New Car!!!

I'm sure by now some of you have heard about our new car:

A family in the ward gave it to us and Daniel LOVES it.
Oh, wait... you weren't thinking of that car, huh? Maybe this one?:

That's right, we bought a brand-spanking-new 2010 Hyundai Elantra.
"But wait", you say, "aren't you always whining about how poor you are?" Yes, yes I am. But the last few months taught us we couldn't afford an OLD car anymore. The durango had recently cost us at least 2000, was due for new tires and a $1500 routine maintenance for it's 120k mile mark. For what we've paid for our two old cars in the last 6 months, we could have made almost 2 years in payments on a new car. And we decided to go completely new, rather than slightly used, because we wanted a great warranty. We're so sick of car problems.
The car that wrecked two years ago was an Elantra and we loved it. And Hyundai is just getting better with time- it's got the 4th best resale value on the market. And it only bumped our insurance up 16 dollars per 6 months.
Yes, I am a bit defensive and can go on for a long time to justify this purchase. It took a long while for Kenny to convince me. I don't come from a family that buys new cars. But then, I come from a family with the worst car luck ever.
We're so glad now. A huge weight was lifted from our shoulders. And since I'm going to have to work in one way or another for a while yet just to sustain the necessities of life, we figured we could afford to throw a car into the mix. We got an AWESOME trade-in value on the durango which helped a lot.
So we bought Merlin. He's dark blue, magic, and wears a pointy blue hat:

And yes, it's a decepticon just like the durango was. Merlin-icon?
It's not the gutsiest car- It has a squirrel running on a wheel in the engine. (The durango had a badger. The vespa had a caterpillar. Ask me what kind of engine a car has, and I will tell you it's animal equivelant.) But he's clean, comfortable, and reliable and we're very happy.


(ignore my honkin nose in that last picture).

Busy busy busy

I figured I should let you all know why you'll be seeing even less of me soon. I just picked up another job. An old client emailed me asking if I want to do contractor work for his company (which in turn provides analytics for other companies). I had worked with them before for about a year while I was still consulting and I remember them favorably. I'll work from home and the pay will be about 6 times more per hour than my B&N job, and they say it'll stay under 10 hours a week (I'm dubious about whether or not that's how much I'll work or just how much I'll bill). It's an awesome opportunity to make lots of money quickly, I'm very flattered that they reached out to me with such a generous offer, and I'm thrilled to once again use the 3/4s of my brain I devoted to web analytics knowledge, but... working from home was hard (there was a reason I quit), and I'm already feeling that nagging sensation whenever I'm at home of "are you sure you shouldn't be working right now". Not only that, but with my B&N job I've already been as tired, busy and sore as I've ever been for an extended period of time. I'm going to try to do both as long as possible- working at B&N is good, it makes me happy, and if I keep at it I could get health benefits at last, saving us about 600/month. It's also more predictable in the long run than consulting. So I'll continue doing that in the evenings, about 25 hours/week, then somewhere I'll squeeze in 10 hours of consulting, 168 hours of babies watching, and hopefully some time with my husband at some point...
As for plans for the future... we're clueless. We know that we don't want to get pregnant until we know where we'll be 9 months later (and whether or not we'll have insurance), so it may be a while before our family expands (a plan I will admit I haven't adjusted to very well, logical though it may be). Kenny is currently searching for teaching jobs- mostly in Texas, Oregon and Washington. Unfortunately very few schools will post opening before February or March. Once we know where he'll teach next year, we'll make the decision of whether or not to move. Even if he teaches locally, we may still downgrade so we can save up to move out of Texas in a few years.
Daniel is so much fun. He's currently under the weather, but today aside he's just been a blast lately. He's a great helper, and loves watching sesame street on the computer or movies upstairs (unfortunately he has learned how to pick out which movie he wants, and it usually ends up being the stupid Super Mario Brothers cartoon from the early 90s). His speaking isn't progressing much (I think it may have actually gone backward a bit), though I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak because he spends all his time with me and I understand his grunts/gestures well enough he doesn't see the point in verbalizing. All the same, if things don't change in the next few months we'll go in for a screening and some advice on how to get him talking before he turns 2 in april. Also, if any parents out there want to reassure me that it's perfectly normal for a 21-month-old boy to have a very limited attention span for mealtime, library story time, or church, it would help me out a lot.

