Hubby said yesterday that his company has confirmed he is getting a bonus this year. When that happens, it usually posts to the last paycheck in February. I am praying it does. This will be just the boost to savings and everything that will really jump-start things.

I am not sure how much it will be. Last year, it was somewhere around $7,000 after taxes. If it holds steady, I think I will put $5,000 toward savings and then divide up the other $2,000 between the other goals--namely the car loan and the kids' college.

Still, hard to plan until the egg is squarely in the bank account.

In other news, we are going to look at our first four houses in our target school district today. We aren't planning to move for at least another year to two years, but decided it was time to casually see what is out there, how much it sells for and to start driving around the area deciding what part we want to live in.

It's exciting and weird at the same time. We also went on a family outing to Lowe's yesterday (the kids had fun, amazingly) to price out some of the smaller improvements we are going to make.

Menard's is having an 11 percent off of everything sale this week, so I may drive down there (it's about 40 minutes away) to pick up some of the odds and ends we need to do some of our designed to sell projects, such as a tub sink for the laundry room, a gallon of paint for the laundry room, and some mortar for the chimney and exterior stonework.Little stuff, but I may as well get a discount, right?