Wednesday Update

I have pictures from Tuesday and from today :) Tuesday we were at a putt putt place as part of employee appreciation week. We sat under the shade in 90 degree weather and just roasted. Yuck! We also ate fish at Captain D's. The baby was all over the beans instead of the fish - I give up!
The course

Listening to her little jukebox.
We only made it to the second hole lol

She didn't get the "hit the ball with the club" concept.
Loved the little golf balls tho.
She licked the box of girl scout cookies so I had to buy them!

She's dangerous with that thing!

Flexing her muscles at dinner, it is really funny! I want to get it on video soon!

Today when I picked her up, she got hold of a blue marker and did a mark from her mouth to her ear lol She also did both arms and half her shirt. Luckily it is washable on her clothes but I can't seem to get it off her skin - oops!

Bye for now!

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New Daycare! and updates!

Ok, so sometimes you just know you've made the right choice you know? Today was scooter's second "first day of school". No tears. No whining. Just bye bye mommy and kisses. I left my baby in a little chair at a little table coloring on construction paper :) When I checked her at lunch, she was eating peas, drinking apple juice and swinging her feet. When I picked her up, she was in a circle of kids, they were singing (screaming) twinkle twinkle little star and swaying back and forth. She was heehawing!

The master bedroom is painted and we'll start moving furniture back in once it's not so stinky. I choose a different ivory color for the walls. The old color was ivory putty, there was some gray in it. The new ivory has yellow in it that picks up the yellow tone in the carpet. Plus it makes the other ivory look dirty, it is very light and fresh looking. The baseboards and crown molding are white, so it really pops (can you tell I've been watching a lot of HGTV?). The bathroom is still being painted. I am going to pick out new towel racks. the old ones were cheapo ones installed by the builder. I have to dig through my storage containers in the basement to find my white bath stuff. Ideally I would spend very little $$ in this transition period!

I went through my house and decided what to keep and what not to keep. You know what? I am not keeping a whole lot. Our clothes will hang on the short rack in the closet. Everything else I am storing (with dust on it) will be sold. Everything in my tall dresser and long dresser (minus some make up and some PJs) will be sold. I am only keeping half of what is in my red chest. All the baby's too small clothes - gone. Most of her room is a keeper because I had already purged it. All of my kitchen stuff is a keeper because mine is nicer than Dad's and we'll sell his. My two larger closets, I would say 25% is stuff I'll use up (stockpiled bath stuff) which is a keeper. 25% is stuff I want to keep (pretty Christmas decorations) and the other 50% is going to be sold too. And you know what? My entire basement, the 1000 SF that is full of weird odds and ends? 90% of that is going to be sold too. It's very liberating because in the past I held on to stuff because I felt guilty selling it because it still had value. Now I have a great reason to get rid of everything!

The plan is, once my house is sold, I'll buy another house that is better suited for the three of us. We'll move in and empty out the condo and put it for sale. Hopefully in the end I'll just have a small mortgage and a nice house in a nice neighboorhood. I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

Ok, here we go - pictures!

She was in a mood this morning and wouldn't smile. You can see the difference in the walls, the far wall is our room. The darker color looks like a better match to the carpet in this picture but in real life its not.



Let me get this straight...you have FOUR cell phones? How do I get my hands on them?

Check that out! The old place used toy chests, the kids had to dig through them. Everything here is labeled and her height. The also have very nice toys, many that she has at home. She really liked that!
Shew momma, I played hard, I am tired!

Eating green beans. I purposly bought these monsters at the farmers stand because I knew she'd like eating them so much :)

Ok that is it for now. Things seem to be falling into place pretty easily. In the next week or so, the things I want to keep from my house (minus my furniture, I don't want it to look empty) will be in the condo. Everything we want to sell will be in my house. Then the yard sales/ebay/craiglist/classified freenzy will start! Bye!

An Update...

We are going to combine households and Natalie are moving into my Dad's condo. My house is going to be decluttered and sold. I am tired of living so far away from everything in the crappy area of town. Work is less than 10 minutes away from here too. Plus the condo is only 4 years old and has a pool. It wins!

Natalie and I will be sharing a room for awhile. That is really ok with me because it is about the size of our two rooms now combined. We have a walk in closet that is about 12 X 5 and our bath is 15 X 10. So we really do have a lot of space and I think it will work ok. And you know what? If I can't fit our stuff into the new space then we have too much stuff, simple as that. Eventually I'll buy a larger house on or around the street I grew up on. Actually a great house is for sale now but the timing stinks.

Natalie starts a new daycare on Monday. I've never been thrilled with her daycare and after today's tour of one next to work, I know she wasn't in the best place she could be. Her new daycare has lots of light, natural and artificial (the other was too dark), the playground is better and the room is suited better for little kids. I feel good about the move, plus there are 2 teachers for 6 kids and one is a early education teacher. It is $20 more per week and I have to pack a lunch, but I feel like it is higher quality care.

