Friday, January 30, 2009

Blog neglect...

I'm guilty as charged. It's been so crazy around here. We have had to set up a real budget and an emergency fund. As I type this I still think "doesn't everyone do this?". I now know that most people do not budget or plan for their future. We are those type of people who just pay the bill as it comes in, buy groceries when we want something, and we dine out very frequently. That has all changed since we've begun to budget. I'm not sure I like all this budgeting but I am convinced it will get me where I want to be. Even if that is at least a year away.
I've been going to second grade and watching my daughter. I will be doing this again next week. I'm considering holding her back for a year so that she can get that feeling of mastery. Tuesday is her birthday and she has tons of surprises coming her way.
My father-in-law is arriving tomorrow since the birthday girl requested his presence. He'll be here for five days. I'm planning her a birthday party in a couple of weeks with all of her friends. This party has had to be delayed a bit since my son is taking the SCAT a week from tomorrow.
I think I've decided on a cake for her party. It's a flower pot cake with a candy made flower. Basically you take a clay pot and bake chocolate cake in it, ice it and add sprinkled oreos on top. Then I will stick a few gummy worms in. Here comes the tricky part, I need to make a flower. My thoughts so far are to dye a lollipop stick green and stick it in the cake, take the wrapper off the lollipop and use edible glue (aka sugar and corn syrup) to attach another round candy to the lollipop to make a flower. I've been searching for round candies that are colorful. I'm hoping to find some disc type candy in multiple colors. These will be made in clay pots that have each child's name on them and Happy 8th Birthday. My son has a birthday 18 days later and has requested a skateboard cake. I think I have figured out exactly how I will make that happen and will use trucks and wheels from an old board to make it look more real. I will smell like icing until March.
Anyone see that new movie Taken? It was really good but pretty intense. The husband and I saw it last night. That girl has one badazz daddy!
I think I've rattled enough at the moment. Time to make sure that everyone is getting their job done for today and start some lunch. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Enjoy watching the super bowl...I'll probably be chatting with friends and watching the commericals!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

No bike riding this week

The high today was in the mid 40's and dropped consistently the rest of the day. It's below freezing now and is supposed to be down around 17 tonight. They (meteorologist) are telling us to leave water dripping on all your faucets tonight. This is something we were accustomed to in Oklahoma but not out here. All of that to say this...IT IS COLD!
Chiropractor visits this afternoon went well. I got some muscle stimulation on my shoulder and then we headed to the grocery store. A woman we go to church with is having steroid injections tomorrow so I offered to cook for her and her family. She's a single mom and will need all the help she can get. It's not much but just one less thing she'll have to worry about tomorrow evening. For me, it feels really great to be able to help her.
Tomorrow I'll be making a surprise visit to my youngest daughter's classroom. She's having a difficult time staying on task so I'm going to sit with her in class. I'm thinking I'll have lunch with oldest daughter and then appear in the classroom for the remaining part of the day. The teacher has set up a desk for me that will face my daughter. Each time she gets off task I will be there to get her restarted. Fun! Fun! I'm headed back to second grade!
Right now I'm working on getting homework finished up for the evening and looking forward to the weekend. Hope everyone has a relaxing weekend and stays warm. Brrr

