After a major freak out...

we successfully had S's mom and oldest brother over for dinner last night. I have these issues I'm trying to work through and well lets just say yesterday they all came to a head. Let me start by saying the house was pretty clean but we still had dishes in the sink and toys on the floor and I was not thrilled about it. I wanted everything to be super clean when they came over. I have been feeling like if things aren't clean, organized, cooked well and presented nicely I am a failure as a wife and mom. I'm not sure where I got these ideas but it lead to a breakdown yesterday. Finally, I snapped and started yelling at S to help me because it was his family coming over and he started yelling back that I was freaking out for no reason, which was true as things were pretty clean.

Anyway, I made marinated chicken breast, roasted squash and green beans. All of which turned out very well. I wish the green beans were better but such is life I guess. Hopefully, I'll be not so crazy the next time we have visitors for dinner.

-M

Cooking Adventures

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best chef. I can read and can follow a recipe so I'm slowly learning. If it didn't come from a box or require shake n bake my mom probably didn't make it so I never learned how to cook it. I'm being adventurous and trying many new things. I've picked out a bunch of recipes, planned days to make them, bought most of the ingredients and am hell bent on becoming a decent cook for my family.

This past week has been trial and error both in cooking and in planning. I planned meals for the upcoming weekend with the intentions of S planning for Monday and Tuesday and everyone eating out on Wednesday and Thursday. I went shopping Sunday night for some basics and hoped for the best. This didn't go so well and S was unable to child wrangle as well as work the stove. Tuesday I needed up putting something in the crock pot for him to serve at dinner time.

Let me also point out some scheduling factors we have while making the menu plan. Monday - Thursday I work til 11pm. S works Wednesday - Sunday starting at 10pm. O eats dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's on Wednesday and Thursday while Mommy works and Daddy sleeps.

Menu Plan for 11/16 - 11/26 (I shop on Fridays)
Monday - S was supposed to plan and cook. It ended up being hot dogs with a veggie stir-fry. Epic fail on the ability of S to watch O and cook at the same time.

Tuesday - After the night before fiasco I decided Mondays and Tuesdays will be crock pot meals set up by me before I leave at 12pm. Chicken Parm with S cooking the spaghetti when he was ready to serve. Thumbs Up!

Wednesday and Thursday - Dinner at Grandma's

Friday - Mexican Stuffed Shells

Saturday - Cabbage, Rice and Beans

Sunday - Marinated Chicken Breast with Squash and Salad

Monday - Spaghetti Squash with Tomatoes and Herbs

Tuesday - Egg, Cheese and Sausage Bake

Wednesday and Thursday - Dinner at Grandma's

So, there you have it, my first attempt at a menu plan and keep tuned it to see if we can follow it and how the meals turn out!

-M

New Home!

We're in our new place... almost. Physically just about everything is in the apartment. We have a few straggling boxes at S's parents' house. Only 70% or so is put away which is a good deal but we are very busy during the week and were hoping to get more done this past weekend.

All of our groceries are put away and we are accessing what we still need to fully stock our pantry and freezer on items we like to keep in the house. I went shopping late last night which is the worst time to go because the shelves are almost empty. The store had none of the cheeses I wanted luckily I was able to get rain checks so I'll pick those up later in the week. S is washing all of our dishes today and after that the kitchen will be fully set up. We need to finish the living room. We have the TV, sofa, rocking chair and VCR in place but still need to hook up the DVD player, radio and Wii.

I did the laundry before we moved but never put it into drawers so that needs to be done pretty quickly before it starts getting mixed in with the dirty stuff and I have to wash everything over again. Possibly tomorrow morning. Things are moving into place quickly which is the way I like it because when they are out of order I tend to become a basket case.

-M

We're Moving!

