Animals

A couple days a stray cat showed up at our house. The next day I saw signs of a largish rodent (as in rat) in our house. I put the cat up on freecycle and got a taker, but her husband wasn't convinced, so the cat is still here. I'm going to keep it around for a few days longer in hopes that she'll help our rodent problem. I also hope someone will come and adopt her. I've got 6 cans of cat food. When that runs out I'll take her to the pound if we haven't found an owner for her yet. She's really sweet.



I was really very silly and offered her food from my hand. She accidentally bit my finger, so I had to go get a tetanus shot, some heavy duty antibiotics, and some acidophilus. A bit more trouble than I thought I was getting into when I wanted to feed the poor, starved cat. Oh, well. She's really nice and cute.

I've repented of my vehicle of choice. I want head rests on at least some of the seats. So, now I want a Ford Expedition. The ratings are quite a bit better than our Aerostar. We'd be moving up in the world of vehicles. Gas is about the same, so we wouldn't notice a difference.

Someone thinks I'm off my rocker

I read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover book and I am ready to change our finances. All we have to do is send every bit of extra money off toward debt, starting with the lowest and so on until we have only our mortgage left. We could do this in one year. After that we'll have at least $1,000 extra every month to put into saving. I am so elated at the thought of the car breaking down and it not being a huge catastrophy. So, I told the old hubby about it this morning because I was super excited at the prospect of not being broke. He thinks I'm absolutely nuts. He has no faith in the principle of paying our debt. His plan is to put all extra money (which is not so much since we never have any leftover after paying our minimum payments) into savings. Then whenever we have a baby we can use that money as a downpayment on an expensive vehicle, add more debt, and be broke for the rest of our lives. I showed my plan to him on paper. He does not think we can get a reliable 8 passenger vehicle for $5k. I did the research tonight and we can. It isn't my dream vehicle by a long shot, but it is something that can transport our entire future family and our stuff. The Ford full size (economy series) van. My actual dream vehicle is a vintage vmw bug. I want teeny tiny. Since that isn't going to happen for many years, I will settle for a giant van bus and $1,000 extra a month. Now I have to convince Aaron.

At the same time I bought a car seat. It is a radian 80. It will fit an 80 pound kid. I was just looking for a 65 pound car seat, but the 80 was on sale for half price. It was an amazing steal. I've been saving up for this. I have $90 cash in my underwear drawer. I'll be getting $50 in two weeks for music lessons, and $15 for survey membership. I'm also selling some items. I'll put it all in the bank to pay for this seat. Eric gets to have it until Karen's car seat expires. Unless I go nuts again and save up another $150 to buy the Graco Nautilus.

Homeschooling

I went to a homeschooling support group last night. I found out there were a bunch of moms with educational views similar to mine. I was reminded that I was doing what is right. Now I have to convince my husband (again). Many of these moms have college students and older teenagers as proof that our odd educational views really work. I'm going to keep going because I need all the help and support I can get.

On the search

I've been put to the task of finding music for the community orchestra to play. Since we have no money it is not an easy task. There is a bunch of free orchestra music, but it is mostly Mozart and Vivaldi. I'm supposed to find "lighter" music. I'm up to suggestions.

A little surprise

Tonight Karen was digging in her nose, so Aaron thought to ask if there was something in it. She answered yes, but didn't know what it was nor where she was when it got up her nose. Aaron got the flashlight and I looked up her nose. It appeared to be a grain of rice, but we hadn't had rice for a while. I did the blow in child's mouth trick and out came a three inch long piece of linguine. How did that get up there? (We did eat linguine for dinner.)

Caitlyn is selling Girl Scout cookies. We had planned to go out and take advantage of all the people home today for the holiday. Unfortunately it snowed 6 inches and I didn't want to drag the little kids out in it. We went out to get our circle and I brought the shovel so that I didn't have to step in piles of snow. My back went out by the time we returned. I helped the kids can our wheat. When we ran out of canning jars they put it into baby food jars. I can just see myself bringing up 10 jars of wheat to grind for one loaf of bread. I'm going to buy more lids and rings tomorrow. I have lots more canning jars and 75 more pounds of wheat. While I was resting I finally patched Karen's pretty pink dress. Then I sewed Caitlyn's apron. I guess I better do Emily's tomorrow. They match. (Made from the same ugly dress.) Caitlyn started sewing beads on a hat for a pony. I'm exhausted.

Oh, the stress

I finally worked on the budget. I don't know how we've been making it. We have been spending a bit more than we've been taking in. Friday is the date of the new paycheck. That will help greatly except for the part about putting the extra into savings. At the rate we're going we won't have any extra... I think it is time to go back to beans and clean my kitchen so that I make bread.

We had surprise weather today. Yesterday the forecast was sunny and freezing. It was the same when I got up in the morning. When I went upstairs the snow was falling at a fast rate. After my shower I checked the weather again. The forecast changed to give us a slight chance of snow. It snowed all day and was freezing. The low temp is supposed to be around 0 tonight. I'm sorry for Aaron. I was going to crochet like crazy so he'd have a hat. Instead I checked out the finances.

Monsters and a new cause to work for

Karen has learned about monsters. She has been up a few nights screaming about monsters. That results in three sleepy people. Fortunately she has quit peeing the bed, so Caitlyn moved back in with Karen. Hopefully Caitlyn can ward off the monsters.

Saturday was our stake women's conference. The key note speaker was big in the church's humanitarian stuff. She got her young women to work for others. I borrowed the welfare dvd from church and we watched it yesterday. Today the big girls and I started sewing baby blankets. Eric desperately wanted to make one too, but he just can't follow a line. He doesn't understand in and out. I need to find a project he can do. He designed quilts that I will make for him, but he needs something to occupy himself while the girls and I sew. I wanted to get the "I want"s out of the kids. I hope we can succeed.

A picture post

I've finally got the pictures up. I told the kids to grab their favorite gift for the picture and this is what they chose.



Her mittens.



The Spooky Old Tree. (He has it memorized and reads it nightly to scare himself. Grandma and Grandpa have the book.)



Socks and barrettes.



More socks and barrettes.



All together with some cards and pencils.

This past Saturday was Emily's baptism. I forgot to bring the camera (I remembered the baby, though), but I have some pictures in her dress which have not yet been uploaded. Friday night we had hurricane force winds and this is what we found in our backyard Saturday morning.



Just the week before the ward had to do an emergency equipment survey, basically listing what equipment we had. On Saturday they knew who to call to find chainsaws. The crew came over after lunch and took apart the tree. We now have firewood for next year as well as piles of pine needley branches.

Sunday we went to church at 9am. It was early, but we made it 10 minutes early. Karen is a sunbeam, the littlest and youngest of them all. Eric gets the neighbor as his teacher. Emily got her Faith in God booklet and an invite to activity days. I got my Joseph Smith manual and started reading. My New Year's resolutions are: to keep up with the Relief Society lessons and to read the scriptures every day.

Today I took my van over to the health department to get the car seat installations checked. The tech (a guy in the ward) said they were the best installed car seats he'd ever seen. I know how to install my car seats in my van. Yay! I feel good today.