A TARDIS, AN OCELOT, AND THE PURPLE FLASH DRIVE INTO A DERBY...

Pinewood Derby 2017 is in the books! 

And I'm happy to have my kitchen table back ;-) 

Just like last year, it was really neat to see the kids come up with their ideas and help daddy design the cars. Luckily for us, Jay is very good at the cutting and shaping and sanding and perfecting so that the cars run smooth and straight and fast! James wanted a "Tardis on Wheels" (he does not watch Dr. Who, but he plays the Dr. Who level on Lego Dimensions and loves it), Cora wanted a purple Flash car (last year she had Pink Flash and James had a regular red Flash), and I wanted a cute gray kitty like Cannon (but Jay told me a rounded head and body and tail was out of the question, so the kids helped me come up with a pixelated/squared, MineCraft kitty - an ocelot - and when I told them I didn't want a yellow car, they said "That's OK, you can make an electrified ocelot, they're blue!")

He used his Lego Tardis as inspiration

Dr. Who got the honor of driving the Tardis down the race track

I thought it turned out pretty good for a non-MineCraft playing mama...

Checking our cars in (making sure they'd the correct dimensions and not overweight)

My little entrepreneur brought some of last year's cookies and set herself up to sell Girl Scout cookies to all the Cub Scouts dropping their cars off! 

Pack 7 cars (minus the few boys who didn't participate, plus a slew of family category cars)

Wolf Den cars to the left (all 7 boys participated!) and family cars to the right

James (1st), Avery (2nd), and Jacob (3rd) for Wolf Den

The Electric Ocelot took 4th in the family category, but the first place winner (one of our doctors) refused his trophy, so I took third. Jay was surprised that boxy thing moved so quick! (And Cora was not pleased that hers came in after mine - we went head-to-head down the race track.)

Wolf Den boys!

Me and my little loves - it was a really fun afternoon!

COOKIE CHAMP

Cora hit her goal at noon today, just in time to submit her presale numbers to our Troop Leader. Granted, mama and daddy helped her with the last 50 or so boxes (ordering a bunch of "extras" to sell at work and while she walks the neighborhood with her cookie order laden wagon), as well as a heavy order for our own freezer and the kids' class snacks, but our friends and neighbors really helped her to be one of the top sellers in her Troop again this year and she is very proud of herself. There's a superhero themed camp in June that she's hoping her Troop attends...

 Most of her online sales were military cookie donations (huge thanks to Grambot, Sandra, and Mary Beth), but we ordered some for her great grandma and one of our local friends placed an "in person delivery" order that Cora can't wait to take her (she's a veterinarian and it means a visit to "the barn" while we're there, and probably buying some new baby chicks...)

GETTING CLOSER...

My last debt-reduction update was back in April of 2016, and at that time we were making really good progress (we had paid off Jay's credit card and the Jetta, which felt like a HUGE accomplishment considering how long we've carried around debt). We started this process back in January of 2015 (2 years ago), with a loose goal of being debt-free within 3 years. That's a VERY daunting goal when you are (at the time) living paycheck-to-paycheck and have a ballpark of $40K (not including mortgage, obviously) to pay off... In the past year though, we've paid off my student loans and the Odyssey, and are just working through the rest of my credit card at this point. My end of December 2017 goal could be upstaged by a summer celebration of becoming debt-free, but we shall see... And I caveat that because we haven't been perfect (we could certainly have spent less on "things" and restaurants this past year) and things do come up unexpectedly (like roof replacements and repairs, big car repairs/maintenance, dentist bills, etc. - you know how it goes). I can't tell you how good it feels to see the end so near thought and to finally KNOW that we can and will get there!

So how did we do it? 

(Well, we're not done yet, but in case you're looking to get started NOW, I'll give you my tips, which are summarized/combined from Dave Ramsey, You Need a Budget, and the Financial Wellness class that we took at work about a year and a half ago.) 

1.    Get yourself budgeting software (and if you can, take a financial planning class - it was eye opening). Whether it's a program or a series of Excel spreadsheets that you manage on your own, just get EVERYTHING written down. (Google Docs even provides templates, if you'd rather go that route!) Know exactly what you owe, to who, and how much interest they're charging you. Then write down EVERYTHING you've spent in the past 3 months. Yes, it sucks to see where you money goes (especially if your significant other has been looking the other way up until this point), but looking at the reality really helps curb the tendency to "just go out for lunch" or take advantage of that "30% off sale" every time an email comes through. (On that note, unsubscribe to ALL the newsletters of places you shop unless you NEED them - if you don't see the sales, you won't be nearly as tempted to make unplanned purchases.) Figure out what your "Fixed" expenses are, then budget your remaining dollars for things you need (food, gasoline, clothes, kid activities, travel - give every dollar a job and do your best to stick to your plan!)


