However, we will be moving this summer anyway. Though instead of up to Massachusetts, we’ll just be going a couple of miles west to a bigger house here in Mobile. Since last summer we’ve been renting a cute little 3-bedroom home that is just barely big enough for two adults and two kids, except that we have Jason’s great-uncle Frank and my mother-in-law Carol living with us as well. We love having our big family all together, we just need more space. Four grown adults and two busy-body kids under 5 years old shouldn’t be crammed into about 1,000 square-feet.

We expressed some interest in a home via email. The pictures were beautiful but, you know, seeing a place in person gives you a better idea of how your furniture will fit, so we went to see it. The house is 4-bedrooms on a split floor plan, 3 bathrooms, 2 car garage, a big backyard with a new above-ground pool and a deck. It even has a formal dining room that we envision as a play room for the kids (mostly so that their toys won’t over-run my living room anymore). The breakfast area off the kitchen is plenty of room for our dining table and chairs.

If you remember, almost two years ago we moved from California to Alabama. We rented the first house that we saw that was in our price range. It was a little farther out of town than we wanted, but it was humongous. Also four bedrooms, but it was really a 3-bedroom with a fourth one down in the finished basement. None of us liked having a two-level home. I am not a fan of stairs and actually fell down those stairs while I was pregnant (scary!). This new house is all one level. It has an attic with floorboards, so there is plenty of storage. Right now the only storage we have is in our closets and 1-car garage. Makes for very messy and cramped spaces!

Another wonderful thing is that we will be renting from a fellow Coastie couple. Jason actually worked for the husband for a few months when they were both in Kodiak several years ago. How exciting!

At first I was apprehensive when we started considering doing another in-town move. My gut feeling was to stamp my feet like a child and say “No no no!” I took a week or so, did some Bible study, and searched my heart. I cleared my mind and opened my eyes. Really, we are a happy family all living together in one house. We had some trials in the beginning (two years ago), but what can you expect? What we had done was get married, moved across the country, and welcomed two more people into our household all within two months. Oh, don’t forget that we also went from two incomes to just one and found out that we were pregnant a few weeks after moving. Enough to make any group of people totally crazy! Well, over the last couple of months we’ve worked out the kinks and smoothed out the wrinkles. Perhaps living in such a small space for a while was a blessing in disguise? Nothing like living practically on top of each other to force us to figure out a way to make the situation work.

So, our future living situation is settled, the lease is signed. Now we just have to wait three months to move in. Aw man! I want to start packing up things we don’t need now, get the junk tossed, and plan a summer yard sale for anything worth a dime.

Oh, and once we move in I plan on taking you all on another photo tour of the new house, just like I did with the first house. This time, with furniture in it!

Monday, April 25: Breakfast with the girls (and two baby boys and Kim’s bro). Ran a couple of errands and then back home for lunch and relaxing. Tonight we’re having One-Pot Pasta, we seem to have this about once a week or so. It’s quick, easy, and always sounds good.

Tuesday, April 26: Playgroup in the morning. For dinner we’ll have one of Jason’s simple favorites, Lemon Pepper Chicken with rice and carrots.

Wednesday, April 27: Always a busy day of the week since I have bible study in the morning, a few hours at home, and then right back to church for the evening service. I always plan a very fast meal so that we can eat before heading back to church instead of relying on drive-thru. Our quickie of choice this week is smoked sausage & diced potatoes.

Thursday, April 28: MOPS in the morning, then off to deliver a meal for a good friend who just had her third baby a little over a week ago. I’m very excited to meet little miss Ann Elise! For dinner we’ll have another current favorite, Lemon Parmesan Pasta with Chicken and Bacon. I’ve been trying to think of a new name for this meal because just listing the main ingredients doesn’t sound much like a recipe name. Jason decided “Summer Pasta” sounds good and I think it fits pretty well.

Friday, April 29: Meatloaf bowls (planning to use my new Better Baker edible bowl pan) filled with mashed potatoes, topped with gravy, and carrots.

Saturday, April 30: Trying a new recipe, Slow Cooked Sticky Chicken, an old favorite Crash Potatoes, and corn on the cob.

Sunday, May 1: We’re having a cook-out after church with our Sunday School group. Later on for dinner we’ll have Beef Stroganoff with rice and carrots.

