What Flavor Are You!

I saw this quiz at From Dates To Diapers and thought I’d give it a try.

You Are Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

You are kind, popular, and generous. You tend to be successful at anything you try. A social butterfly, you are great at entertaining a crowd.You are most compatible with strawberry ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

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It’s Official!

Mike is going 1st shift as of the 4th. I am so excited. It’s the slow season right now so that means he’ll be getting home around noon!!! When it starts to get busy the latest he’ll be home is 3:30! This is going to be sooooo nice! I’m actually going to have a husband during the week.

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Big Change Coming.

Mike called me tonight while on his break as he does every night. He said he wanted my opinion on something although he’d pretty much made up his mind already. He wanted to know what I thought about him going to 1st shift. He’s been on 2nd or 3rd pretty much since we started dating. He now has the opportunity to bump someone from 1st shift and take their place. There is a downside to this : He will be going farther down the seniority ladder. On 2nd shift he’s number 6, but on 1st he’d be number 9. Three positions may not sound like much, but it’s huge!! He’d be right on the bubble if a layoff came around. I have to say I’m pretty nervous about it because a layoff would be devastating to us financially – it’s bad enough that he’s not really even working 40 hrs a week. Well just the other day, I shared with him that I really would like him to start making more decisions as the leader of our family – I often feel like all major decisions are made by me. So as nervous as I am, I’m trusting that he is doing the right thing for our family. It’s not hard for me to trust him. After all, he is the one who works there and know way more than I do about the inner workings of the plant, but I just naturally worry especially about money.

Anyways, he is going to talk to his supervisor tonight to see if he can make the switch when we get back from vacation. He thinks he should be able to do that. He thinks it will be easier to adjust to the time change since we’ll have early starts while we are in Florida. He’ll have to be at work at 5am instead of 3:30pm.

Besides my hesitation/anxiety/neurotic personality, I’m really excited. There are so many things that I have to do on my own and during the week, I’m basically a single parent. He’ll be able to go to church with me on Wednesday nights. He’ll be able to go to dinner with me and my family on Wednesdays and Fridays. He’ll be able to come with to school functions. He’ll be able to play softball on the church league this summer. He also reminded me that if he makes this switch it will mean we can go through all the foster care classes together which will mean the licensing should go much quicker!!! WOW so many things that I’ll get to have my husband around for. I can’t wait!

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Weather.

Yesterday it was -10 degrees here and in Florida it was nearly 70!!!! All I have to say is, I can’t wait to be on the beach!!!!!

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Foster Care Classes

We start our foster care licensing classes on Valentine’s Day. I’m so excited for this new journey we are taking as a family. Both Mike and I have decided that we want more children and since there is no guarantee (or hope at this point) of me getting pregnant again, we are going to use alternative methods to growing our family. I’m hoping that we’ll have our first child(ren) sometime late summer. After speaking with DCFS though it may be a bit longer. When I spoken to the director a couple months ago, I had told her that Mike works nights so he would not be able to attend the sessions coming up. She said that there are few that they would want us both to be there for together, but the others he could make up once they offer a day or weekend class. My impression was that by doing this  it wouldn’t prolong the process any. Well today, I spoke to the actual licensing agent and from what I gathered, that may not be the case. So it may take longer than we were hoping, but we have to do what we have to do. She said she is going to speak to the director tomorrow and call me back to see what can be done. At least the ball is rolling!

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We have our plans.

Well, I have made all the reservations. We have our plane tickets, our disney tickets, rental car – It’s all done!! We told Carter today and he is so excited. I just may be more excited than he is though!! We will be leaving a week from Saturday and will be coming home the following Saturday. Saturday through Tuesday we will be staying in Orlando and doing the theme park thing. Mike wants to spend 2 days at Disney World and then Tuesday we are going to go to Sea World. We invited my grandpa along for Sea World and he said he would really like that. One of my uncles is going to be visiting him so Grandpa’s going to see if he wants to come with. Tuesday night then we will follow Grandpa back to the condos for the rest of the week.  I just wish we were leaving this Saturday and not next, but oh well, I have a ton to do. My house HAS to be completely picked up before we go though. My sister is going to come over and actually clean – do things like dust and vacuum and mop (her Christmas present to me), but I need to get everything ready so she can do that and then the carpets are getting cleaned while we are gone. My mom said she would come sit at the house while they do that. SOOOOO I have quite a bit to do this week.

