "Buy one, get one $0.88 sale". I was so excited. Now I could go get what we needed, and get a "sweet deal".

Later that afternoon Brent called and informed me that his tire was flat on his car. We took it in to get it patched up and they told us he had to get new tires... he had been putting it off for a year and all 4 of his tires were completely bald. So we got new tires, 4 of them, all brand new tires on his old car, not cheap :( Oh, and did I mention that he had to get his car fixed the week before because it wouldn't start. So there was all of our extra money and some. Why does it always happen that way. Just when you think you are so totally broke, the most random, expensive, repairs-bills-replacements pop up, and then you give up all hope and go into more debt. Does it ever end?

Anyway, back to our clothing needs. I hit the Penny's sale after having cut my "needs" list in half and walked away having spent $80. How many items did I get for $80? only 6. For some of you, that might be amazing, but I was raised thinking, and still do, that a pair of jeans should cost $10 and a shirt $5. When it comes to kids clothing a pair of shorts should not cost $15 ON SALE! Kids clothes should all cost under $5. I expect to replace my wardrobe for around $100. Maybe that is why I hate shopping so much, because I am always so mad at how much everything cost. Does anyone else shop like me? You walk into a store and you don't even look an item of clothing, or try it on, you just walk around checking price tags and once you find one that matches what you were thinking of spending you check out. Then a few days later you realize what an ugly, misshapen, over sized, waste of money that purchase was. Needless to say, I have never been the best-dressed mom on the block.

After a few hours at the mall and having spent more money that I had budgeted, and not gotten even close to what it was we needed I was very frustrated. So I got the bright idea to check out DI. I have never been a successful DI shopper, probably because I can't stand to be in there for more than about 4 minutes, but I am pretty sure the Lord opened up the windows of heaven for me yesterday in the form of DI. I walked in and immediately found Will 3 pair of shorts for $5-total. I decided to give the women's section a shot and found myself 2 very cute, very nice pair of jeans for $4-each. Then I wandered around for a while feeling so excited about the fact that I just got our absolute necessities for $9 I wanted to see what other great deals I could find. I came across 2 little boys baseball gloves for $3. That is wonderful because the boys are starting baseball in the summer and we just recently returned some previously purchased baseball gloves from Target because we felt like they were too expensive. Then I decided to check out the kids books. This was just a big fat bonus for me. I spent an hour looking through all of the kids books and found so many good ones. It was like a school teacher had just dropped off her collection and I was there to pick it all up. I found close to 60 books that I wanted to buy, but I knew I shouldn't spend a lot on books even though they were all only $0.25-$0.50 each. So I put half of them back. I left DI having spent only $30. Half of that was on books!

Today we took a trip back to Pennys to return all of our "sweet sale" merchandise.

And so I end with this, I would like to bear my testimony, I know that DI is true!