Monday, January 31, 2011

Back on the Market and cleaned out.....

So the house is back on the market as of today! Let's keep our fingers crossed that 3rd time is the charm. We spent the entire and I mean the entire weekend packing up stuff and getting rid of everything we don't "need" right now. Thanks to my cousin Becky and our ever gracious friend Nick we were able to store it all at their houses/garage.
I can't believe how big the house looks and clean it is!! Of course there are still some minor things we need to do:
Paint the basement walls / floors as well as scrub the floor in the back porch.
We are listing it for $59,000. For that price we are pretty much giving it away, but we are doing anything we can to sell it.
Say a prayer for us every night that we get some lookers and then a buyer!!

Back Porch - view 1
Back Porch - View 2

Kitchen
Back Porch
Basement Room
Basement room
Laundry Area
laundry Area
Hallway in basement
View from top of stairs
den/bedroom/sitting area
door to den
Girls Room
Girl's room
Alex's room
Alex's room
sitting area in den
den/sitting area/bedroom
Our bedroom/den/sitting area
Upstairs bathroom
bathroom
Front porch
living room
dining room
dining room
kitchen
kitchen

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Mamma Mia, here we go again....

There are so many things to decide when you are a grown up. Then add more decisions when you become a parent. Ugghh, anyone else tired of making all the choices? We are.
Right now we have some pretty big decisions to make that will affect the next 5-10 years of our life and it's pretty hard to know if we are making the right choices. Who is to say that one way is better than another? Here is what we get.... lot's of very useful imput on what everyone else would do if they were in our shoes. Thank you so much to everyone for their guidance and ideas. Believe me they are very helpful.

I have faith ,if you will, in RJ and I to make the best choice for us and our family. Regardless of any outcome that may result, we will still be together and "tough" it out. We love our family and LOVE everyone for helping us!

-Thanks-

To be or not to be friends on Facebook.....

This is a dilema that has been coming up lately. I hear a lot of friends and co-workers say "no way" to being friends with certain people. I guess it just comes down to how much of your personal life you want people to be privy to. You can always just limit what you post about yourself, or what you are thinking. Then I think what is the sense in that? Facebook, myspace, and twitter are all sources of branching out and putting your life out there for others to criticize. It's a way for others to "snoop" if you will and check in on people. I am one of the biggest snoops. I love to see what others are doing. Even this blog is open to anyone to look at and form their own opinion about me or what I do. So I say go ahead. Form an opinion about me based on my blogs and my facebook status'.
I will be doing the same to you !

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Daddy time.....

One of Daddy's favorite past times is to lounge with the girls on the floor in the living room. Usually they are singing songs and watching musicals. It's so cute to see how much they love their Daddy. He loves it too!



It's also soo much fun to fix Daddy's hair, you can never have too many hair clips!!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Money, money,money, must be funny in a rich man's world.....

I tell you if it is not one thing it is another. From prescriptions to failed appliances to light switches, when it snows it'a a freaking blizzard around here.

Somewhere we have lost our way when it comes to being able to budget our money. Somehow we have dwindled down our "set aside" money. Oh wait, I know where it is:

CHILD SUPPORT, LAWYER FEES, AND THE COST OF RAISING 2 MORE CHILDREN.

I thought 2010 was bad when we cut back almost everything extra we had. Well 2011 is in for some more cut backs. We are at the point where there is no more to cut back now.

This is going top be one of those complaining blog posts where I am going to rant and rave so if you don't want to hear it (read it) you should leave this website for now.

You wouldn't think that paying child support would kill us, but it is. It's an additional $500 a month (which I may add is 10 times what we were receiving when Alex lived with us) that we weren't budgeting in. With an additional crap load of attorney fees and court costs, all of our money set aside for groceries and gas and diapers is gone plus some.

