I'm having a makeover...

A Total Money Makeover that is!



You have just got to check out this book if you have any kind of debt. I wish I'd discovered this book years ago, although years ago I probably wouldn't have been ready for it. NOW, I'm ready for it.

I look forward to living a life with out debt. He talks about how it can be done. He has baby steps that you should follow. Baby Step #1 is have a $1000 Emergency Fund that is not easily excessible. Baby Step #2 is pay off debt (all debt= cars, medical, credit cards, small loans and anything else) using a snowball method. Baby Step #3 is save 3-6 months in expenses. I completed Baby Step #1 in just a couple of months, Baby Step #2 I'll be working on for quiet some time! He believes that you shouldn't even have a house payment, and that it's actually possible. I'm a long way from that though!!

One of the funny things that he points out though, is that once you start this process and get really focused on getting rid of your debt, MURPHY (as in Murphy's law) will hit. Well, let me tell you - this month he came to visit, moved in and never left. First, Hubbies car broke down, it wasn't a huge priority and I didn't want to use my emergency fund (baby step #1), then Hubbie broke a tooth and needed a root canal in another tooth- total bill so far $950 (I say so far, because they totaled $11,000 in work he needs done!! Can you imagine?!) Then my shower broke, to the point where Hubbie can't fix it, but as there is no E-fund left I just shower in my spare bath (we'll live). Then I thought, hey I'll go the dentist too. Now they say I need $1000 worth of work done too.

The stupid thing is they can't fathom the fact that we don't want to go into debt to fix our mouths, Obviously we want to fix the painful stuff now, the rest will just have to wait. The billing lady who was actually filling out paper work for the loan for Hubbie, was like "Oh, but it's only $180 a month for the next 72 months" (UM, hello that's like a car payment!!!!) She couldn't believe he didn't want to sign it to apply. Now that I'm focused on this I can't believe the ads out there. Buy now, pay later. It's everywhere. It's normal to be broke and in debt up to your eyeballs. It's normal. Well, I don't want to be normal anymore!

What the heck??

Mother Nature, I have a beef with you. I'm all for the rain but that little show you put on last night was NOT. COOL.

For starters I had 2 extra little bodies in my bed. Not fun.

Then I hear several very large cracks. After only about 5 minutes of DOWNPOUR SO BAD YOU CAN'T SEE OUT this is what we found:

Yeah. Thats' a very large portion of my fence laying in my yard. At least it knocked down the sunflowers I've been meaning to cut down for 4 months. And look at the stunning view of the neighbors back yard. GORGEOUS! (not that my dead grass looks any better!)

Then there is this. See that clear view of the nice cloudy sky? Yeah, well that's not supposed to be there. My trellis roof is supposed to be there. And to top it off it's NO WHERE TO BE FOUND. Guess it's high time I meet my neighbors! Maybe it was deposited in their yard?

Then there is the "fort" at the top of the play-place. Minus green vinyl cover. It was barely hanging in before the storm- now it's just clean gone.

And then there is the basketball net. It was knocked over Backwards, and it had probably 7 cinder-block bricks on top of it for extra weight. I was watching when the wind knocked it over. It fell like a piece of paper. And missed taking out the other fence by about 10 inches! (I wish the wind had picked it up and blown it away, it's such an eye sore to my gorgeous (in the winter) lawn.)

So thanks for all the fun Mother Nature, but pass me by next time please!?

Getting to know Squirt

Now that Little Man is off to school again, I get to spend some quality time just me and Squirt. I feel like I'm getting to know him all over again. He loves to play with Little Man and will usually go along with what LM says to do. But left to himself, I've realized he has the biggest imagination!

Today we sat at the little picnic table and had lunch. He was the Dad, I was the Kid. He just kept talking to me, calling me kid. At one point I told him if he didn't eat his lunch he'd have to have a time-out. He replied: I'm a Dad, Dad's don't have time-outs.

Yesterday he found a package of stretchy headbands in my bathroom. He put them all on, kindof low- around his forehead and told me he was off to the gym, "See ya later Mom!"

Also, a few days ago, we were walking to the car after work and he made me stop to "pet the pigs". There was a whole family of them right there in the parking lot. I probably looked like I was on crack, bent down in the parking lot petting the imaginary pigs but to him, they were very much real. It was too cute. I've also played every animal imaginable. He's very serious when it comes to animal noises!

He turned on the CD player today and it turned on the Children's Songbook CD. Track #1 is I Am A Child of God. He shouted "singing time!" got real excited and then proceeded to sing the song. Now when it was just Little Man and me, we'd sing all the time, but with 2 it usually just turned into a fight over which song to sing next. But he's learned it all in Nursery, so I feel like I've got some catching up to do. But he is really a pretty smart kid. He needs a lot of work on his letters, but I've got time to work with him now. It'll be fun!

And the best part was: when Little Man comes home from school, they are SO HAPPY to see each other and they got along great for the rest of the evening! Oh Happy Day!

Heartburn

I guess I complain about Heartburn alot. I didn't really even realize I was doing it. Until just in the last few days.

We saw a commercial for a heartburn medicine and Little Man says: "Mom, in the middle of the night I had the worst heartburn. It felt like my heart was burning and I called for help but you didn't come so I went back to sleep."

Then the other day I laid down on the couch next to Squirt. I groaned getting into position mainly because I'm getting a little large in the middle these days. Just as I got down Squirt jumps up, runs to the kitchen and comes back with a package of TUMS for me and says "Here go Mommy, so you don't "fro up" (throw up). It was such a sweet gesture. I love when my boys do little things like that for me! He then tells me that the greens are his favorite. What? I then noticed that there were alot missing out of my bottle. TUMS won't kill a 3 year old will they?

