Boring post...

Being a mom and wife are hard. I have moments when I'm totally proud of myself, i call drew and tell him what I accomplished and how I handled the situations. Those are the good days. Then I have the days that I look at the kids and think " what was Heavenly Father thinking, trusting me with these perfect children and all I've done is screw them up." And then I list the things I'm not doing. Why do I do this? It's not productive. It doesn't make me a better mom. There are certain things that I have tried to do since Mac was old enough to be disciplined and have responsibilities and ill be honest, consistency is not my forte. I once was a laid back person but I find with every child I have I loose that part of me. But instead of being patient and "laid back" I ignore somethings for a bit and then lose it. Ie cleaning and jobs. I would go a week with the upstairs being a mess and then loose it, demanding cleanliness from the boys. Hours later the rooms would be cleaned. What were they learning? Back in November we decided to do 2 things budget and do a consistent job chart. The budget we wouldn't start until January but the jobs we jumped right into it. Drew was on board and so were the boys. The jobs and allowance are simple because I don't do complicated:) They have 2 chores everyday, clean their room and clean the playroom. If they accomplish it, they get a sticker. On Saturdays they get an extra job, bathroom, vacuum out car, fold laundry ect. For every sticker they earn they get a quarter but if they get a sticker on Saturday they get 50 cents. We are on the 4 th month and it's working! We have consistency! The boys love that they are earning money, not much but enough that they are learning the blessings of tithing, savings and the value of money and hard work. And I have a clean upstairs most of the week and it has saved us a ton of money. I no longer buy them anything when we go to the store. No treats, stickers, only what they need I buy. I think they are getting sick of the "you can spend your own money on that" phrase.

Budget- this post is really lame:) we looked over our financial stAtements and saw where we could save and where we needed to throw more money ie student loans. We have never budgeted ever! When we were students we just didn't shop, we went without. Then drew got his job our money management was more month to month " ok we didn't do great last month lets do better next month." Or visa versa. And surprisingly it worked ok. We stayed in our means but we weren't saving as much as we wanted. So we came up with a budget and every night we sat down recording our spending. Ill be honest, I thought I only spent a certain amount on groceries but ya, i was off by a lot! So staying in a smaller grocery budget was hard. There were some pretty skimpy meals. Even though i went over my grocery budget we finished the month of January under budget and we saved a ton of money! This month has gone better. I have figured out how to shop in our grocery budget- basically I can only go to the store 3 times a month. This has taken a lot of planning on my part and smart meal planning. But we are on track once again to save lots of money. Last night drew paid off a student loan and now we are only down to one! While budgeting has put a damper on shopping I have found it so rewarding! Plus I hit the gym a lot more cause what else do you do when the weather sucks and target is off limits?