A Day With Xander

Yesterday I went to the museum with Xander, all day. I didn't work, I didn't blog, I didn't answer emails, I didn't vlog. I just focused on my newly 2 year old son.

It was the best day! We spent the day learning, talking and playing. I got to really focus on his voice and his little view of the world. We didn't rush through anything. I let him lead me to where he wanted to go, which was the African prairie display 9 out of 10 times.

                    

He was so excited to share with me his major love of all things Zebra. I was excited to listen to his squeals of joy and zebra facts he rattled off to me. "Zeeyas are black and white momma", "I love zeeyas" are the only facts he really can articulate, but  I appreciated them :D

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Time goes by so fast and I want to revel in every minute I have with my children. That's why I have decided that once a week I will spend unplugged, uninterrupted time with each of them. This day reminded me of just how important that is.

Do you spend unplugged, un-phoned time with your kids? What's your favorite thing to do with your kids?

Blowing Up The Log Jam

I was watching a video clip of Dave Ramsey's Radio show a couple weeks ago. (Did you know you can watch the radio broadcast live on daveramsey.com ? Or clips on youtube here ) The clip I was watching had a caller on the line asking Dave what he could do when he felt like he just couldn't get traction. He was making enough to just pay all the bills and minimum payments. Dave told him something has to give. You need to sell something or increase your income. He compared it to when loggers used to float logs down stream and they would all get so stuck, this is called a log jam. To get the logs moving again the loggers would have to use dynamite to blow up the log jam. Once the log jam was gone everything could keep flowing smoothly down river.


With my probable job loss (the company I work for is being sold) and having to save my income for now, we have our very own log jam. I keep having to pull some out of savings just to keep our payments (our gazelle intense payments) the same. So, I am having a hard time reaching our savings goal, which is 2500 dollars . The reason we chose 2,500 instead of the 1,000 dollars Dave Ramsey recommends is because we want to be prepared for a job loss and a possible big emergency at the same time. Our insurance deductibles for our house and car are both set to 2,500 to save us some money every month in the premium. If an emergency came up where we needed that deductible, we need to make sure we have it safe and sound in the bank. We need to do this as quickly as possible.


So, that is our log jam and here is how we are going to bust it! We are having a yard sale. A huge one. I have asked some friends to come and sell too. The reason I asked friends to come and sell is the more you have out there the more likely people are to stop and shop. I have been going through every nook and cranny of our house and boxing up anything that we no longer use, or barely use . If we barely use an item we can more than likely borrow that item from someone and don't really need to own it. As I have been going through our home I am realizing HOW MUCH STUFF we have. I wish I could go back and kick myself for every item I bought and never used or used once. I have 15 boxes and a couple garbage bags FULL of stuff, ready to be sold! I am pricing everything to move because we are not taking it back into our tiny home. Anything left will be donated. We are hoping to make a couple hundred bucks and blow up the log jam for good! All of the garage sale money should be going into savings. If we do make more than expected I will take a tiny bit out of the profits to do something fun with the family.

The Value of Memberships

Hey guys!! How are you?? We are plugging right along on our debt free journey, slow and steady wins the race.

I wanted to talk to you guys today about entertainment on a budget. One of our favorite ways to have fun and not spend a lot of dough is through memberships to different places. We actually have three of them and it has saved us tons of money! We always have a place to go to meet friends or take family from out of town. We have extra passes that came with each membership so we can take friends and family with us. Since we can invite them along we don't need to meet at a restaurant or any other place that would end up costing us extra, and since we can take a picnic along to each place, we save even more.

We have one for the zoo ; that we bought for Xander on his birthday. This zoo is so big! Instead of rushing around to see everything in one trip we now get to take our time and look at just a few animals a visit. We find many teachable moments at the zoo too. Xander (and even Hannah!) is learning so much and so fast.The zoo never really gets old either, because the animals are always doing different things!

We also have one to a beautiful nature center. I can't even tell you how nice it is to leave the city behind and take a walk in the woods when ever you want. Also, talk about learning opportunities! Xander is learning about trees, animals and plants and even how to catch frogs :D
There is also a serene beach. It's the prefect way to de-stress and unplug for a while. We don't bring our gadgets with us (except for my camera of course!) we just hike and enjoy the beauty of god's work.

The last one we have is for the  museum,.We buy this membership as a Christmas present to our family. We have been going to the museum for quite some time now (5 years) and it still isn't old! There is so much information in there I don't know if we will ever be able to see it and read it all!!We find this membership especially valuable in the loooong winter months in Wisconsin when it's too cold to be outside. It gives us a place to get out and walk and learn with out any extra money being spent.


We feel like with these 3 memberships we have the best of all worlds! We get to spend the whole day exploring different places and when we do the math it costs less than .50 a trip. That is hard to beat. Do you guys use memberships? What is your favorite way to spend your down time?