Meet the parents

So this blog might come as a shock to some of you. I wanted to write about a topic that is hot in our house right now and that is "Meeting the parents." Now, Anthony met my mom, dad, and siblings long ago when we were dating for about a year. That is pretty normal considering my family is about 2,500 miles away from us. I met Anthony's mom and brothers in Novebmer of 2006 just 5 months into us dating..however..I have never met Anthony's dad.

To say that Anthony and his dad have issues would be an understatement. They haven't spoken consistently for years and it seems they are both a bit stubborn about it. I have wanted to meet Alford (Anthony's dad) for the whole duration of our dating/married life. Finally that is going to happen. Next Friday we are going to have dinner up in North Hollywood with his dad and stepmom Kaye. I am really looking forward/feeling awkward about meeting his father. In one way I am so excited to finally put the pieces together and meet the entire DNA that is my husband. The other part of me is really feeling awkward since me and this man already share a last name and he has never seen my face.

We have spoken on the phone twice and it was very brief but overall he has been very pleasant and kind to me and has been really pressing to meet me. I am feeling a bit nervous because I know that Anthony has unresolved issues with him and he with Anthony so therefore there might be a little stickiness in the situation. I am just hoping for a really nice dinner with his dad and step mom and hopefully there will be some fences mended in the mean time. I am looking forward to finally having a father in law. Anthony's mom is married and her husband is really nice to me as well so I have sort of had a Father in Law all along but there is no substitute for meeting the man who gave my husband his beautiful smile and sparkly brown eyes. Anthony is an exact replica of his dad (I have seen pictures) and I am really excited to see them together.

This is the next big piece of news for the Lewis family and it seems like it's so long overdue. I'll keep the blog posted on how it goes and maybe I'll post a picture of the twins (Anthony and his dad) too so you can see what I mean! Keep your fingers crossed, pray for us, etc... that it all goes well and isn't too awkward.

--E&A--

Keep us in your prayers

I just wanted to write on the blog and ask that those of you who have a prayer life...say a few prayers for Anthony and I as we approach Jamie's due date. Our first little one would have been due February 15th and it is really a tender subject right now. We are working through it but it is especially hard as we would be meeting our sweet baby and now we are just empty. I thank you all for your support through this struggle and just ask for your prayers in these next few weeks.

Thanks,

E&A

Fixing our car and getting out of storage!

So the last time I wrote getting rid of the storage unit was an idea. It has now become a success. Last weekend Anthony and I rented a U-Haul truck for the day and emptied out the storage unit within a few hours. We brought a number of things to our apartment (which is now a different project altogether) and took some of the bigger items that aren't used normally to his mother's garage. I am so grateful that she let us store that stuff there because to be honest, we are running out of room.




Another cool thing that happened with this shift in money-saving is that Anthony and I fixed my car this last weekend by ourselves. My car has been acting kind of crazy for a few months and we knew it needed routine things like an oil change, new windshield wipers, and a few light bulbs and things but something more serious was going on with the car. I feared that it was the car slowly dying since I have had it 10 years in May (I bought it new) and it has over 170,000 miles. Well it turns out it was nothing serious..it just needed new spark plugs and wires. I learned how to install new spark plugs and wires on E-how.com
and Anthony and I did it with success and now the car is running perfectly.

Let me just take a few minutes to absolutely praise my little Cavalier. I bought it on May 25,2000 and it was brand new. I put all but 8 miles on my car. I drove it off the lot with 8 miles on it and it was mine after that. I have done all of the routine maintenance on time on the car and all I have ever replaced on the car came from normal wear and tear. It has been a gem to me over the years and continues to be even in its twilight years! :)

Anyway, the car is fixed and we feel great about ourselves. We checked into what money we saved by doing this simple repair ourselves and found that we would have paid our normal mechanic about $300 to replace the plugs and wires including parts and labor. We did it for about $30 total. It is crazy to me that it made that much difference.

Another thing that we did this week was check out a new grocery store that I heard about called The Grocery Outlet It is a lower cost grocery store that sells overstock of name brand items for 40%-60% off of regular store prices. We ended up supplying our house for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner and household items for 1 month for the bargain price of $140.00. I mean really??? That is crazy.

God has really been helping us figure all of this out and I am actually having fun learning how to be more frugal and a better steward of what he has trusted me with. The next goal is to get that cable/internet bill down and start paying significantly on the debt. Wish us luck!