In other news, I have about 3 months worth of news, videos and pictures to post. I promise I will someday. Oh, but this is fun. Kenny bought me this Goomba bag from Hot Topic:

It makes me happy.

In the last decade

I spent New Year's Eve, 2000, throwing my annual new years party at my parent's place with 20 or so of my great high school friends.

In the last decade, I have:
-Got my driver's license and had a kickin surprise Sweet Sixteen party
-Bought my first car (and 6 subsequent ones- one died, sold two, wrecked one)
-Had my first kiss and first boyfriend
-Had an inch and a half of jaw removed to fix my cross bite
-Grown back an inch of jaw to unfortunately renew my crossbite
-Fought some serious clinical depression
-Graduated high school
-Got accepted to my college of choice
-Kissed seven guys (including the last guy I'll ever kiss)
-Had my heart majorly broken 3 times
-Lived in Paris for 4 months
-Found the love of my life
-Graduated college
-Moved 11 times
-Had 18 roommates, husband not included
-Been to the er/been hospitalized 5 times
-Got married
-Had 8 jobs
-Spent two years in corporate america
-Bought a house
-Spent 8 weeks on bedrest
-Had a baby
-Spent over 1000 hours breastfeeding
-Changed over 3600 diapers
-Found lasting happiness with the best husband and son in the world

All in all, a fantastic decade, and it's only looking up from here.

Still Here

Life has been very crazy, but good, lately. I've been working 32-40 hour weeks, sometimes going days without seeing Kenny. Most of the time he is wonderful and brings me dinner during my break so we can see each other for at least a half hour per day. And now it's Christmas break, and since I usually only work closing shifts we should be seeing lots of each other in the mornings.
The schedule has also made me lose 10 pounds, bringing me to 15 pounds below where I was when I got pregnant with Daniel. I'm pretty sure my wedding dress would fit me now. So now I am purposefully scarfing everything I see because I don't want to be any skinnier, especially not if the method of losing is stress and forgetting to eat.
We haven't decided how much longer after Christmas I will work, or how many hours. If I keep my average over 30 hours, then we get health benefits. In truth, the job itself is quite enjoyable and I feel well established there now. Much less stressful than consulting- I go home from work I can forget about it and relax. But I'm not sure our family can keep up that pace for too long.

That, and many things are up in the air. In a few months, schools will start posting openings for next year, and then we'll decide if we're moving, and where to (maybe the NW, maybe staying around here), and if we can sell a car (only if we live somewhere not as cut off from the world as our current neighborhood), or when/if we should get pregnant... so things feel a bit up in the air at the moment. There is an opening at Catlin Gable (very nice private school) in Beaverton, Oregon that I've been drooling over, so everyone pray that Kenny gets it. The one thing we aren't considering at all is having Kenny stay at his current school. He deserves to work somewhere where he is appreciated. There are some very hostile coworkers at his current school, not to mention the fact that he spends over 30% of his class time giving stupid tests.

Financially things are improving. We are still in debt, but we're slowly climbing out of the whole. The Durango had another problem (in general the civic is the one with big problems)- nothing that kept it from functioning, but something that had to be fixed to pass inspection. It cost 800 bucks. We were bummed. Then two days later, about 800 dollars appeared in the bank account. Apparently Kenny's whole school got an unannounced bonus for their standardized test scores from last year. So woohoo!

On top of it, our friends and family have been amazingly generous. I won't ever forget all the kindness we've been shown. Someone ding-dong-ditched a bunch of toys for Daniel and a significant chunk of cash and gift certificates a few weeks ago... I still get emotional even thinking about it. Whoever it was, I'm sure they'll be blessed. To everyone who has sent us anything- even something small- thank you so much. The atmosphere of our home has changed from the gloominess of October to joy and love and happiness again.

Daniel has been a blast lately. Not today particularly- it's a sunday, after all- but in general he is so much fun to be around. He has 6 words or so now, none of which he uses consistently- sit, shoe, sock, dada, down, stop- but he's a great helper, loves to clean up, and gives hugs and kisses constantly. I still think my favorite trait is how much he loves to make random people smile. Standing in line with him at the store is so much fun. He's such a little showoff.

I got released from being the Relief Society secretary and I'm now a RS teacher- my favorite calling! I'm so excited! I don't think I'm good at it, but I sure enjoy it!

Kenny and I are on a marriage high right now. Things just keep getting better. Overall, we feel blessed, happy, and just very busy.

