Happy Birthday, Gladys!

Around 2 a.m. at the hospital, the nurse was gracious to take the last (only) belly picture before baby is born.

About seven hours later, oxygen is given to help me and baby (post epidural).  I told Eli to take a picture because the third child seems to not have many pictures...(I would know).

Emergency Cesarean produces baby girl at 10:39 a.m. with a "marble" for a head--so says the doctor.

Post-op recovery:  scrubbed-up daddy shows off his newest prize.

Finally, I get to hold my girl, but I haven't looked at her full in the face yet, since I have to lay on my back (blood pressure has tanked considerably).

Elsie and Oscar meet Gladys.  :)

Daddy's other little girl.

Alone with my girl, the nurse grabs the camera (bless her!).

Happy Birthday, Gladys!

May 2014 Debt Update

The first half (the federal half) of our tax refund arrived this month--just in time to have the van checked out, haha. Thankfully, repairs have been minor, and because of that, we were able to put a pretty sizeable chunk (~$2300) onto the last of our loans, bringing the total to just under $12,000! (We ended last month with ~$14,000.) So, upon crunching numbers, we can have this paid off if we can double our snowball payment every month between now and Christmas, which, frankly is completely doable. I can just TASTE our success!

Fifth 10K Chunk, started 4/17/14

Fundraising Thermometer

The momentum is picking up and we're getting pretty gazelle intense about getting rid of the last of our loans, and we're looking at our budget to see where we can make temporary sacrifices.

Not everything is going, though.  We did decided to spend a little bit of money for some summer activities for the kids so that I can have a little reprieve with the new baby around.  They will be taking a ceramics class once a week starting at the end of May and lasting until mid-July, will be doing swimming lessons for two weeks in June, and then will do a week of art camp at the end of July.  All of this is through the pretty awesome Opelika Parks and Recreation department.  I tried to find activities that they could do together based on their ages to make my life easier.  There will be a whole lot more choices when they both get to school age, but for now, this is enough.  And, of course, there's always the library's summer reading program and a few days at Miss Kay's house.  It will be a full, but restful summer as we keep giving this debt a swift kick in the pants!

Cheers!

Easter 2014

Happy Easter from the Beavers!

 (Yes, this was the best picture we could get after church today. That's life with the Beavers.)

We were very "untraditional" with commercial Easter activities this year.  We didn't go to community egg hunts.  We didn't do Easter baskets.  We colored eggs today, but only 9 of them--and we used a dye kit that I bought at end-of-season last year.

Then, we had an egg hunt with those nine eggs this evening--plus some other plastic candy-filled eggs that I bought at end-of-season last year.  The kids had fun.  It was hilarious to hear their squeals when they would see one of the eggs that Eli hid.  The grass was just tall enough that eggs could hide in the grass and the kids didn't see them until they were on top of them.

Of course, the eggs I got last year were "egg"ucational (per the package) and had letters on them, so Elsie was calling out letters as she picked them up.  Then, once they got their buckets inside, they dug through and found the eggs that had the letters of their names.

I wish I had had time to do Easter outfits this year--it was a lot of fun to sew them last year.  But, alas, I have little energy right now, so that went by the wayside with the Easter baskets.  Elsie and Oscar were having a conversation after church about how the Easter Bunny didn't come to our house, and then when Eli was about to go out to hide eggs, she was so excited, jumping up and down saying, "Daddy!  You are the Easter Bunny!"  I'm okay with that.  (But I did tell her not to mention it to her friends...)

So, happy Easter!!

Cheers!

Laundry Sanity

Laundry:  it never ends.

The more people you have, the more of it is generated.

At some time when the kids were little, I found some pop-up hampers and we used those for a while as the receptacle for dirty clothes. Then those ended up just being utilized as laundry baskets, and I found another pop-up hamper that I could use as a dedicated laundry hamper because it hung from the closet doorknob (found it cheap cheap cheap in the Target Dollar Spot).

And that worked.  Until the kids got bigger, messier, and their clothes took up more space, and then essentially broke the pop-up hamper under their weight.

After Christmas I was at Target looking for some solutions for toy storage, and they were having their big storage sale, and I happened upon the Lamper.  It's basically a tall laundry hamper that could double as a laundry basket when needed.  So, I bought one in black for the kids' room.

