Life at home

Another store needed my help for work and since I had worked there last year for a while, I figured I would do it again for a few weeks.What a mistake. I thought my store was bad.... this store is even worse. At my store there is tons of gossip. At this new store, the manager is just plain mean. He sits at the desk all day and then tells me I didn't do anything. Ugg.... This is not the same manager as last year. I am not overly thrilled. OK. that being said, I think I am going to quit my job. I haven't been happy at my job for a while now. But I don't have the courage to interview. I have been looking into day care at my home. My mom does it and loves it. Caleb's grandparents did foster care and day care for years while I was around. And I truly have a love for children.

Life at home

So this week I have been kinda sick! I haven't wanted to do much and have been pushed to do tons. On top of working full time for the first time since last December, I had feeding clinic for Joel, a check up Dr.'s appointment for me, vacation Bible school for Caleb. Then on Saturday we went to Starbucks for drinks with my mom, then to the farmers market, then garage sales and we actually cut garage sales short because I was feeling so crumby! Then my sister has been bugging and bugging and bugging for weeks to go cherry and raspberry picking. I told her I wasn't feeling well but she just doesn't let up. So I went (VERY SICK) to pick cherries and raspberries. After that I came home and got some dishes ready to sell on Craiglist. Jimmy came home and worked outside while Joel and I lay on a blanket. Caleb played. Then on Sunday we went to church  and went out for a belated fathers day for my daddy. We went to the beach. We couldn't find a spot to save our lives and Caleb had to go potty. So Jimmy dropped Caleb and I off at the entrance and went to find a parking spot. A few min later, he calls and said he found one up the road and he would just walk from there. So with Joel and my 16 year old sister Toni, he started walking. Mind you, he still had all the picnic stuff. The cooler packed with drinks and food, the watermelon, a few bags with chips and plates in them.....Everything. So Caleb and I start walking towards him on the main road and we keep walking and walking and we just aren't seeing him. Finally after about 25 min of walking we see them. They had parked over a mile away on some side street! Yup.... that's Jimmy for you. He is very patient with me, not so patient with the rest of the world. My dad ended up at the beach before we were and he was still at home when Jimmy parked. Long story short, we had a great time. But by golly what a goon of a husband I have!

Life at home

Although we are going by a pretty strict budget, we did throw some blow money in there. We had to other wise we would crack! So today with my few dollars of blow budget money for the week, I got a manicure :) I know that it's not super frugal but I really really enjoy doing it and it helps me grow out my nails some. Also as I have mentioned, I really have been trying to get the house cleaned. And even though it's something little I would like to tell you what I did today. I got a load of laundry done, I cleaned out my underwear drawer, made dinner, gave Caleb some Dinosaur and Camping "schoolwork" papers, sold 16 bath towels and 20 hand towels on Craigslist, read some more of Caleb's book to him (45 min today = 215 for the month!), and got a load of dishes out and a load of dishes in. Oh! And I also listed a few more shirts on Craigslist. I am hoping to get rid of some more clothes and FAST! We have seriously got probably 20 boxes of junk garage sale items down stairs taking over our basement. I am determined to get rid of those before October 1st. If not everything is gone, I am Blessing my house and giving it to Good Will. I will just have to remind myself of my October 1st goal. *2 minutes have elapsed* ok! It's in the planner. Lets just hope that on that day or before it we are free of all this stuff!

Financial Update

So today we got our new Sallie Mae bill book and our payment went down.... by 3 dollars. I guess down is down and that three dollars that we already have in our budget will go closer towards paying it off!

Financial Update

Bills continued from yesterday:

Car Insurance - We swapped some cars around this month and that has reduced our bill. We also asked about any additional discounts that we could get and they said we could have a home owners discount and a multi-car discount! We never asked before and they never told.

Christmas Club - With me being on bed rest and then the wedding and honeymoon and all, we haven't been putting money towards Christmas this year! But now that I am back to work full time and we have got everything out of the way, we are starting to save for our Christmas Club again. Last year we didn't do Christmas presents for any one. Not even Caleb. Between Grandma's and Grandpa's we didn't need to get him anything. Actually, we had a hard time thinking up things for them to get him too!! We have already started a Christmas list for this year so that next year we won't be totally stumped when they ask.

Vacation - We took a very large vacation this year (Hawaii) but we hope to take a small family vacation next year so we are putting aside $50 a month for that.

Jimmy's student loan - We are going gazelle intense with paying off Jimmy's student loans. Right now we are paying an extra $250 a month so we can get rid of those suckers. He has still got about $17,000 left but $250 is all we can scrape together right now after bills so that is a gazelle intense as we can be. We have also been selling car parts and odds and ends of junk from the house to pay this baby off. All in all we are paying $490 a month on student loans. Thank you Sallie Mae! lol

Financial Update

I had to work today which means instead of my normal 8 hour shift, I worked 9 and a half. What a boring day we had. At least we got a whole bunch of cleaning done. And I made some money! I have been working part time for the last two or so months. I go back full time this week. Although I am excited to make some more money and pay off Jimmy's student loans, I really don't like the people I work with. So work is really a love/hate relationship. Now for our financial up date.

