Something good.

My sister (aka ‘E’) has told me a few times recently, ‘you’ve come across something good’ and I would agree.  When we downsized homes from 3 bedrooms to 2, 2 bathrooms to 1 and 1400 sq feet to 1000 (or so I am told), we had to make a few changes.  The bathroom thing wasn’t a big deal, we really only used one anyway, but the bedroom thing was something to figure out, for sure.  We have four children; 5 1/2, almost 4, 2 and 1.  The eldest are in bunk beds, the 2 year old is in a crib and the 1 year old has a crib, but co-sleeps a lot and mainly uses his crib for naps.  So 3 1/2 months ago, when we moved, we put the three oldest in the 2nd bedroom (which is attached to the 1st bedroom) and then put #4’s crib in our room (which is attached to the living room and thereby the rest of the house).

*Ok I think I need to upload my sketch of our house plan (that I concocted) so this might be a little easier to understand.*

This situation has proven to work.  In the ‘kids bedroom’ there are NO toys, only beds and clothing.  We keep all toys in the covered/enclosed front porch and the kitchen.  There have been no problems with them keeping eachother away at night, waking the others up in the morning.  The three old have seemed to enjoy that they all share a room and I like that it is ‘everyones’ room and nobody can be shut out, yet if someone needs some alone time the room is there for just that.

So this something good I’ve come across is just this: a room for sleeping/quiet time and a room for playing.  Now it wouldn’t take a genius to see the benefits of this, but it takes some faith to act on it.  In our situation we really had no choice.  But we knew God was leading us back to Eureka and to this house and into this rooming situation, so there we went.  And honestly I wouldn’t change my current situation for each of them having their own rooms, I think individual rooms for little kids are over-rated.

Buh, Bye!

Make sure you watch the ENTIRE video, it is worth the wait!

It’s An Inside Day

It is not necessarily raining, but shhhhh don’t tell my kids. I woke up this morning and deemed it an “inside day”. The two babies have colds, the other two are on the verge, so I bullied Aidan into staying home from school and told everyone we were staying inside and in our jammies ALL DAY.

I have been scanning through The Children’s BUSY BOOK and The Preschooler’s BUSY BOOK, I found them at a 2nd hand store for 25cents each. The books have some really fun ideas, nothing you couldn’t find on the internet, but sometimes I just like to have something to flip through.

I decided this was a perfect day to make a ‘table fort’, you know take everything off the table, move the chairs away, throw some blankets over the table and VIOLA, we have a fort. The older boys have decided they are spending the night under the fort, they have already moved in, blankets, pillows, flashlights, snacks, they are READY! Funny thing is, it isn’t even noon and they are asking ‘how long until bedtime?’. Maybe I could use this to my advantage

Wordless Wednesday

Bath time at our house!

The Compact - January is behind us!

One month has come and gone and we are still Compacting strong. I have to say I am proud of me, proud of us (my husband and me) and proud of all of the support we have gotten. There are still lots (LOTS) of people in our daily life that do not *know* we are on The Compact and that is ok.

We haven’t had any slip ups! I only went to Target once and it was to help my mom pick out Téadora’s birthday gift. I bought some used clothing and a pair of shoes for myself and a used video for the kids. I bought some used Tupperware containers for Aidan to use instead of baggies in his reusable lunch bag. I have baked bread 4 times since the beginning of January and I have decluttered about 265 items from our house (mostly toys that my kids weren’t playing with (more on that in another post). We had to buy Nick a new pair of work of work boots and those were bought brand new, but that was an exception in our Compacting “rules”.

It has been freeing to not NEED to go to Target or the Mall. I have un-subscribed to many company emails; Gap, The Children’s Place, Gymboree, Pimperlime, Old Navy, Sears. Some of which I am not even sure how I got on their email list in the first place. I have spent more time with my family, with the Lord, planning adventures that do not cost money and organizing mine and my family’s life around things that do not involve excess and consumption.

X-Posted Mamas on the Compact

Adelaide Stuart Lende

Please join us in welcoming, Adelaide Stuart Lende, aka Addie. She is amazingly cute and super tiny, weighing about 2 1/2 pounds.

Some of you might be in shock. Most of the world did not know the Lende Family was expecting to add another girl to the family quite so soon.

Without further ado….

Were you fooled?!  I thought that would be a funny one.

We would appreciate you leaving us a comment telling what thought/s went through your head when you read the email/MySpace bulletin/beginning of the post.

 

Oh my, holy goodness.

