We had a great night at our small group bible study tonight. Despite a much smaller small group than usual, due to babies and vacations and kidney stones and out of town company, we didn’t use that as an excuse to not get down to business. No way. We went late into the night working on marital communication, especially in regards to conflict resolution.
See? Here are Jarrod and Christie dukin’ it out with Wii Boxing. Christie killed him every round. What did they learn tonight? “Wii can work it out!!”

So yesterday afternoon, I wanted to play with Ali. Or read to her. Or something interactive. But she would have none of it. She ignored all of my attempts, would crawl out of my lap after the first phrase of a book, and kept walking off to the kitchen to play with the doors.

So I finally got out my computer and started blogging about Guantanamo. As soon as I sit down on the couch with my computer, she comes in there, starts bringing me every book that she has and wanting to read them (which we did, awkwardly, and she actually wanted to read them all to the end), then crawls up in my lap and wants to “ride to town” (ride the horsey down to town, watch out horsey don’t fall down. . .), points to the guitar and says “play guitar”, etc etc – basically every interactive thing that we could do. All of these things are very difficult to do with a computer in my lap.

So I go put up the computer so that we can play.

Then, *boom*. She goes back to ignoring me and playing with the kitchen doors.

How do you get a toddler to play with you without an object of jealousy in the way??

One of my work computers has been dying for quite some time. It isn’t without cause – it is old as computer dirt – I think I’ve had it for 8 out of my 10 years at Slappey.

But as many times as they have tried to get me to take a less antiquated computer, I just can’t seem to take them up on it – this computer is by far the best, most reliable computer I’ve ever had. It’s never gotten that inexplicable sluggish crawl that every other computer has. You know, you have a computer for about a year, and then for some reason it just

s   t   a   r   t   s                d   o   i   n   g            
e   v   e   r   y   t   h   i   n   g          
s         l         o         w         e        r ?  ?   ?  ?  

Well that’s never happened to this computer, and I just couldn’t bear to think of getting a new one. For a while, my computer was the notoriously fastest computer in the office, and anytime someone needed a process done quickly, they would ask to borrow my pc. Plus, a lot of our work software doesn’t work as well on newer operating systems. So I need to stay antique to be able to work the antique software.

I’d been getting several warnings from my computer when I booted it up for quite some time. It always begged me to let it run all these big fancy and LONG processes to fix itself, but, DUH, it was BROKE. A broke computer can’t fix itself, no matter how much it thinks it can. Kind of like people. But that’s another blog. Anyway, I had let it try it’s self-help processes a couple of times, and it always just locked up, so I always bypassed them, and it kept limping along. But over the past couple of weeks, it has been getting more dire in it’s warnings and started to get nasty to me about not letting it fix itself.

I’d been putting it off for as long as I could because of my very short time in between payroll periods during which I HAD to have my computer so that everyone could get paid, but no longer. SO, I took my computer in last week for our computer guru Woody to see if he could fix it. I basically wanted him to completely copy my old hard drive onto a new one so that it would boot up exactly like it did before, except without the nasty warnings. My remote connection into the office is “sensitive”, to say the least, so I didn’t want to mess with any setup things that would disturb it. AND I gave him a three work day limit. With his and everyone else’s paycheck hanging in the balance.

Not really, I’m sure I would find a way to get everyone paid without my computer, but I’ve found that it really lights a fire under people to think that it’s the only way.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting (I’m sure you’re wondering where this post is going). After having the computer since Friday, I got this email from Woody yesterday:

I suspect that the drive’s condition was made worse in the past few weeks while it was in use, but the condition was worsened exponentially during the transport to the office. I spent some time Saturday and Sunday trying to recover the data, with no luck. Last night before I left the office, I placed the hard drive in a plastic ziploc bag and placed it in the freezer, which was my last trick-up-the-sleeve. This morning, I pulled it out of the freezer and immediately connected it to my computer and attempted to create a “forensic” ghost image, which worked, although the last thirty minutes I held a fan on it and patted it with a damp cloth.

Yes, that’s right. He couldn’t get my hard drive to give up it’s info via normal methods of interrogation, so he resorted to torture. My poor hard drive was taken to Computer Guantanamo Bay. Talk about water torture – how about being frozen?!