It actually doesn’t look like much is going on, but I assure you – Jason and I have a To Do List that is about a mile long. I also need to keep up with my knitting. I’m making great progress on my current project and as long as I keep up this pace I’ll have it finished on time. Lastly (unfortunately it’s always last), I really need to finish writing up a few of the several posts that I have started. I’ve got so many drafts, they just need some fleshing out and I need to get the photos off of my camera to add to all these posts. Lots to do, but only one me to do it. Have a great week!

Surprise surprise! At 5:13 I got a text message telling me that Jason’s dinner break was going to be at 5:30 instead. Oh no! All I had done to prep for dinner at that point was take the ground beef out of the freezer to thaw. I could have easily picked up the phone and called the pizza man to deliver, but keeping our budget in mind I flew into quick cooking mode.

Just about a half an hour later we had a scratch-made dinner on the table. Hamburger steaks, mashed potatoes, and seasoned corn. Yum! The only shortcut I took was leaving the skins on the potatoes instead of peeling them. We happen to like our mashed spuds a little rustic anyway, not to mention all the vitamins and flavor in the skins!

Dinner wasn’t anything special and it certainly wasn’t gourmet – but it was tasty, filling, and homemade. Those are the three most important things to me when I make a meal. We are very blessed to live close to Jason’s work and that he chooses to spend his meal breaks at home with us rather than in the galley or drive-thru line. The least I can do is make sure there is a homemade meal waiting for him when he gets here.

Luckily, tonight’s dinner happened to be one that I could make from start to finish within 30 minutes. Other nights I have meals planned that take more time. If this had happened on those nights I could have swapped meal plans from different nights – it’s very handy having planned for a whole week at once.

I know some people have done the work to do some freezer cooking and have meals waiting in the freezer for just these type of nights.  I have grand plans for a freezer cooking day in my future, but it hasn’t happened yet unfortunately.

What do you do in this situation? Do you have any freezer meals ready to go, a couple of go-to meals that you can make in a flash, or do you have several take-out menus hanging out by the phone?

Well, this week I’m flying with the boys back to California for a quick 5-day trip. It’s Monday night now and we’re flying out Thursday at 6 am. I glanced at the calendar today, looked around the house, and nearly fainted when I realized how much I need to do in such little time. I feel bad leaving Jason with a disastrous house, no clean clothes, and nothing to eat. I am now close to caught up on laundry, the kitchen is very nearly clean, and the toys are tamed.

Tomorrow I might need to skip our usual playgroup in order to finish getting things together and start packing. Our schedule on Wednesday is totally packed, so tomorrow is my only real time to get anything done before we leave on Thursday. Thank goodness we live literally across the street from the airport we’re flying from, so we can pull out of our driveway at 4:55 am and get to the airport at 5:00.

All before bedtime on Wednesday I need to:

• Complete at least some of the homework from last week’s bible study class.
• Finish laundry.
• Cook a few meals.
• Pack for 2 boys and myself.
• Try to squeeze in playgroup (so Jeremy can see his friends again before he’s gone til June).
• Bible study.
• Bake 3 or 4 batches of lemon bars for Jason’s cook-out at work on Friday.
• Wednesday night service at church.

I was also hoping to bake some cookies to leave behind with the rest of the family (and take some with the boys and I for the flights), but I really don’t think that will be happening. I’ll be incredibly lucky to get all of my list completed and still go to bed at a decent hour on Wednesday.

All in all, I know that everything will come together just fine so that I won’t have to worry and the boys and I will have a nice mini-vacation at my mom’s house. Hopefully we’ll get to see some more family and perhaps a few friends if any of them are available (hint hint, nudge nudge). I’ll just have to light a fire under my behind and work really hard tomorrow. Jason’s really great about keeping the kids entertained during the time he’s here til he leaves for work after lunch, but it’s the afternoon time that I’m worried about. I wonder if anyone wants to watch Jeremy and Jesse for a couple of hours so I can work on my Must Do list?

I have a turkey, potatoes, carrots, stuffing mix, and fixings for rolls and pie. However, I have no plan of attack. Also, it’s just Jason & I with Jesse this year, so there is no pressure to hurry the meal to the table at any particular time.

The two of us will be enjoying our day, cooking together as we did last year, snacking as we cook. Whenever our feast is done, that’s when we’ll eat!

