No work.... All play!

Most of you probably don't know but I have been working since the beginning of the year. I work for a company that provides captioning for phone calls for the hard of hearing community. When I heard that this job was available, I jumped on it. I have been taking a lot of ASL classes and I have learned so much about the deaf community. I adore the deaf community and I am so grateful to learn their language and to be able to communicate. Right now, I am taking direction to become an ASL interpreter. I think I have finally found out what I want to be when I grow up. I say "finally" as if I am old. :yeah right:

I got the job and not because we were struggling financially but because we wanted to pay off my car and a few other things. Well, the job has helped us accomplish those things except paying off the car because instead, I am going to use that money to go visit my sister in Virginia. But that is okay. We are excited for the vacation. It is a much needed vacation. We are going to go to Busch Gardens like a hundred times. :D

Yes, I will be flying across the country 7 months pregnant. Don't worry, I will be good and make sure we know where the hospital is so we can skip on over if needed. I will be flying alone though with Kiera so I am a bit nervous. Randy is going to only come for a week or two and then he is going to drive back with Stacy and my mom. Did I mention that sister's husband is going on a deployment/training for 6 months so she is coming out to STG to visit us. But while her husband is gone they will be getting a relocation assignment so she needs to pack up her house in preparation.

So, my mom and I and later on Randy are going to go help her out.

Anyways, let's get to the purpose of this post. I quit my job today. It is official. I put in my two weeks notice. EEEK. I am so nervous but excited at the same time. This time will allow me to prepare for the newbie as well as go out and help my sister. I will miss the extra income that we have had. I haven't really spent too much time away from Kiera since I work at 5am plus I am only part time. She is sleeping almost the whole time I am gone. That has been nice. So, I will miss the income and the "me" time (whatever time that was) but I am so happy to begin to sleep in again. :P

Amazon Rainforest in St. George

I would venture to say that we are pretty good parents. Good parents to Kiera, even good parents to our dog, but I am quite embarrassed to say that we are NOT very good parents to our poor garden. Heck, we aren't very good parents to all of our plant life.

I have a dream. (Yes, just like MLK.) I want to have a lot of kids, a big house on 5 acres to acommodate our size and I want to live off the land. I don't have a dream to become this amazing farm or to pretend to be a hard working cowgirl! But I want the space to have a large garden, some milking goats, a cow or two for meat, some chickens for eggs.....you get the picture!

Right now, Winder Dairy is about as close as I can get for farm fresh eggs and farm fresh milk, not even goats milk. We do get fresh beef from my In-laws in which we are SUPER grateful for since meat can be expensive.

So, last night just as we finished dinner and we began to watch our weekly movie( we only have time to watch one movie a week together), I suddenly got the urge to go weed out our garden. It is massively over grown and it pretty sad looking. Randy wasn't too excited on the idea since he had been working outside all day already and got sunburned. But he was a good boy and came out to help me.

and to illustrate....

This is what the garden looked like when we began. We had our own personal Amazon Rainforest back there!

 Miss K-bug trying to help Daddy pull weeds.

 A little sensory play!

 And to taste the dirt...

 Oh, it doesn't taste very good. Well, yes dear, turkey poo is not very yummy!

I promise Randy was not doing all the work. I would have taken pictures of me working but somehow none of my shirts can fit over this dang belly and my tummy was hanging out the entire time. Not so pretty!

 Here Daddy! Let me help you by stomping on all those weeds! Good job baby girl!

 And then she tried to escape...

 Almost finished. You see those plants in the back? Those are strawberries. They survived the winter as well as the overgrown Amazon. Oh and the plant below, with the wood shoots coming out of it, that is a sage plant. It also survived the Amazon.

 Why yes, we let our daughter dance on the hot tub and play with the garden sprayer!

And we are finished. Doesn't it looks so much bigger with all those weeds gone. I was able to plant some flower seeds in some pots but I wasn't able to get any veggies planted. It was Kiera's bedtime and she was letting us know.

Taxes

Also, we finally submitted our taxes. We had them all completed but we were so depressed to see that we had to pay money this year that we were totally avoiding finishing them off. I finally told Randy that we needed to suck it up and just send them in.

