The Berger Family

First, I have to say I love the new changes to blogger!  I can rearrange my pictures now!  

This is sooo much better!  

I just wanted to give a little update on my reading for 2011.  One of my new years resolutions this year was to read 8 books.  Here we are in September and I've read 5 books.  Just 3 more to go, so I think I'll make it.  

 In May I read Matched by Ally Condie.  It is a great book, and Ally Condie is from Salt Lake City, so that's pretty cool.  If you like Hunger Games and Twilight you will like this book.  It's basically the same sort of love triangle situation.  I really liked it and I'm excited for the next book in the series to come out.  It's called Crossed and will be released November 1st. 

I really enjoyed reading Running with Angels.  It is written by Pamela Hansen and it is her story about a lot of things, but a lot of it focuses on her losing over 100 lbs and running her first marathon.  It's pretty inspiring.  She also lost two children shortly after they were born and has two children that have special needs.  One thing that really stood out to me in the book was eventually she realized she needed to make herself and her health a priority.  Even though that is hard when your a mom and you have kids and so many other things to take care of.  It's a really great book if you need a little inspiration and perspective in life!  

I recently finished reading Dave Ramsey's book The Total Money Makeover!  It is awesome!  Really Dave is a genius!  His book is just full of common sense and it's just refreshing to read it!  I listen to Dave on the radio pretty often and my sister and brother-in-law gave me this book to read.  The book is great.  If you have any questions about money and especially getting out of debt you need to read this book.  Just for the record we actually don't have any debt except our home. . . but this book is still really helpful.  I learned a lot about budgeting and what percent of your take home pay should go to different things like food and your home and stuff like that!  Also I think the best thing I got out of this book was that you should make a new budget for every month!  I don't know why this never occurred to me before.  Mark and I have tried to set a budget many times in our marriage, but every month there are always different expenses that come up, so it's never seemed to work out.  It just makes sense to make a budget for each new month.  Then you can kind of plan ahead for that month!  I made a budget for us for September and I know were only 3 days in, but so far I've stuck to it and it feels great!  

I've got a pretty big list of books I want to find time to read, but if you have any suggestions I'd still appreciate them!