I didn’t update the banner for so long, because I didn’t have any good photos laying around, and also I liked the January banner a lot! But this morning, I got a good photo, and voila.

New banner.

This isn’t the actual show and tell item. But I think you can guess what it was.

Weekend Catchup

So, as you know, we went bowling on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. It was NOT fun, however, to arrive and be told that the wait for a lane was 1 hour long. We decided to go get some ice cream and then come back. Even ice cream did not help convince the kids to leave the building, so enamored were they of watching all the bowling.

Also, just so you know.. it’s exausting bowling with small kids. The getting up and sitting down and up and down and making sure the little fingers stay away from where teh ball comes out and the helping pick up the very heavy ball and the moving of teh weird metal contraption and the cheering, and the making them wait until the lady in the next lane goes, and OMG SO EXHAUSTING.

However, it was fun.

And I will say, the bumpers came in handy for me as well!

THE SCOOP ON ALL THE SICKNESS

So everyone went to school the last few days of last week, as I reported. Thursday I ran to Target to pick up some veggies and valentines for the kids’ upcoming valentines parties and still beat James and the kids home. I hit the button on my answering machien while I packed frozen veggies into the freezer to hear our pediatrician’s voice telling me that the 24 hour (or is it 48 hr?) strep test? For Ethan? From I took him in to the too-hastily made doctor’s visit when really his symptoms hadn’t really changed much and he kept telling me his throat hurt but I was convinced he was workin it to stay home another day and play on the Wii? THAT strep test?

Was positive.

So veggies safely stowed into the fridge, I hied my way back to Target and filled the prescription she had given me in case of just such an event. As an added bonus, I was now starting to feel kind of overly tired and had more congestion going on than before. I know, just so wonderful! Luckily, a call with explanation to my doctor yielded her calling in a prescription for me w/out having to go into the office. James having seen her just days before helped that, no doubt.

So yeah. Entire household on the antibiotics. I guess our (james & mine) family practice doctor had the right idea when she said the entire family should be treated.

Everyone is doing much better now, thank you, with the exception of Jocelyn — who is still so dang snotty and coughy and it’s day 7 of antibiotics and shouldn’t she be feeling better by now? I may just phone the pediatrician and see what she thinks. James was also STILL complaining of sore throat pain as late as Sunday. I think they both had a pretty nasty version of this. Blech.

THE REST OF THE WEEKEND

Saturday dawned with me rarin’ to go. Mountains of laundry was piled up to be washed. Rooms were tidied up and cleaned. Litter boxes were dumped and refilled (ok just the one). I even cleared out the area next to my side of the bed which has been strewn with magazines, books, cards, toys, kleenex boxes and more magazines and books for years now. Ethan, as he was casually running through the room, came to a dead stop and stared at this area, before finally commenting, “Wow. Very clean!”

I ran out of “Must! Do! Everything!” energy just short of actually wielding any sort of cleaning product and attacking the bathrooms, which really is a pity, and spent most of Sunday sitting on my laptop playing mah-jong, freecell, internet backgammon (when the wireless thingee decided it COULD connect me to our wireless network afterall) (Damn all the neighbors who have made their networks secure – don’t they realize I might need them to play backgammon???) while watching old episodes of Scrubs.

Seriously. Remember how addicted to ms. pacman i was? Now I am all about mah-jong and backgammon. so nice and mind-numbing. Those are games I can get behind = no thinking required!

Monday dawned with everyone having clean sheets and towels and a mountain of clean laundry to put away. Yay.

-amy

Oops. I missed several days of my “photo a day.” I would like to blame the shoddy behaviour of my wireless card in my laptop. Doh.

Oh well. Here are the missing photos, all taken Saturday night, when we took two VERY EXCITED kids to the bowling alley. It was such a hit – we’ll definitely be doing it again.

Jocelyn – Granny style, Ball in Midair

Ethan with the Metal Contraption

Ethan’s “I made a strike!” Victory Sign

Jocelyn: “I’m so confident, I don’t even have to look”

Bonus shot: Ethan’s 2 strikes in a row:

Just one note – I can’t wait until I get my flash (planned birthday present).

EVERYONE is at WORK and/or SCHOOL today!

However, Jocelyn clung on to me like a barnacle and cried when I finally pried her off and scooted out the door. That hasn’t happened in probably a year or more. Very sad 🙁

NOW I HAVE THE MOMMY GUILT!

Ethan tried to insist that he was sick, but he had no fever all day yesterday and methinks he was working it a bit.

NO MOMMY GUILT THERE!

Hopefully by the weekend, everyone will be back on the “healthy” side of the spectrum.

I’ve decided I’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do for Jocelyn’s birthday this weekend. Her birthday is March 10th, so we’re getting close. We originally thought we’d do a party at home, maybe rent an big inflatable bouncer, and eschew all the different party venues that our kids keep getting invited to (chuck e cheese, pump it up (warehouse full of inflatables), etc.) But now the thought of the party at our house is making me tired. The cost of these venue parties is what gets me, but then I started thinking about how much we would spend even if it was at home and then add on the stress of cleaning before and after… I don’t know, maybe I’m just stressed out in general but the thought not having to worry about all the party at home particulars is starting to sound good. I need to look into bowling alley parties, as I think they’d be a lot cheaper than the other alternatives.