God Bless Cramer and his Mad Money show. He recommend Carnival and it went through the roof. Went up about $12 in 4 days and I was able to sell all my stock and make over a dollar on each share and I had a LOT of shares. I'll be able to flip Carnival around a bit to make up for two bad stocks I have (which I'll wait to sell, use them as a tax balancer).

I got my first paycheck with chacha.com (use my email neatokimmo @gmail.com if you decide to do it please). It was for $246 woohoo! Once things settle down here I plan to start back. I was easily making $75 a week just working here and there at night. Its nice to know that as things like stocks and everyday prices are iffy, that there are ways to make extra money to balance it all out!

Ok that is it for now - bye!

What a week

My step mom died on Tuesday in the early morning. My Dad checked on her about 3am before he went to sleep and when he went in to wake her for breakfast at 7am she had already passed away. 5am was the estimated time.

So my week has been a blur. By Tuesday at 2:30 the entire Mass and party had been planned. She always said she didn't' want people sitting around and crying over her and that we should have a great party. So we are, a celebration of life sort of thing. We've rented a local cabin that overlooks the lake. Her friends have taken over the food and decoration planning. We are taking her flowers (lots of really pretty flowers were delivered to the church today) and a bunch of pictures with us to display.

Today was the Mass and we had 120 people come. I thought that was really good considering it was at 1pm on a Friday. It was a nice service, unfortunately Natalie didn't understand (and I wouldn't expect her to at 17.5 months old) and I had to take her outside. I heard about 5 minutes of it total. Plus she got all worked up showing off before the service that when I picked her up she puked scrambled eggs all over both of us, all over the side of me down into my shoe. The smell and mess were disgusting, I am glad no one saw!

So right now I am in the process of cleaning out her room and deciding which is just "stuff" and what is important. Her room is a mess still (I tend to make huge messes as I clean) but I have made great progress on her bathroom. It is really big and had a lot of stuff stored in it, plus it had medical extras like special seats and pull bars. Tomorrow I am going to remove everything from the walls then putty, prime and paint everything. I also hope to wax the cabinet to shine it up again.

So that is my week. I am very tired but it will all work out in the end. I'll post baby pictures soon!

Sunday Update and Bargain Alert

In certain stores like Kroger and Food City, there are tear off pads near the wheat thins that are buy three of these participating brands and get either wheat thins, kraft salad dressing, crystal light or hot dogs for free.

That really doesn't sound like a great deal until you see the Koolaid logo on the back of the coupon. Yup, you can buy three envelopes of Koolaid and get your other stuff for free.

So on Saturday I bought..
40 packs of Koolaid for $8
7 boxes of wheat thins - free!
3 packs of hot dogs - free!
3 salad dressings - free!

The reason I love this deal is, one, it is cheap! Plus we are eating a lot of non meat meals that involve beans. The baby loves to dip stuff, so I can take a batch of red lentils and rice on a ride in the food processor, give the baby some wheat thins and cooked carrots and she is in baby heaven.

Also through my selective diet these past couple of weeks, I have determined I have a tea allergy. It makes me nauseous. I wondered if it wasn't the sugar in it but I put half of what most people do. I switched to koolaid (LOVE this stuff, not as much as freezie pops but I do like it!) with the same sugar ratio and I have zero illness. In fact with the Koolaid I was able to wean myself down to 1/4 cup per pitcher and not miss it.

I've not drank crystal light a lot, but I am sure its fine and a good diet coke substitute.

And who doesn't love a nice greasy hot dog every so often? You can spend up to $4.50 on the dogs I think, I got the all beef ones. It will take us months to go through three packs.

And with the salad dressing bit, I am eating salads! woohoo! That is a big flippin deal considering for several years I've broken out in hives from lettuce. I discovered one store with one kind of lettuce does not make me sick. I break it into little bits and shake it around in a ziploc baggie with baking soda and tada! No spots! So I need salad dressing :)

I plan to go back and stock up this week, the coupons are good until August and I snagged a few extra. I think it is interesting, I found the deal a week ago and bought just a few wheat thins and put the extra coupons on the shelf (they are in order on one tear pad). Did you know a whole week later, every single one of those hot dog, crystal light and salad dressing coupons were still on the shelf where I left them? The just put new boxes around them. Hello? Surely I'm not the only one has the deal figured out? Well at least you all know now, go...get processed food for cheap!