*I started writing this about 2 weeks ago, only to finally finish it now. 

We are living in a small house. The house belonged to my husband’s maternal grandmother, she passed away a few years back. The house is amazing, quaint, 1920’s, random add-ons over the years, we actually have a hard time telling what is the “original” house and what has been added on. Our bathroom was added on, hmmmm, guess they didn’t have bathrooms in the 1920’s. Well we have gas and electricity here, in the last county we lived in we just had electricity. We bought an electric clothes dryer a while back, while still living in Crescent City. The house heater is gas, it is a wall heater that does not allow heat to reach the bathroom or the kids bedroom, so we have an electric heater in the kids bedroom. We have two refrigerators running, one very old (has an actual ice-box) small (maybe 8-10 cubic feet) and then our not huge (maybe 18ish cubic feet) one that is in our laundry room. Ok then we have lights, a microwave, a small heater in the bathroom we use when we take a shower (it is like an ice box in there), a stove, a hot water heater, and on and on. But mind you we live in a house that is roughly 1000 sq feet. Do you want to guess how much our gas/electric bill was this month? Come on guess!

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS! Are you totally joking me. That is insane.

Ok so we have uncovered some useful information. Our so-called lighting in the living room is a chandelier, it has 12 bulbs that have 40watts in each of them, so burning 480watts are burning when it is on. I got out my tape, that chandelier is not longer in use, HAHA! And we found out from my in-laws that when the house was completely vacant there was a gas/electric bill of around $70 each month. It has to be that old fridge. Cute-old-energy-sucking fridge you are UNPLUGGED! Take that!

We are being extra, extra mindful of what lights we have on, making sure we turn them off when we leave the room, unplugging items that are not in use as much as possible  and bundling up before putting the heater on.

Will our efforts be rewarded?  Will our bill take a dramatic dive?  One can only hope (and pray, HARD).

Eliminating Debt

This year we are really tackling our debt.  Honestly we don’t have that much, especially in comparison to the national average, which is about $9900 in credit card debt, plus car payments and mortgages.  We have no where near $9900 in credit card debt, but if you add in our car loan we are just $10,000.  We have made a debt pay-off plan with the help of Dave Ramsey, and we will be completely debt free in April of 2009.  The target date of April 2009 is very easily attained and we hope to be debt free by the end of the year, we are praying for Gods will in this.

We are doing a few things to help pay-off our debt:  using the cash/envelope system for most purchases, using the Dave Ramsey debt-snowball,  COMPACTING, budgeting our money before we spend it and using some of our tax return to help pay down the debt.

So far so good.  We are paying off a few little debts this month, and old dentist bill, a garbage company bill that I got tired of fighting, along with our closing cable bill from our last house (we just received it, WEIRD) .

As you noticed, I said nothing about a mortgage, well that is because we do not own our home.  We live in the home that my mother-in-law grew up in.  Our hopes and dreams are to add on and remodel.  I am not sure it is possible, but I dream of being able to pay cash for the remodel/add-on.  Right now any big changes to the house are on the back burner, it will definitely have to be in Gods timing.

Tackle it Tuesday

My DH is gone again. We are newly self-employed, so we really can’t say no to really good and good paying sub-contracting work. Even if it is 2 hours away. So prayers for me again this week please

As a surprise to Nick I am going to clear off all of my files of photos and organize other computer files that have just gotten out of control. (He has been bugging me for quite some time to take care of this.)

Anyone know if I can just use regular CD-R for my photos or do I need some fancy-smancy CD?

My fear and The Megas

About 6 years ago I had a huge, I mean huge fear. I feared one day I would loose my best-guy-friend to stardom. See at the time he was living in Southern California, going to school at Cal State, Long Beach, making movies, playing in bands and being beautiful. One night I told him (I actually think I was crying), that I was so afraid that one day he would be famous and he would forget about me. That we might pass on the streets and not even know each other. I couldn’t stand the thought of that and thankfully nor could he. See, our lives had gone different directions, he was working on becoming famous in LA and I had gotten married and was having a baby. Honestly our lives couldn’t have been more different.

There is a happy ending to this story! The Megas have released their first album and are on their way to becoming famous and Eric and I are still friends. We still live pretty different lives, but we get to talk (not as much as I would like) and we are still friends. He hasn’t forgotten about me, well not yet anyway. So here is my plug for The Megas. Check them out, support them, for all of you Humboldt folk, LOVE them so they have to come here and play.

The Megas MySpace

 Buy The Megas Album