you know you are officially an adult when. . .

you ask for a thermostat for Christmas and are so excited when you actually get it.
Yes a thermostat.  I am not officially a hippie geek.
Before December 25th, we had a programmable thermostat that was never really worked.  We should earn an A for effort, but the programming was hard to set up and once the batteries quit so did we.  For the last several years we just would turn it up or down when necessary, so basically our house stayed the same temperature, not good for energy efficiency.
Now we have a Nest and we are very aware of our energy usage, the temperature in the house, the humidity in the house, and how to be the most efficient. 
I LOVE IT!  I honestly never thought I could get excited over a thermostat, but I am.
Our nest tracks our energy usage and we try and earn leaves:

 As you can see we didn't do so good Tuesday, but it was REALLY cold.  We did earn a leaf Sunday since we were out-of-town.  The leaf indicates energy efficiency and hopefully will teach us to lower the thermostat more to save energy and money.  It is too early to tell yet whether we have actually saved any money, but we are much more aware of the heat and when it is on and only using it when we are home and awake which hopefully will pay off in the end.  Even the kids have gotten in the game, they are curious if the temperature will earn us a leaf or not.  I love that it is more than just a programmable thermostat, it learns our patterns and adjusts accordingly, after a week of turning the thermostat up to 70 at 7am, it now has the house at 70 degrees at 7am, it is so nice not waking up to freezing cold temperatures.
So last year's experiment was homemade laundry detergent, this year, energy efficiency in heating and cooling.   Yes, I am yet one more step closer to becoming a hippie or maybe an just an energy nazi.