So really with the new diet I feel a ton better. I am down to two cans of coke (24 ounces) compared to 3 bottles (60 ounces). I am drinking one cup of coffee a day, with a max of two. I was up to 6 cups. We still eat fish and a little bit of chicken and beef, but mostly we are eating beans and eggs for our protein source. Natalie cleans her plate and sometimes licks the tray so I know she likes it too!

sweet chubby cheeks
Eating lentils and rice and drinking green koolaid in her baba. I've created a monster, green baba only appears once a day, she loves it and would drink it all day.

She loves to mess with the TV and carry her purse and bo around. Let this be a warning to the new moms out there. Do not introduce a stuffed animal unless you can produce a backup. Bo was a yardsale bear and now I'm screwed because I can't find another bo. The day bo is finally loved to pieces will be a very sad day for her. And look how long her hair is :) In the back I can pull it into a teeny pony tail :)

We leave for Disney on August 27, 2009. So much to plan, so little time! (I'm only have joking!) Anyone want to go with us? I am working on scooter's blog for the trip http://nataliegoestodisney.blogspot.com/ it is a mess now put will be much better once I start put trip tips on it.

Bye for now!

Parade Pictures!

Stinkbutt wasn't impressed with the parade. I was so excited, I thought my cute lovable kid would charm everyone and be really cute. She acted more like a teenager who thought the whole thing was stupid. If she could talk, she would of said "can we go home now? what about now? surely now?
bored
bored
bored
really bored

sighcan we got home now?

She wins the good eater award :)

Lunch: Watermelon, salad (blue cheese and yellow tomatoes), pintos & pickled cucumbers (cucumbers, onions, sugar, vinegar). Check out the pinto goo in her hair hehe -this is why we have baths after lunch on the weekends!



Post piggie tails picture. She is pretty good at feeding herself, I'd say 50% actually gets in her mouth :) Menu was chicken dog, pickled cucumbers and peach yogurt.

She had oatmeal for breakfast and snacked on cheese crackers all morning. She's an eating machine! :)

Happy 4th - again :)

Natalie is a stinker a lot of times. She got into the habit of whining when she wanted something. I know its just because she lacks verbal skills but it still makes me want to grind my teeth!

So with the chicken pox vaccine (not taking any more chances!) and her teething, she ran a fever today. But the little angel sucked down her tylenol without any fuss. She was cute, she was snuggly and she didn't hit the cat once! Her spots have "dried up" it is allergy related. I am going to have to get brand names of the food next week so I can try to figure out what it is. Here at home we are starting a new food thing to help identify her allergies and my own but I'll post about that later!

I decided at 9:15 to go to the fireworks at 9:50. I can see a lot of it from my front porch but I decided to go to a shopping center a couple of miles from the site to avoid all the people (plus I wasn't "I'm going into town pretty enough"). I took the baby in her PJs, she was so cute!



I took this just because I thought she looked cute with her bed head :) And yes, she eats that many grapes plus 2 scrambled eggs and sometimes a piece of toast. All with milk. And she only weighs 22 pounds!

All those toys...and she is playing in my $3 dishpan that I took to China and $2 of balls from a yard sale - sigh
Hey! Where'd that bubble go??

See, I told you, snuggly! This is hippo or puppup bobo (not to be confused with pink bear who is THE bobo..she calls for it- very cute!)

Grandparents and sleepy baby!
Dad and Natalie, she is standing in the bed of his truck.



Poo, that Super 8 sign is new, they just remodeled it. I will have to find a new shopping center!

They were nicer than this but this is the only picture I could get. Stinky stinky broken camera!

Night night! I'm off to ChaCha!

Happy 4th :)

Ok here is our week condensed to just a few sentences!

Monday - lunch - yum - oh wait - not yum - I might heave..and heave and heave. Baby has 3 spots on her shoulder.
Tuesday - can't stand up or I'll heave more. Baby has 15 spots! Goes to the doc, not chicken pox, say maybe bug bites. Really?
Wednesday - I'm like the walking dead. No new spots on baby!
Thursday - I'm normal hooray! Baby breaks out in spots right before my eyes. Def not bugs, allergies! Hooray! Not!
Friday - PJ day. It rained so no parade for us. She won't make it until 9:30 for the fireworks.

Still working ChaCha. If you want to earn some extra $$ too, go to www.chacha.com and please use my email (neatokimmo @gmail.com) in the referral box. That will put us on the same team :) I am up to $150, I am trucking along at my $75 a week goal. Today is the start of week three, I hope I can keep it up because I have a new 30 month money plan and the $9800 I'll earn from ChaCha is part of that.

I am trying to think of anything else. June budget came in at just $8 over - yay me! I am working the cost of the new table into the budget over the next 12 months (I know, I'm weird). This month I want to be way under just to show myself I don't have to constantly buy "stuff".

Joined a challenge on DisBoards to keep on my grocery budget of $160 for the month. Doing well so far, $38ish spent and we have a house full of food!

Hmm I guess that is it for now, I'll post more later. Buh Bye!