Author Archives: Sheila

School Choice

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Choices are not always black and white, nor are they always easy, and most important as a parent, a choice for one child is not always the best choice for all your children.  Today, I am announcing that we have chose to place Lily in a online charter school for her sixth grade year.

The start of this adventure which really starts August 22, begans last November, specially on our Disney trip. Lily told me that she dreamed that she graduated from High School at fourteen. This was not a one time dream, but has been reoccurring.

Next came the realization that Lily will begin Middle School this fall.  Neither Matt nor I every doubt that academically Lily is super prepared and will handle everything thrown her way. However, middle school girls are mean and given the fact that Lily is a full year younger than most, very small, wears glasses and has horrible eczema, I have no doubt that these next couple of year could be emotional and difficult for all of us.

I decided to start researching options that would allow her to excel and even advance quickly academically and work in our current household budget.  I did start asking some of my friends who are also educators.  Based on our rural location, we found only a couple of options: 1. The one private school in our area- academically would not be as allow her to advance at her own pace . 2. Home Schooling- not the best option currently due to my work schedule  3. Charter School.

I was told about the North Carolina Virtual Academy by a educator. We started doing research. This virtual academy has operated for two years in the state of North Carolina but the company K12  has operated for over 20 years and graduates have been accept to all major colleges in the US.  We began the application process for Lily in March.  Lily has been involved in many discussions regarding this and decided that she would like to try officially in May.  In June after finishing a ton of paperwork and submitting, Lily was officially accepted into the North Carolina Virtual Academy. Today, Matt withdrew her from the public school system.

Lily will be attending this online charter school for her sixth grade year. She will access her teacher and classmate via  web camera at least weekly but most likely several times a week. All learning is complete using both online method and traditional methods, in fact only about 60% of her academics will be completed online. Matt, who is considered her learning coach, is responsible for grading and entering grades online, inputting attendance records and ensure that Lily is completing academic work on a regular basis.  One of the greatest benefit is the ability to work at her own pace which if she so choses should allow her to accelerate her middle school and high school academics.

Her books weigh more than she does and are almost as tall!

Her books weigh more than she does and are almost as tall!

We have spent many hours in prayer about this decision and are truly excited about this opportunity for Lily. Zach and Kendall will continue to attend the public elementary school this year. We want to start begin slow and determine if and when they would benefit from the same online school.  Lily also is very aware of her option to return to public school next year is this does not turn out to be a good fit and huge benefit for her.

 

July in Review

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Personal-
1. Blogging– Post 20 per month. Fail. This is post number 15. I have been working hard the last two weeks to catch up and already have some plans for the next weeks so on to better things next month.

2.Weight Loss– 175#. BLAH!

3. Spiritual– Spend at least 5 days a week, reading and studying The Bible. Nope. I am hoping to finish reading through the Bible this month and start something new.

Personal goals are a failure for the second month straight.  Not much more to say in regards to that.

Financial- 

1. Set aside money each month in every budget category. Fail

2. Establish and maintain Emergency Fund- Fail.
3. Groceries: Goal is for $550. Fail . We spent $818 in Groceries this month. I am hoping for improvements in the next 2 months but if not I will again increase the budget!

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month- Fail! We spent $424 this month including a new battery.

5. Pay off all Credit Card debit by December 2016- Fail. I am meeting bare minimal payments on everything but really was hoping to begin to get control and reduce this number.

So if you read this review you can see that we have not righted our ship yet in fact most days I think we are headed in the wrong direction. My plan PRAY!

Square Foot Garden Update

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  • The squash bugs won, sort of anyway. After a couple of weeks of trying to kills by hand and using soapy water, we have lost all our squash plants and even our cucumber plants that started.  I was able to make 8 containers of squash casserole and thanks to our neighbor 4 packs for squash lasagna.
  • I replanted 14 squash plants and it appears that 4 or so have survived the heat. We have cucumber relish and one jar of pickles. I hope that these new plants will start to produce and allow us at least a couple of gallons of pickles.
  • Matt was able to get our rain barrel collection system put together this week and one rain storm we captured over a 55 gallon drum of water. We have been able to water the entire garden and hopefully save our sweet potatoes and some tomatoes for the past 3 days without running out.  We hope that in the near future we will be able to store at least 2 of these drums for use during these hot dry spells.
  • Last night we pulled up all of the corn plants without harvesting a single ear. I have learned a couple things that I plan to try next year before giving up on growing corn after 2 years of no benefit. First, against what square foot gardening says, I think we need a deeper bed. The roots for the corn were very small and the kids were able to remove from the ground without difficulty. The current plan is to purchase and add another board to the sides of the bed. We will also be moving as much of our compost dirt as possible into these beds to help with deep roots and better soil.
  • We are starting to get all three types of peppers, green, jalapeno and banana. I am hoping that given enough water we will have a good abundant harvest.
  • Within the next week, we should also get our first watermelon and cantaloupe.