Also, in the past, we’ve always specified “presents not required” on the invitations, as we wanted to keep the present expectation low. I’m starting to waffle on that too – if new stuff comes in, then that gives us a good reason to clear out some older unused things, right? Plus, they’ve now seen the presents that other kids get at their parties – Jocelyn probably won’t notice quite yet, but I know that Ethan will be grilling us on this point. My thought is maybe we should let them get presents from friends, but I don’t think James has changed his mind, so we’ll have to discuss.

What are your thoughts on parties and/or presents?

-amy

Now, I realize that money is one of those things that you are not supposed to talk about, along with religion and politics (and I’ve been pretty good on all those subjects on this here blog so far). I really debated about posting this, as it crosses a line about how much information I want about me and my family out there for all to see. But I feel like there are probably a lot of normal people out there plodding along like we have, who don’t like their situation and who might benefit from hearing some of this.

Without going into too much detail, I’ve been crushing on all the personal finance blogginess and podcasts out there in the inkernet. One of my new years resolutions was to get a better handle on our finances. More than just making sure the bills were paid on time and then spending on whatever until the rest was gone. Probably not a good plan, right? Right! We’ve let some debt accumulate and so it was time to pull my head out of the sand and get moving on it.

(I have even started a super secret money blog in order to keep me motivated. Hello, I am fickle. I need things to keep my attention from wandering when something shiny walks past. And no, I’m not telling you the url. Some dirty laundry should only be read by STRANGERS! See above re: how much information i want about me and my family out there.) (If you’re a stranger, maybe I’ll tell you.)

Obviously, the first order of business was to start spending less, which James is already good at, and me, not so good at. I stopped eating out at work (except for group lunches) and more importantly, on the WAY to work. While this is a good first step, I still needed to know where our money was going and get it to go where I wanted it to go.

Now, I handle the finances in our household, a role that James is fine with. Discussing money and budgeting in our household has not been without stress, conflict, and outright tension. OK, I admit it, when he sometimes (rightfully so) criticizes the state of our finances, I would usually throw up my hands and say, “Let’s see YOU pay all the bills then!” and it would stop about right there.

So the very big important second step was getting the budget in order. I know how to budget – a handy spreadsheet will suffice for most everything, really, but I ran across some budgeting software purely by chance (linked off of one of the personal finance blogs I’m crushing on). It’s called, “You Need A Budget.” Catchy, huh! I’m a quicken user, and I have tried using the budgeting part of quicken, but have found it lacking. Usually I just ignore it, and assign things to categories as the transactions occure. Which, yes, shows you WHERE the money went, after you spent it, but doesn’t not help you put it where you want it to go! And yes, assigning a $200 Target bill to just “household: groceries” is me lying to myself, don’t you think? 🙂

So enter You Need A Budget – this program is really cool. It’s not produced by a company, just a guy who decided to put his own budgeting system into software form (it was originally an excel spreadsheet, which you can also purchase) and there you go.

Now this is the part where I should just point you to the software and let you look further if you’re interested, but I can’t. I love it so much, I’m going to get into it right here. I don’t blame you if you skip the rest, but there’s some touchy feely crap at the bottom, if you want to just skip to there.

The software has 2 main screens – the register, and the budget. The budget screen has the month at the top, with a big number, which is your available money. Then there are all the categories. To start, you switch over to the register, make an income entry which is whatever your checking account balance is, and then when you go back to the budgeting side, voila, that number is there as “available” to budget with.

So then, you think about what you’ve got coming up, (the phone bill, the gas bill, the kids’ piano tuition, groceries, etc.) and in each category, you assign what you think you’ll spend. As you enter numbers for each category, the available amount decreases. You keep on doing this, until you get that available number to 0. Now all your money is ASSIGNED. It all has a JOB to do. You can make or change categories to fit your needs.

Now, as you go through the month, you enter your purchases in the register, and it will show up as “spent” in the budgeting screen. You can see with a quick glance that you’ve spent $79 of your $400 grocery budget, and it will even show you the available balance left.

It used to be that as the month went on and our checking account balance dwindled, I would grow worried & concerned $600 left in the checking account used to be, “what is going to happen? will that stretch far enough?” Now, in my budgeting screen, if I’ve assigned amounts to all the categories I can think of (including some categories for yearly expenses, like car tax and tuition) and see that I still have $600 “available” – it’s like I “found” money to put into savings or towards debt!

There’s a whole other side to the software too, which is the methodology, called the “Rules” which I also adore. I am not going to get into them much though – if you want to read more, it’s on the website.

I could go on, and I WILL go on, if you really want me to. But I won’t go on any more right here. If you’re looking to get your finances in order, this is a great piece of budgeting software.

TOUCHY FEELY CRAP

Let me just say this – the best part about this software? James and I are on the same page. He still doesn’t really look at the budget, I’m pretty much handling all the money… But no one feels like they’re being told what to do, we’re in this together and there are no more arguments, we both know where the money is going, and we are both on the same page. We have made some very specific goals and our budget reflects that. You HAVE heard that money is the #1 cause of divorce, right? (OK, I just made that up, but it MIGHT be true!) While we still have work to do in front of us, it is nice to have a plan, and nice to know we’re pointed in the right direction.

Also – It really makes me think twice about buying stuff. It’s very freeing. I don’t feel the need to buy useless crap anymore. Crap that only clutters my home and we don’t really need. I know this feeling won’t last, and there’ll be times when I just want the INSTANT GRATIFICATION of a new whateverwhatsits..

But you know what else? If I do? There’s money in the “Amy’s fun money” budget category for whatever the hell I want.

-amy