On Sunday! This explains the lack of postings and lack of state of the finances update. We'll be skipping the finances this month and begin again in December with an awful drop in net worth. We spend more than we would have liked buying things to set up our new place. I'm disappointed but also not at the same time because much of the stuff that we bought is good quality and will last a long while. We could have saved here and there on some things but had to replace them much sooner which would most likely cost us more in the long run. I'll give you some rough numbers: We spent about $300 on household items such as dishes, pots/pans, towels, rugs, appliances and so forth. We spent $75 on setting up the pantry so far. We fully intend on spending a large chunk (over $100) either Sunday or Monday when we go shopping and after that we are down to a much smaller weekly grocery budget. We are also renting a moving van to move items from my parents house about 190 miles away to our apartment. This will cost just over $100. Moving sure is expensive especially when it is your first actual apartment.

-M

Tot School!

We have so much to update you on! Since we missed our tot school updates the last few weeks I’ll start with those and continue to post little updates throughout next week. We have been busy during Tot School plus we took a field trip. We spent some time building with blocks. While we were doing this we were learning color, letter, number and animal recognition. She currently knows the letter O and most of her colors. We are still working on the rest and they will come with time. This is also good for hand eye coordination.

We love our play dough. We play with it multiple times every day. We had green, red, yellow and blue but they dried out so we bought new play dough on our field trip to Toys R US where we met Plex. We came home with two shades of pink, teal and purple. (All picked out by O) Most of the time play dough is used to increase her fine motor skills but occasionally we have a little throwing which is a gross motor skill. Ho Hum, can’t keep it all on the table.

This is PLEX from Yo Gabba Gabba. O loves this show but not people in costumes dressed up as people from her favorite show. She would not go anywhere near him to have her picture taken. Such is life with a 17 month old. We were expecting other characters from PBS as well as Nick Jr to be there as well but we waited around for 20 minutes and no one else showed up so we checked out and headed to AC Moore. After AC Moore we checked back in Toys R Us and didn't see anyone else. I was disappointed and O didn't have any idea she was missing out on anything.

After trick or treating and candy eating we created a homemade drum set out of the candy containers and some lollipops that no one really wants to eat. We experimented with using both ends of the lollipops and decided that we like hitting the pot with the stick end better than the pop end. We learned that the pot makes a different noise than the plastic pumpkin. Most of all we learned that drums are very noisy when other members of the family are sleeping.

There you have it! That’s what we’ve been learning at Tot School!

Apartment Hunting

Even a Perfectly Honest "For Rent" Sign
Originally uploaded by dmperkins

We have been keeping our eye out for apartments in our neighborhood. There is one across the street that had a moving truck outside but when we asked if someone was moving out we were told no and there is one down the block. I met with the landlord of the down the block apartment today and it was not the most plesant experience I've ever had. Let's just say we'll probably keep looking but S is going to call him back to follow up.

-M

Not feeling well!

I haven't been feeling well since Thursday. It started out as a sore throat which went on to be cough. Yesterday, I took a day off of work because I had the voice of someone that had been smoking and drink straight scotch for 50 years. Today, I'm feeling better but still not 100%. I have a headache and a lingering cough.

Yesterday, I finished knitting a pair of mittens using my own pattern as I couldn't find one to fit her hand. They are a bit long but that's ok as she won't even put them on. She starts to shake her head and yell no when I get any where near her with them. Hopefully, she'll try them on before she out grows them. I'm very proud that I was able to finish the hat and mittens without putting them down for a different project. I've had a blanket in the works for awhile now. I'm going to work on that some more before I start yet another project.

-M

Work and Hobbies

While we haven't been any busier this week than we have in past weeks we experienced a big change and a hobby resurgence. S went back to work (at least one of us has been unemployed for the past 16 months) and I started knitting again.

S going back to work has created some mixed feelings from everyone. O now has both parents in the work force which is something she's never had before. I'm upset at the shift. S is upset he can't spent more time with us. We're both happy to have more money coming in. It is one of those situations in which you are damned if you do but even more damned if you don't.

