Up at bat……
Random cuteness
One thing that we do well around our house is celebrate, Zach’s birthday was no different and is one of the reasons, I have gotten behind blogging. Of course this is going to be a picture heavy post but enjoy!
We started celebrating on Wednesday night at Paw Paw and Granny’s with ice cream cake.
Early on Thursday morning, Zach opened a couple of presents and played with them before breakfast.
September 1st, was a regular school day but we did not let this stop us! Matt and I took donuts to his class in the afternoon. His class sang “Happy Birthday” and he was so glad they remembered the “cha cha cha’s”
He received a neat certificate and $1 from his teacher.
Our next stop was ToysRUs where Zach had lots of money to spend. He also ended up going to Lowes to buy tools on Saturday because we ran out of time on Thursday.
Zach choose to eat at Bad Daddy’s . The plan was for he and Amanda to go to a college football game but the weather decided otherwise.
We all enjoyed celebrating Zach’s Birthday this year!
We had an awesome vacation and I want to share some more pictures. The weather on Saturday was rainy and humid. The tide clocks are changing due to the full moon. So high tide was not expected until 9;40 am. After checking out these two things we decided to go play putt putt. Putt-Putt is one of the things that we have been talking about doing for over a year and the timing never seems to work out. Most of us had a great time. We did stop at Sonic that was next door to the course at 10:55 am and purchased 99 cent drinks for us! Here are the pictures.
Can anyone guess who did not like Putt-Putt? For the record Matt scored the best.
1. On top of our already busy schedule, Zach started spring soccer this week. That means at least 2 practices and one game a week.
2. Over the past month, the car that Amanda drove has started to fall apart. The car had 282,000 miles but after $500 in repairs it finally died yesterday. Today, we received $150 for the scrap value.
3.In good news, the weather has turned warm quickly. We turned off our heat and based on the forecast for the next week, we should be able to keep it off for a couple of weeks. I will be amazed if we are able to not turn it back on but every penny counts and our electric bill jumped almost $100 for the month of February.
4. We have made absolutely no progress in the kitchen this week. I am hopefully to get some painting done tomorrow night but that is even doubtful.
5. The one area of our budget that I have managed to keep great control of is our groceries. I am continuing to cut the grocery budget this month by using a “credit” from American Express. I was able to purchase all the items on my list for less than $50 using this credit.
Quite honestly, this has been one of the most stressful week in the past two or three years. Today, I am going to share a little of that stress both financial and personal with you.
I talked last week about the fact we discovered a nail in our new vans tire on Saturday. Matt took the van in on Monday morning and discovered that not only was the tire not fixable but we actually needed to replace all four tires.
Amanda’s car, which we are still responsible for major repairs on, was not working properly. Amanda said she did not have any heat. This ended up being a minor repair of less than $150 but still a unexpected expense.
Kendal is scheduled to compete in her first cheer competition on Saturday, so they have had practice 3 of the 5 nights this week. Lily also has had practices on these nights but at later times, which means we are playing taxi a lot.
Zach and Kendall both are not feeling at 100%. I took Zach to the doctor this afternoon and he has a double ear infections. I am so thankful that this is the first real sickness for him since starting school in August.
On a more positive note, both Lily and Kendall had orthodontic appointments this morning. Lily will be in braces most likely at age 11 or so. Kendall unfortunately is going to require several phases of brace and some other really expensive work. The good news is that it is felt that waiting another 6 months to a year before starting this process is our best options.
Matt has a doctor’s appointment in the morning and with the multiple trips this week we have accomplished very little in the way of remodeling this week. I hope to share at least some progress this weekend.
We decided to change out the window and door cases with our kitchen remodel. What we discovered is that there was no insulation around the windows. I purchased two cans of foam which is the yellow you see above.
All three of the kids got “Olafs” for a special Valentine gift. They are a huge hit. I was really good at keeping these hidden.
Kendall enjoyed the circus and even more so she enjoyed the special time with her big sister. Do you think they look alike?
Finally, I have learned how to fix Lily’s hair for cheerleading and it stays up! It does take close to an hour to complete but at least it works.