Single Mom and dreams

While I am by no means a single mom, I do have help from my husband - but there are those days when he has to work late and I have two kids until about 7 or 8pm at night. Sometimes I feel like a single mom. My hat goes off to the single moms out there who are raising young kids, because I am getting a taste of it and I know it isn't easy! Yet I am thankful for the job hubby has now, because it's regular income and it's paying the bills, despite the fact that his current job doesn't offer health benefits.

But sometimes I wish we were in a financial position to just jump on the 'work from home - be your own boss' bandwagon. It'd be great to set your own hours, work with clients and still get paid. But the hard part is finding clients.

Anybody need a new logo for their business? New website? Seriously. Contact my husband. Or me. I'm good with those too.

Dreams. 
We are regular people, living in a regular tax paying world. Our house, it's beautiful, it's big, it's old. I love it. It's brick (good for keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter), and it's in a great neighborhood. But the city we live in keeps increasing our taxes, but our income has not increased since we moved into this house 10 years ago - if anything our income has gone down. The jobs for two graphic design professionals just aren't here - or they are, but they are already taken (not by us).

Despite the fact I have never had a full-time graphic design position, I do okay with the part time job that I have and with side graphic design jobs. If you have been to the Market On Main (if you live locally) and see the Apple A Day clothing boutique sign - yup, I did that. I'm proud of my artwork and designs, and I love what I do, I just wish I could do more of it.

Country Living.
Hubby recently did the math on moving out to the country - and he says it wouldn't be that much per year in vehicle maintenance, and even tire replacement (darn gravel roads). We know where we would move and why and there are benefits and the negatives as well. The benefits being: my kids would be outside A LOT, my kids would be close to what we refer to as the farm (aka Grandma's house), and life would maybe move a little slower - or at least be quieter - not living in town has that effect on people, building our own house for the purpose of having everything (including the laundry) on one level.  The negatives being: living so far out (almost 10 - 15 min.), this would be an adjustment for me because I haven't lived in the country since I was like 4 years old! So just dropping everything and running to Target would no longer be an option. Building our own house (are we crazy?), because we have very little income right now, we don't have money to dump into all the things that are needed to build our own house, the way we want it.

I'm not afraid of work, I grew up working for my parents on their rental properties or on their own houses - of course most of the time they paid me pretty well (despite the fact that I wasn't the best worker), but I was by far their prettiest! I don't think my husband will pay me $8/hour for painting, though. :(

Building a house is not only a dream, in the next 10 years it will become a necessity - due to the fact that I have 65+ year old knees (I was told this by a doctor when I hadn't even reached 30 years old!) , and since baby girl is 2 months old, and the pregnancy stretching of the joints and extra fluid have 'worn off' I have noticed a whole lot of extra pain when I try to go up and down steps (mostly up). The hard part is going to be selling our house, which involves: ripping up some 1980s carpeting, refinishing floors, finding area rugs, getting rid of stuff (yikes!), teaching children how to put stuff away and painting/ touching up rooms.

Hubby wants to build basically a pole barn, but make it look like a house. The good thing with this is that they are cheaper to build, and they don't need support walls in the middle, so we don't have to have them, if we don't really need walls. Open floor plan, that's what I'm talking about! Hubby wants to design it himself - and as a former architecture major, I'm inclined to let him. Of course I'll have input, but hopefully we know what we like at this point in our lives.

Something like this, but not necessarily exactly like this:

Here's to dreaming big and making a new home! 

2013... a year of blessings

There is so much that happened to our family in the year 2013!

My little guy turned 5! Being 5 is the best! Hard to believe he will be 6 in a few short days.

He's the one in the black shirt on the left, with his friends around the Lego Party table. 

Hubby got notified at the end of January that he was part of the layoff at his old job, which was effective the first week in February. Ouch.

Hubby went on unemployment and through God's provisions and a little help from family and our church, we were able to keep our house. Although it never was that close, somedays it sure felt like it!

Hubby went on a number of interviews, including one phone interview that - had he gotten that job would have required a move. Hubby even worked a few times for a local place, and got paid for that. Hubby landed working at a contractor position for FedEx, and by the last week in December was interviewed and hired full time by FedEx. Almost 11 months to the day. While it doesn't offer health benefits, it does however put us back up - financially - to where he was with his old job. So now we can afford to buy health benefits on our own.

Who doesn't love a handsome man in uniform? 

At the end of April, I got offered my current position at a local non- profit organization I have been passionate about since 2010. Although it is part-time, it's nice to be paid for doing something you like to do!

In May I figured out I was pregnant, only to be told by the doctor I would loose this little one. But, by far, the best doctor ever- because before she left the room after telling us this, she gave both my husband and I- hugs! Read a little more about that on the Dear Friends and Family post.