We are stuck in a lose - lose situation. Trust me, I am not trying to get any sympathy here, I am just completely frustrated that we work so hard every single day to provide a roof over our families head and food on the table and we are seriously in jeopardy of losing it all.
We simply "NOW" don't make enough money to pay our bills. The not-so funny thing is we don't have crazy outrageous bills, we have your normal everyday lights, gas, water, carpayment, insurance, daycare, garbage, and 1 credit card. We don't know what to do, if RJ gets another job, they will take MORE child support from us. So it looks like I seriously will have to get a second "full-time" job on the weekends or something. We can't sit around and wait for luck to strike, we have to change it ourselves.

My Dad took over payments on RJ's truck yesterday and they switched trucks. Now RJ is driving an old truck that we don't have to make payments on.

I am compiling a list of things to cut back on:

#1 switching trucks --- DONE
#2 going back to a plain cell phone(plan included)- no multimedia/smart phone/data package/family& friends feature... on and on.. just plain phones that will have texting but it will be limited.
#3 no eating out (we don't anyway, only on very rare occasions and we share meals!)
#4 continue to plan our meals for the week ahead of time (preparing ahead of time when possible)

So far I think I am doing good on my list.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Lucie's 1 year Stats....






We visited Dr. Thiel today for Lucie's 1 year check up. Knowing full well that she was to get shots today I made sure she had some tylenol in her system before we left. Who knew today she had to get her finger poked, and 4 shot's plus an additional flu shot. Poor baby has band-aids covering her little legs. She did pretty well considering. She only cried when she got her shots and then she was fine. She is lacking a little big of iron so she is now going to take a one a day multivitamin with iron (liquid form). Here are her stats:

Height - 31.5 inches tall - this is in the 98th % for her age
Weight - 20 lbs, 6 oz - this is in the 50th % for her age

Overall they think she will be tall, and the best news of all??? SHE CAN NOW SIT IN A FRONT FACING CARSEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is by far the best news of the day. It has been such a major pain trying to cram her into her carseat in the van right now. She will enjoy movies in the van so much more now and will be able to see more of what is going on!!!!!!!

Way to go Lucie!!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Almost 1 year later.....


2010


2 months old...



________________________________________________________

2011






The first 5 pictures were taken of us in February of last year, the last 5 were taken in January of this year. It's crazy to see how much we have all changed...........

Weir Christmas....

Alex vs. Anita

Logan vs. Gabby

Megan vs. Erica

Anita taking her turn at Guesstures

Wanda, RJ & Lucie

Every year, usually a week or so after Christmas, my sister's along with our parents and I get together to celebrate Christmas. We all have so many different places to go on the 25th that we don't have time to see each other on the actual holiday. So we get together for several hours and play games, dance and sing, and have our annual "gift exchange".

We set the limit at $15. These days nobody has a lot of money so anyone who wants to be in the drawing buys a "gender neutral" gift and wraps it up. We then place all of the gifts into the middle of the living room and draw numbers to see who gets to choose first. Then the first person chooses a gift. The second person then can either choose a new gift from the pile or steal the first persons gift. It ends up going round and round, people stealing someone else's gift until the last person is satisfied with their gift and the exchange is over. (we had to put a limit on how many times you can steal the same gift - 2)

Some of us get pretty creative. Gift choices this year included a hot cocoa set, a gas card, beer mugs, margarita glasses, snuggies (one came with the matching foot massager), mind benders, minute to win it games, a salsa chopper, a serving tray that came with 2 bowls, 2 plates, 2 glasses and some candy, and several other gifts. BUT the most fought over gifts were the 2 (seperate gifts) crockpots. I had boughten one last year and put it into the drawing and it was a huge success, so I thought why not buy one again this year. Everyone seemed to love it last year. My sister Anita obviously had the same idea, therefore we had 2 this year to fight over. It was quite funny how many times we stole them back and forth. In the end, we each took home the crockpot we bought, too funny. Who knows, maybe next year there will be more!!!

We also played several minute to win it games at this gathering so I was able to snap a couple of pictures of us all playing the "stack the cup" challenge!