New Year New Goals

  In my last post I mentioned a new adventure I'm dragging my husband on. Well, as long I've had kids I've been torn between work & staying home. I would love to only work part time, but with 3 kids & daycare that could just never happen. The other day I got to thinking we should really work on a goal that would result in me being able to stay home with the kids. We would love the kids to be home schooled and get a little more personalized education. So after sitting down & doing the math we came up with a plan and we hope to be there in 12-18 months. Our first goal is to save 4 months worth of expenses (not counting my husbands 401k & retirement). That is the primary goal. Once we reach that goal we will then go 3 whole months saving my entire paycheck. This serves 2 purposes, one to see if we can survive without it, but also to put a little more money back. Another part of the plan is between now & then for me to work on making a small income from home to help cushion the blow a little bit (I have a plan on how to do this also, but it will take awhile to get there & I'll share that a little later). We currently own our cars outright & do not have notes on either one. We also don't have any credit card debt, which helps! We do have student loans but that is about it as far as debt goes besides our mortgage. My promise to YOU (hopefully to make me more accountable also), is to post our savings progress on the first of every month! I am not going to give exact dollar figures but you can see the percentage we have saved towards our goal on the upper right corner of the blog, there is a little savings meter! We had a little money set back already, so as you can see we are at 38.5%! Our plan is to just really cut back & try to think of all the good things we can do once I stay home! (the picture above is our son Tuck & our dog Bella).

Ten Years!

      Today me & my wonderful husband have been married for 10 years! It is so hard to believe how fast 10 years has gone by. It seems like yesterday we were 20 & 21 getting married. Looking back I don't think either of us realized how much work it would be. But, I do think we both were willing to do ANYTHING it took to make it work & that's the reason we got married. We had realistic expectations of each other and our marriage. We basically grew up together and it hasn't always been easy. We fight & bicker like you can't believe. If you know us in real life maybe you CAN believe it, because chances are you have seen it. We don't hold a grudge against each other & we always just fight it out right where we are! We usually get over it in about 10 minutes and feel much better. I don't want to be one of those couples that acts all perfect and fake all the time. I think those people are headed for trouble. How exhausting must it be to always feel the need to put on a perfect front! I want our kids to see us have a real marriage, with real fights, real bumps and real LOVE. I want them to see it is work, but it is worth it. I don't want any of my kids to go into marriage thinking its just a fairy tale & a wedding. I can't even begin to imagine where I would be without Chris. He has always believed in me and my dreams. He always supports my crazy ideas & dreams and trusts me (stayed tuned for more on the NEWEST adventure I am dragging him into). Even when we have failed he has always been there to pick me back up and help me keep going without throwing it in my face. Everything I lack as a parent he is. I'm tough and strict, he's soft and playful. I'm a planner and a control freak, he is free spirited and doesn't care if I plan everything down to the last detail! I'm messy and a horrible cleaner, he can put on headphones and clean the house in an hour. He is such an amazing father to our kids and I could never ask for more. He will usually get out of bed at night when they cry before I can wake up. He changes diapers, kisses owies and wipes noses better than most mothers. He can juggle 3 kids at a doctors office, make lunches while doing hair, and cook dinner while doing laundry without blinking. He starts the coffee pot for me in the morning even if he has been up and down all night with one of the kids. He still makes me laugh until I sound like a truck driver and always knows how to make smile and how to piss me off! Its been a roller coaster, but has been so worth it!

Dr.Temple Grandin & Park Fun

So things have been very chaotic lately! A few new things are going on. The girls are now coming with me to work as we have an onsite daycare at my job & they finally had openings to fit the girls in, we had been waiting a few months. It has been a HUGE help & time saver. Not to mention its nice to be able to check in on them & see them throughout the day. We also recently switched Tucker's daycare, this is also the daycare where the girls used to go. We discovered that about 5-6 months ago the LaPetite Academy that he had been attending illegally published photos of him as well as both girls on their website. They not only didn't have a legal release, they had EXPLICIT instructions to NEVER publish the girls names or photos. It took 2 phone calls & 3 nasty emails threatening legal action before they removed the photos. Even then I only got the run around as to why it wasn't their fault. The worst part is for a year even we didn't publish photos of the girls on our Facebook pages, blogs, etc. I felt like it was such a slap in the face from a company that was supposed to protect our children, instead they put them in harms way. In happier news the baby has a new found love of the swing! See the video above. She laughs like that the entire time she swings. I also went yesterday & saw Dr.Temple Grandin speak at an event near me. If you aren't very familiar with her you can always watch the movie named after her, but basically she is an autistic woman that went on to invent a cattle sorting system used by half of handlers in the US. She has won many awards including from PETA for her work in the ethical treatment of animals. Working with kids with autism everyday it can be very hard sometimes to understand what they are going through. Dr.Grandin has an amazing way of breaking things down & describing things that make it a little easier to see things from their perspective. After the speech she did a book signing. I waited in line over an hour to get a book signed.

 She was very nice & JUST like the movie. The part that made me laugh is she was talking to me the whole time, she wouldn't even stop when they tried to take this photo. It was really exciting to meet someone that has overcome so much and opened so many people's eyes. She is really a true testament to how misunderstood people with autism are. She may be awkward in situations, or can't pick up social cues, but she is brilliant and is in no way "handicapped", or less than what we view as typical. I think she has taught so many people a lesson on acceptance and tolerance and I find her very inspiring.