Then it sounded like he went a little “good cop / bad cop” on it – he froze it, then he was fanning it and patting it with a damp cloth, as if he was caring for a poor, frail old lady (which does kind of seem like what my poor hard drive was).

BUT – it worked!! He was able to ghost my hard drive, and I have my computer back at home today!! It has a few kinks to work out, but largely it is definitely back to it’s good old self!!

I consider myself somewhat of a computer geek, but only when it comes to software. I know very little about hardware, and I CERTAINLY haven’t ever heard of freezing a non-compliant hard drive!! I am quite impressed with Woody’s computer geekery.

p.s. – Woody spent in total 17 hours saving my computer. That’s crazy. And dedication.

I always feel like my videos of Ali are way too “Mommy Bloggish”, but every time I put one up, at least one person always says I need to post videos more often. So, for friends and family who are out of town, and anyone else who enjoys videos, here are two from yesterday at the Botanical Gardens.

The first one is Ali asking for a wet wipe for her hand. This was actually the first time I’ve heard her refer to them as wet wipes, they’ve always been “Yuck”‘s before (apparently the term she heard associated with them the most). Her new obsession with cleanliness is quite convenient, especially since she has a cold right now – she’s a little less opposed to me cleaning her nose, especially if I use a wet wipe. Plus, when she wipes her own nose and then has a hand dripping in snot, she actually ASKS for a wet wipe to “ceen up”. Very convenient!!

The second video is just of her running down the path and talking to me – “dis way” is her favorite phrase when out and about on her own. At the end, she says “hold you” – she got tired and wanted me to hold her. Notice she still has the wet wipe from 20 minutes earlier – she was bent on the mission of cleaning the whole Garden.

I think I may have misplaced mine sometime in the past few days. I just haven’t had my usual inspiration for blogging. I asked Chris if maybe he accidentally swept it in with some other stuff while we were straightening up, but he doesn’t remember seeing it.

I’m just hoping that Ali didn’t find it and think it was “trosh”. I guess I better check all of the garbage cans. Maybe Oreo just swatted it under something. At any rate, hopefully I’ll find it the next time I’m searching under all of the furniture for Ali’s toys.

In the meantime, here are some pictures from today, and one from yesterday.

From yesterday: The little book to the right has a picture of chocolate chip cookies in it. Any time we get to that page, she eats a bite of the cookie and feeds me a bite as well. I was blogging yesterday, so my laptop was on the ottoman when we were reading the book, with the title picture up of the three of us. So she had to feed Daddy a bite of the cookie also.
Today, we had to go to “daddy wuk”. Here’s Ali playing boss. She’s looking quite thoughtful and biting her fingernails just like Daddy used to do!
Taking an important call from the customer. . . .
This afternoon, I decided that I needed some sunshine and fresh air, and so did Ali. Since it wasn’t QUITE as suffocatingly hot today as it has been – only 105 degree heat index – I decided that it would be fun to go to the Botanical Gardens and let Ali run around. As I have mentioned before, she LOVES getting to run around without having to hold my hand. And, since the Botanical Gardens is less than 15 minutes away, what better place to do it?

Here’s Ali deeply admiring the fountain. I think she would have been happy to just stand and watch the fountain all day.
Posing by the plants that match her shirt. . . .
Checkin’ out the flowers!
Pondering the meaning of life. . .
Of course, she was more interested in rocks than in flowers.
A (very short) still moment.
She actually looked at the camera and smiled at the same time!!!! She has definitely been avoiding doing that lately.
TWICE!!
Got dirty. She begs – “wet wipe!! dutty hand.”
. . . . then proceeds to clean the whole garden with her wet wipe. The bushes, the rocks, the ground. . . just in case anyone cared, the gardens are now clean!!!
I couldn’t believe it – after running for a while, she actually started to get worn out, and kept wanting to sit down every time she saw a big rock in the path.
Checkin’ out the flowers as tall as her!!
She finally got so tired that she just plopped down and laid right in the middle of the path.
Stopping to smell the flowers.
The Botanical Gardens were much fun for both of us, and a great way to spend the afternoon, rather than Ali sitting in the window waiting for Daddy to get home! I think we’ll start going there more often.