The best thing about hubby being 'laid off' in the summer, is that I went to work and didn't have to worry about my little guy, because I knew dad was in charge. While they did some stuff that I wouldn't have done - like they tried to light a pile of leaves on fire with a magnifying glass and other dangerous stuff. Most of the ideas came from this book: 50 Dangerous Things (You should let your children do). It really is a good book, and teaches the children how to do things safely. I'd rather let hubby teach him how to light a fire in the backyard than him figuring it out with a lighter in the basement with friends a few years down the road!

I also co-directed our Vacation Bible School this year, and it went pretty much without any major fiascos.

Here's my little cowboy at Vacation Bible School! 

Here we are at the end of a very long day, at Adventureland, thanks to my brother-in-law and the company he works for! This 5 year old got some of his 'firsts' out of the way on this trip. First time on a big-kid roller coaster -The Tornado (he did not like), but he did like a more subtle roller coaster that is called The Underground. The swimming in the wave pool was the best, because we had recently put out some money for swimming lessons - he was able to swim (like a fish) in the wave pool, when it wasn't waving. 

Mommy and my silly little boy at the end of a great day at Adventureland. 

In August, my husbands family farm was named a Century Farm by Farm Bureau, so almost the whole family got to go to the Iowa State Fair.

Here's my little guy holding his ticket, getting ready to get on the bus to go to the fair, 

no this wasn't posed- he's just that good! We had a great day!  

Almost the whole family celebrating being a Century Farm! 

Later in August I was able to go to Women of Faith with my mother-in-law to hear some great speakers, and some awesome singers. I was only able to do this by way of budgeting and saving money the Dave Ramsey way! 

My mother - in - law and I outside the Wells Fargo Center after Women of Faith. 

 In September, my little pre-schooler turned into a Kindergartener - officially. Yikes!

Being a little silly for first day of school photos. 

In October I entered a local photo contest, and won a $25 gift certificate! Here is the photo I took, well, I had a great subject! 

My little guy in front of the Amtrak train, with his train conductor hat on.

October brought fall leaves and an awesome Iron Man suit - another bonus of hubby being laid off for so long, he came up with this project all on his own, and made it light up. All I did was buy the suit at our local Aldi's store! While it lit up good for the photo, come Halloween Night we watched the lights slowly die and fade out. Oh well! 

Iron Man in my living room! 

We have a friend who decided to start her own photography business! Go Autumn! So we invited her out to our family farm to take some photos of the 3 of us. They all came out great! Happy Day Photos is the place to go, if you are in the area! See more of our family photos here. 

Our family, 2013. 

For Thanksgiving break we went up to see my brother, who lives in Minneapolis. My parents met us there, after packing up everything they own and selling their house near Charlotte, North Carolina. We had an early Christmas celebration and yes- I was crazy enough to go to the Mall of America on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. No, it wasn't that bad. 

Here are the 3 boys- my son and his cousins. 

No, his younger cousin K does not like photos! 

We also made the big announcement of us having baby #2 while we were up there. Watch the video on this post. 

In December we wrapped up the old year with the boys playing Mario Kart and mommy eating ice cream. Is there any better way? 

Happy New Year to all! 

2014 will be the best year yet, because 2013 had some low points, that's for sure. But it also had some pretty great times, most of which wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for some great family! 

What's in store for 2014? 

1. New job for Roy, with a new route and a new to him FedEx truck! 
2. Sarah's job is moving locations (about a block away)
3. Little boy turns 6, with a dinosaur party (more on that later)
4. Sarah has to decide if she wants to do a gender reveal party for baby. 
5. We will welcome baby #2 into our little family in June! 

Back to Work

Well, it's been two weeks since my husband got called back to work. So... our financial situation has improved drastically. We've also made some major financial decisions..... our first one was to join the Financial Peace University class our credit union was offering.

The class was a gift from my parents last Christmas- but we hadn't had the opportunity to use it until recently!

Today we finished Baby Step #1- so we are excited about that!!! We had almost finished baby step #1 around the time he was laid off full time- that helped us get through in that emergency situation!

Health Insurance doesn't kick in for us until November 1st, even if we are going to have to pick up a majority of the costs, but at least we'll have health insurance again! So life is returning to somewhat normalcy. No more worrying if one of us gets hurt or sick "how will we pay for it?"

FPU is probably the best thing that we could have done for ourselves! We are now on a budget- sticking to it- and we feel richer already! We are going to pay off our credit cards with Gazelle Intensity! We can be debt free in 2 years or less if we put our minds to it (besides our house)!!

My problem is I like to shop! I've used most of my 'blow' money for the month (over half of it went to someone who needed the money more than I do!).

We've made financial mistakes in the past- but we are going to turn that around, and stop spending like we had been, and be debt free in no time!

Most of Americans are dragging a $450/month car payment behind the car they are driving. We are blessed we don't have that problem.... that's $450/month we don't have to worry about. Plus our car loan will be paid off in January- which means that money can go toward a credit card and we'll pay them off one by one!!!

As Dave Ramsey says:

Today I choose to....

Live like no one else so later I can Live like no one else!

God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good.