Slimming it down

For once this post is not about losing weight in the Lewis Family. Today Anthony and I had a "family meeting" of sorts and came to the conclusion that we have to really work on our financial health this year. When I went into my last year of Graduate School Anthony decided that he would ask me to stop working and focus on school and he would take care of the bills. That was all well and good except that we didn't make any changes to our spending. We kept spending the same amount and we quickly got into debt. We used Credit cards when we couldn't afford things, were late on our bills, got behind and now we are just in a really bad place.

We both knew it was time to stop doing the things that we had before and start being financially mature. The first steps we took were to stop spending money on things like dining out and starbucks. We have been pretty good about this for the past several months. We still were hesistant to cut out any more of our lives as we were very selfish. Now we have decided that we need to cut down our monthly expenses considerably and start paying on debt more seriously. It has been hard since my caseload is taking a while to build and since we only have one car working, a full time job for me is hard to do.

Today I started this process by immediately cutting down our cell phone plan by $100 per month. This alone will save us $1200 this year. That is amazing. The second thing I did was to cut down our netflix account. I got that bill lowered by $15 per month equaling $180 this year. The third thing we are working on is our cable/internet plan which we currently pay about $100 per month for. I would like to lower that by at least 50%. Another course of action that we want to do is get rid of our storage unit. We got the storage unit when Anthony moved out of LA and we have paid about $160 a month for it for 2 years. It was such wasted money because if Anthony actually loved and needed those things why are they sitting and collecting dust? We are going down next week on Anthony's day off and emptying out what we can with the car and then following up with a truck and brining my bike to our house. That will save us $1920 this year!!!!!

All of that to say we are also planning to lower our utility bills by being wiser with energy, lowering our grocery bill even more (although we are very good about this), and reducing our use of gas by taking walks to Wal-mart & Target instead of driving when we need only a few items...we get exercise that way and save Gas. We live very close to so many places that this would be great. We are right next door to CVS so sometimes we are literally steps away from the things we need.

I am going to use our family blog to show you the savings each and every day that something changes. I am going to use it as a place to show how I manage our grocery budget, free things that are out there, ideas for reducing debt, etc... I figure if we need this makeover, many do. I am excited yet very nervous for my self-discipline and financial maturity to begin. God is doing big things with my 30th year!

Our new family member

Hey everyone, I hope you are coming to 2010 with a renewed strength and focus. Things have changed in the last couple of days in our house for the better. On December 26th Anthony and I adopted a rescue kitty named Niakara. She is absolutely adorable as you can see from her photo above. She goes by Nika and so her full name is now Niakara Bigglesworth Lewis. :) We are having so much fun being pet owners now and every day she adjusts more and gets more affectionate. Sleeping is still pretty hard due to her lack of understanding of "bed time" but we are utterly enjoying her either way. From our family to yours, Happy New Year and we pray God's blessings over every day of 2010 for you and yours!

--Anthony, Erica, & Nika Lewis--

Update on the Lewis' at the close of 2009

This year has proved to a be a tough year in the Lewis house but one in which we praise God for also. We began 2009 by continuing to try to have a baby and I was finishing up my last semester at Vanguard in the Graduate Psychology Program. In february we had our amazing first family photos and found a photographer that we will keep as long as we live in California. He is absolutely amazing. To view his work or look into getting your own photos done by him go to Kassel Photography
and check him out.

In February we also headed to Las Vegas for a weekend to celebrate our one year anniversary and shortly thereafter headed to Indiana to celebrate Hilliary's (my older sister) baby shower. Later in March on Spring break we took a road trip all around the state of California making sure to stop in locations such as The Hearst Castle, The Winchester Mystery House, San Francisco where we toured Alcatraz,Our State Capital, Reno Nevada, and even the Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Factory as well as much more. It was a blast. We spent a whole week on the road and enjoyed it so much.

In April, I was named Outstanding student in my graduate program and was asked to speak at my master's hooding ceremony. That was such an honor for me and absolutely changed the way I think about myself. It was such a blessing to know that not only my colleagues but my professors respect me in my field. How wonderful is that??!!! My wonderful friends were able to come out for my hooding as well as my Mother in Law, Step Father in Law, past boss, and many others who love and support me. It was a great night and really brought a finality to all of the work that God had done with me through Grad School.

