The Budget

So in order to capture some of the money that goes in and out of our bank account each week, we decided to team up and form (and stick to) a family budget. I had one going really well back before Makay came and I just can't seem to get it together again. Plus Josh hated my spread sheet because there was only 1 spot to write what was spent that day and I used the comments to detail what was purchased. So I suggested to him that he make a more functional spread sheet to record what was going on in hopes that it would motivate him to help me, and make it easy for both of us to use. *Keep in mind that Josh really likes to go the extra mile(s) for example, the cup project and Josh's life philosophy of "Go big or go home". Well Josh called me a few times last week to tell me that his spread sheet was coming along and how excited he was about the whole thing. So I have committed to sit down today and trade some of my cleaning/showering time for the budget. I opened up Josh's masterpiece and not only do I have a functional budget, It has 272 rows for me to enter my purchases..........all with a label of any possible expenditures. It has 13 categories, with at least 3 sub-categories for each category, and several sub-sub categories for a hand full of the sub-categories (each having their own color) The problem with this is that the budget looks like a large business could use it to manage their accounting, and it gives me the false impression that I am going to have to shop to keep up a large business rather than a small household. The more categories there are, the more ideas of places for me to spend money. Some parts of me would rather go back to Josh's other budget.....The Don't spend any money budget :)

FYI-This post is all out of love and I have been smiling while typing it....I just like to give Josh a hard time.

Reality Bites

Seriously...I just got home from St. George, with the blue skies, warm sun, a beautiful condo, steps from a beautiful warm sunny pool, steps away from my favorite bike ride of all time, next to an awesome 4-wheeling trail, around the corner from the sand dunes and a beautiful lake. What more could a girl ask for? I was so bummed out to come home to my reality that I have been struggling with for a while. Plus my big bro pointed out several times that Patrick Dempsey isn't going to come and send me on an unlimited shopping trip with his credit card in New York any time soon so I'd better get used to it. Hence....Reality Bites. Josh always laughs at people that try to live like they are in a movie, but why not...people in movies don't have to pay the bill after the shopping trip...they just get to go. People in movies don't have to suck in to fit into jeans, they just fit. People in movies get to drive awesome cars and have beautiful mansions perfectly decorated...and they don't even have to fill them up with gas or clean them. Little birdies come and clean for them. Why wouldn't we want to live in fantasy land.

But on the other hand, people in movies don't get to keep their babies forever, they don't stay married forever, they don't even eat real food..it could be plastic for all we know. I really am grateful for what I have, I just like to be in lala land every once in a while. Anybody want to buy a Snowie?

Top Ten Comments from the Never Ending Cup Project

10. "Does Josh know he can only get an "A" in a class?" my dad regarding the time and energy it took to accomplish this feat.

9. "You're the smartest person I have ever met, for figuring this all out" Comment from student at Olympus

8. "Can we design our own custom face?" Sophomore before he realized actually how hard it is to design a face out of plastic cups.

7. "They Break" Exciting breakthrough while we were cutting 14,000 plastic cups with scissors one at a time. We ended up just tearing them all 5 at a time after that.

6. "Is there an adult around here that knows what is going on?" Goofy teacher of the class that helped us put all this together. Needless to say...day one, was chaos.

5. "Isn't it funny that some 'Artist' is supposed to do this and we are doing it?"Sophomore from the class regarding the cup project.

4. "I am going out on a limb here, but this doesn't look right" Helpful student trying not to hurt any feelings, when the words weren't turning out.

3. "Are these pictures going to be in the yearbook?"A student looking for his chance for yearbook fame.
2. "Milo what do you do with cups?"... "You put dem in da fence"

1. "Who in the world has time to do this?" A students comment when he walked past one of the fences.

The whole idea behind this is for a drug prevention campaign. He wanted to do it out on the tennis courts or baseball backstops, but the principal thought it would be a good idea to bring in portable fence panals and put them in the school ( Hopefully you can all picture me rolling my eyes right now) So as if we didn't have enough work to do we got portable fence panals and hauled them into Olympus High School. We had the kids help us put them together. They acutally went up pretty fast and some of them were pretty proud of their work. On Monday we put up faces with the message and on Thursday we switched the faces to skulls with the words "2 drug related deaths every hour" Josh also had posters all over the school advertising the CUPS (Challenging You to Pledge Sobriety) project. It also said Drugs Kill...get the picture. It was really well thought out and had awesome presentation. Good thing the grunt work was easy because it would have taken him forever to do it all himself. We had my mom, sister, Oma, cousins, sister in law and his mom and dad helping with it. It was a major family project.

Josh still has to go take the fences back to the fence place but it is mostly done. He/We have been working on this all school year. Since last September. And now all he has left to do is a web site and a business. Then we can tackle the Snowie. What wierdo's. Why can't we have cool things going on like buying 4 wheelers/or finishing our basement. We choose to spend our money and time on cups and Snow cones. I guess they are all an investment for a hopefully prosperous future. Wish us luck!

The Potty Train...Choo-Choo

VICTORY!!! Milo has been in "under-roos" for 3 days now. He has only had 3 accidents. He gets to go to Boondocks when he is "on the Potty Train" and it looks like we are going to Boondocks! It wasn't bad at all. I have been dreading this for a whole year now. He loves wearing underwear, and I was on the phone all morning and he came running out of the bathroom with his spidees on the wrong end. I didn't know boys were born to think like that, but Milo totally is. He never catches either of us with our underwear on our head covering our face. Ooey, Ooo, gross. Oh, well...it is fun for him. I am so excited, I am going to organize his closet to make room for his underwear and move out the diapers. It totally helps to have his two favorite older cousins potty trained. A couple of weeks ago, Anthony watched Milo get a poopy diaper changed and he said " OOh Mahlo...why did you do that?"