It got better

Just wanted to follow my downer post and let you know we're all feeling a bit better. All of your comments helped a lot- really, I'm just the type of person who feels better simply knowing that it's ok to feel like crap. Does that make sense?

Kenny came home and we all moped around the house for a while, but we're both doing much much better now. I've been working on finances and while things are still glum, they're not as end-of-the-world as I thought. My parents and sisters have been wonderfully kind about listening to me vent and cry and it's helped so much. I have a great family, and I miss thme so much.

Kenny fixed our washer! I'm so proud of him! So handy and fix-it-ish. He's fixed two power windows, one trunk latch, one washer, done two oil changes, made 4 bookshelves... and has a nice rugged beard to complete the look.

Daniel had a brief setback this afternoon and re-hurt his hip, and for a few hours I thought we were starting the process all over again, but after 4 hours or so he seemed to be back where he was with the old man limp. By the way, for those who don't know, this is how he hurt his hip- the tan slide in the picture below (at collin's park, behind the library):

He loves slides, but this one looked a bit intense, so I decided to go down with him on my lap. That proved to be his undoing though, because a mommy in jeans slides much faster then a pudgy left foot in a shoe. His left foot tried to stay towards the top of the slide, wedged between my body and the slide, as the rest of us went down. I barely even noted it at the time. When we got to the bottom, he erupted into screams, but I couldn't tell if he was scared, overly tired, or hurt. So we went home, and he was still screaming, even while I held him (which is TOTALLY unlike him). I couldn't get him to let go of me enough to check his legs. He just fell asleep in my arms (which he hasn't done since he was like 4 months home). After a THREE HOUR nap (also unlike him), he let me poke around his leg and while I couldn't see any problems, I could tell he wasn't able to put any weight on it without collapsing and crying. So we got x-rays (thank heavens for welch's fruit snacks, they can calm my baby down in any situation) and found out it was just a sprain, and sure enough 5 days later he's walking at 80% of normal.

This may sound awful, but another thing that has cheered me up, or more appropriately made me realize how good we still have it, is seeing what some of my good friends are dealing with right now. I have a few good friends battling some serious inner demons right now (bipolar disorder), a family in the ward with a daughter who just battled her leukemia into remission, a lady we are good friends with who is battling with some advanced lupus and epilepsy all at once (I gave her a ride to the ER today because she's hasn't held anything down for 4 days), various friends desperately trying to get pregnant or adopt, friends declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills, and an online friend who just spent weeks on bedrest in the hospital because of pre-eclampsia (but she had a healthy baby boy, yay!).

Lastly, our good friend and roommate, Corinne, for some unfathomable reason can't get a job- she's been looking for months! Hire her, people! She's lovely and smart and a pleasure to be around, and has a year of chef school under her belt. Texas folks, keep your eyes peeled.

In other words, we have it good. I know that. And the thing is, many of the people just listed have been comforting and pitying and sympathizing with me. I am surrounded by wonderful people every day, both virtually and in person.

And above all, I have an amazing, awesome, wonderful husband. I can't stress that enough. He is such a trooper, and takes such good care of me. Through all the crap of recent months, our marriage has definitely only gotten stronger. He's been wonderful about being a single daddy a few days a week while I work, and even still cooks and cleans while I'm gone. Where did I find such a gem?

Even if he is watching Happy Tree Friends right now. (I HATE that show).

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (the vent you've all been waiting for)

The last month and a half have been a lot for us to handle. We'll start with the Good:

• Daniel winning the award at Macy's for best costume. That seriously made my month.
• I got a part-time seasonal job at Barnes and Noble. It's the only place I'd applied, about a month ago, thinking "I could enjoy working here, and we could use the money". It's weird working minimum wage again (it's actually a quarter less than my first job was 10 years ago, because Texas minimum wage is so much lower than Washington's), but unlike my last job, when I'm done for the day I can leave it behind and not think about it until I walk back through those doors again. I could go back to consulting (it certainly pays better), but that was so all-brain-consuming, and since I worked at home, I could never just leave it behind. Anyways, I've enjoyed working there so far and I LOVE the benefits- great employee discount, plus I can borrow any book with a dustcover for 2 weeks (so I can be knowledgeable about what's out there). The staff has all been very kind and easy to work with.
• Kenny sold his three bookshelves on craigslist, and the buyers were thrilled! Once we get more time, Kenny has some more customers lined up.

