Category Archives: Life

Random Thursday Thoughts

Posted on by
Reply
  • Matt and I have survived our first week of car sharing. Because we do not feel comfortable driving the white van and the truck does not have working air conditioning, we have been car sharing.  The current plan is continue for at least 2 more weeks.
  • My summer clothes shopping is finished. I was able to purchase 2 pair of shorts for myself, a t-shirt for Matt, a shirt to match a skirt for Lily, a pair of short for Lily and 3 pair of shorts for Kendall today all for $92 or about $11.50 each.
  • We will be increasing our food budget to $700 a month starting in July. Today I used our rewards coupon from Costco help us stay on track for the budget for June. We only needed 3 items but decided to go ahead and buy some extra produce and a couple of fun food items as well. Out of pocket was $23 for 22 items at Costco or $1 an item. No way to match that!
  • We are suppose to close on our new mortgage next week so I plan to share more detail and our new budget some time after that.
  • I am already working on the new budget but had to adjust both the water and electric bill higher than I anticipated due to the extreme heat (above 90 for the past 10 days with prediction of another 10 days). At this point if we do not water the garden will be start to lose anything that we have. I had planned to water every third day but I may have to alternate every other day in hopes to still get a decent harvest.
  • Tonight we made the tough decision to skip a practice. We are in week 3 of 8, with 4 night a week swim practice in addition to cheerleading and piano. Because we have been car sharing, everyone has been out to at least 8:30 each night this week. I am tired and so are the kids, which is evident by attitudes so Zach, Kendall and I stayed home while Lily  went to cheerleading only.
  • Amanda is planning to bring a camper over next week and stay the week allowing the kids to sleep outside in the camper with her a couple of nights. I am not sure how this will work out but everyone is excited so at least it should make for some good stories in the future.

5 Things Friday Financial

Posted on by
Reply

This is a sad and hard post for me today but in the real world things are not always happy and warm. So this is real for us.

1. We are in limbo with refinancing our house. My understanding is that we are actually waiting on FHA to process paperwork and that is currently taking a long time. We have not even been given a time line at this point so we wait.

2. In the past two weeks, the white van has continued with mechanical issues, unfortunately the issues are becoming larger and more expensive each time. After prayer and consideration, we have decided we need to sell the van. In fact, if it does not sell as is in the next couple of weeks, we are going to call a junk yard and sell it that way.

3. The combination of both 1 and 2 also mean that we are looking at the need to purchase a new or new to us vehicle this summer instead of October/November. After some discussion with the mortgage broker, our only option is to wait until the refinancing of the mortgage is complete. The current plan is to purchase a mini van that will not only be my transportation to and from work but also the primary vehicle for us as a family.  Currently we are sharing Matt’s van and he will be using his white truck as needed.

4. The white truck is small but will hold up to 4 people at a time. The bigger issue is that neither the heat or air condition is working at this time. Our weather indicates that the temperature will consistently be above 90* for the next 10 days. If and when we are able to get rid of the white van, we are planning to have the air fixed in the truck.

5.I am a stress eater. I have been struggling especially with this over the past week. Yesterday, both Lily and Kendall invited a friend over to play/spend the day at the pool with us. We ended up eating pizza for lunch and hamburgers for dinner. So our entire $40 pool budget for the month of June has now been spent.

5 things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

1. The white van left me completely stranded yesterday. Luckily after some investigating, Matt was able to replace the battery with one we already had so no out of pocket expense.

2. Our house appraisal came in much higher than we anticipated, which sounds like a good thing but it means more choice and decisions to be made. I am going with the lesson my mother taught me “never count your chickens till they hatch.” so waiting to actually share numbers and our new budget after everything is settled.

3. Lily and Kendall have 1 more week of school left. Both are excited for the summer! Lily finished required testing this week and scored 5 out of 5, the highest possible on both Reading and Math.

4.My work is crazy. For the first time EVER, I actually worked 40 hours this week. I was really nervous about going over 40, which is not allowed. I managed to stay inside the 40 by 3 minutes.

5. The weather is much cooler than normal and it has rained every day this week. My garden is loving it! We even have corn spouting from the seeds I planted last Saturday.

 

5 things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

1. I sent my list of “sit down” dining reservations over to our travel agent this morning. She will be making these on Sunday! It is so exciting!

2. Today is our 11th anniversary. We celebrated by adding on to the square foot garden.

3. I made our first official harvest of the year, 1 small squash a ziplock gallon bag of dill and another bag of cilantro.

4. We are waiting not so patiently for our house appraisal so that we can refinance.

5. Swim season has officially started with practice 3-4 nights a week. This week I have been working until 6:30 then picking up Zach and Kendall from swim practice before coming home. I really dislike this schedule!