My house - Our renters moved out in April so we have been paying mortgage and bills on it. Although we aren't living there, bills still add up slowly because they have to charge us for having the access to use it. We are hoping to look for some carpeting this week for the upstairs and get some general cleaning done to rent out.

Bills - We are trying to keep our bills as low a possible. We are opening up the shades so the natural sunlight shines in and we are keeping our AC at 79. It's a perfect temp so that we aren't sweating in the house and we also are racking up our bills super high.

Life at home

I have been actively been trying to be a better mom and a great newly wed wife this year. That has been my goal. I wanted to get the kids outside more, read more, make more dinners at home, and clean clean clean. Well I do think that I have been doing pretty good. Although we have been struggling with our reading time, we have been outside to play almost every day, I have made a weekly dinner chart so I am not scrambling around at 5 not knowing what to make, and I have been trying to clean clean clean and the house has been looking pretty good lately.

Our weekly dinner chart looks like this for now:
Monday - Salad (We have been able to get salad ingredients really cheap as it is summer)
Tuesday - Homemade Pizza (There was a great sale on make your own pizza crust a few weeks ago so I got a ton and we are going to use the cheese from our WIC card to put on top)
Wednesday - Hamburger Helper (hamburger is also one of those cheap meats during the summer and for some reason Jimmy just LOVES hamburger helper!)
Thursday - Pasta Night (Last summer we got pasta at 6 cents a box, we will be using this up this summer)
Friday - Hot dogs (There was an awesome sale on turkey dogs a few weeks ago that made them free with a peelie coupon)
Saturday - Chicken Tacos (we just love these!)
Sunday - Pasta Bake (something super simple for Sunday dinner and we all love it!)

Life at home

This morning we woke up a little earlier than normal and we went to the farmers market! Boy, did we have a blast! We got some great produce too :) We got lettuce, carrots, raspberries, and tomatoes.

Our local farmers market has a great program this year. If we use our food stamps card and scan it for $20 in tokens, we get $20 in tokens free!! The first $20 in tokens are $1 wooden tokens that can be used for any food item or any plant that produces a food item. The 2nd $20 in tokens are $2 metal tokens that can be used for Michigan fruits and veggies only which is fine because that's all we typically buy any way. What an awesome way to double your money! So although we paid out $12 in tokens. This fresh, Michigan grown, organic produce was a steal at only $6 off my food stamps card!

Life at home

So every time I go on here I feel like I have to write a ton and then I get overwhelmed and I don't publish it because I never finish because it isn't "done". So I have committed to just typing some thing short and sweet so I can actually post :)  Here's an update on us.

Joel- Out of the hospital and doing well. He is off his feeding tube!
Caleb- Got accepted into Cross Creek Charter Academy's Fantastic 5's program!
Jimmy- Went to Texas on a business trip just 2 weeks before our wedding.
Me Jessica- Got married. Lost all of my baby weight plus some.

Ok so that is us in a nut shell :)


Joel has started to jabber a little bit. I could listen to his little baby cooing all day long! Caleb got a letter from his teacher that says that we must do 30 hours of reading before the summer is over. Although we do like to read, we are finding this hard to do with our busy schedules. We have got exactly 2 months left today. So about a half an hour each day. Along with getting married, Jimmy and went to Hawaii on our honeymoon. It was beautiful there. We had put away money to go so we paid cash. We did tons and didn't worry about a budget at all :) We thought we would spend a ton more than we did so we came home with a good chunk of change to put back into our savings! Here's what we did while on Vacation in Hawaii:

We got in on Friday evening so we just went to dinner.
Saturday we went to the Dole Plantation. First we picked out a clam to see if we got a pearl. We got one! A nice shiny blue one :)

Then we went into the flower garden.

 

 Saw a multi-colored tree in the gardens too.

 We got the Boy's names written in the cool Hawaii look.

 On Sunday we went to Pearl Harbor. Well... first Jimmy made a wrong turn and we ended up at the navy base. This man took our ID's from us and asked us a whole bunch of questions! We told him we really just took a wrong turn and we would like to be on our way. It was kinda like he thought we had intentionally come this way of something. Finally he pointed us in the right direction and off we were.

 We took a ferry our to the Arizona Memorial

 Here is the Missouri Memorial

 After that we went home to take a "nap" and slept from 2pm-11pm woke up, realized it was the middle of the night and went to sleep til 4 am. Hawaii's time is 6 hours behind us so it was really 8pm-5am Michigan time. Which seems just about right for my work schedule wake up time.

On Monday we climbed Diamond Head.

Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center.
Tuesday we went scuba diving. Then out to a fancy dinner.
Wednesday we went back to the Polynesian Cultural Center. Then we went to a comedy club.
Thursday we went kayaking, hiking, and snorkeling.
Friday we went shopping then got a plane for home.
We got back home to our kiddos on Saturday morning :)

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