Day 293: Selling & Shredding

The garage sale started today and went well for the most part - Eric and I sold a few little things, both sets of our dishes, and my trombone.  Mom, Alan, and Ashley fared a lot better - Mom and Alan sold some exercise equipment, and Ashley sold a little bit of everything!  Eric worked the sale in the morning and then went to work, I went to work and then headed to Olathe in the evening.

They had already put away the garage sale for the day, but I had a good time playing with Andrew and Jacob, who were both visiting for the evening.  Later on Alison came over and we did Jillian's shredding video together. It kicked our tails, but we survived!  Last, but not least, I finally got my Otterbox case for my phone!  It's finally protected from all of the torture I put my electronics through - my tough camera and super protective phone case are quite important to their survival.

No phoning it in!  We shredded like crazy people!

Day 278: Can We Do It? Yes We Can!

Today was a schoolwork day for Eric and a chores day for me.  He had a take home test and a project due in his tax preparation class.  Eric had been working on these last week and while we were in Michigan, but couldn't really focus, so today was crunch time.  While he was crunching numbers, I used my new phone and a checklist app to make my list of chores for the day and set off to work!

Then while he was at class, I went to Dave Ramsey with Papa and Ashley.  Tonights lesson was "From Tuition to Fruition", and it is about saving for college and retirement.  Dave talked about if a 30 year old made 40k per year and put 15% into retirement each year (making 12% interest), that by the time they were 70 they would have over 5.8 million dollars.  Eric and I won't yet be 30 when we start on this baby step, and we may not make 12%, and we might not work until we're 70 - but as Dave says "if I'm half wrong, you're still a millionaire!"  We are VERY excited about this because we really believe that this can be our future!

Aw man, I fell up the stairs!

Checklists and calculators, oh my!  These new phones are great!

Day 276: More Michigan!

I'm almost feeling fully recovered today and we decided to keep the boys home for the morning so we could spend some time with them.  We played at home for most of the day and went to the park for some slides and a picnic.  Finding the park was an interesting ordeal.  It isn't spring break in their area, so all the kids are at the schools.  Plus it was really cold outside.  We were going to skip the park, but Cash kept saying "we're going to the park" and "I'm going to slide!"  So we scouted one out at a local church and got our slides in.  Then we had an in-the-car-picnic because it was so cold outside, brrr!

After we dropped the boys off at daycare, ready for their naps, we set out to enjoy a really cheap movie!  We stopped at Family Fare to get some movie snacks - chocolate covered peanuts for me and cheese nips for Eric.  The best part is that Family Fare has a coffee, water, and popcorn machine by the doors for their customers!  So Eric and I grabbed three mini bags of popcorn to take to the movie with us!  We went to see Tron in 3D for $6 each.  We both liked the movie - but I really didn't like the lack of visual contrast.  Everything was tones of gray with accents of blue or orange - there were no other colors while they were on the grid!

We had planned on going to the driving range after the movie, but it was too cold and rainy so we went home instead.  Luckily, less than 5 minutes after we got home, Eric saw the UPS truck and we tripped over each other running down the stairs to the front door.  I signed for our package and we raced to open the boxes for our new cell phones!  Within the next two hours we had activated and set up our new phones, and spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with customer service to get our numbers transferred from T-Mobile.  Now Eric and I belong to Virgin Mobile - for $25/month/each we get unlimited texting and data, and 300 minutes.  Eric will easily be able to keep it under 300 minutes, but I may have to bump myself up to the $40 plan for 1200 minutes.

After Molly and Nate got home from work, we had a potluck of lasagna and barbecue pork and set the boys up with some of Declan's new toys so we could play games.  We started with Pandemic and won (pretty closely) on our first try.  We were at 7 outbreaks though, so it was a race to the finish!  The game is over if you reach pass 8 outbreaks.  Then we played Monopoly Deal, which is a really cool card game version where the goal is to collect 3 full sets of properties.  Then we all ended up going to bed pretty early, it was a long day!

 Cash and Dec on the spiral slide.  Cash is trying to smile, but not looking.

 Popcorn and crackers in the bag!  We don't spend $5 on a bag of popcorn, no way!

I was offering for Eric to use scissors to open the box with our phones in it, but he insisted on using the knife shaped like a raptor claw. 

They didn't want to overwhelm Dec with gifts at his party, so we opened his Kansas gifts tonight.  Both boys love the remote controlled dog from Aunt Becky and Uncle Alan, and the baby smartphone from Aunt Deb and Uncle Sean!