WoooHooo!!

We've done it! We're just over halfway to our goal for the house! 53.5% to be exact! We're very excited about this. We have both worked really hard at saving money for the house, and reaching over half of the goal before the middle of the year is, we feel, quite an accomplishment.

That's the good news.

The not-so-good news is that Kevin's job at the district will be reduced 60% in July. While it's not something we're thrilled with, we definitely feel it's something we can easily live with. Because we both work in public education, we know that there's always the chance that things like this can happen. It seems to be cyclical -- one year the state is doing extremely well, and the next they're talking budget crisis. You'd think that we'd find a way to strike a happy medium, but that never seems to be the case. Oh well - even with the cut, it's deemed 'temporary', so we know that, when the 'crisis' subsides, Kevin's job will return to normal. In the meantime, he's going to pick up games (he's an umpire in his spare time) here and there to fill in the gaps. In this respect, it's a good thing -- he'll have more time to do something he really loves and will be making money, too!

Even with this small setback, we feel confident that we will still be able to make our goal by year's end. We may have to be a bit more cautious in the spending arena, but that's okay with us -- we've got our eye on the end result...a home of our own!!