OK, so I promised the other day that I would reveal the reasons that budgeting is FREEING, not constricting. Obviously, I’m biased. I LOOOOVE budgets, and reconciling, and logging, and measuring trends and percentages. This is true fun for me.

But I am going to try to think like a normal human being, putting aside all of my quirky accountingness, and explain why, to a normal person, budgeting could have a positive impact on their life.

I know, I know, I know – this blog doesn’t fit under my goal blog-type of “entertaining”, but fiscal responsibility and living debt free are huge passions of mine, and I believe that there are many people out there that WANT to know what steps to take to get on track, but just don’t know how. Hopefully at least a few people will find it helpful!

I am going to try and prove five benefits of budgeting:

1. It takes away a large portion of the guilt that goes along with spending money in general
2. It takes away a large portion of the arguments that happen over what to spend money on
3. It helps you control your spending guilt-free by helping you be more aware of WHAT you spend money on.
4. If paired with a little bit of planning, it can help you never have to worry about overdrawing your checking account.
5. If you have debt that needs paying off, there is no better way to make that happen than to have a budget.

So here’s the question: when you go to the grocery store, or any store, or make any purchase, do you always feel a little guilt in the back of your mind, or a little question like “do we have the money for this?” or “is this going to overdraw the checking account?”

If so, budgeting will change your life.

Most people assume that if they make a budget, they will feel constricted by it and like they are being “told what to do”.

But what budgeting really does is it helps you know what you have, where you can spend it, and how to make it “all work out” so that you don’t have to feel guilty every time you spend a dime!

Let’s say you spend $300 at the grocery store every month. If you know beforehand that you’ve got $300 set aside to spend at the grocery store, then you don’t feel guilty spending $25 because you know where it’s coming from – it’s coming from the money that you set aside for that very purpose!

Also, I highly recommend that you set up a budget for every area that you spend money, whether you think it is “wise” that you spend money there or not. For instance: going out to eat. When Chris and I first got married, we didn’t give ourselves an out to eat budget category because we were young and poor and figured that we shouldn’t be going out to eat anyway. However, being the young and carefree people we were, we of course DID go out to eat, and it would all just get lumped into our “misc” account and throw us over budget every month. Then we realized that we would just do better to face up to the fact that we WERE going to go out to eat and fit it into our budget so that we weren’t blowing our budget by doing what we were going to do one way or the other. Then, all of a sudden, we knew that we didn’t have to feel guilty when we were eating out, as long as we stayed within the budget!

Also, it works great for each person to have their own discretionary budget. I have my “misc” money and Chris has his, and Ali even has hers (although it goes to buy things like diapers and wipes). This way, we NEVER have to question what each other spends and have those lovely arguments about priorities and not seeing how it is more important for him to buy Wii games than for me to buy more clothes. Chris can spend his budget on whatever he wants to, and I can spend mine on whatever I want to, and we literally never have to fight about it. Also, we never have to ask each other’s permission to buy something, as long as we know that it is within our budget.

So how do you go about setting up a budget for the first time?

It’s very easy. I have helped about a half dozen people get started on this in the past few years, and here are the steps that I use:

1. Figure out what budget categories you need by thinking about what you spend your money on. i.e. –
Tithe
Groceries
Gas
Out to Eat
Bills
If you have debt that you are working towards paying off, Debt
Her Misc
His Misc
Kids Misc or Allowances
Family Misc (covers things like toiletries, hair cuts, pet food, and other random unavoidable expenses)
Gifts
etc.
2. Get out your checkbook register or receipts or bank statement (whatever is easiest) and add up all of the expenses that you had for the last month for each of the above categories. For instance, add up all of your grocery receipts and put the number down, then add up all of your gas receipts and put that number down. If you really want to make sure your numbers are accurate, do it for the last 3 months and then divide it by three to get an average.

3. Analyze the numbers that you came up with. Do you want to spend that much on groceries? Do you think you’ll be spending MORE in the future for some reason? Do you want to cut down anywhere? Do you want to pay more on debt?