The bad:
Where to start? These have honestly been the worst 6 weeks of my life. Our luck has been AWFUL. And since I've been such a drain and so whiny, I figured I'd let y'all know why I'm so glum. Just so you know how we were coming into the month- we had recently decided to save money by doing our own haircuts (requiring a haircutting kit to be purchased) and by changing our own oil (requiring jacks and tools and draining pans). We had also bought me some harping supplies for upcoming gigs, and extra tools for Kenny to build bookshelves to make money. So we had drained our already meager account to make these investments so we could start saving money. We were planning on buying new tires for the honda, as they are currently dangerously bald (and still are).

• Then the honda broke down- needed a coolant flush, a new timing belt, new spark plugs, new coil and distributor cap, and some other things I have no idea about. 1400 for repairs.
• 3 days later the honda power window broke. 6 hours of Kenny's time (when he was already overly busy building bookshelves).
• The next weekend the Durango trunk latch broke.
• The following week the Durango power window broke. Fortunately by now Kenny has learned a thing or two about dismantling car doors.
• My next (second and last) harp gig got put off indefinitely.
• And then the washer broke. We looked online and everyone who had our washer had the same problem and fixed it by replacing a certain part. We buy the part for 30 dollars. It gets here and doesn't fix it. So K goes back online and finds some forums that say "oh yeah, for a few of us that part didn't work and we had to buy a different part for 130". We are currently waiting for that part. Daniel has no clean clothes to wear today.
• Last week the durango "check engine" light came on. I don't even want to know what's wrong, but today the engine started sounding like there is a small helicopter in there.
• And the A/C in the durango started mysteriously stopped working this last week. Fortunately we are entering the three months in Houston where the weather is bleeding hot only ever OTHER week.
• On at least three different occasions (twice in the church parking lot), some random person has deeply scraped/gauged the durango and left their car paint in stripes on our car.
• Daniel broke my only pair of eyeglasses (I'm blind as a bat without them). We tried super glue and masking tape for a few weeks, but they're beyond repair. I'm wearing my contacts all the time at the moment but had to pay 120 for an appt/prescription and another 100 or so for the costco glasses (which are still being made). Thankfully my mom helped out with funding the new glasses or else I'd be stuck wearing contacts all the time, which hurts my eyes.
• Lucy sprained her foot being set down in the garage after barking at a visitor, and has been walking on three legs for 3 weeks or so now. She's putting weight on that 4th foot again, but not fully.
• All four people in our house has some combination of sore throat, snotty nose, and/or cough.
• I got a toenail and two plantar's warts removed about 6 weeks ago. A lot of billing confusion happened after the fact, and I only just discovered the true cost of getting a toenail removed is 786.31. And that's still only halfway to our deductible.
• Our healthcare premiums, which started the year at 381/month, recently jumped up again, bringing the total to 445/month. I calculated it, and by the end of the year, we will have spent nearly 7500 for medical care this year (including premiums, deductibles, prescriptions and copays). That's over 20% of Kenny's post-tax salary. For a healthy, employed, family of 3 where the biggest health problem was toenail fungus. And this doesn't include the baby I would like to have but can't afford.
• I've had a UTI and ear infection for about two months that I just can't kick. But we can't afford a doctor, or the medicine, so... I'm still drinking that foul concoction known as cranberry juice and hoping it will go away on its own.
• Daniel has had two ear infections, then the amoxicillin to treat the 2nd ear infection gave him a yeast infection and diarrhea leading to the worst diaper rash of his life. Fortunately some activia helped clear that up just in time for...
• Daniel sprained his hip going down a slide last week, so we had to get x-rays. He's finally hobbling around again today. He had a very rough weekend, full of energy but unable to run around. He stopped sleeping the night for a while because either his ear hurt or his hip hurt.
• Daniel still hasn't adjusted to Daylight sayings and is waking up at 6:30 everyday. Since I get home from work at 11:30, I'm quickly becoming a zombie.
• Kenny and I are desperately trying to deal with our losses this month and have cut out dates, our once-every-other-week fast food trips, netflix, and allowances entirely out of our budget.
• We've also stopped having "real meals" three times a week to save money, so we are once again eating college fare- pb&j sandwiches, totino's pizza, and top ramen. I've lost 7 pounds I didn't really want to lose.
• My new job, which is great, requires me to work a few days a week from 2:30-11 pm. Meaning I have to leave Daniel with Corinne for an hour until Kenny can get home. It also means I don't get to see my husband awake once the whole day.

