Little baby Gianna was born on Sunday. 7lbs 4 oz and mama and daddy couldn't be any happier.

So T keeps thinking this baby is going to SAVE us money. As it is, we spend about $300 a weekend on entertainment/food/household items/etc. His thought process is once the baby gets here we'll most likely forego all restaurant outings for a while and will be spending lots of time with family which costs nothing except the gas to get there. I keep trying to drive home the point that while that's true, babies cost money! He doesn't seem to think past formula and diapers and when I said I might be breastfeeding and not doing formula he thought that really drove his point home. I was going to wager some sort of bet but for right now I'll just sit tight and hope that he's right (even though I fear he is terribly, terribly wrong!) :P

Kitty has been snuggling up to me moreso the last few days. Can't determine if it's because it's getting colder and she wants body warmth, or she senses these are her last days before baby comes and she wants to get a little more lovin' in! :P

Savings keeps dipping lower. The oil bill is going out tomorrow but hopefully we've seen most of the car expenses. Travis still needs to buy two tires, but we might be able to float that with weekend money. He was talking with him mom about the situation and evidently she wants to help us out because she feels bad about the timing of all this. So who knows, we might end up getting a few hundred (??) which would be very generous.

On a side note, I was adding up all our payments that go out each month directly on principal, and between my student loan ($45), rental ($235), and house ($685), that's over a 1k in debt GONE each month! That's before prepaying anything which is super exciting! Woohoo!

Cost to tow stolen/stripped car to impoud lot and pay for storage: $375
Cost to tow stolen/stripped car back home: $50
Price of new parts: $325
Labor: Hopefully $0 if T can do it all...
Total: $750 (Yipes.)

Then yesterday I come home to see they've delivered oil. Last year we used $800 dollars worth and I forgot they never came back late in the season to top it off. Still figured it couldn't be THAT much... Bill so far this season: $640. (Double Yipes.)

Savings is currently at 5,500. Haven't decided if I want to pay the oil bill this pay period. Probably should get it over with, but I'm too scared to see our savings dip below 5k when I could be going out on maternity leave any day now. I guess it doesn't really matter, it's going to have to get paid at some point. Bleck.

On the baby front: I went in for my 39 week appointment yesterday and still not dilated. She's up to 7.5 lbs though! When's this baby going to want to come out?!

Please tell me if I'm being super hormonal (I am 39 weeks pregnant on Thursday so that's entirely possible :P) or if there is any merit to this idea at all. To be honest, it's more of a rant than anything...

My husband and I make a combined 110k between both our jobs and rental property. We have no credit cards, have recently paid off the last of his student loans and my car, and our debts now are my 20k student loan, a 93k rental property, and 165k balance on our 15 year mortgage for our primary home.

Saturday night his car (93 honda civic) was stolen and much of it stripped. This is not the first time we've had an issue with this car. It has been broken into two times before (head unit stolen) but this time the entire car was stolen, wheels removed, and battery, plugs, wires, etc. under the hood stolen before leaving it in some alleyway. We previously had a 94 honda accord that was stolen as well by some young teenagers and taken for a joyride and left in a neighbors driveway down the street which cost us nothing to fix, but was quite a headache and still not something you like to see happen. We live on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in Pennsylvania for almost 5 years now, and although our street is quiet and nice, only 3 miles down the road is "downtown" which has a very bad connotation. We moved here almost 5 years ago and refinanced earlier this year right before I became pregnant. We owe about 7-10k more than what I think the property is worth, but it was our intention to stay here 4-5 or so years until our daughter is school age and then move right before she has to enter the school system (since we are in a poor performing school district). With a 15 year mortgage we would've paid off a large amount of the mortgage and would be in good shape for our next home.

As it is right now, I just feel uncomfortable. We have a short driveway with a very small garage that barely fits my husbands honda civic. I'm thinking maybe he could start parking his car in the garage instead of at the end of teh driveway (behind my car) and that would deter any theft. The scary thing is now I feel like this invites the thieves to come even closer to my home.

There have been no instances on the block of home theft/burglary, only some car issues (and to be honest, we seem to get the brunt of it since his car is considered popular in the inner city). I don't know if a car burglary is serious enough that I should be scared of living here, or if maybe I'm just blowing things out of porportion. Part of me says to sell the car and get one that no one in the inner city would want, but my husband drives 55 mi each way to work, and reliability wise and gas wise, the Honda civic is by far the best car out there. Plus this is one of the few cars he is familiar with, and can do most repairs and maintenance himself which saves us a lot of money. Am I just being difficult and do you think there's something else out there that would satisy our needs but not entice thieves? Should we consider moving and taking a loss on this home for added security?

I feeling increasingly uncomfortable raising a child in this area. If I could put a bubble around the 5 blocks around my house it would be so nice, but the reality is we have a depressed economy with a lot of job losses and high crime in the inner city, and a lot of desperate people that will do this sort of thing within only miles of our home. With a baby on the way, my parents are more than willing to let us live with them for a couple months rent free (and my mom would babysit) until we figured out exactly what we're doing. We make a good income and considering the progress we've made in 2 years on our debt, I'm confident we could pull out of the house loss fairly quickly (especially living with my parents). So many thoughts running through my head. Anyone else have any comments? Sorry for the long rant...I just really needed to get this off my chest.

This weekend was super spendy for us. After two weekends where we barely went out and were super frugal, we totally blew it this last one. T and I celebrated our anniversary at this exclusive steakhouse near our house and it was AMAZING. Bill for the amazing meal ended up being $166 with tip! :0! We never ever ever spend money like this on eating out, but I wanted to splurge since we didnt have any other anniversary plans (staying over someplace or going to a broadway show just didn't seem enticing when I'm as super big and pregnant as I am now.) We bought each other frugal gifts ( less than 20 each) but then by the end of the weekend we decided to treat ourselves yet again and do a joint annivesary gift of a Keurig single serve coffee maker. I was able to find it cheapest brand new on ebay for $72 which was pretty good. But between the expensive anniversary dinner, the gifts, and the new rotors T had to buy, it ended up being a super expensive weekend. Good thing we had a little bit of a buffer from the last two weekends being cheap ones. I'm going to try and cut back on groceries this week too and make up for some of it there. I'll keep you posted!