Thanks All,
I can honestly say that the flight sim helped. I spent an hour a day for about 4 months on the flight simulator learning to fly. It taught me thumb movements to get the plane to do what I wanted it to do without having to think much about it. It really does help. Once I got just flying and landing down on the sim, I worked on landing where I wanted to land, then I kicked the wind up and worked some more, then wind and turbulence up and practiced some more. I have soloed in two days worth of lessons and my plane is still in one piece.