Through the eyes of a child

I am finally downloading the pics off the new camera and I find that the camera has made it's way into little hands... enjoy the view....

Simplify finances

I'm obsessed with simplifying. After all, every minute saved doing something productive means another minute I can spend doing something unproductive. For the bills, I have everything set up and goes out automatically. I used to maintain a spreadsheet that itemized our cash flow and separated everything into categories so we could easily see where our money went. It took way too much time to maintain, so currently we have a 'rough idea' of where our money goes.

I already use QuickBooks for our businesses, but the banks we use for our personal finances does not support QB and quite frankly, it's much too complicated for our personal finances. I looked into Quicken, but I don't want to have two different gigantic financial software competing for space on my hard drive.

Any suggestions on how to automatic my budget tracking without too much complication, expense or time required?

Updates

Work is crazy busy. I'm on a fast track project that we can't agree on anything and we keep redoing everything so it feels like I'll never finish but we have to finish. To sum it up at work: stressed.

School is now in full swing and baseball season has begun. Coach has decided Bubby is the pick for the required 9 year old pitching and since he just started kid pitch, we have lots of practicing to do. Every evening is baseball and we're still doing the twice a week 2.5 hour gymnastics practice.

One of our rent houses is eating our lunch and hubby has been spending every Tuesday and Thursday (the days Sudsy is in day care) killing himself trying to keep the house from falling down.

That's all.

Feingold

Sometimes I feel like I am stuck between two worlds. In one world, I am an a cynic, an engineer, an immediate disbeliever in anything organized- religion, government, and so on. I need to see and feel something to believe it.

The other world is the mother in me. Bubby has struggled in school (and at home) since he was a young child with listening and following instructions. We tried every intervention possible short of medicine. In desperation, we tried Feingold. The program eliminates artificial colors, dyes, sugars and BH* preservatives from both diet and anything with contact on the skin or inhalation. It did make some sense after seeing the effect of red gatorade on Smoochie. However, the cynic in me wondered how a simple change like this could possibly help.

When it came to the choice between trying Feingold and homeschooling Bubby (as the school was threatening to suspend if we didn't medicate), we chose Feingold as medication was not an option for us. Honestly, I never expected the Feingold program to be the answer we had been searching for. Not only did the program work for us as evidenced by teachers who did not even know about the changes we had made to the fact we no longer had regularly scheduled meetings with his teachers, the principal and the school counselor.

Now I have been introduced into an entirely different world. This is a world that is open to all kinds of ideas that are not proven, not known and are quite controversial. Sometimes it is difficult to bridge the difference between the two but somehow in my mind, I have made peace and sense of it all.

Secret Blog

I've been accused of starting up a secret blog (Sara). I didn't think it was a secret, but apparently it was. So here is the big announcement- I've started up a new blog with two of my friends. We have decided to be each other's back up and support for all things health related- mental, emotional, physical and the blog is a way for us to keep in touch and on track. I've tried to start up a blog dedicated to my health before but I can barely keep up with this one much less another one on my own.

Here is the brand new, secret now no longer a secret blog!!!:

*drumroll please*

Support Sisters

Making some progress

We are doing fairly well with our new plan. Granted, this is week 1, but still. The kids and I laid out all the clothes for the week and this has saved so much time in the mornings. Instead of the usual arguing and stalling, they simply pick up the next outfit in the stack (hah, not really but they do grab something) and get dressed without any lip.

Every night this week (all three of them), DH or myself has prepared the lunches for the next day so we don't have the mad scramble the next morning. Progress has been made on at least one load of laundry every day. Best of all, I have a system for dinners now.

The weekend before, I plan out the meals for the week and try to gather all the ingredients. I write down the list of meals on the white board in the mudroom. I bought a small white board for the kitchen on which I write down the next evenings meal before we go to sleep. I also place any daily activities/things to remember on the little white board. I have a giant white board with the month in the mudroom, but since we don't live in the mudroom like we do the kitchen, it's nice to have the reminders right in front of us.

Today's board reads:
Wednesday
Family Fun Night!
Make your own pizzas
Bike ride and dominos

Family fun night

It seems that when each weekend arrives, I throw myself a mini-pity party. Hubby works weekends do we don't get to do the fun family stuff that I'd like. Instead of feeling sorry for us, I decided to take action. Who says that fun family activities can only happen on weekends? We have declared Wednesday night Family Fun Night. We will probably have to shift the shedule a bit when baseball starts up this fall, but for now, Wednesdays work great.

Last night was our first Family Fun Night. We decided to go bowling. I'm wondering when bowling got so expensive? $45 for a four of us for one game? That seems quite steep. I am now looking for ideas for our weekly adventures, preferably ones that don't cost money.

Here is what we have on the list so far:

- family bike ride
- roller skating
- getting gelato from Whole Foods
- driving range
- rock wall at the gym
- Astros game
- we have tickets in December to see The Sound of Music
- movies