Times, they are a changin'

Good news to report- Matt got a new job! Wooohoo!!! We are really excited and it's an excellent opportunity for him, not to mention a great raise and benefits package. The transition is a bit bittersweet because he has been working for a very close family friend of ours, but we both feel it's the right thing for us right now. Aside from seeing more disposable income in our future, I'm really looking forward to the ability to save money again. For the last few months we haven't been able to save a dime as our income just covered our bills, and we also haven't been able to do many fun things because we didn't want to spend the money. We've been lucky that the only thing we really had to pull from savings for was to fix our air conditioner THREE times since Memorial Day...yes, we will quickly begin saving for a new unit as I'm confident the one we have isn't going to make it another summer. Ah, the joys of home ownership.

And, here comes the mom in me again, I'm looking forward to expanding our grocery budget so I can start buying organics again! I never buy regular milk, but when we were crunched I couldn't justify the price of organic produce even though I have very strong convictions about the benefits. Now I can go back to being the green hippie Matt thinks I am :)

We've also decided we're going to be moving in a few years as we're not thrilled with the direction our current schools are headed in. We could move just 5 minutes away and be in excellent schools, but we're also looking at moving closer into the city. I work in the middle of Atlanta and while I do get to work from home a few days a week, when I do drive in it's at least 45 minutes each way with traffic. Since Matt will be working out of the house with his new job but have the entire city of Atlanta for his territory it seems logical that we should be in a more central location. Our goal is to save as much money as we can so that we can put a good amount down on our next house, since at this point we can't count on making much money on our current one. We spent all day Saturday looking at homes and neighborhoods in the 'burbs where we currently are but didn't find anything we were in love with. Next we're going to look in the city which I'm super excited about. Granted, this is very premature, we just want to get an idea of what we want and how much it's going to cost us so we know what we're in for when the time comes!

Anyways, this is a pretty boring post, so here are a few new pictures of Madelyn for you to oooh and aaah over :) She laughed for the first time this weekend. I could have died it was so freakin cute.