Monday, January 12, 2009

Back to Reality

 It's a new year and as I promised I'm more determined than ever to get my budget under control. We are attending Financial Peace University once a week for 13 weeks. We started this last Wednesday. We were just getting started and the power went out! LOL So we went around the room and told who we were, why we were there and what he hoped to learn from this. It was a good time with good people. I'm looking forward to next week. We are assigned homework each week to do during the week. It consists of some reading and this week we had to put down on paper a mini budget. This made me sick and I've been thinking maybe I should get a job at night so that I can be home when my children are, do homework and prepare them a healthy dinner meal. The husband hates this idea so we shall see how this month goes. 
 I ordered our AFM's boxes this month and a fruit and veggie box. I get a recipe menu from menus4moms. For a very small fee they give you two weeks of dinner menus that use your AFM box and a few extra recipes as well. A regular main box is $30 and the fruit and veggie box is $21. You cannot purchase all of that food in the grocery store for the cost that AFM charges. Their website says you can feed a family of four for a week/box. I've had better luck and been able to feed my family almost all month on two main boxes and a fruit and veggie box. Now I do have to buy a few extras for the dinner meals and stuff for the children's lunch everyday. I'll have a better idea of my grocery budget after this month. 
 Our first major step for this month (after writing out a budget) is to save $1,000 for a rainy day and put it in a savings account. We are working on that now. Our goal is to be close to credit card debt free by December 2009.  That will take a lot of frugal living to make it happen. Maybe it's unrealistic and it may change as we get further along through this course. It's a goal and that's a step in the right direction. 
 We are also trying to bundle up our t.v. internet and directv. We want to go with Verizon since FIOS is now available here but I want to keep our directv since we have dvr's with them. I may end up giving it up if the deal isn't worth it. Anyone else doing a bundle with Verizon? This is just one of the ways we are looking into to save a little extra cash each month. 
 Friday I had my second spinal injection. I spent most of the weekend on bedrest and am feeling much better today. I really hope to get quite a bit of relief now that both sides have had the injection. I see my spine specialist on the 30th of this month to re-evaluate. I plan to be riding my bike with the kids by midweek and trying out my Jillian Michaels Wii Fit game by the end of the week. I hope everyone has a great week! 

Friday, January 9, 2009

My Sooners lost

a great game. Congrats to Florida on a well played game. I'm Sooner born and Sooner bred and when I die I'll be Sooner dead! Go OU!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Boomer Sooner and a bit more

 Tonight the Sooners play for Florida for the BCS Championship. We're having a few people over to watch. I've rented the children some movies so they'll stay entertained. I'm surrounded by Fla. fans out here but I wear my OU gear with pride! 
 The husband and I went to our meeting for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. The weather knocked out the power so we only watched about 20 minutes of our first dvd. We have homework too. I thought two hours of homework with my children was enough but I now have to squeeze in financial homework too. We are really excited about taking this class. I'll keep you posted as we go through this process. 
Hope everyone has a great night and remember... I'm Sooner born and Sooner bred and when I die I'll be Sooner dead! GO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU! 

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Two more days...

before my parents return home. We've had so much fun with them. The weather has not cooperated so we've not been to the skate park and all the kids want to get in the hot tub at night but it's been in the 30's at night. Other than that we have done everything we wanted to do.
My father and I always have projects planned months before he gets here. One was to get all of the baby clothes out of boxes, washed and donated. After carrying them all in the house and sorting them we reboxed them and delivered them. We donated about 600 items of clothes. Yes, I counted each peice! Then we went through old toys that the children no longer played with and donated them. It was a pretty good size tote full. Since we moved here in late June and I'd been in Oklahoma all of August I hadn't packed away all the boxes. I carried them to the attic stairs, father handed them to son who was in attic, he sorted them and stacked them neatly. My garage looks clean and that makes the husband much happier.
My mother tends to lay low while we do all this work. She spoils the children rotten and lets them do EVERYthing they want! (Bricks are now laying on my pool cover, want to guess who'll have to fish them out?) With my mother and her grandkids there are NO rules! My neighbor does video from her home so my mother brought tons of old movies to her. My neighbor will be blackmailing me soon as she watches each movie and turns them into dvd's. There was about 4000 hours of video total. I'm sure the next time I'm home we will be having a home movie night. I feel bad for our husbands and will be finding a way for them to do anything but sit through all that.
The oldest daughter raced a brat in our neighborhood on her scooter. Daughter won the race and the other little girl went home whining that she needed a bigger scooter. That night my daughter said this, "how much do you want to bet that Brat has a new scooter by tomorrow night?" 24 hours later and Brat has a new, faster scooter! I'm serious! Then a neighbor calls me and tells me that not only did Brat get a new and faster scooter 3 days after Christmas but she also convinced her parents she needed a cell phone!!! Can someone explain why a 9 yr old needs a cell phone??? Back to the scooter (hehe) my father and I are in the process of converting the daughter's into a bigger scooter with the same frame. I promise the daughter will be racing and winning in the near future. I'm from the country and my husband is the computer guru. This means I know how to put a motor and battery together and the husband can wire it to make it all run smoothly. This should be fun! :)
I hear my father making coffee so I'm going to share a cup. Have a wonderful weekend and Happy New Year to all!