I'm just a little worried...

about Squirt. He's so aggressive. We're going to have to get him into some good constructive sports, the kind where he can beat people up and it be okay. Football or Hockey maybe. Otherwise I'm afraid he'll just beat people up because he wants to and that's not okay.

Specifically on my mind today though is his opinion in the car. He's a little back seat driver. He tells me where to go, how fast, what to do, etc...

We'll be in the car and Squirt will say "Go faster, Mom!" or "Be a race car, Mom!" then Little Man, always the cautious one, will say "No mom, go slower so you don't get a ticket." or "No Squirt, we could get in an accident that way"

So today I was not going fast enough for Squirt. He starts in on his "Go faster, Mom!!" When I explain that I can't because there is a car in front on me, he informs me that I need to "Crush it, and drive over it. DO IT MOM, DO IT!!"

Seriously, we need to keep him off the road for a good long time!

The battle of the Hamburger Helper

I got hamburger helper on sale last week. It was $.65/box. I got a tuna one, and a stroganoff one. I'm not crazy about HH, it's usually a little too salty. But somedays feeding my family for $.65 just makes it worth it. I put it on the menu for last Thursday. It was basically all I had left in the pantry (except meals I had planned for when my parents were here- Fri, Sat, Sun) and I've been working crazy hours last week and this week so I haven't had time to go to the store.

Well, I'm crazy pregnant lady with raging hormones and basically I didn't want HH. We decided to try this new little restaurant by our house. It was a kindof fast food type place, so still cheap but supposed to be really good. We got there to find that they had had a small kitchen fire and were closed. So we settled on Red Robin. $50 bucks down the drain.

Fri, Sat, Sun were good. I had a plan for those days.

Monday, no plan just the HH. Still didn't want it. So Macayo's here we come. $38 bucks down the drain.

Tuesday, no plan just the HH. Still didn't want it. So we ordered pizza. $15 bucks down the drain (because I didn't want pizza, I wanted a sub).

Wednesday, no plan just the HH. Still didn't want it. So we went to McDonalds. $15 bucks down the drain.

AND THEN WE WENT GROCERY SHOPPING. Because this madness had to stop.

See not only did we eat out for dinner, but I didn't have leftovers for lunch the next days and bread is currently on the list of "things that make me puke" so I had to buy lunch too.

So that 65 cent box of Hamburger Helper ended up costing me about $160 on food in the last week. That's not counting the grocery shopping. See I can't afford to be pregnant again. Oh, and did I mention Hubbie had to have $800 worth of dental work done? ON ONE TOOTH.

Current savings account balance: $0
Good food and good times: PRICELESS

Oh well! What ya gonna do?

Report on the first day of school...

This was my conversation with Little Man upon returning home from his 1st day of 1st grade.




Me: How was school?
LM: Good
Me: How was lunch?
LM: Good
Me: Did you have a special today?
LM: Yeah
Me: What was it?
LM: Music
Me: What'd you do in there?
LM: Sing
Me: What'd you have for lunch?
LM: Can't remember
Me: Are you excited to go back tomorrow?
LM: Yup.

So there you have it folks. 1st grade is "Good"

I did finally get a few more details later in the day, such as: They do not do the flag like in KDG, they do have helpers just like KDG, He'll have homework starting next week (he was so excited), they only have one recess (not so excited), He sits next to Jianna again (blah... girls!), oh and all the girls chased him on the playground but don't worry his new Nike's (found them on clearence at the outlet store!!) are faster than all those girls so he couldn't be caught!

So 1st grade IS good!

My Baby is beautiful!

I went to the Doctor today. I'm proud to announce that all of this vomiting is not completely worthless. I'm 2 pounds less than I was when I started this little journey, I've found the first trimester of pregnancy to be one of the most effective diets I've ever been on. Of course, it all goes down hill there towards the end. He gave me a new drug to try, so maybe it will help. I had a good weekend, my parents came for a couple of days and I didn't even feel nauseous. Then they left and it came back with a vengeance. Oh well, such is life. When I told the Dr. how sick I'd been he looked at my chart, noticed my 2 previous pregnancies were boys and said "Oh, I'll bet a Diet Pepsi it's a girl" I will take that bet!

Here are a couple of pictures of the baby. It actually looked like a baby today and it had a good strong heart beat.
Here it is laying face down, it's got it's little arms up by it's face and it legs folded underneath it.

Here it is facing the camera, kind of looks like an alien, but that's okay. It's still beautiful! You can see it's knees there on the right of the screen. It was a very wiggly, happy baby. I came home with about 7 different pictures and so now Squirt thinks that they are each a baby in my tummy. Can you imagine carrying 7 babies at once? No thanks! Oh and when I first got home, he wanted to know where the baby was. He thought I'd be bringing it home! He's so funny.

So today they've determined that the tear I had (I mentioned it a while back) has healed, but now they are noticing that my sac has not fused with something? I don't even know, they weren't real concerned but now I have to have another ultrasound in a month to make sure that it has corrected itself. And in 4 weeks time I'll be 17 weeks and should be able to find out the sex of the baby!!!! I've now had 5 ultrasounds, my insurance company is going to croak when they see this. So even though I'm feeling really crappy, I'm feeling very happy today!

Little Man and I were watching some TV the other day and a commercial for this green tea weight loss supplement came on. He was watching very attentively. They were displaying a body and saying "If you have excess weight in these areas (belly) and these areas (thighs) then this product would be perfect for you"

He turns to me as serious as ever and says "Wow, Mom. You really need that. You should call that number."

Some days it's hard to love my children unconditionally.

I've lost it...

Today Squirt hurt himself, and when I went to "kiss it better" he said "No don't touch it, that will hurt"

It made me sad.

I've lost the ability to kiss things better:(

He's not a baby anymore.