Back to the more exciting stuff, knitting. I have been knitting on and off since high school. I taught myself using internet instructions. I bought a how to book as well as a kit to get started with and just couldn't figure out the darned pictures. I did end up learning the basic knit stitch and just like Ellen Page, I've made a bunch of scarves and attempted a hat which has a massive hole in the top. That is until this weekend! I attempted to make O a hat and it turned out nicely. It is very hard to see in the picture but it is a multi colored hat (purple, blue and green, 959) with a royal purple (596) trim. I'm not a big fan of the yarn itself but I had it around the house. She loves holding the hat and carrying it around but doesn't really like it on her head. I'm hoping she'll warm up to it. My next project is going to be a set of matching mittens... wish me luck!

-M

Money

Money
Originally uploaded by Leaca's Philosophy

I can honestly say I am shocked at the numbers for September! Our net worth went up when I fully expected it to continue to fall. I have come to realize that I haven't been counting my retirement fund in our net worth statements. I'm going to continue to not count it and while this may paint a skewed picture of our net worth we are not using that money for another oh 40 years so it is not in our every day thoughts. I'm going to keep it to banking accounts that we can access as well as debts.

Our E-fund is up a bit from $149 to $675. We are working our way to our long term goal slowly but we'll get there if we keep chugging along.

We did a deposit in O's savings account this month. We are not depositing every month so a lot of times this doesn't change. We deposited $60 to bring her to a total of $300.50. She also has $30 in her piggy bank in bills as well as a good deal of change. This will get deposited this month. Usually we do it all at once but S and I had a bit of a mix-up regarding who was depositing the check.

Our travel fund is down and down a lot! We used this money to pay for S's college tuition this month. He is paid in full for the semester and it is his last semester. This was not something I was willing to put on a credit card when we had the cash in the bank. Vacations will come and go but not more paying interest on college tuition than necessary is golden at this point.

Retirement stayed the same at 4% for September but I changed the deposit amount to 5% as of this past Sunday so that will have an increase in the October amounts.

M's Student Loan is down, of course, to just under $15,000 which was our goal for 2009! WOOHOO! We should have about $500 more paid off by the time January rolls around. I am excited about this but also know that we should be saving a little bit more. I'll think about changing how much I'm sending to my student loan this month and report back next month. S's student loan remains the same.

Our net worth, as I said, has gone up. It wasn't much but any improvement makes my heart and pocket happy. We are up to -$26,330 from -$26,740. As I said, it wasn't much of an improvement but I fully expected a decrease.

So, there you have it! Our monthly check in... a little late but due to illness it was to be expected.

-M

Visiting My Parents

As I've posted before, we are living with S's parents because S was unemployed for the past ten months. S started his new job yesterday and we're hoping to move out by our first wedding anniversary in March, if not a little sooner. I don't particularly enjoy living with S's parents and while I'm very grateful to have them to help us out in this time of need it makes me miss my own parents even more. I haven't always had the best relationship with my mom but I think all women go through that at some point. However, having O has changed things. While I'm annoyed that she wants to buy her toys every time she sees her, it has certainly made us closer. S's parents live three hours from my parents but we visit my parents often. In fact, I'm typing this from my parents' home computer. Visiting my parents has always been a priority for me even while away at college. I was the girl that went home at least once a month in addition to holidays and vacations. Now, we try to visit my parents twice a month. I'd like to cut it down a bit but then feel guilty that they will not see O as often and as my mom always reminds me, "She's only little once." We will continue to visit often so that O can have a great relationship with both sets of grandparents. S and I never had that option as our grandparents died while we were young. Well, that's not entirely true. S had his paternal grandmother until earlier this year. His mother did not get along with her and she lived a few states away so he did not see her often plus his mother's opinion of her strained their relationship. I think a part of parenthood is wanting your children to have what you didn't and that's why I visit my parents so often. I'm hoping she has a great relationship with all of her sets of grandparents.

-M