It seems strange that it’ll just be the two of us and a baby. Last year our group was larger by three people (my Jeremy, Jason’s mom, and Uncle Frank), but they’re all in California this time. Every Thanksgiving before last year we spent with our extended families. I’m still getting used to being so far from them; I haven’t been a military wife for very long.

I’m counting my blessings though…
- Jason doesn’t have to work this holiday, so he’ll be home with Jesse and I.
- If he did have to work, we have wonderful local friends who would share their holiday with the baby and I and send a plate home for Jason.
- We’re taking a 3-week vacation to California for Christmas and New Years and will have a bunch of time to spend with all our loved ones.

I ignored the laundry, left the dishes, and barely cooked. I hung out with my boys giving them both extra attention since Jason was away. I wish we all could have gone to Las Vegas to see our good friends Mike & Elka get married, but we could only afford to send one of us. Since Jason was the best man, he got to go. I can hardly wait to experience their wedding as soon as someone posts pictures!

I know today is technically a holiday, but when I woke up it felt like a regular Monday. The baby was hungry and the preschooler was bugging me to read him any number of books. After my occasional insomnia got the better of me until 2 am, a 6:00 full steam ahead wake-up was unwelcome. I had been hoping for one of those slow mornings that let you ease into your day.

Anyhow, it’s 10:30. I’ve fed everyone (a certain someone has been fed three times), one is napping, I’m on my second load of laundry, and the dishwasher is loaded. As soon as Jeremy tires of playing the Cat in the Hat games at PBSkids.org I’ll follow through on the promise I’ve been making to him all week, he will help me make some cookies.

Later on we’ll all pile into the car and head to Gulfport to pick up Jason. I know we all missed him like crazy!

So, I’m wondering… Do you feel like a day or weekend off was “successful” if at the end of it you are welcomed by all those piles of chores that you put off? Or are you on top of everything and get all your chores done before taking a day off? I know my weekend was nice because I did almost nothing but entertain my boys, but now I’m paying for it with extra laundry, dishes, and toy clutter everywhere. Can I count this as successful?

1) Laundry. When we moved a month ago I had bushels of laundry that I had waited on from the old house because I was busy packing. Finally, the piles upon piles are no longer living in my bathroom. Who knew I had a floor in there?!

2) Dishes. Oh my goodness. For as much as I deeply love my new kitchen and really enjoy spending time in there cooking and baking for my family, I do not like doing dishes. Jason helps out a lot and I try to keep on top of it, but I can finally say that I now have a method which is keeping things under control.

3) My blog reader is EMPTY! I used to be able to stay caught-up on my favorite blogs by reading them through Google Reader on my iPod Touch during the 10-20 minute feeding sessions with Jesse several times a day. Lately he’s been so distractable that I can’t hold my iPod close enough to read. If I hold it within Jesse’s arm’s reach he will catch a glimpse of it and wave his arm around to grab at the shiny thing in my hand. This leads to him unlatching before his meal is finished, wanting to play, and then hungry again 30 minutes later. Not fun. I’ve been keeping tabs on a select few blogs but haven’t commented much. I have to say, though it was nice to have those little bits of time to read something other than Dr Seuss, it is even nicer now to have those bits of the day designated for quiet time. I ask everyone to be quiet and turn off the tv because any noise distracts my little guy. Jesse is so wonderfully social that he wants to be included in everything. In order to get him to nurse well I have to keep everything off and place my hand on the side of his face to cover his ear (which also makes him go to sleep).

I still have a few lingering boxes of miscellaneous things to go through, but I really feel completely unpacked. The stuff in the boxes is mostly just that – stuff. I’m thinking of joining (significantly late) the Declutter Challenge at Amy’s Finer Things. I’m convinced that if I haven’t needed any of it in a month or longer, then I really don’t need it at all. I was determined with this recent move that I would unpack gradually just the things we use instead of opening and emptying every box at once and ending up in a horrible cluttered mess. So far it’s working and I really can’t pinpoint what we’re missing. Jason took a big load of things to Good Will a couple weeks ago and now I’m feeling the itch to pull together a bunch more stuff to make the same journey.

In order to keep my mind off of my numerous messes this past month, I’ve been tinkering with my blog’s design. I am no professional and it still needs work, but I think it looks significantly better than the standard canned design that WordPress gives you to start with. The faces up top are really cute, but I am looking in to getting some nice family photos taken to send to family and I’d like to have our smiling faces on the landing page of my blog.

