2012..................Bring. It. On.

2011 was a bad year. A really bad year. Not just for my family but I'm sure for a lot of other people as well. In 2011 my husband tried a new venture into the world of selling life insurance. Unfortunately with a down economy people just simply cannot afford life insurance. And that is bad. Very bad when the job is 100% commission. So in December he left the world of life insurance for the world of property and casualty insurance. I'm so glad that 2011 is over and 2012 is here and ours for the taking. 2012 will be full of hard work and I'm sure a lot of sweat and tears. But we'll make it. In fact I think this tribulation that we've been through has actually made our marriage stronger. That if we can withstand this major bump in the road we can withstand anything. Its going to be a long road to fixing what wound up broken but we're just going to have to pull our bootstraps up and jump in. Right now we are starting by being on a very very very strict budget. But if we adhere to it we will get out of this whole quicker than we thought. How about you are you looking forward to 2012 as much as I am?

Leggo my Eggo.......

My son is 19 months old and at the moment has all 4 of his bicuspid's poking through (it's like God is playing a massive joke on me) and is absolutely miserable. We recently took the binky away so don't want to offer it back up for the soothing sensation he'd get when he chewed on said binky. Also I cannot absolutely cannot give this child a normal teething ring as he 1. Doesn't like how cold his hands get as he's holding it after coming out of the freezer and @. He's bitten through most of the ones we had. In an effort to soothe him I ventured deep into the recesses of my brain to vaguely recall an episode of the 90's sitcom "Roseanne" and remembered an episode where Becky was babysitting and the baby was teething and MISERABLE. She called her Dad (Dan) who told her to give him a frozen waffle to chew on and , bonus, built in drool cups. I use this option for the really bad days when nothing is soothing him and he gets a mini snack as well as a quick fix for teething pain. And that's what works for me.....

What works for you? Check out Kristen here for more Works for Me Wednesday

Yowza!!!

Holy blogging break Batman!!! I just realized that when this posts tomorrow (hopefully) that it will be exactly 2 months since I last posted anything. I would like to blame it on being on summer vacation. But summer and the word vacation going together ended a LONG time ago for me. I could blame it on work. And that would be totally legit as I just started a new job on the 9th of August (8-9-10 how cool is that?!?!?) but mainly it has been that I decided that this summer I wanted to more time offline than online. And that I wanted to really revel in my children's childhood. They are 4 and almost 2 now and when I talk with my daughter I realize how quickly she is growing up. But now that school is going to be getting underway again and we will be on a more consistent schedule I am making a comeback. So without further ado...........stay tuned for part 2.

Uh Uh I didn't just do that......

I have taken what I'd call a Blogging Sabbatical for the past two months and now have decided to come back with a vengeance and was stoked that I decided to do it on a Monday so I could participate in Not Me Mondays at Mckmama's place. I love this carnival. It makes every Monday worth it so why don't you head over there when you're done here and check it out but first things first:

I absolutely do NOT call and leave myself voicemails when I get ideas for what I want to blog about. I have such a better memory that I can remember for 20-30 minutes what I want to write down.

It is so not me who looks forward to Sunday nights because that means there is a new episode of Hannah Montana Forever or Good Luck Charlie on and I've got a 50/50 chance that it's the latter. Because I have SO many more pertinent things to do than watch a tv show that is about a great family and has great family values but whose demographic is the tween girl and not the 30-something year old that I am.

It also was not me who in an attempt to not break my daughters heart decided to spell that we could not go on a picnic on Saturday and then said picnic and spelled Wednesday, don't ask why I'm not sure what the mix up was there.

It is not me who every single day when I come home say to my 4 year old who is waiting by the door for me, "Where are your pants?"

What did you NOT do this week?

Snapfish works for me

As far as photo storing sites go they are bountiful. There is Shutterfly, photobucket, flickr, Kodak Gallery, etc. But the one I use and trust the most is Snapfish. I have been a loyal user of Snapfish since about 2004 when I really started taking pictures with a digital camera. I loved that I could order prints for $.09, that I could make gifts using my photos, and the best part was that as long as I purchased one thing every year (even if it was only a $.09 print) they would continue storing all my digital photos on their site so I didn't have to store them on my poor battered pc's hard drive). But one of the other things I love the most about Snapfish is their customer service. I recently ordered a batch of prints that encompassed Easter, a first Communion, Memorial Day and various other shots of my kids and when I received my order of 79 prints, 6 of them had the heads of the person in the picture cut off. I immediately emailed Snapfish's customer service and was ecstatic to find out the next day, when I got the reply, that they were going to credit my account not only for the 6 pictures that were headless but the entire 79 prints I had ordered and the shipping costs for future use.

Wordless Wednesday...Ice cream brings us together

Head here for more Wordless Wednesday Posts.

Money, money, money......

...there's just never enough of it. After paying all the bills and putting some away into savings it seems as though there's really not that much left for discretionary purposes. But there probably is, if you budget right. I work in the financial sector so a budget is nothing new to me and neither is writing one. But I want to have a budget that shows me exactly how much money I have for discretionary purposes ever week and that is where Gail Vaz-Oxlade and Til Debt do us part comes in. Til Debt Do Us Part is a show that is filmed in Canada that I stumbled upon one night while channel surfing. It is a show that is hosted by Gail Vaz-Oxlade that shows as she goes into people's homes and makes them get serious about their finances. She shows them exactly what they're spending (most of it frivolously) and has them fill out budgets. Then she introduces them to the budget binder and the money jars. She essentially takes away all credit and debit cards and makes them live on cash alone. This is where the jars and budget binder come in and where my ramblings are leading you. Here you can find the interactive budget for how much cash is needed in a given week for discretionary purposes, hence the jars (the money has to be placed somewhere) and to track it you need the budget binder. My husband and I have used this system before and now it is just second nature to update it every month. It has saved us a lot of money in the long run and really showed us where we were spending out money. It allows us to put into perspective how much we're actually making and where all our money is going. The interactive budget works for me, how about you? Head over to see Kristen at wearethatfamily.com for more Works for me Wednesday posts.