(source)

And then, I saw that they had it in teal.  And upon further research, I found that Walmart had it in white.  That gave me an idea.  Over spring break, I went and got one in each color (white, teal, black), and now these lampers are what we are using as our dirty-laundry-sorting system.  The system hasn't been in place long, but there are no and have been no dirty clothes on the bathroom floor for a couple of weeks, and I'm telling you that this is amazing, and a step in the right direction (not tripping over Mount Washmore on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night)!

I've had various sorters before (one a pop-up tri-compartment thing from when I was single/unmarried, another one from FlyLady that I used when Eli was away at JAG school), but after being married and putting two people's worth of clothes and linens in there, they were too small, and Eli wouldn't use them.  I think I like having the three separate baskets because when one gets full, I just have to take it to the laundry room, put the clothes in, and then leave the basket there for the duration of the wash/dry cycle, and then use it to bring the clothes in to our room, (where, truthfully, they may or may not get folded...hey, baby steps here, baby steps) and return the lamper to the closet.  Also, the lampers are just the right size to have one full load of laundry in them when they get full.  And they're large.  And they're being used.  Need I say more?


The other sanity-saver in my life these days is one that I give all credit to my oldest sister.  We've been using it for a couple of years, but I am still amazed at the wisdom.  Stacey mentioned to me, back when Elsie and Oscar were little little, that when her two were little she used a shoe organizer to put their clothes in "tacos" to plan for the week.  So, I went out and got this self-standing 10-compartment shoe organizer from Target and have been using it ever since.

(source)

We fill the compartments with "tacos" on Sunday night after doing laundry on the weekend, and there are five outfits for Oscar and five for Elsie.  The element of choice is there, but I get to pair the outfits.  On school mornings, they wake up, go to the organizer and grab an outfit and get dressed.  The end.  You know, when we keep up our routines.  It's not perfect, but it's waaaaay better than sorting through the clean laundry pile that lives in our room.  :)

Something else that I tried this fall that worked well was to have only 7 outfits for the kids--seven pants and seven long-sleeved shirts.  Period.  So, yes, they wore the same clothes to church every Sunday.  Didn't bother me.  This worked great until it started getting warmer and each child, in each a separate week, came home two of the days with holes in the knees in two pairs of their pants.  I knew I could send O to daycare with holes in his pants.  But, it gets a little more tricky to navigate sending E to school with holes since there's this whole dress code thing.  Turns out that the elementary schools don't have as aggressive a stance on holes as the middle and high school--thank goodness.  Now we're into warmer weather, and shorts and short-sleeved shirts fit better in the organizer.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do when their clothes get too bulky for the organizer (because they've GROWN)--this system is just working so well for now!  So, if you have any ideas, let me know!!

Cheers.

Debt Snowball Visual -- 2014

Okay, because I have better things that I should be doing (you know, like getting together sub plans for my impending maternity leave), I have instead been going back and reading all my debt updates since we started with the debt thermometers in October of 2011.  One of my posts from June 2012 has a picture of the debt snowball tool from mytotalmoneymakeover.com (free 7-day trial).  Looking at that picture, it got me to thinking that I should post an updated picture, particularly since we paid Eli's loans off last fall.  So, here it is (click to enlarge):

The orange line that dropped off the map was the first of Eli's loans that we paid off (law school).  The blue line is the one that we are paying on now (undergrad), and when we pay it off, we will be debt-free, except for the house.  If you look at that blue line, you notice some dips and drops that ultimately alter the payoff date--these are times when we paid more than the minimum snowball payment (orange's minimum payment + blue's minimum payment).  Told you March 2014 was a good month, haha.

Also, in going back and reading, I saw my goal about being debt-free by 35 or by the time Elsie starts kindergarten.  Well, I turn 35 in June, so that's not going to happen unless we experience a giant windfall...and we did Kindergarten registration last week, so Elsie will start Kindergarten in August.  That one will be close.  I just looked at loan totals today, and we have around $13,200 left.  I absolutely plan to have this paid off before the year is over (maybe even cancel the commercial Christmas traditions?), so perhaps I should amend that original goal to say "when Elsie is in Kindergarten", because she will be (time flies).

When we're done with all these debt shenanigans, I will definitely post a picture of our completed snowball.  :)

Cheers.