Frugal Pretend Play

Lily had last Wed-Fri off of school for conferences, veteran's day, and teacher work day. I had to work a lot more than usual, and was really impressed with how great the kids did. They behaved well for Julia and were really sweet to me, not whiny, just appreciated the time we had together and not much guilt inducing complaints. The girls have been playing REALLY well together. The way they used to, when they acted like best friends instead of sisters. I has been so much fun to not break up fights, and let them play a little longer before dinner, nap, bedtime because they are just getting along so well, laughing and agreeing, listening to each other in their pretend play.

Yesterday evening the girls were again playing together beautifully. We (Lawrence and I) were headed out for dinner with friends after bed time but we didn't waste a moment before that, playing up until the time we were to leave. We made a boat out of a box and it was really fun. Lawrence snuffed my ideas of how to make a sail and in the end I WAS RIGHT. Heh. After the boat was finally crafted, all three kids sat in the boat for a long time, and then Lily and Addie sailed alone. Lily was the mommy and Addie was the daughter. I was the grandma and I was babysitting Bryson while they were off on their adventure. When it was time to get PJs on, I told them to go upstairs, pick out jammies, and bring them down. They pretended that they had forgotten to pack them on their voyage and they had to stop at a store. As they ran upstairs to the "store" I ask them if they could "buy" some for Bryson too, and "don't forget a pull up for Addie and a sleep diaper for Bryson".

They had great fun shopping for pajamas in their drawers.

When they came down, Lily handed me a pair of Bryson's PJs and said, "I got these Christmas ones at the store for a dollar".

"Oh Thanks, the dollar store?" I asked

"No, a regular store, the were just a good deal."

"Cool, thanks", I laughed

"Addie wanted to get a Firetruck shirt and Firetruck bottoms, but those were ten dollars and there is no way I was going to spend TEN dollars on clothing! "

"Especially for someone else's kid."

HA! I wasn't sure whether to feel proud about that pretend frugal/greedy mommy or hide under a pillow!

My buddy and me

Father's day this year was a MAJOR fail at our house. In order to not drum up more sour feelings, I'm going to leave it at that. All around cruddy day. Soo....

With our anniversary on the horizon as the next time I could replace that sourness, I wanted to plan ahead. Something really special. Something that would be super cool for Lawrence and I to do together, to celebrate us, and really have fun. Not just dinner or a drink, but something different and special.

So when I got a Groupon deal in early July for a 4 hour sea kayaking class, I knew I had just found my anniversary gift. As our anniversary neared, things were getting crazy. Life felt really stressful and so we decided to celebrate on our Tuesday night anniversary with a beer and nachos at the new Big Al's that was in it's Grand Opening a mile from our house. And we scheduled our "real" anniversary kayaking celebration for last weekend.

Every time we have plans away from the kids on the weekend I get anxious. Especially when it is during the day, before bedtime. I spend enough hours away from them while I am working during the week; I really feel like I can't afford any time away during the weekend and I stress out getting ready to go. My partner in crime, aka Lawrence, stays cool, calm, and collected and usually even finds a few minutes or thirty for some Sports Center, while I'm scrambling around in shear panic. :) Then of course once we do have an actual date, I'm refreshed, and I remember that I need to do things alone with Lawrence more often. But it's hard to do that. To make time for that. And usually our dates are set up because someone has invited us to an adult only event, a going away party, birthday party, football game, concert, etc, etc, and much of the time is spent with the guys doing one thing and the girls talking about another. We spend the drive in the car together and then our date turns into a "see each other in passing" kind of thing. And since we are SO Dave Ramsey, we rarely do out to dinners, just the two of us.

So this sea kayaking class. It was more awesome than I could have imagined. Even though I was anxious when we left, we had a blast, and when we came home we made a big family pancake breakfast dinner, and the kids had a great afternoon with Julia, they were happy and excited to see us. And I didn't feel guilty, I felt good.

We weren't together the entire time, but it was just us with 2 guides and 10 strangers, for four hours, doing something new and cool and outside and active and together. Something that we couldn't, wouldn't, wish we'd brought the kids too. We went 9 miles in the Willamette River around Ross Island and saw the city (of Portland) in a totally new and interesting way.