Another thing I’ve been meaning to do is get my photos organized. A lot of my posts here are “naked” – text without any pictures (like this post). I have loads of pictures, but there is no rhyme or rhythm to their disorganization since Jason and I consolidated to one computer. I need to fix that and start putting some up here.

Lastly, I will make a Household Notebook. I’ve seen lots of posts on several blogs, but FishMama’s posts especially intrigue me. I’ve been menu planning for a couple of years and I maintain a color-coded family calendar on the fridge, but there are many other bits of information involved in the running of my household that are kept up in my head. This doesn’t work for me anymore because I am becoming quite forgetful and when I travel with the boys to California and leave Jason and Uncle Frank here in Alabama, they are left hanging. I need to get myself in gear and make one of those books.

In other words, in some things I am finally caught-up but in other things I’m still getting there.

Even though I’ve been taking care of both boys all day I was still able to be incredibly productive around the house. I was pretty lazy yesterday and then we went out and had fun for the afternoon, so I really wanted to make up for it today.

After Jason came home from work at 8:30 this morning, I dragged myself out of bed and got the boys and I dressed for the day. I took both of them with me for a short excursion to pay the rent at the bank and go to the grocery store. Neither errand was difficult thanks to Jeremy being exceptionally well-behaved. Thank goodness!

Lunch happened when we got home but Jesse was STARVING so he got a few pieces of my mac & cheese dropped on his tummy since I had to nurse him while I ate. Oh well, could be worse. He was incredibly angry from being too warm so it took a while longer than usual to jiggle and shush him to sleep – giving me my only sitting-on-my-butt time all day.

Then I really got busy: Finally folded the laundry that had been wrinkling in the dryer for a couple of days, threw a load in the washer. Restocked my kitchen fridge and freezer from the deep freeze in the basement. Shifted the laundry and threw in another load. Packed and started the dishwasher and rolled my eyes at the dirty pots and pans covering my stovetop, I’ll get to them later.

I can hear the dryer beeping at me, so I need to get back downstairs to fold another load and toss in some sheets. It’s my aim to be completely caught up on laundry before I go to bed tonight. We’ve been doing laundry all this month, but none of it got folded or put away – we’ve been living out of hampers of clean clothes. For a while it was like we were on vacation and living out of suitcases, but now I’m quite over it. Counting what I’ve already done and including what’s left, I’ll have done 5 (perhaps 6) loads of laundry today. I also need to fold and put away the clothes that have been clean for days and sitting in hampers (that’s another 2 loads). Ugh! Never again!

I had no idea that I could be this productive while still spending a little quality time watching a couple of tv shows and a movie while coloring with Jeremy, snuggling and feeding Jesse. The only thing that will have suffered today is dinner. I had planned chicken fajitas with spanish rice and grapes but forgot to take the chicken out to thaw so it’s still quite frozen. We’ve got leftover beef stew from last night or I might just throw a frozen pizza in the toaster oven and call it a night. Sounds good huh?!

When we were making the decision to move from California to Alabama this past summer, we took a good long painful look at our financial situation. We looked at our then-current budget and we made a realistic budget for after the move. We took into consideration the extreme changes in income and did some severe cut-backs in our budget (i.e. swapping the $400/month cell phone plan for a single emergency cell, eating out whenever we wanted to once-a-month or less date nights, etc.) We also estimated future budgets by considering when Jason would be getting expected raises and when certain expenses would decrease (like finishing the car notes).

We’d heard of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and looked into ordering the dvds but decided that our plan was complete enough for our needs. However, after moving here we realized that we did not accurately estimate the moving costs and just how much would not be reimbursed by the Coast Guard. Our well-planned and generous savings went down to nothing in a hurry and we were getting really worried about how we were going to make it. For the past few months we’ve been even more diligent about making all decisions together so that we don’t spend money that was earmarked for something else and did our best not to spend any savings unless we had to. It was tough, but we made it through Christmas.

During our time in California we worked with my former employer and our bank to roll-over my 401k and cash it out. Knowing this would create an extra wrinkle in our taxes this year, we decided to go for it and made a clear budget for how it would be spent to pay off debts. Well, our cross-country trip expenses mounted to more than expected and we had to do some more creative budgeting. We were still able to make the money do mostly as we designated but weren’t able to pay down either of our cars as expected. Very disappointing.

