One of the reason that we chose to stay at this particular hotel is because of the cool water areas that it has. These include several both indoor and outdoor hot tubes, a really cool water slide, several pools that range from 1.5 to 2 ft of water with buckets and sprinklers galore, a lazy river and of course several regular pools. Zach has even decided that he likes playing in the water. Check out the fun the kids have been having…..
2. Amanda decided at the last minute to join us for this trip and everyone is really enjoying having some quality time to spend with her. The funniest part is that they are “taking turns to sit beside her” but no one wants to sleep with her because she snores! 
3. We had planned to play Putt Putt today but the weather has not cooperated at all so instead we surprised the kids with a trip to Ripley’s Aquarium. They LOVED it..I am going to plan an entire “Wordless Wednesday” post with some of the awesome pictures that Matt took.
4. The water slide that is part of the outside pool at our hotel was open today and all three of the little kids were so excited to go down it. Unfortunately Zach ended up with a battle scar from it. I was so proud that he did go down a second time after hitting his head the first time. 
5. We have not even been down on the beach because of the weather but I did at least get a picture from the pool.
Lily at 9 years old and her first day of contacts!
I am not a person who enjoys working in the yard, well except for mowing. As a mom, who can say no to an hour of uninterrupted quiet time? I do however, want to have a yard that is pretty and looks like I care. I really enjoy flowers at least looking at them. We are finally at a season in our life when we have the money, time and energy to attempt to beautiful the yard. We are also focusing on making our square foot garden not only productive but at least not an eye sore. Yesterday, we spent most of the day working outside, the biggest project was adding a “platform” to the square foot garden as well as getting it ready to plant in a couple of weeks. I am so excited that it turned out this well.
Next after twenty years, I decide to replace the brick chip with mulch on both sides of the house.
We also ended up replanting some grass up front and I did some rearranging of the flowers in the front bed. Finally, I replanted tulips and love my flower pot in front of the house.
I am exhausted and sore but very pleased with the results.
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To me this is the most important day of the year. I have the privilege this morning to be teaching the Beginner’s Children Church group which is the two year olds. I hope that they will begin to understand the significance of this day even in the smallest manner. I am using the Resurrection Rolls as the base of my lesson. I was not able to find a recipe that I really liked so I combined a couple including scripture to make the meaning as clear as possible. Do you believe?
In pictures…. but I will add this was the most I have enjoyed coloring the eggs. It was easy and not a lot of clean up!
And the final results….
Blogging: Goal: 15 per month Goal Met! I think I have finally got my groove with blogging!
Weight: Goal: Met and maintain weight of 175. This goal will be considered met each month that weight loss is achieved and once this weight is achieved, each month maintained is considered achieved. Fail again!
Spiritual- Goal. I want to spend time reading and or studying the Bible at least 5 days a week for the year. Doing better but still not achieved
Personal Goals: Achieved 1 of 3
Financial Goals: Achieved 4 of 4
We are continuing to make small steady progress in this area. Income wise this was an awesome month as we received an expected boast. I am also hoping to keep on track during April with our Beach trip.
1. Pay off all debit by December 2015, except for mortgage.
a. JC Penny- 79.32– . DONE
b. Home Depot- $270 a month Payment. Will be paid off in July Goal met!
c. American Express – pay $2300 this month Goal Met!
d. Personal Loan (used to purchase van) .The current scheduled payment is $217 a month with this scheduled to be paid off in December 2015. Goal Met!
2. Emergency Fund to $2000. Placed $100 in for the month Goal Met!
. 3. Groceries: Spend $600 a month . Currently at $741 for the month. No real reason for this except we choose to purchase some steaks and convenient foods and this was a 5 week month. Hopefully better on track next month especially with the need to purchase plants for the garden and a trip for meat in our near future. Fail
4. Gas: Spend $400 a month with any remaining to be move to Auto fund for repairs. We need to make another repair on the white van this month which cost $157. We also have been travelling alot both for cheerleading and for medical appointments. With the repair we ended the month with a total of $474. Because of some extra income we did not need to dip in our emergency fund for this repair so officially this is Goal Met!
Disney- I have decided to add this just to be accountable. This month, I have been selling items online in preparation for our physical yard sale in April. I have been really surprised and excited to see the money come in. I have been able to purchase a stroller that we plan to take and use in Disney, 2 autograph books and a dress.
Looking ahead to April- First is going to be to control with grocery budget. I am hoping to eat out of the fridge and freezer for the first 3 weeks of the month prior to our beach trip. I am positive we will at that point have to head to Costco. I will also need to purchase live plants during the last two weeks of the month depending on the weather. I am setting $100 budget for this which means that I need our grocery spending to stay under $500 for the month. Next is Gas- in April, I am already aware of 3 small repairs that are needed. I am hoping that gas prices will stay low enough to accomplish these repairs in addition to covering our regular expense of gas. Finally, I have reworked our budget and have added a line for saving in our emergency fund. I am so happy to accomplish this goal.
That is how we spent most of this beautiful Saturday! Playing in the dirt! The temperature was around 65 degrees and it was sunny! I would call it a perfect Spring day in North Carolina!!
I started the day with a long list of small projects that needed to completed to make our yard at least presentable.
As you can tell we did accomplish a lot. The ground is simply too wet right now to get the playhouse adjusted, so hopefully in the next couple of week we can get this marked off the list. Applying the weed preventer, need to happen just prior to it raining so I am going to do this on Sunday in anticipation of rain late Sunday night or Monday.
This is one area that I will admit that I usually forget to budget for however this year, I did not. I had budgeted $100 for the yard, after using this I ended up pulling $25 from the yard sale profits to keep us even for this project. I am so excited to have this behind me and to not have to borrow money to complete. One of the ways that I ended up saving money was buying plants off the “clearance” shelves at Lowes. I ended up purchasing all but 2 of the plants from this area this year. I had great success with these last year as most of the time the plants are simply not blooming or missed getting water prior to being placed in this area.
Lily is a bit of a prissy girl and does not like playing in the dirt but because we were all outside, she was required to at least sit outside as well.
And finally a picture of the mulched beds and planter…
Enough randomness for today!
1. I decide to post to an online yard sale yesterday, these are all items that I was gathering to sale anyway so I figured I would just get a head start. If everyone arrives and picks up the items they have claimed I will have made $250! This is going to help with our Disney trip! We had decided that the first $100 would be used for a stroller, so that takes a chuck but I am super excited to see extra money coming in!
2.Matt is working tonight, tomorrow night and Tuesday night… three nights a month is nothing to complain about but main it just seems like a lot at this moment. It probably has to do with the fact that I worked late and am tired but I was so glad to put the kids to bed.
3. Our new to us white van continues to need small repairs. Yesterday, we took it to the radiator shop and they were able to fix a small leak that was causing the van to smoke especially when sitting in traffic. I don’t like sitting in the school line with smoke coming out from under the hood! We are hoping to be able to pay for this repair out of our gas fund for the month. It will leave us stretching a tank for a little over a week but it would also mean that our Emergency Fund is able to stay in tact
4. After a huge trip to Costco last week we have $200 left in our grocery fund. I am hoping to spend half this amount for the month but if some excellent sales come along I may just stay under budget and be happy.
5.We are travelling again on Sunday. This will be the second Sunday in a row that we have missed church. Other than during our annual beach trip each year, I can not tell you the last time that we have missed two Sundays in a row!