 

Five Things Friday

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  1. Today is the fifth Friday of July which also means I receive my third paycheck for July. I am paid every two weeks but budget based on two checks a month. This third check will cover our trip to the beach and our grocery overages for the past couple of weeks.
  2. Tomorrow night we are planning a “girls night in” as Zach is spending the night with Amanda. Matt will be working.
  3. Tonight is the end of one of the two “quiet” weeks of the summer. Piano and cheerleading were all the activities for the week. Next week is back to busy with a trip planned to Emerald Point and the girls have sign language camp all day Friday.
  4. My best friend used the same analog yesterday to explain MPLACES as I have been thinking all along. It is like Pokémon Go, as I am always trying to “check in” places at stoplights but in two months I have earned $15 in gift cards.  MPLACES is an app on my phone, ask me more if you are interested.
  5. I have officially booked our next trip to Disney. The goal of this trip is to pay for all or as much as possible by using apps and other found money. This money will not come from our regular budget at all and does not including saving on any bills or the differences in budgeted amounts vs. amount spent.

Grocery Budget Buster

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I will be the first to admit that I don’t grocery shop like most people but I do shop in a way that over a period of a year, saves money and feeds us well.  I did excellent in the month of June of keeping cost low and even decided to reduce our monthly budget. I knew that sometime this summer, I would need to restock on meat and some other items, even last Sunday I had high hope of holding down our spending for the month. We had been to Costco twice and spent a total of $497 . But as of today that is not possible.

Last Friday, Matt texted that we were out of toilet paper so I stopped by the CVS, where I thought our preferred brand was on sale. It was on sale but not what I thought so I just grabbed one package.  The sale I was thinking about started on Sunday. Sunday night Lily and I headed back to CVS to grab the toilet paper of course and a couple of other deals. I was disappointed that I had to get a couple of rainchecks which threw off my savings. My goal is always 60% but with buying the needed toilet paper and also some additional sunscreen I ended up spending $27.25 and saving 48% or $24.71.  I did start this trip without any ECB and ended with $2 so not a complete fail.

Next, the one store in our area that doubles coupons started a super sale, which doubles coupons up to $2. I looked over the list and realized that many of items we need were available so last night we headed out. I was also able to grab drinks that we will be taking with us for our beach trip.  I did hit my 60% mark, spending $77.97 and saving 140 or 64%. I used three rainchecks that included 10 packs of hot dogs, flour and sugar, all items that I did not have coupons on but were a great deal with the rain check.

Finally, we are still following our monthly plan with lots of different items on the weekend. We decided to have Hamburger Helper on Monday since both girls had cheerleading. Matt and I realized that we were using our last pack of ground beef.  Typically we purchase between 30 and 50 pounds at a time and fry and place in one pound bags which make meals really quick and easy to fix. Zaycon Foods is where I always purchase chicken breast and I have been pleased with the ground beef in the past. I got an email this morning with a pick up for ground beef next week and an additional 12% off code. We decided to go ahead and purchase 80 pounds of ground beef. We plan to fry up 50 pounds and just freeze the other 30 pounds to use as raw meat. Total cost for 80 pounds of ground beef $215.38 or $2.69 a pound which is the cheapest I have seen this year.

Currently I have spent $818.07 so a total budget fail but it should allow us to eat well through the rest of the year. My goal will be to lower the grocery budget to $400 for both August and September to keep us on track for the year.

Monday Musing 1/25/20016

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  • We have 5 weeks before Zach and Kendall start back to school and 4 before Lily begins her adventure in a Charter School. The next three weeks are what we consider slower because the girls have cheer on Monday and Thursday. They will also have piano once a week.
  • I was able to make a deposit on our next Disney trip this week using money that we have earned from Swagbucks. Matt and I are both using this site to earn extra money. I am so excited. The goal of this trip is to totally pay for it with money not included in our regular budget!
  • Our garden has not produced like we had hope but one of the biggest reason is the heat. Currently in NC, we are experiencing Day 26 of the summer with highs in the 90s. A typical summer is 29 days of 90 degree temperatures.
  • Matt has assembled the new water barrel to start collecting any rain water. Hopefully we will be able to water the garden on a regular bases without increasing our water bill.
  • I did plant 3 additional tomato plants and a dill plant this weekend with hopes of increasing our harvest.
  • We have really enjoyed our 2 trips to Emerald Point, a water park, this summer. We hope to go a couple more times but plan on spending only 4 or 5 hours at the park instead of 8.
  • The plan for August is to re-stock the pantry so our spending may be really close to budget.

Saturday Savings

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sos

Today was the final swim meet of the year and I have a ton of pictures that I will post during the next week but for now we have been doing some serious saving.

First up is a budget buster- we have a leak in the  main water line from coming  the street to the house. The first leak occurred over the Fourth of July and it failed again today. Matt was able to fix the leak and repaired  the leak for less than $5. If we could have found a plumber to come out on a weekend or holiday just the service fee is at least $100 per trip, so we saved at least $200.

We were given a bag of cucumbers and squash. To be honest, I am exhausted and did not want spend anytime doing anything in the kitchen. But this is a lifestyle choice so I fried squash for dinner, chopped up and cooked the remaining squash with onions and carrots. I have a squash casserole ready for the oven tomorrow and we have a bag that will be used for a casserole in the future. The cucumber have been cut into spears and place in a jar. Our pickles will be ready in three days and will last in the refrigerator for up to a year. This is hard to place an exact price on but I am going to say that we saved at least $10 by doing these things.

We did save money at the County swim meet by waiting to purchase t-shirts until later in the day, when the price was reduced, we saved a total of $7.50.

How are you saving?