Sorry I haven't been on for a long time. Life has gotten so busy. My husband and I decided to pull our kids out of public so that I can homeschool them. We have been doing homeschool for about a month now and have finally figured out our schedule.

    About 2 weeks before I started homeschooling, I started as a product tester. Something that I have always wanted to do. Since I am a stay at home mom, I am always trying to help out anyway that I can. I do couponing, surveys and now product testing. These few things have helped me stretch our budget further.

    Its nice that we have plenty of food on our table, bills paid, money going into our savings and some extra cash to spend, plus now we got products of things we enjoy using. I will post about how I got into product testing tomorrow. I do surveys through Pineconeresearch.com. They pay you $3 a survey. It might not be much but it adds up. I had just cash out a $75 check and in 2 weeks I already have $30 waiting to cash out. Some weeks are better than others but $3 for about 5 minutes of your time is great. They also sometimes send you products to test which means you get another survey to do after testing.

    I got into couponing a few years ago after moving to Georgia. My neighbors and I went to a class to learn. After I had tried getting into couponing by myself years before, the class showed me that I was over thinking stuff too hard. The gentleman that taught the class introduced me to the website Southernsavers.com. This lady does most of the leg work for you and shows you most of the deals going on each week. Her site works for most of the southeast states. I personally don't buy newspapers. I mainly use coupons printed from offline.

      Life is always changing but I have my family here to support. So take one day at a time and live it.

I believe things happen for reasons

Life is a very complex thing. We never no where we are going or how we are going to get there. But I do believe the way we get there makes us who we are. Has something happened in your life that you don't understand or how life will ever be the same again?

Here is part of my story. After being married for almost 2 years, my husband decided to flip our lives upside down by joining the military. Neither one of us lived more than an hour from our parents in our lives. We got orders and had to move on the other side of the country for our first duty station. After living there for a year, we found out why we were there. Our unborn son was diagnosed with multiple heart diseases. The hospital, where they treated my son for the first 3 years of his life, was amazing. Even though they hadn't seen anyone like him before, they never had us guessing if they could handle his care or not. I truely believe we needed to be there.

Even though I wish my son didn't have his medical condition, it has taught me so much. The little things in life are taken for granted. I remember how wonderful it was the day my son started eating out of a bottle. The training and practice he had to do just to be able to feed on his own. How many people take that for granted? It has taught me patience and perseverance. My son was almost one when he learned to sit up on his own. Until he learned that he was unable to eat semi-solid food without choking on it. Don't get me wrong it has placed a lot of fear into my heart, but his desire for life and the love he has makes everything worth it.