2.    Once you have all those numbers lined up, you need to prioritize. List your debts in order with the highest interest rates at the top. Pay those off first. Just pick that #1 debt and start sending them the extra that you're no longer spending on "stuff" or your Fixed expenses each month. Eventually, that debt will be cleared and you can move down to the next one. The bonus? For each debt you pay off, you get to add the funds that you WERE spending on them to the next debt in line, which can sometimes double or triple your usual monthly payments. (This is called the Snowball Method.) Guess what happens when you start paying double or triple each month? That's right, the subsequent debts (with smaller and smaller APRs) disappear faster and faster.


3.    While you're doing this, you need to set aside $1-2K for your "Baby Emergency Fund" (AKA, the BEF). This will cover you if something unexpected comes up, so that you don't use your credit card for "emergencies". For us, even setting aside $1K those first few months was difficult... the kids were still in private school and we were stretched thin each month, so we made some sacrifices, and it was worth it. Why? Because we've needed it. Multiple times! And after each little "emergency", we dutifully replace those funds as soon as we can, while still following the Snowball Method, so that we're ready when the next ball drops.


4.    Once we're debt-free, we'll work on our real Emergency Fund. This is the account where Dave Ramsey recommends saving 3-6 months worth of expenses. Yes, that's a LOT of money. (Well, to us it is, anyway.) It will take us a while to get there, but it will certainly be easier once we're not handing out huge sums of money to credit card companies each month... This account is designed to keep you afloat if one of you loses your job, a natural disaster occurs, or some other unforeseen emergency hits your family


5.    Next on Dave Ramsey's list is to set up your Roth IRA and college savings funds for your kid(s). Luckily for us, our federal jobs have multiple retirement accounts to which we contribute (and receive matching funds for) with each paycheck, so while we're not investing heavily (nor saving into personal accounts, yet), we do have some funds set aside for retirement. And we have more than 20 years still to continue contributing to those savings (which snowball themselves, which is very good news). Luckily for the kids, we set up their college savings accounts and certificates when they were each baptized as infants and have been contributing monthly to them (with set transfers, so we can't forget and it's just automatically budgeted into our biweekly paycheck cycles), as well as depositing the majority of their birthday and holiday monies into them. They are aware of these funds and know what they'll be for someday, and they are proud of their savings. (Hopefully we're sowing the seeds young for them so that they don't end up in debt in their 20s and 30s like us!)


6.    Something that goes along with all this financial planning is setting up your Living Will, Last Will and Testament, and Trust. (That was another "emergency" that drained our BEF, since we hadn't expected it to cost so much.) When you're planning for your financial future, you might as well plan for your whole future...


7.    And my last tip? Take debt reduction seriously, but not too seriously. The Financial Wellness class we attended was so very strict ("What would you rather do, spend $40 on a night at the movies or pay for your kids to go to college?!") that it really stressed me out... No movies or restaurants or new running clothes for 3 years?! Not reality. We cut WAY back, but we didn't cut anything out completely. We went to Disney the first summer and to California the second summer, and didn't add to our debt with either trip - not even a penny - because we saved smartly for them (for the first time ever). We found ways to reduce our Fixed expenses (cheaper cable, cheaper utilities due to the new roof, being more careful with water usage, refinanced mortgage, etc.). We never buy anything without doing our research (best price, best quality to last a long time, best coupon code available!) We're not perfect, but we're continually trying to improve our spending habits, and I'm already proud of how far we've come!

So on that note, if you have any specific tips for us as we finish our journey to financial wellness, please let us know!

FOUR LAYING LADIES AND THE FART EGG

 Remember how we thought that pointy egg was a guinea egg? Well, as the days went by and we kept getting more and more of them, they became less pointy and more blue than tan... so we asked our vet about them, and it turns out our Ameraucana has FINALLY started laying (now that she's nearly a year old)! (Sometimes first eggs are shaped funny as the girls bodies get adjusted to laying.) Hooray for no more free-loaders in the coop! (The guineas get a pass because we didn't get them to be egg-layers, just to eat the ticks!)

Our ladies are all laying! Lady (Olive Egger), Anna (Easter Egger), Chickaletta (Ameraucana - true blue), and Elsa (Porcelain Bantam).

Then we had another little mystery... a teeny tiny egg that I almost missed because it was buried in the pine shavings. Turns out, that little thing (most likely from Elsa, but it could be from one of the other girls) is affectionately called a "fart egg" (usually yolk-less little mishaps). Yes, the kids thought that was a HILARIOUS thing to call it. They do have other names though (fairy egg, wind egg, witch egg, rooster egg...)

MONEY MAKERS

At Cora's Girl Scout meeting today they talked about money, budgeting, and goals. They made lists of fun things they like to do that are free (splash pad, playgrounds, fashion shows, etc.) and things that cost money (waterparks, movies, DisneyWorld...). They determined that their Troop goal for cookie sales is 4000 boxes (they sold 7100 boxes last year, but they had 8 more Girl Scouts than they do this year). If they reach that goal, they will do one thing from each list (the raised-hand votes determined that the free thing will be a sleepover, lord help us, and the costly thing will be a trip to High Heaven - personally, I think it would be smart to combine the two, since I've heard High Heaven allows sleepovers...). With just a couple days to go to reach their goal, the girls are going to work extra hard!