The Ugly:
In july we switched insurance to geico. I called Chase to let the escrow folks know to send the new premium amount to geico. Apparently the address they had on hand for geico actually took that check to some donut shop in minnesota and geico never got it. I call and all chase can tell me is "we sent it, it's not our fault". Geico tells me "we didn't get it, it's not our fault". So two months later, Geico retroactively cancels my still-unpaid policy and it looks like I've been without insurance for 2 months... meaning my premium went from 800/year to 3500/year (because I've had a lapse in coverage). After spending about 8 hours on the phone with chase and geico (sometimes with both at once, listening to them bicker about who's fault it was), chase admitted fault and geico was kind enough to forget about the lapse in coverage and sign me up for 765 (lower then what they had quoted me for in july). Yay for geico, boo for chase.

It gets worse. In september I called Chase (who (mis)handles our current mortgage, to ask about a refinance. The guy, Eric, was oh-so-kind and helpful and said he could bring our payment down 200 dollars a month. I say "great, but don't obligate me yet, I want to talk to my husband". But the guy goes ahead and sends an appraiser and a filled-out 30-page application. Somewhere in the middle of those 30 pages, Kenny notes that our mortgage payment itself will only be going down about 58/month (definitely NOT worth losing 7000 in equity). The rest of the "savings" are from the fact the guy quoted by escrow payments as being way lower then they currently are.
For any of you who have been following our refi woes... the reason we even want to refinance is because our original loan folks underestimated the escrow so our mortgage payments have bene more than we could handle. Had we known they would take up a third of our mortgage payment, we'd probably have never even moved to Texas.

So I call Eric back and leave a message. Twice a week for 5 weeks. He returned ONE call, but I happened to be in the shower. I'm a stay at home mom with a cell phone- I'm NOT a hard person to get a hold of.
So anyways, I think "fine, whatever, so long as we don't get charged" (thinking a month has passed and they haven't charged us, so we must be good). Then we get a letter from Chase saying "by the way, sorry it took so long, but we're only just now charging you the 750 application fee". WHAT!? I call Eric back more. I call his manager. I send emails. I call billing. I call Eric. No returned calls. I finally call billing one more time and the most they can do is cancel our application, getting us 350 back. But they get to keep the other 400. They're putting it for "review" to see if I had authorized him or not (which I hadn't) but it sounds like we'll not be getting that money back. I'm seriously fuming, I'm so upset about this. DO NOT EVER BANK WITH CHASE IF YOU CAN HELP IT. Unfortunately, it's our mortgage- we can't just pick that up and walk it across the street to our bank of choice.

Both of our families have been very kind and generous and have helped us get through this, as has our ward. I know things could be so much worse, but it just feels like all of our best efforts to save our money, stay out of debt, and be financially independent have only gotten us into trouble. For the first time in our marriage, we will have credit card debt that we can't pay off at the end of the month. Even with my additional salary it will be months before we pay it off- my last hope is our tax return.

Anyone who made it this far into my pity-party deserves an award, but I have none to give. Honestly, I'm feeling a bit broken right now. Keep us in our prayers, that Daniel, Lucy and I will all heal without any more doctor fees; that Kenny and I will find a way out of this financial mess; that there won't be any more mean surprises for us in coming months.

Sorry for posting so much and for it being so depressing. I'll probably regret posting this all later. I just needed to get a few things off my chest.

PS. This is IN NO WAY a solicitation for financial help. Just some sympathy and prayers.

What baby elephants do in their spare time

In their free time (and sometimes in disguise), baby elephants can be found at the library reading a book:

At the mall (winning 50 dollar gift certificates by taking 1st place in the Macy's Department Store Costume Contest)

Fussing over their cruel fate (let's face it, being a fat elephant is hard, hot work):

Playing with sticks (and moving too quickly for nature photographers to get crisp photos):

Trying to go down slides (it's hard with a backside that wide):

Hanging out with Dr. Kunz after a long hard night grabbing candy out of bowls:

Hanging out with their friends, the gnomes (this one's name is Avery, and he's ADORABLE):

Getting pictures taken with Gandalf:

At the park boldly feeding fearless nutria and ducks:

Getting their faces painted:


And overall having an awesome halloween:) All photos can be found at our October album.