many of you know that we spent this past winter in Costa Rica with Mr. D’s familia. you may or may not know that the main reason we had such a difficult time deciding whether or not to do that was because we were pretty certain it would mean giving up a steady income. we’d been living off of a very small income for about a year and a half at that point, but at least it was something.

we didn’t have any clear feelings of what we should do, but we finally decided to go at almost the last possible minute because we believed that it would be better for our family than staying. we did come back feeling like it was the right decision, but a very large part of us just wanted to stay there…

now that we’ve been back for a couple of months, we still kind of wish that. we are very open to doing almost anything, and that feels really great, but of course it is still scary.

we’ve never really bought snacky foods, but since having no real steady income, here are a few other things we’ve stopped buying:

brown rice tortillas – now we just make corn tortillas from scratch

ice cream – we just randomly found some quite old ice cream in our freezer, you know all freezer burned and whatnot? realized we probably don’t care too much because it’s been so long since we’ve had any. minus the odd birthday party here and there.

Aldi’s $1.99 cardboard pizzas – as we so fondly like to call them. we used to eat that for about 2 meals a month.

blueberries/strawberries – used to get them from our buying club, the natural kind without pesticides, you know. now we just eat pineapple from a can

paper towels – we hate dishrags with a passion, but, you know, oh well.

bodywash – the good-for-you kind, now we buy bars of soap

our favorite also good-for-you shampoo – now we get this

the other thing is that we’ve stopped spending any money on our monthaversary date or for things like Mother’s/Father’s day. we’ve also stopped driving pretty much anywhere – I mean, only as we have to.

we just paid our yearly home insurance and 6 months of car insurance yesterday. then we also had to buy a replacement water heater because the current one has been leaking for awhile and isn’t repairable. thank you, God, we were able to get a much better deal on ebay, but still, frankly, I don’t even want to look at our bank account.

we know we’re in a time of transition, and we know it’s good for us. we’re certainly interested to see what God has for us in the next year, but it’s definitely a day by day matter of choosing to trust.