4. Figure out your monthly income.

5. Open up the Holy Grail of Budgeting, my beloved Excel.

6. Have an “in” row, and plug in your monthly income figure

7. Have an “out” row for each of your budget items, and plug in the numbers that you came up with in steps #2 and 3

8. Create a totals row. Subtract the Out from the In.

9. DON’T PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I have helped someone with their budget, it almost always starts out in the red. That’s just a sign that you REALLY DO need a budget, or you will really dig yourself in a hole over time. If you AREN’T in the red, then that is a great sign!! Especially if you have any debt that you want to pay off. You can use that extra money to help you get there!

10. Reevaluate your budget numbers, if need be. Figure out where you need to cut back or if you can add to your income. This part sounds depressing but it’s really best to know where you are, even if it’s bad, then to go through life clueless because you don’t want to face it. At least if you know where you are, you can come up with a game plan to move from that point.

Those are the first steps.

After that, I create tabs onto the spreadsheet to log all spending (instead of using a checkbook register – it’s much easier to log what category things go into) and to show where it is in the budget. Because I’m a total budget nerd, I log all of our receipts and income once a week so that we always know where we are.

We are not, however, militant on sticking to the actual budget number. Some months we go over in one category and under in another – our budget numbers are more like “guidelines”. Some people are militant, even to the point of using the “cash method” where you have cash in different envelopes for each category, and if you need this kind of discipline, it works great.

As far as any debt goes, once you have a budget and know what you can put toward your debt, you can use your all powerful Excel software to lay out a debt payoff plan, and see that it might not take nearly as long as you thought if you have a plan for it!

If you actually read this whole post without running away with your hands over your ears screaming, thanks! :) I hope it helps. If you want to set up a budget and have any questions, let me know! I’d be glad to answer them. I can also send you an entire budgeting template in Excel if you would like it. Hope it’s as much fun to you as it is to me!!!! I know. . . that’s impossible. ;)

Every adolescent boy is insatiably curious what a girl keeps in her purse, mainly because it is drilled into their head that they are NEVER to look in one.

This command is for good reason, of course.

Then, when they grow up and get married, their curiosity of the purse turns into fearful respect. I’ll ask Chris to go grab my wallet, and he’ll come back carrying my whole purse, holding it out in front of him with two fingers as if to keep from catching a disease.

However, this is an expose about what is in a woman’s purse. Or, at least what is in an 18 month old’s purse. Maybe not quite as scandalous as a woman’s purse, but still, it’s an inside look!!

As I told you last week, Ali has a new purse. Since Ali loves to be like Mommy, this weekend we picked up a few things for her to keep in it to make it feel more like Mommy’s purse. Here is a picture with the lady herself with all of the contents of her purse pulled out for play:
Ali’s purse contains:
a) a cell phone which rings when you close it (and answers with a recording of Mommy)
b) a set of keys, including a “beep beep” like Mommy’s (my car often goes “beep beep” in the basement when Ali manages to find my keys).
c) a mirror/brush compact
d) four of Mommy’s old makeup containers that were filled with Nerds by Daddy, who painstakingly divided out the colors from a box of Rainbow Nerds to make them all different. NO, HE’S not wrapped around her little finger at ALL.

Here’s the Little Miss with her purse and on her car telling me “bye bye!”

I know, I know, I know. You’re all calling all of the emergency rooms around town as I type trying to figure out what trauma must have happened to me to skip a WHOLE DAY of blogging, right? Although I DO seem to frequent emergency rooms this year, no worries – I’m fine – our weekend just took an unexpected turn, so I was unable to blog yesterday. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be back to regular blogging programming, but here are a couple of random pictures from the last couple of days in the meantime.

This is Ali’s new favorite place to watch Veggie Tales from. Actually she loves to climb up on the coffee table regardless of whether the tv is on. It’s fun, you know.
Ali started waiting for Daddy at the window at about 3:50 Friday afternoon.
He didn’t get home quickly enough for her, so she decided to just camp out in front of the window:
We went to the park for a few minutes on Saturday. It was unbelievably hot, so none of us could stand to stay long. Here’s a couple of pictures of Ali and I sliding. Here, she’s giving Daddy the A-OK:
Fun fun fun!!