Lawrence is kind of a bossy teacher, and it reminded me of our early dating days when he'd try to instruct me on how to (snow) ski better, totally out of love. But my know-it-all-this-is-good-enough-self, hates that. So I chuckled inside when I yelled at him, "I KNOW!"
as he suggested I hold my paddle with my thumbs pointing a different way or what ever. The river was so peaceful, so there were long periods of time of no talking, being alone with our own thoughts, working hard the whole time. It reminded me of us. What we are like when the busyness of every day life and the tasks involved with carrying and caring for 3 young children aren't there to distract us from each other, from us. Don't get me wrong, we LOVE that distraction. We love how involved the other is our children's lives. We look at the other being a present parent and love more for it. It's not that we want to be away from the work that children bring. It's that last weekend when we were, I felt reconnected and rekindled and reminded. He is my buddy, he is fun, he is my best friend. When we get away to realize that, we come home and model that we are more than just teammates working for a common cause. Mommy and Daddy are in love, they are friends, and they go out and come home and are even more fun to be with because they have each other as a partner in this life. It's pretty cool.

22 weeks!

I have a private blog that I keep for journaling about my pregnancy and for some reason it has been easier to keep up on than my family blog. We are doing so much and I just get further and further behind. I am now 22 weeks pregnant. This is a spaghetti squash and it represents the size of my baby. It is next to a quarter so you can see the relative size.
I can feel the baby kick quite often and am starting to feel a little shorter on breath especially when I'm hunched over, so it's been forcing good posture for me. The pregnancy is going great. I really do love the second trimester of pregnancy, it feels good and very easy. I look all big and pregnant but not suffering the "I'm so pregnant I want to die" or "Please make this end". I actually don't remember feeling that way until the very end. Like the last two weeks. My back gets sore when I do outside events with the kids. I don't know why it is all the bending wrong. Why do I only do it wrong (w/out my knees) when I'm outside? Possibly because I don't have a counter to pull up on. In any case, time is going quickly, and I'm enjoying my pregnancy very much. While there are things about being pregnant that are inconvenient and tiring, I'm certainly not one of those people who hate being pregnant. I really like it, especially after starting show. The whole world treats you special because something really amazing is about to happen in your life. And it is.

In my below post, I mentioned some bad news, and I said (more later on that). I was deciding what exactly to say about the bad news. The news was that Lawrence lost his job on Friday. His boss held on to him as long as she could, but due to the economy, and that they are a floundering small company, and he was the newest employee (of 3 years), he was let go.

So I've had a week now to process the news, and it's all going to be okay. I have brief moments of freak out time, but then I recenter, do not allow a pity party, and take the steps I can to move forward in a positive direction. The rest is out of my control. Some of it is out of Lawrence's control. I will do my job to be a supportive, loving wife, who has one amazing husband. He is also in a great mental place with this. He knows that something better will come out of this, and it will probably involve a few months of struggle. We've already done some cost cutting in a budget where there wasn't much to cut, like reducing life insurance and 401k contribution. We don't pay for cable or home phone, I use public transportation and our nicer car is for sale (though it has been for a while and we have had a few bites-we are willing to downsize that), we are not buying organic foods at the moment and have even been shopping at Winco (ugh) for savings, we've stopped paying debt so aggressively, gotten on equal pay with both power and gas - as well as both living a little out of our comfort zones temperature-wise (me in the winter, him in the summer), heck, we've even invited someone to live in our home, using the house to help pay for our childcare (and a wonderful cultural experience for our kids as a bonus!) any other ideas out there? I'd love to hear some suggestions. Ya know, not wear a sweater in the house or stop buying starbucks (I wish) or stop eating out (HA!) but things that aren't on the top ten nightly news cost savings every single night. Sometimes people don't like to talk about this, but I find it comforting to know we are all in this together, and we aren't pinching pennies alone. I don't feel the lest bit of shame in being a tightwad and actually know I'd be making Dave Ramsey proud, and I HEART Dave Ramsey so there. There is shame in continuing to live outside your means and we haven't been doing that for nearly 2 years, and it feels GOOD. I love Lawrence and I love our family unit, and I love how dedicated we are to making it work, and I love all the lessons we are learning. Interesting how you don't learn much when things are simple and easy and take no effort! :) Anyway, leave a comment of some thrifty stuff you do and help some other mamas out!

That's the update! Happy Friday!