Couch play

Em's new favorite pastime is playing on the couch. It is hilarious. She runs from end to end throwing off the pillows and faceplanting in the couch. She also leans back on the couch in between runs. Of course the time I was recording this, she decided to start picking her nose in the middle of the video. Ha!

Day of Thanks (and Domestic Failure)

Thanksgiving was (mostly) great. We ran our annual Thanksgiving Day race. I even did the 10K this year instead of the 5K, and it was great! We had a yummy breakfast at my parents' house after the race, and then had Thanksgiving dinner at Matt's family's house. I have been sick for the past week, and now I think Emmy is starting to get a little sick. It was so sad...she was so unhappy. :( Anyway,  other than a bit of sickness and my domestic failures, it was a great day.

So for Thanksgiving I was in charge of jello, rolls, and pie. Well, the pie was voluntary. I like fruit pies, and I knew there wasn't going to be any there, so I decided to make some so I could have some fruit pie. I was determined to make all of my assignments really delicious and beautiful because last time we had Thanksgiving at Matt's, I brought rolls and they didn't rise so they were these little tiny hard things that were gross. So I needed to redeem myself.

So I made the pies the night before. I thought they looked ok. But it turned out that the pear pie had way too much nutmeg and the cherry pie didn't have enough filling to crust ratio. I overcooked the rolls and they just didn't turn out as tasty as they normally are. And the jello was a complete disaster. My family makes this amazing 12 layer jello that is so pretty and yummy. But for some reason when I made it this time, it turned out runny and watery and so all the layers were all mushed up together. I almost cried. I even got up at 5 a.m. to make those rolls and spent 2 days making that jello. So much for redeeming myself.

Anyway, despite my domestic failures, everything else was delicious and it was a fun day and we have so much to be thankful for.

Fishies

I took Em to the aquarium yesterday. She loved it! She would run from tank to tank pointing and yelling, "ish, ish!" It was hilarious.

Emmy Funnies

Just some random pics and funny things Emmy has been doing lately.

She loves playing with her Halloween candy. She loves to take it out of the bucket and shake it and hide it under the couch. When she can't get it out, she comes over and says, "stuck!" and wants me to get it out from under the couch.

When she takes her shoes off, she says "shooz-ahh". She always does this in the car. When she tries to put her shoes on she says, "nah" for "on".

She loves to brush her teeth and hair, but she doesn't understand the difference between the toothbrush and the hairbrush. She just says "ush".

I just really love this outfit. :) She looks like such a big girl!

She loves to go in my room and get my stuffed animals, and throw them from the bed to the floor. She can say all their names too. (Rocky, Nala, and Sammy). She gives them all kisses and hugs first though.

She can do her farm animal puzzle all by herself, and knows what all the animals are. She can't say all of them yet, but she can point to them on the puzzle. She calls a lot of things "nooey"s. I have no idea what that means, but she says that for bird, bear, heater, Ariel, and probably a lot of other things too.

She LOVES her books. Especially the ones we get at the library. She will sit and look at them over and over and over. She also loves pizza. Every time we have it, she snarfs it down. And every time she hears a noise coming from the direction of the door, she runs to the door and yells "Daddy!" because she thinks it's Daddy coming home. Oh what a little funny girl!

Football

This is how I find my honey watching his Utes football games. He also paces. :)

Budgeting

I have had a few people ask how we do our budget, so I thought I'd share. I am not a tight/exact budgeter nazi, I don't like to balance the checkbook, and I don't like to use cash. So we wanted something that was a little more flexible, but still allowed us to keep track of our finances. It took us about a year or so to find something that worked for us, but we did and have been sticking to it ever since, and it has worked with any income--large or small.

For our monthly budget, we use our online banking system at Utah Power Credit Union. With the online system, we have the ability to create sub-accounts that you can transfer money easily between. So we created a sub-account for each category of spending that we do. Our categories are: Savings 1 (this is for our house or other big stuff we need to save for), Savings 2 (this is for fun stuff that costs a little more like vacations or bikes and stuff), Checking, Matt, Christy, Emily (we each get our own individual accounts that we can spend however we want), Food, Gas, Medical, Entertainment, Clothes, Car (for repairs & stuff), Gifts, Misc, & Mission (we wanted to start a mission savings). Our retirement and insurance and stuff is taken out before we get our checks, so we don’t count that in our monthly budget but we do have them take it out before we even see the check.

Since it’s all online, we both have access to it at anytime. We have figured out what our fixed expenses are that we absolutely have to pay every month (tithing, rent, utilities, etc.) and listed everything out on a Google Doc. At the start of each month, we calculate our income for the past month, subtract the fixed expenses and then divide the rest up into these sub-accounts forthe  non-fixed expenses. Since we know approximately what our monthly income is, we can determine how much goes into each account every month. (Of course this changes whenever we have an income change.) If we happen to have more income than our estimated amount, we get to put it into whatever account we want!

When we purchase something we just transfer the money from the corresponding sub-account into the checking account. We pay all our bills from the checking account at the beginning of each month. When the sub-account for a certain category runs out, we can’t spend anymore for that category. We also use our credit card for everything and pay it off every month. This way at the end of each year we get quite the nice cash rebate.

It’s nice because it’s real-time and you can see exactly where you stand at any time. Of course you have to be diligent about getting online and transferring the money every time you make a purchase (or every few days or so), but it has worked well for us. They even have a mobile app that Matt uses to do his stuff on his phone. It’s also nice because we each get our own “allowance” each month that goes into our individual sub-account and we can spend this money on whatever we want.  We can save for Christmas and birthdays all year in our Gifts account, we can save for medical expenses and car repairs, and we know we have some money each month for fun stuff in our Entertainment account.

Anyway, like I said, it took us awhile to come up with this solution to our budget, but we have been using this method for awhile now--both when we had a large income and when we had a very small income--and it has worked really well for us. And now...3.5 years after getting married, we've both gone to grad school, had a baby, took a couple vacations, paid off Matt's car (mine was already paid off), saved enough for a down payment on a house, and have ZERO debt. I'm pretty proud of that. :) 

One more thing, we always pay our tithing and fast offerings first. And we have always had at least a little to put in each account every month. And we have always had enough in each account to pay for everything we need and a lot of what we want. And I know that is a huge blessing. For example, when Emily was born, we had pretty much exactly the amount we needed to pay all the hospital bills in our medical fund. Another example, we always have enough to have a weekly fun night even if it's just getting a Redbox and a $5 Little Ceasars pizza. Sometimes it's been tight, but I haven't really felt deprived.

We could probably do even better, but for now this is what is working for us. So there you have it.

Trick or Treating

Trick or treating was fun! We only went to 4 houses (the grandparents and auntie's) but we had a lot of fun. Since Emmy doesn't eat candy, and we shouldn't eat candy, we just went to the relatives, but I really wanted to take her and she was so cute!

Here she is checking out her trick or treat bucket.

She was not at all interested in taking any more pics, but at least these are better than the last go-around.

She just wanted to wander around.

She was much more interested in the doggies than the candy.

But then at our last stop (Grandma Lively's), she kept taking handfuls of candy and putting them in her bucket. It was hilarious. And then she was shoving pizza as fast as she could into her mouth. Ha! Happy Halloween! P.S. I may or may not already be planning next year's costume. :)