5 Things Friday!

Posted on by
Reply

1. We are in the process of refinancing our home. This time we are getting a whole new mortgage. By completing this we will be dropping 7 years off our current mortgage schedule and reducing the interest rate by over 2%. So far the process has been time consuming but not difficult. Our closing is tentatively scheduled for the end of June. I will share more details once a couple of issues are settled. The first of which is the appraisal of the house which is schedule next week.

2. The end of the school year is getting closer. I honestly think it is more heavily scheduled than Christmas. Sunday-was a piano recital, Tuesday night-Lily chorus performance, Wednesday night-Ending Party for Church Kid’s club. In addition to cheerleading tryouts on Monday and Thursday.

3.Our community pool opens this weekend, with swim team practice starting on Tuesday. Zach is planning to swim this year and I am so excited just to get him in the water on a regular basis!

4.Kendall is star student next week so I am scrambling to get some picture found and printed so we can make her poster on Sunday.

5. I am officially on call for Monday, so I may have to work a couple of hours but that means that I will get a 4 day weekend for the Fourth of July!

Random Thought Tuesday

Posted on by
Reply

I have lots of these to share!

  • Happy Cinco De Mayo, we celebrated by having cheese Quesada and Mexican Rice for dinner. Matt and I ended the day with margarita wine! Yes we are partying hard.
  • The white van is having even more issues, currently I have a flashing light and it is running rough. I am frustrated. In fact I am so frustrated that we are discussing options for purchasing a new to us car and making payments. The goal right now is to wait several months in order to reduce our debt load and make sure we can afford a new huge monthly expense.
  • I purchased 48 bottles of water at CVS for a grand total of $0.10 yesterday. This was in fact all tax. I have not been shopping regularly at CVS for over a month now but was excited to actually grab a great deal and use ECB at the same time.
  • Our bean plants have spouted! I have had horrible luck with planting seeds this year that I was becoming concerned that the green beans would not grow either. In fact I was trying to find a store to purchase live plants from. But yesterday, they started popping out of the ground and today I am counting a close to 90% growth rate from the seeds.
  • Spring/Early Summer has finally arrived in North Carolina. The high temperature this week are crawling slowly into the 80s. We have not needed to turn on our air condition yet but I am sure it will not be long. The great news is that we have now been a month without use heat or air. Our electric bill should remain below $200 for the month of May as well!
  • Amanda has applied for and been accepted into the community college starting in the fall. I am so excited and proud of her.
  • On Sunday both Lily and Kendall participate in their final cheerleading competition for the year.  Lily’s team received a special honor of best tumbling for the entire day! My plan is to post lots of fun pictures for Wordless Wednesday. Pictures not only of the competition but also from the rides we enjoyed at the amusement park where it was held.

Random Thoughts Thursday

Posted on by
Reply
  1. It does not feel like just a week ago we were enjoying some fun at the beach!
  2. Matt’s birthday was Tuesday but due to our schedule we decided to celebrate tonight. He wished for things to slow down and I just laughed!
  3. I am amazed at the difference in the weather in different parts of the country. Today it was windy but 65* but in Michigan it snowed!  I am also very thankful I don’t live where it snows in April!
  4. I was able to plant most of my square foot garden today!  The current plan is to finish it in two weeks and replace anything that does not survive. I thought I had checked the weather better but it turns out that we have a chance of going below freezing today so I hope everything survives. I am so excited to get things growing!
    FullSizeRender 
  5. . We are doing really well on our budget for the month. I knew in advance that our beach trip would cost us extra and I am hoping to cover the additional repair to the van as well. As of today, we have spent only $121 of our $600 grocery budget and that includes not only the plants you see above but steaks for Matt’s birthday dinner! In gas, we have spent $309. This amount does include our gas for travel to and from the beach but not the repair that was made on the white van prior to going. I don’t see that we will be spending anything more in gas but do expect to end up spending around $150 on groceries by the end of the month.
  6. Weird things excite me, as you can tell from the numbers above, we have not been grocery shopping this month. On Monday, we went down to our building where we have both our freezers. In the chest freezer is all veggies, it is starting to look a little low except for the zucchini which I froze over 2 years ago.  The other freezer now only contains chicken and is less than half full. I am excited to finally be using and seeing a difference in our grocery budget. I definitely don’t want to use up all our stock pile but like the idea of starting fresh at the end of the summer and attempting to maintain the same $600 budget after cutting it down to a fourth for a couple of month.
  7. Our next and final cheerleading competition is only two weeks away but it at Carowinds which is an amusement park. It will be very expensive but a fun trip. I am actually really looking forward to decreasing our schedule by at least one night a week for cheerleading! Swim team starts everyday in the month of June so I am not sure what we will do for the month of June this year. I would love to take a month off from cheering but just don’t see that happening!