We're Moving!

So we're moving to Carson City, you know, a whole half an hour away from where we currently live. We'd been looking at houses in Reno for almost a year and a lot of things were overpriced and if we did find something we liked that was decently priced, it had a million offers on it and we had no chance of getting the house. It was discouraging, and we decided to put a stop to our search.

But we really wanted to simplify life and ditch our 2070 square foot house which sucked away our time and money. We needed something smaller that would be easier to clean so that we would have more time for important things, like spending time with each other, other family, friends, and travel. And we really focused on the family part and decided we wanted to be closer in proximity to the McLaughlins. So we started looking in south Carson and found something very quickly!

Our new home is 1089 square feet and has large front and back yards. It's got an open layout, which is what we wanted, and, I believe, necessary in a smaller house so that it doesn't feel as small. We're going to change out the cabinets in the kitchen as well as get all new flooring; these projects will be a pain, but we can handle it!

We just received an offer on our current house yesterday and the close of escrow is at the end of June, so we've got mounds of paperwork in our future and more packing. I hope that the offer doesn't fall through, I'm so ready to start this new adventure.

Evey's Second Birthday!

It's funny how we started making decorations for Evey's first birthday four months before the party, and, although I did start early, I didn't start that early for the second birthday. Now don't get me wrong, the second party was a big to do, but it required less of my time, which was lovely.

Evey's birthday fell on a Thursday this year, and she went to daycare in a cute dress and brought frosting-less cupcakes (which the teachers thanked us for) to share with her daycare compatriots. Chris and I picker her up early and presented her with a Minnie balloon, and this girl loves her some Minnie. She has a stuffed Minnie that she actually calls Mickey, or really, Icky, in Evey speak, because the mice are identical, it's just their clothing choices that set them apart, really. Anyway, she was uber excited about balloon and showed everyone at school as she haughtily walked out before the other kids got to go.

She took the balloon into Red Robin with her, where she snagged another balloon, of course. We whiled away the time until our food came by coloring and singing songs. The Red Robin crew sang Happy Birthday to her and brought her a sundae, which she fed to us because she's a cake girl and not an ice cream girl.

Her birthday party was held two days later at our house and we did it up Wizard of Oz style! Jen and Pepper made decor and the amazing cake, and my buddy Drew and Jen's mom Gerri helped with putting everything together. Evey wore a cute dress I got from Etsy and ruby slippers and bow from my mom.

We had a lot of people and definitely more kids in the house than we've ever had before! We were, and, always grateful to our amazing family and friends who love, support, and celebrate with us! It's bittersweet that this is our last party in this house (I need to do a blog post about our move...), but I'm glad we went out with a bang!

Thoughts on life with our two year old: It's absolutely amazing the difference a year can make! Last year we had a non-mover, and now our kid is running everywhere and climbing everything! And her personality is really shining through; she's showing us that she's funny, caring, adventurous, and sensitive. Life isn't perfect, of course, but it's so much fun getting to know her and sharing new and exciting experiences with her!

March Happenings

So March brought two holidays this year, what the hell, calendar?? There wasn't much time in between our St. Patrick's Day decor and our Easter decor, but that's ok; with all of the decluttering and downsizing we've been doing, we don't have as much to put up, and consequently, to take down. 

St. Pat's was really uneventful for us; Evey and I wore green and Chris wore brown, because he thought it was green...yay for colorblindness! And actually, I spaced putting Evey in green for daycare! I seriously called Chris while he was enroute to daycare and he turned around to grab Evey a green shirt! I know, ridiculousness, but it made me feel better, and he wasn't that far away! For dinner that night I made Irish nachos, which is a recipe from The Firkin and Fox, and I doubt it's actually Irish, but they're just waffle fries with sour cream, cheese, and chives, yum! I don't even have any pictures, I guess Evey's first holidays are more important to document than the subsequent ones...

For Easter, we dyed eggs, and by we I mean my friend Meghan and I. Our kiddos kind of helped, but they were way too grabby and not as gentle as they should have been, geeze toddlers! But it was nice to spend some time together.