HIGH IN THE SKY...

 You never know what you're going to find in James' folder...

(And clearly his friends are enablers!)

BOURBON TASTING

Jay went to the Bourbon Tasting at Martin's tonight and he said it was a really cool event. They learned all about the history of bourbon (how it came to be during the days of sugar taxation, the different varieties, etc.) and tasted 5 types. He got to hang out with a slightly different group of people (Martin's has a lot of "regulars", and they were there, but there were folks in attendance who don't join in on the Delta Brews meetings or other brew events), had a good dinner afterward, then came home and fell asleep on the couch while I typed up Girl Scout cookie orders and watched the new Gilmore Girls ;-)

 (P.S. Jay did not take these photos - I "borrowed" them from a friend who was also in attendance tonight.)

ROUGH HOUR

It was one of those afternoons where everything was great, until it wasn't. The kids were on good colors at school (they usually are these days), they didn't have any homework, they quickly did their chores and got ready for dance, and we happily headed to the studio. Then Pre-Ballet ended, and while Cora was in Acro 2, James went from awesome to unbelievable... There was running and yelling and Acro in the halls (distracting the students in classes), defiance of my asking him to sit quietly and read his AR book (complete with whining, and then outright telling me "no"), and an all around terrible attitude (from eye-rolling to rude noises to full-blown meltdown-sobbing). All this from the child who normally behaves angelically (though, this behavior is becoming more common over the past month or so... must be a birthday coming up - we always have behavior issues around birthday milestones for some reason). When Cora got out of Acro, I was beyond ready to leave, but I needed to get the kids fitted for Acro shoes. While I waited for the sales girl, Cora jumped up to hang on the counter. I asked her to get down, and when she did, she accidentally knocked over the ceramic pen holder, smashing it into a zillion tiny shards of danger for a bunch of barefoot ballerinas... As I was attempting to clean that up, she started crying because she thought she was in trouble (she wasn't, it was just bad timing on top of everything else) and James continued to whine (now about wanting to go sit and watch his friends play on his Kindles). When I turned full around to tell Cora that I wasn't mad, and tell James NO and that he needed to wait patiently to have his feet measured, I caught him chewing on his watch band again (we've asked him repeatedly not to do so). It was obviously missing chunks and about to fall apart, so I took it from him, which caused him to WAIL (and lie that "it got stuck on something - I wasn't chewing it!) At that point I was DONE. You know you're no longer holding it together when your friend walks over from the waiting area and pats your shoulder to assure you that "we all have those days". Oh, what an hour...

 So, I did what I had to do to keep my sanity. We left without the foot measurements. We blasted the radio on the way home and I sent James to his room while I threw dinner together. When dinner was ready, I had him come out with the $12 required to purchase a replacement watch band, plus $3 in "whine taxes" (we started this with Cora over winter break and it has worked really well, mostly, and we recently had to start doing it with James too - $1 for every "most horrible noise on the planet" made - and I felt that $3 was lenient for an hour worth of back-talking and whining). I ordered his band, fed him (and everyone else) dinner, and sent him to bed (with plenty of hugs and kisses and an "I love you, but you're overtired and/or overwhelmed if you're behaving like this, so you're going to bed an hour early"). The rest of the evening was much calmer (and he barely complained about his early bedtime, so clearly he knew he needed it, on some level). We played Cloud Hoppers with Cora (and when I checked on James 10 minutes into our game, he was already asleep.) Jay won, neither of us had a beer (we cut out weeknight drinks again at the beginning of the month when the holiday festivities ended), and we vegged out with TV until my temper was completely calm and ready for bed. Oi. Vey.

 This blog/journal tends to document all the fun and cuteness, but it's obviously not like that all day, every day around here, so this was a little bit of "the bad" recorded for posterity. And now I can't wait for James to turn 8 and get this transition behind us!

SADIE GIRL

Sometimes the Yorkies get out of our neighbor's house (they also have an Blue Pit and another large, reddish dog that live outside), and you can bet Cora will find out and run to help catch them (not that they aren't allowed outside, but obviously they're house dogs - only one is friendly though)!

GIRL SCOUT COOKIE SEASON!

Girl Scout cookie season is upon us! Pre-sales (where Cora can earn prizes and cash for camp) are due by January 29th. If you don't live locally, but still want to support the cutest little Daisy you know, check out her online Digital Cookie sales website!

She's currently sold 129 boxes, with a not-so-modest goal of 300...

ZY

We have been puppy sitting for the past few days. Zy is a little 20 lb bundle of energy, always on your heels or under your feet, and sweet as can be with kisses and snuggles. The kids (and Buster) already miss her! But I bet she'll be back...

 Little dogs don't like big storms...

 ...so we broke the rules and let her on the couch to snuggle for safety

 She wore Buster out!