This weekend, I have to go to Madison with my sister to get fitted for bridesmaid dresses. Not super excited about that. I would actually prefer not to even be in the wedding. I HATE standing up in public. I’m just too self-conscious, but gotta do what I gotta do for little sister. My mother-in-law wants Carter for the night on Saturday so Mike and I will probably go out to eat and see a movie or something that night. We have some gift cards from Christmas that we can use. Well, I’m exhausted today and way way behind in my tv shows that I Tivo so I’m off for the night.

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So Excited!!!!!!!

So we ended up going through with borrowing some money against Mike’s 401K. It really is a great solution for us and while it is technically a loan, we are loaning ourselves the money. Anyways, Mike decided that we should take out a bit extra and take a vacation. We have not been on a real vacation since shortly after we were married. We have taken quite a few day/weekend trips, but nothing major. My grandpa spends his winters in Florida at a condo and said he can get us a hotel room or condo for about $70/night right on the ocean. I have stayed there many times before and love it. When I was younger we would go to this same resort every year as a family, but stopped when I was in high school. Anyways, (long story short) Grandpa is going to get us an awesome deal on the room and probably will help cover some of our meals too. He likes to pay when we go out together. Those two things will make this a much cheaper vacation than it otherwise would be. Orlando is about an hour from the condo so we will likely make a few day trips there to Disney World and Sea World and such!! I can’t wait mostly because I know Carter will have such a blast. We decided that now is probably the best time to go since we will be starting the foster care licensing and don’t know yet where that is going to take us so it may be a very long time before we get the chance to do something like this again. Did I mention that I am excited!!!!! I’m going to start researching whether or not it would be better to drive or fly. The BEST part is we are going in less than 2 weeks!!!!

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A Night Out

My sister invited me and my other sister to a play tonight. She works at a theater called the Armory. Her boyfriend, Scott, is in the play and because she works there she gets tickets for the dress rehearsal. They are showing Footloose. I’m pretty excited. I love going to the theater and it will be nice to just get out and have some fun. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Scott will propose tonight. 😉

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We’re Back!

Well we are back from our trip to Michigan. It went really well. Carter had a blast and it was great to spend time with family. I was also able to get my baby fix in. My cousins’ kids are all so stinking cute!!! Anyways, there were some ups and downs over the weekend as I was trying to figure out our money situation. We have a solution that I think is actually really beneficial to us. We have decided to borrow against Mike’s 401K. It’s really ideal because we can drop his current contributions down enough to cover what we would be paying on the loan so there would be no real change to his weekly check at all. Plus we are paying the interest to ourselves so even though we are dropping his contributions we are still adding extra into it each week. I think it’s really a great solution. We are also going to attempt to get rid of my car and go down to one car for right now. It’s not going to be ideal since if I want to use the car at night, I’ll also have to pick Mike up from work at around 2:30am, but that’s only for the winter months. He has a motorcycle that he will use during the Spring, Summer & Fall. Also, I really only go out about 2 nights a week : Wednesday to go to church and Friday to go to dinner with my family. Doing this will save us nearly $600 a month!! So I think the benefit well out-weighs the inconvenience at this point.  Once the lease is up on our other vehicle we are going to downgrade that one a bit and then maybe get a 2nd car again. We could probably get 2 pretty nice cars for what we are paying for just 1 right now.  Today, I’m start Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey (There’s a link in my reading list.) Hopefully I’ll get some more ideas there.

Thanks to everyone who said a prayer for us. I am really thanking God for clearing our minds of the fear and stress so we could come up with a solution that really does work in our favor.

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Another great contest from Momsational!!!

Momsational has another contest going on that I think is great. It’s a “get your year off to the right start” contest. They are giving away products from DayRunner. Go HERE to enter.

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