I had to throw this non-Eastery picture in because it's really funny and she made it herself!

Chris took Evey to see the Easter Bunny, and you can see the wonderful that ensued below:

On Easter Day Evey opened her basket and we hung out at out neighbor's. Pretty low key, but awesome. I think next year we'll attempt the Easter egg hunt, it was way too cold this year!

So like I said, it was cold, and it snowed soon after Easter. We got six inches!

 

Tonsils and Adenoids

So, I wrote this the other night at some ungodly hour while waiting for Evey to fall back asleep after we had to wake her up to give her some medicine:

Evey had her tonsils and adenoids taken out this morning and tonight she and I are guests at the fabulous Renown children's wing! Yah, I wasn't planning on ever having to spend the night with my daughter at Renown, after she was born of course, but shit happens, and by that I mean I passed on my humongous tonsil and adenoid gene and so it's really all my fault that we're here...or something less dramatic;)

Oh yah, like mother like daughter. But it really hasn't been too bad, and I actually would have said that the whole thing has been a breeze, as far as surgical breezes go, except for Evey's psychotic reaction to waking up from the anasthesia! Holy hell, that memory will never leave me, EVER! 

Poor thing wasn't even mentally all with it, yet found this freakish inner strength that caused her to flail around in our arms and eventually rip out her IV. Ugh, blood on the floor, on her diaper, and all over Chris, because he was the one dealing with the flailing at the moment, heh.

No seriously, this moment sucked, I was crying because my highly sensitive personality (look it up, it's a thing) just can't always deal. I wanted to be there for her, but I let Chris handle the situation as he and three nurses wrapped her in a blanket and held her down while the doctors gave her more meds to calm her down and redid her IV. I sat at the nurses' station and went back to her bed when they were done sticking a needle into my little girl.

She passed out and we decided to keep her in recovery until she woke up, just in case she needed to freak out some more. I was helpful while she slept: I held an oxygen mask close to her face until she woke up 45 minutes later, sans the Exorcist impression, and we went to her room.

*And now back to today! We're two days out from her surgery and we left the hospital yesterday morning. She's doing so amazing, you'd never guess she even had surgery! The nurses and her doctor all commented on how well she was doing. She nursed, drank water, ate cottage cheese, yogurt, apple sauce, and pancakes. 

We went to the play area on the pediatric ward and she enjoyed the kitchen and coloring.

And now she's home and acting as if nothing happened! Her voice sounds different - it's not all nasally. She slept well last night and was amenable to taking her medicine at 12:30 and 4:30 am. She was running amok in the house, and outside!

Today and tomorrow she's home with Chris and I'm back at work because I don't get any paid leave. We plan on taking her back to daycare on Monday, so all in all, this has been a relatively painless experience (I'm still working on blocking out the horrible anesthesia moment;)

Big thanks to Jen for coming out in the morning, it was very nice to have her there. And thanks to our family and friends who gave us tons of encouragement and well wishes!!

Spending Fast

Chris and I have decided to do a spending fast for the year, which is a great way to save money and or pay off debt, and is the brain child of Anna Newell at And Then We Saved. The spending fast is different for everyone, based on priorities and needs, but it comes down to making drastic cuts in your spending so that you are able to save more. Eventually, it also lets you see where your money is going and possibly help you to make permanent changes regarding spending that isn't necessary or that can be scaled back.

We've decided to do the spending fast so that we can make a dent in my graduate student loans. We had at first decided not to aggressively pay them off, because they're "good debt", right? Well, we are now in the mindset that any debt we have is annoying and we want it gone. The only other debt we have is the house, and I'm not sure if we'll ever be aggressive about paying off the mortgage, but that's a different story that I'm going to touch on later.

So what are the rules for our spending fast? Here they are:

- Only one meal out each month as a family

- Only one lunch out each month at work

- Only one coffee shop outing each month

- No buying any convenience food or drinks, like from vending machines or fast food joints 

- No buying alcohol (it's a good thing we have a healthy stock of wine!)

