I've been avoiding this place because life's been hard...really hard. A good amount of it is our own fault. We went way off the rails when DH returned home, but we've also just had an incredible amount of stuff going on, and we're very much emotional spenders. I'd thought we'd made so much progress, but these past 6 months have just kicked our butts.

Just a quick rundown:
-DH came home
-We (very stupidly) leased a family car
-Excessive holiday spending
-Got a puppy (he wasn't cheap, but that part we'd budgeted for)
-Puppy brought stomach flu chaos (this we hadn't planned for and resulted in a really expensive surgery)
-Attempted to refinance a house (another ongoing thing, but I think we're finally getting really close to closing)
-Got pregnant (not expensive in and of itself, but being so sick and having all of the other craziness led to way more eating out than I'd ever like to admit)
-Baby started daycare
-More family help (brother quit one job before the other was finalized which led to needing help with car payments since I cosigned and was responsible and a very expensive insurance lapse mistake that he paid for)

DH and I have committed to resetting. Now that I can actually eat food that isn't greasy and DH is back at work and more settled in to a schedule, he's agreed to take on all the cooking, so long as I make the meal plan and ensure the groceries are available. At some point in all the chaos, I lost my son's social security card, so I need to apply for a new one in order to file taxes because I literally cannot find the number anywhere. Between that and the money from the refinance, we should be able to catch up all of the debt we've racked up and get back to living on last month's income. All of our projects that we wanted will just have to wait because we both want the security that comes from feeling like we're swimming rather than drowning more than any aesthetic stuff right now (although, I'm still really sad that the yard won't get done).

Lastly, we've put our proverbial feet down on the family thing. We got rid of my mom only to be stuck with the brothers. We gave little bro a deadline to move this year now that he's making a livable income, and we've extended the offer to have big bro live here as well to save money and find a full-time job to hopefully move out with little bro. Regardless of what happens, everyone will be out by the fall even if big bro just ends up moving back to our mom's and little bro has to find a roommate or live in a small studio so he can afford it.