Finances in the family

When it comes to finances in the family, so far kinsy has been taking care of that.  I understand and know how to do it and pay the bills and things but she just kind of took the reigns on that part which is perfectly fine for me.  But we are working on creating a budget for ourselves that will work.  Also when it comes to getting rid of debt me and kinsy are using the method that Marvin J. Ashton provided in his pamphlet "One for the Money."  He basically says that when you pay off one debt use that payment to go towards another debt and it snowballs until you have paid off all of your debts.  By doing this me and kinsy should be debt free in a few years. This is excluding school loans for now haha.  But when it comes to the finances, I am just really worried about having kids because we already have to save up to be poor and when that kid comes we will have to save up just to be broke...and that is really poor.  People always come back with you must have faith, but it is still very scary.  So far we are learning how to really manage our money instead of it managing us but sometimes unexpected expenses come and when your in college it is hard to have a rainy day fund.  But we are trying and having faith and that is the main thing.  But honestly getting and staying out of debt is probably one of the best pieces of advice anyone could give, and that is exactly how we will live for the rest of our lives.

Dealing with Conflict and Problems

One of the things that really hit me hard this week in class was when we talked about how to handle and deal with problems.  How do we come up with different solutions in our families? How do we deal with difficult choices? How are our children involved? These questions are ones that I never really contemplated, I just figured i would deal with them when the time came but when we actually discussed them in class I really began to think about how me and my wife would do it.  Brother Williams discussed in class how the first presidency and quorum of the 12 work through their solutions, and that is by first expressing love for everyone admiration and things like that, next they pray to invite the spirit and then they discuss until the solution reached is one that all can agree on and one that they believe is in accordance with the workings of the lord, which i believe means that the spirit has led and guided the entire discussion until they finally realize what the will of the Lord is.  They do this same process every single Thursday.  I might have skipped a couple of steps but i think i hit all the major arteries.  I have thought about this process and truly it might be a little weird doing it this way, cause I'm not used to it.  But i truly believe that by following this process that families, friends, associates, and any other kind of relationship can work through the problems it has and find a solution that will be beneficial not only to them but will be the will of the lord, and that is the most important part of the entire equation.  Do not leave the lord out of your discussions.

Dealing with Teen problems

In this day and age its really hard to keep you family members away from the horrible things of the world and in the past we my family had a bit of a family crisis that we had to deal with and its really an eye opener to the harsh world.  Sometimes you really get caught in a bubble safety and its really scary to get a wake up call.  I love my family with all of my heart and if anything ever happened to any of them that i could control and could have prevented my life would have been destroyed.  I'm so grateful to have a loving wife and family that will always be there for me no matter what.   This class has been one of the biggest helps and one of the greatest blessings.  Truly this class has helped me get through some family problems and opened my eyes to why some other problems actually occur, i just hope that when the time comes when i have children that i will be able to recall the information that i have learned and help my family get from this world to exaltation.

Babies!!!

Ok this week was a little bit tough for me and my wife because she got her wisdom teeth pulled and like a good husband i have been waiting on her every need...wait i already do that hahah i freakin love my wife.  Anyway, but we have been talking about having kids and to tell ya the truth the idea scares the crap out of both of us but at the same time it gets us both really excited.  I went over the PowerPoint about avoiding the baby blues and the most important thing that i saw was some of the things that you need to plan together as a couple in order to have an increase in marital satisfaction instead of a decrease.  Me and my wife have already been through alot even though we have not been married very long, only 5 months, but it feels like we have already gone through like 6 years worth of hardships and trials.  These things have made both of us stronger and it makes me very hopeful for when we have children.  The biggest thing right now is to rely on the lord and not say, oh well we don't have enough money to have a kid, but to say we want to have kids and if the lord wants us to have kids now we will trust in him and have them and understand that if we do all we can he will provide the way for us.

Missatribution of arousal

Yep that's what we talked about in class today at least that had the most profound impact on me.  The reason being is that identify things that could potentially skew your real feelings is a valuable piece of information for a parent to have.  When we talked about this I automatically thought about the future teenagers that i will have and how this information could really help them stay away from situations or even people that could potentially hurt them.  It even helped me evaluate my own feelings towards my wife.  Now don't get me wrong I love my wife deeper than feasibly possible but it just helped me to really acknowledge how i can continue to develop even stronger and stronger feelings for her.  This lesson was an awesome one and one that will bring added value to my life and the life of anybody that i am responsible for, namely my kids.

Same Gender Attraction

The lesson that impressed me most had to have come from today.  We talked about same gender attraction and before this discussion I had always told myself that if one of my brothers ever said he was gay I would beat it out of him. But now I understand a bit better why alot of people say "i was born this way" and things like that.  I still hate the sin but am better able to love the sinner at this point in time.  The thing that really peeves me off is just the fact about prop 8 being overturned which is completely unconstitutional but that's politics and i wont get into that.  Truly an enlightening lesson today

Culture

So in class we talked about culture allot and how that effects or families and the relationships within them and the relationships that we have with future spouses an what not.  I just never thought about how much my family "culture:" effects the entire world around me, and not for the worse or anything, for the better.  My family culture has shaped me into the person that I am today and has given me a beautiful wife...ok that was thanks to the lord and allot of sympathy from her haha.  But anyway the culture in my family is very unique because we are very outspokenn and don't take anyone's crap and we will put you in your place if you are out of it... catchin my drift. Yep but we can also be the most fun loving warm and inviting family ever as long as you don't mes with another member of the family.