There were two different areas that needed "reviewing" and once completed, we watching our tax return RISE! We couldn't believe it. We are getting money back and a lot of money too! :D

What to do with the money, you ask? We are going to pay off the last $600 we owe on my car and then put the rest of the money into our DIY budget. We are so happy to have the car paid off soon. Also, we pay off the midwife this month too. (As long as things to go plan and we stick to our budget!)

Oh and the best part of all this! We crossed something off of our goals for this year and after the car is paid off we can cross another item off.
Man doesn't that feel good?!

Replacement Parts

Most of you know me pretty well.

Well enough to know that I am not a very shy person. I am not afraid to make calls. When I was younger, my sister was ALWAYS so scared to go down to the basement to get some socks. We would be rushing to get to school and she would refuse to go down and get herself some socks. So, of course, I would go do it for her. I wasn't scared of some silly basement. Same concept has carried through my life. I will call up just about anyone (personal or business) and get what I need done. No one is going to do it for me nor do it as well as I can. :P

I just wanted to share my experiences. I am quite proud of myself. By the way, I would have totally taken my own pictures except that I wrote this blog while at work and it was quite spontaneous.

We own this 5.5 qt Crockpot and WE LOVE IT. We got it as a wedding gift and couldn't be happier. But one day, about 6 months ago, we pulled the lid out of the dishwasher to find the the hinge on the back had broke off. We were so disappointed because we loved the fact that our Crockpot had a hinge. It is so nice to take the lid off and not have all of the condensation/water drip all over the counter, etc. Instead the lid just sit up and all the water rolls right back into the pot.

I have checked the Crockpot site to see about buying a new lid. Every time I look it up, they are out of stock.

Back in September we were ready for a TV upgrade. We had this SUPER old 300 lb TV. It was just ugly and outdated. Randy lives by the motto, "If it ain't broke, don't replace it... and if it is broke, just fix the old one!" Lol. But I convinced him it was time to splurge a bit. So we bought this TV.

It is way bigger than we were planning but it was a killer deal and we have never seen the price as low as when we got it. Not even on Black Friday, after Christmas sales, or even after Super Bowl when they have the best sales! Well, about 2 months ago, our TV remote started acting up. Now, we have a 17 month old who is very rambunctious so she could have TOTALLY broke the remote, we don't know but the top two rows of buttons did not work but the rest of the remote worked. Which means that we had to get off our lazy butt and turn the TV On/Off but we could use the remote for everything else. Annoying, I think yes!

Next, about the same time that we got our TV, we also bought this table.

Complete with 4 chairs and two benches. We absolutely adore this table and we got it on a killer deal too! We love that it is so tall and I am IN LOVE with DARK wood. It is just perfect for us. But about a month after owning it, two of the foot rests broke on two chairs. I can't tell if it was something in the manufacturing or if it is because we did not screw them in right.





We also got a warranty on our washer and dryer.

They came with a 1 year warranty and then for $99 on each appliance you would get another 4 years on each one. So that is a total of $198 for a 5 year warranty on my washer and dryer. I thought that was pretty good. But I had been totally slacking on calling the company and registering the washer and dryer. I tried to do it online but it kept saying my receipt number was invalid. Whatever!

So I finally put my big girl panties on and picked up the phone and I am sooo glad I did.

I called up the Crock pot company to ask about ordering that part. I was informed that they did not make the lids with the hinges like ours so to compensate us they want to send us a WHOLE NEW Crockpot. WHAT?! I couldn't believe it. Below is a picture of our new Crockpot or so I think. Lol. She didn't tell me the exact Crockpot that she was sending but from what she described I am pretty sure this is the one. But when I get the real one in the mail. I will post a picture. :D Oh and did I mention they are also sending the little mini Crockpot too! I can't wait! I feel like jumping with excitement.

Next, I called up the TV manufacturers to get a new remote. They made me go through this huge list of resetting this and resetting that but in the end nothing worked and they are sending me a new remote! YAY!

I called the table company and they are sending me two new foot rests to put on my chairs. Say it with me, YAY!


And last but not least, I got the washer and dryer registered. :D I am quite proud of myself and I felt super accomplished that day. I had been meaning call these companies but just couldn't find time to do it. I think I was subconsciously avoiding it.