I REALLY enjoyed reading all of your quirks last week!! You did a great job (If you didn’t read the comments to the quirks post, I highly recommend it – everyone’s quirks made me laugh quite heartily!!).

So since I had further thoughts on quirks, I thought I’d open up the quirk box again.

I have noticed that quirks are contagious. Especially when you’re married to a quirk someone with quirks.

For instance, Chris has a quirk about checking locks and safety items multiple times a day. Before we go to bed every night, he has a ritual of checking every door to make sure it’s locked, the coffeepot to make sure it’s not hot, and the stove to make sure it’s not on, regardless of the last time we used said objects and doors. Before we go on a trip, everything is checked multiple times, and the coffeepot gets unplugged (to prevent it turning on itself, or maybe the refrigerator reaching over and turning it on).

So if you were thinking about robbing our house and hoping we left the doors open, you might want to find someone else to rob.

Anyway, his quirk de paranoia has definitely rubbed off on me. When I leave the house, I look to make sure the garage door is closed, then when I get to the end of the driveway I look again. Then when I get one street over and can see the garage door through the neighbor’s trees, I take one last peek to make sure it didn’t decide to spring back open.

So. . . have you ever caught anyone’s quirk? In particular your spouse’s? Or am I the only one that catches them? I DO catch yawns easily. . .maybe I catch quirks easily too.

Oops. Sorry for spamming my own blog last night in my excitement over 5 Minutes for Mom‘s latest photo contest. I didn’t realize they had a rule about just one entry per person, as I have entered multiple photos before and made it to the finals – I just must not have gotten caught!! :D It was hard enough to narrow it down as far as I did, and much harder to just pick one! Lucky for me, Chris helped (My final entry was the finger painting one. Hopefully I picked right!!).

ANYWAY, back to our normal programming:

A week or so ago, I had a HUGE makeup spill on the carpet in our dressing room.

Bronzer (brown) powder.

On cream carpet.

About one foot by two inches in area. That’s a lot of used-to-be-cream-but-now-brown carpet.

Ali was with me, and I was very glad at that point that one of my (many) weaknesses is NOT swearing when I mess up. I said, in my most horrified voice, “OH NO!!!” .

Ali watched me for the next half hour as I laboriously cleaned up my mess (it DID all come up, surprisingly!). She totally understood the tragedy, and stood over me and my mess, repeating in the same horrified voice that I had used, “Oh no!!!”. It was absolutely adorable, and I was so glad that “oh no” was all I had said.

From that point on, she has started saying “Oh no!!” when she sees anything on the floor, or ground, that she thinks doesn’t belong there. It can be at our house, it can be a puddle of water, it can be litter in the parking lot. They all get the same horrified “oh no!!!”.

So needless to say, as cute as it is, I’ve started tuning it out, at least in a “jump to action” sort of way, because I know it doesn’t mean anything except that Ali thinks that something is out of place.

Yesterday, I was getting ready in my dressing room again, and Ali was behind me, and started repeatedly saying “Oh no!!!”. I didn’t turn around, since, as I said, I figured it didn’t mean much. When I finally did glance over in her direction, I saw that she actually HAD made a pretty big mess.

The poor carpet in our dressing room. She had somehow gotten an eyeliner pencil sharpener and taken the top off and had spilled the contents all over the SAME carpet. She was quite distraught over her mistake.

I am a big proponent of not fussing at accidents (assuming that the child had not been previously told to not do or touch the object of said accident), and so I didn’t react, but comforted her and said, “It’s ok!! Sit here while Mommy cleans it up”. She sat so still, which is a VERY rare thing for her, and watched forlornly as I cleaned up her mess.

For the next half hour or so, she was so very loving to me. She said thank you for everything (including me buckling her into her carseat, of all things), and gave me free hugs and kisses and “love you’s”. She was so appreciative of not getting punished for her mistake.

I am trying to take her lesson to heart. God has shown me so much mercy, encouraged me when I’ve made a mess and cleaned it up for me. Being that I was saved at a very young age, I often take salvation for granted. But I shouldn’t. I should be as grateful and overflowing with appreciation and love for my God (as Ali was for me) EVERY MINUTE of my day!