When we got home from our trip a few weeks ago we decided to buy Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover kit from Sam’s Club and give it a shot. After reading the book and watching the two free dvd lessons Jason and I hunkered down and put together our $1,000 mini emergency savings, Dave’s Baby Step #1. I’d already gotten a start on Baby Step #2 earlier by using the 401k money to catch up on all of our past due bills and pay off our smallest credit card. We’re expecting a reimbursement from the Coast Guard for Jason’s travel in early December for school and that will go completely toward another credit card and will almost totally pay it off. We’re also expecting little bits of extra funds to come in here and there over the next year, all of that will pay down more debt.

We are really stoked! The people on the dvds and in the book who tell you their stories really aren’t kidding when they tell you how great it feels to get that first Baby Step done and get started on your Debt Snowball. It is truly empowering and shows you just how much you can accomplish when you and your spouse are on the same page and you decide together to make the necessary sacrifices for the benefit of your financial future.

I just turned 28 this month, Jason will be 30 in a couple of weeks. We feel that cashing in my 401k this year (when I only worked half the year) was a good decision to help us through a tough time and get us started on our quest toward financial peace. Jason’s got 8 years in now and another 12 years to go in the Coast Guard, we’ve got a lot of job security and he’ll amass a good retirement in that time. When our kids are all in school I may go back to work part time to supplement our savings. We’ll see how things stand when we get that far. We’re young and have lots of time left. Good thing we got started on this early!

We’re both really excited to keep going through the Baby Steps and get out of debt. The only thing that hurts is that all of this debt that we have now is from both of our screwed-up previous marriages. We hate having this debt to remind us of our mistakes and the best thing about getting it all paid off will be that there won’t be any more painful reminders of those former lives. What’s great is that since we got married, we haven’t amassed any additional debt aside from what we each brought to the marriage. We feel good about that because it means we learned from our mistakes.

I’ll definitely be writing more about our journey to financial peace as we go along. Hopefully it’ll force me to actually update this blog more often, I’ve been horrible about that.

Then, Jason had to go away to school for a couple of weeks. I can absolutely take care of things around here for two weeks without him, right? Riiiight, except when life turns me on my head… literally.

Yesterday I was taking a load of laundry down the stairs to the washer in the basement. I’ve done it tons of times in the few months we’ve lived in this house. I turned around at the top of the stairs to close the door behind me so that Rusty and Jeremy wouldn’t follow me down, lost my balance and fell all the way to the bottom. I have NEVER fallen down stairs before. I mostly slid and bumped down on my back and side, but whacked my head pretty well on the banister at the bottom. I didn’t bump or hit my belly at all so the baby is fine – he was kicking and rolling around like normal all day, so I’m not worried about that. I’ve crashed cars and been less scared than I was after falling down the daggone stairs.

Jason called me from school this morning to check in and see how I’m feeling. Oh, also, he got a flat tire. His spare is fine for riding around town at school, but he’ll need a new tire before he makes the 900-mile drive back home. By the way, my car is still driving on it’s full-size spare because we got that flat when heading to the airport back in September. So we still need to get it replaced.

Then, and THEN… today the toilet overflowed. I had a friend visiting with her two kids and a baby. The bathroom floor was covered in 2 inches of water (at least it was clean water, not yucky), and the tank just kept trying to fill up the bowl to flush it. The bowl was overfull, so the water just kept going and going and going. I managed to figure out how to stop the tank from filling by strategically wedging a Duplo block in a certain spot, but I couldn’t unblock the clog for the life of me. I called the landlord and a plumber. The landlord never answered my calls or called me back, so I had to pay the plumber out of pocket. Hopefully we’ll get reimbursed, because we really can’t afford another $135 on top of the $500 still missing and the two tires we need.

Mr. Rooter assured me that there was no way I could have unclogged it myself with just a plunger and the toilet is almost as old as I am, so it really should be replaced anyway. He wrote all of that on the invoice, so I’m really crossing my fingers that the landlord or the homeowner can take care of this for us. This particular toilet has issues once a week or so, the other two toilets don’t.

What I want to know is what else could happen while my husband is gone? I’d really like to not have to deal with anything else this huge without him please; not to mention it’s less than three weeks before Christmas and our trip to California.