- No buying new clothes

- No entertainment purchases (although we did get multiple gift cards to the movies that we will be using, so thanks friends and family! And we're going to see The Book of Mormon next month, but we bought those tickets in November;)

- No buying books, although we've been pretty good on this one for awhile

- No buying gifts, except for our kid, nieces and nephews, baby showers, weddings. I know that doesn't seem like we're cutting out that much, but we give a lot of gifts to family and friends, which we love to do, but cutting that out will help us save a lot. And for the baby showers and weddings, we feel we've got to give back to those people who were so generous to us when we hit those milestones. 

- No buying any toys for Evey. This might seem heartless and contrary to what the last rule stated, but our kid has enough, and by that I mean too many, toys, and I'm sure she's going to amass some more this year. For Christmas we didn't get her a single toy, and instead we got her books, two shirts, a training potty, and a months's worth of music classes. 

Things we're going to spend money on:

- We've got two weddings coming up this year and we're planning on visiting my Nannie at some point, so we'll pay to travel, but we've been racking up Southwest points with our Southwest credit card.

- Parties! We love our parties and we would be pretty bummed if we cancelled them, but I'm going to get creative and scale back a bit, ha! No, no, I really will, and we're planning on hosting four parties this year, so I've gotta start planning now! I'll post my money savings party tips when I've come up with them;)

I'm very excited about The Spending Fast! It's only been a couple weeks, but I can already feel my priorities shifting. I've been meal planning and freezing food and so we haven't felt the need to grab a bite out. We don't really go out all that much, and so the outside entertainment thing won't be a big deal, but when we get bored we've got Netflix, Amazon Prime, video games, wonderful friends and family to hang out with, a house that still needs some purging, the park, The Discovery, not to mention any other virtually free thing we do that I'm forgetting. 

I definitely don't feel we're going to miss out on anything, and I'm so excited to start our journey to aggressively pay off my student loan debt and be debt free, minus our mortgage, of course. 

What do you think? Would you ever try a spending fast?

Book Challenge Update for 2015

My book reading challenge for 2015 was pretty lame as my goal was only 10 books. One day that number will go back up into the 20s or 30s, but for now, that's where I am. But I read 12 books! Yay for me! And I started reading a wonderful, and long, book in October, which I still need to finish; of course I blame the holidays for that. 

My favorite books for this year included:

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. After reading "Neverwhere", which is now my favorite book, I knew I needed to read more Gaiman! This book was amazing, and because I don't really like to write book reviews, I'm not going to, but I gave it five stars on goodreads. Also, Chris was interested in it after hearing my glowing non-review, so he listened to it and loved it as well. Just as a side note, he's been doing this a lot lately, which is great because it's probably the best way for him to "read" books; he's currently reading the Game of Thrones series. As another side note, he checks out the audio books digitally from the library and listens to them from his phone, genius;)

"The Book of Flying" by Keith Miller. Holy crap this book was gorgeous, tragic, uplifting, terrifying, and inspiring all at the same time. Everything was beautifully written and I want more from this author.

So my book challenge for this year will be 12, which is still pretty lame, but I've upped the ante a bit. I've just gotta figure out how to carve out some more reading time...

Murder Mystery Party and New Year's Eve 2015

So our awesome centering baby group parents all got together for a murder mystery party in December! Ashley and Jordan wrote it themselves and hosted the whole thing! It was amazing and so much fun; I think we're going to make it an annual thing;) 

If you've never participated in a murder mystery party, you should, and if you've never heard of one, then I suggest you google it! Each person has a character to play, and Chris and I were recently married white trash cousins;) 

Oh man, the stuff we did/said...it was a great evening! Big thanks to Ashley and Jordan do an amazing evening!

For New Year's we hung out with the McLaughlins in G-Ville and had too much wonderful food and did a whole lotta nothing. Jen made amazing pink moscato champagne floats with blood orange sherbet! 

We had Xmas gifts to open, and Evey scored big time with some wonderful gifts!

I love that every time we visit with the McLaughlins, Evey is more and more chatty and loving. She gave everyone multiple hugs and kisses! 

I'm excited for 2016! We're hopefully going to make some big changes this year, which ill apprise you of later:)