Just a picture update

Konnor turned 1!

Halloween 2010

I put up new bathroom backsplash

and i know it looks like jared only owns one hoodie, apparently the only time I get a picture of him is when he is wearing his black hoodie.

My not break

As you know I've returned to school this semester, now I have one week left (finals week) and then I get a pleasant break before I return to spring semester for some really tuff classes. So while I have not been posting I have been filling my time with building a playhouse, not going on facebook or blogs, not watching T.V. and homework every night until 11 when Jared arrives home. I'm happy with my "wise" use of my time because I love control and I'm the type of person who can waste a lot of valuable time when I have the remote in my hand or if I feel the need to be current with everyone elses' life thru facebook and blogs. Not that it isn't enjoyable :) it just doesn't help me reach my goals. While I've filled my life with "not fun" I've discovered that there is still not enough hours in the day, it is impossible to do school work when the children are awake, and I can live on less sleep.
Jared and I have our 5 year anniversary coming up and were actually going to do something! The vacation plans have been purchased and the date is set so there is no going back- although at times I've thought I was crazy for spending so much money (it really wasn't that much). Which brings me to the point I felt like blogging about today- getting out of debt. This is more of a written commitment for myself so if money and debt bores you then feel free to quit reading now.
Were not in major debt, our cars are paid off, Jared's student loan is on deferral until he is again done with school and we have never used credit cards. The debt we do have is money owed for car repairs, to my parents for a small amount borrowed for closing costs when we refinanced our home, and two lines of credit. In the end if I were to make a pretty educated guess we probably owe just under 4,000.... (when I type that I think man that is a huge number). Its not all due at once and we plan on getting real people paid off first (its the smaller amount anyway) and then tackling the banks. I've tried approaching the debt in the past with what I would call a band-aid method, pay it off quickly in a giant lump sum with any extra money we seem to scrounge up, but not only is that super hard to do it is super depressing when you can't make those huge goals and life uses the "extra" money you thought you would have. I think my problem is that I keep picturing the future months as completely devoid of money sucking problems, that has yet to occur in my married life so small steps to eliminate our debt is probably a better solution. Things I think are working in my financial planning are adding debt to my budget, every month I have $150 figured in to pay down something. Another thing that seems to help is finding ways to earn extra cash to put toward debt. From the money I've made I've been able to pay for all but $60 of our anniversary so before too long I'll have the complete trip paid for. I think that when schools out I'm gonna find a couple financial books from the library to give me some fresh ideas on how I can help our issues. If you know of any good self help financial books I'm open to suggestions..

dollar store fairy princess

Today we went to Honks a dollar and bought this whole costume for $2, and i had fun putting clip in extentions to my little Makayla's hair and she loved the whole thing... were set for Halloween!

I know its been awhile

Makayla turned 3
up at the cabin

jared at bear lake

So I have several minutes and just because I hate feeling so far behind on anything I wanted to update you on how life is. I am in school and I actually stayed in my drawing class that I was so upset over in the last post... it was an emotional night and it didn't help that I had just gotten mastitis again. I absolutely love my drawing class, its pretty simple and i think its just so cool to draw again. I am on a team for the Wasatch Back Ragnar again and I'm gonna train hard to be ready for that, my only goal is to NOT get pregnant before that. Konnor and Makayla are doing good and growing like weeds. Jared has been at his job for a year now and he will finally be getting paid time off come October, its been a long wait. My yard had gone to pot since I've started school but slowly with the rains we get it will green up again. We've been trying to refinance our home for several months now and I believe it will all go through this coming month and we will be at a much smaller interest rate. My little bro will be home from S. Africa in less than 2 weeks now and I am so stoked to see him and have him home again. So ya that's just whats happening and If I get a minute again I'll tell you how its all working out ;)

At an impass

I like to take the path of least resistance and I hate to step on anyone's toes, and just like i hate being committed to someone elses schedule I know that others would hate being committed to mine. So for this reason i think I'm gonna drop the only fun class I've ever signed up for because it requires me to find someone to watch my cute kids, but as cute as my kids are they are also almost 3 and 8 months old and they need attention and someone who wants to watch them. It'll be nice when Jared is able to be home with them and I can have more freedom with my school schedule but I think for now I'd better choose something online to replace the drawing I class. I'm not posting this for volunteers I'm just posting this to get some of my feelings out :( But hey what mom hasn't made sacrifices? Thanks for letting me be a boob.

Here i am

So a lot has happened between here and now, i just kinda got burned out with the blogging and needed a break. So Its July and were in the process of refinancing our home and of course these things take longer than anyone would hope but if were lucky in the end we will have a smaller mortgage payment. Konnors crawling all over the place... its an army crawl but he is super fast with it... and of course he thinks he should eat everything he comes across, i feel distracted all of the time and I'm pretty sure he has a guardian angel following him around because I'll come across things on the ground that shouldn't be eaten so I'll pick it up and it'll be wet with slobber but not ingested so hopefully that angel doesn't mind picking up where I'm obviously failing!

I got this crazy idea that i wanted to take some classes, specifically some art classes and i thought the college would be a good place to learn and so i registered for fall semester at Weber state and today i got my acceptance letter! Hopefully all will go well with financial aid because last time i checked i didn't have 2 grand in my back pocket. So I'm registered for 13 credit hours and I'm taking 2 nutrition classes, 2 art classes and a health class. All of the classes are online except for one drawing class which will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm still trying to square away where my children will be at that time because driving back and forth from Ogden to pleasant view and Weber state will be a booger. I don't know that i will be blogging much once classes do start, hopefully i can focus and get decent grades, right now I'm pretty excited about it all.

My triathlon went good, the weekend it was on was a horrible weekend and because of the cold i had a cold and was wishing that i didn't need to blow my nose every ten minutes. The water was a cool 59 degrees and i was a dork and didn't test ride my bike before the race other than to make sure the seat height was okay so i learned some valuable obvious lessons. The run was fine and we were all really lucky that we didn't get rained on.

Thats pretty much all for now, have a wonderful day!

Fashion Challenge

I would like a few new outfits for the summer and since i feel like I'm far from the fashion scene and knowing whats in style and I've developed a weird relationship with money I'm gonna be extremely creative with how i go about getting these few outfits. First off I haven't yet picked out the wardrobes i like but I'll be scanning the Internet and sites that i like to pick out a few got to have getup's. But instead of ordering or running to the nearest department store I'm gonna update what i have and then hit some thrift shops and favorite discounters for the rest. All of my looks will be modest and appropriate but hopefully very trendy and something different from my everyday jeans and a t-shirt look. I haven't come up with a price limit but I will be posting what everything cost, how and where i found it and maybe it'll stir up some creative juices for you also. Who doesn't like a challenge? FYI if you've seen something that you think would be a great summer look send me a link I'm completely open for suggestions :) (if you want to join in and find an outfit too be my guest and let me know and I'll post a link to your page also)