Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Valentines day

Because our anniversary is 2 days before Valentines day, the 14th is celebrated as a family. Anything that could be dyed pink or cut in to a shape of a heart, was. Mac was all into it. He made sure I put a heart love note in his lunch cause "that's what all the good moms do:)" I love my family And I'm glad we celebrated our love all day long!









The powells

 It's that time of the year. Friends start getting jobs other places, leaving us behind (do I sound sad? cause I am) it never gets easy. The big exudus that is happening reminded me that I haven't blogged about the powell's move. Wade got a new job back In November in Louisville. Lucky us, just a short 1.5 hours away. Nancy is the type that does a lot for people but hates attention on herself and hates surprise parties. So how do you say a proper good bye to someone like her? You throw a Christmas party that has a surprise theme:) The night was a lot of fun.

One thing I have been blessed with all my life is good friends. Friends that would do anything for me and I for them.  The powells lived here for 5 years. A lot happened in those five years. A lot of transition happened for me. I went from 1 to 2 kids and then 2 to 3 kids. Drew graduated from law school and started a very demanding job. He also got 2 very demanding callings in that time as well. Without sounding too dramatic but I'm not sure I could have gotten through all that without Nancy. Well, would have gotten through it but not happily. It's a blessing to have a friend that you can show up on their front porch with a colicky baby and just hand him over. Or a friend to eat with, run with and laugh with. There's a reason why Drew calls Nancy "Diana." We miss having ike over every day and we haven't found a friend that has replaced him yet but probably never will. Luckily they are still relatively close and we have been able to see them a couple of times.

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?