In early May, I graduated with my Masters Degree and was given a much needed break after all of those years of school and we went for a little married retreat at my favorite San Deigo get away (Rancho Relaxo). While on that retreat, Anthony and I made our first child together. Little Jamie was conceived on that trip and in early June near our 3 year anniversary of dating, I found out I was pregnant. We had been trying for about 7 months when we found out. It was the most amazing moment of my life to realize I was holding life within my body. Anthony could not have been more excited. Right around the same time I got pregnant, my nephew Shawn was born. This was such a joyous event for us as we lost our first nephew in a car accident in 2007. Shawn is such a joy to both of us and we are lucky to have him!

This is where our whirlwind of a year started to be even more chaotic. I was admitted to the hospital pretty immediately after finding out I was pregnant due to diabetic issues. They monitored the pregnancy very closely as I had ultra sounds every week of my pregnancy. I carried my precious little one for only 11 weeks before I had to let go and Jesus took my little one home. This was probably the roughest thing I have ever endured in my life and for me, that's saying a lot. We lost our little one on July 16th.

On August 9th, Anthony and I celebrated one year married and my 29th Birthday. We weren't much in the mood for celebrating so we kind of went low key this year. Just a few gifts and a romantic dinner was enough for us. I also applied for my Board of Behavioral Sciences Marriage and Family Therapist Intern # this month and started working for my professor in a organizational/clerical position before starting in private practice.

In September, my little sister turned 23 and was getting ready to have my neice so I decided to surprise my family by coming home the day after her birthday and being there for my neice's arrival. I got to Indiana on September 28th and wonderful little Kaylea came into the world on October 2nd via C-Section. I also was able to meet my nephew Shawn on this trip and to be honest, it healed my heart after losing Jamie. They both bring me such joy and fill my heart with gladness so I could feel God's healing hands working through their sweet faces and cuddly little bodies. Isn't God good?!!!

Shortly after coming home, Britt was admitted to the hospital and needed to have her gall bladder out due to some complications connected to the birth. Through the kindness of my boss and the willingness of my husband I headed back to Indiana at the end of October/first of November to help out with Kaylea while Britt started to get better. I am happy to say now that Britt and Kaylea are completely healthy and God healed so much in that situation. While I was home I was able to see friends, hang out with family, and celebrate my older sisters/mom's birthday on November 11th before heading back on the 12th.

When I got home my awesome Intern # was waiting on me and God was so good to give me a client right away so I could start doing what I love and what I went to school for. I now have a second client and possibly a third starting at the beginning of 2010. Anthony and I spent Thanksgiving at home enjoying a delicious turkey together in the romantic quietness of our home. We are doing the same for Christmas and celebrating with Anthony's family after Christmas. On December 17th, Anthony turned 29 and we celebrated by spending the weekend at a very nice hotel in Laguna Woods enjoying some married time. This included tv in bed, romantic walks, Nice dinners, and champagne toasts. Our New year will most likely be spent alone as well. We are establishing our own family traditions each day. We are healing through this year but sometimes that requires that you get closer as a couple and spend time recouping your losses.

Our plans for 2010 include a vacation, seeing the neice and nephew as many times as possible, having britt and Kaylea out in the summer, possibly having Tasha and Mike out in the Spring, and getting our life together financially and working on our careers. Overall, we want to love better, live happier, and delight in our 2 year anniversary, our 30th birthdays and our 3rd married year together. God is soooo amazing and all is well on the Lewis' home front.

Still no news to report on having children. We will update you all when we feel like WE know what we are going to do.

Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and we pray the Lord blessings on your home in 2010!

--Anthony & Erica Lewis--

hard times but trusting HIM

Lately Anthony and I have been going through some very difficult times. We not only lost our first child to a miscarriage but have recently stumbled into some very hard financial times. We are having a hard time right now just getting through each day. Every 24 hours seems like it brings a new set of problems and worries and we are faced with making difficult decisions. We are trying our hardest to depend on Jesus through this and just ask Him to lead our steps.

It is very difficult at times to keep your marriage first when it's so difficult to not get worried and overwhelmed with life's problems. We have been trying to have time each night to just sit together and hold hands or snuggle up so that we are getting our time and remembering what the most important thing is; to stick together. Things are probably going to be hard for awhile but we are pressing on and trying our best to stay focused on God. If you could say a prayer for our little family that would be great. To answer the question that everyone seems to be asking, we are not sure when or if we are going to try to have children again. Right now my body needs to heal and my diabetes is the most important thing to get under control.

I pray that you are all doing well and we would love to know if you are praying for us. Thank you!