Thursday, March 29, 2007

Tulip Time!



It's almost that time of year when the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival rolls around! I was going through my pictures looking for some stuff to digiscrap and I came across our Tulip Festival pictures from 2 years ago. Aren't the flowers just gorgeous? And we can actually walk to them from David's parent's house, which is extra nice! I've only ever seen the flowers that once, so I definitely think I'm going to have to drag the boy up to see them this year!

Sunday, March 25, 2007

yet another layout


Credits: Template - Jennifer Woodbury; Paper and Elements - Rhonna Farrer/Two Peas

David and I babysat our adorable niece Angelina yesterday for a few hours and she was soo good! Agreeable and happy and such a little ham! So I decided to take a couple of cute pics of her while she was in such a good mood! Then I scrapped one of the pics along with a small list of some of her favorite sayings. I can only imagine how picture and digiscrap happy I'll get when we have our own kids!

Oh, and yes, I do realize how completely and ridiculously pink my blog is getting! Hopefully I'll figure out something to do with it soon!

I'm ending with a couple more pics of Ang...just because her cheesy grin makes me smile! :)


Friday, March 23, 2007

My most recent digi scrapbook page...




This is only the second full page I've ever finished, lol. I've played around a lot trying to make digi pages but I am still very much a newbie! It's hard for me because I get all perfectionistic about it and very frustrated when I don't understand everything (which is quite often:). I actually made this one off of a template though which was pretty cool. Much easier than if I had to do it myself because all I had to do was copy and paste layers and decided what colors/papers I wanted in it.

Credits:
Template - Gina Miller Designs; Papers - Daniela Peuss/ScrapArtist

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Wiiiiiiiii Madness!

What is it about men and video games? Seriously! It almost seems like a requirement that they are obsessed with them. Almost all of the guys I know are into them at least a little bit...so for you wives that have husbands that aren't...count yourself very lucky! David is going to be in for a rude awakening when we have kids and they become old enough to know what is going on, as I don't want them having too much "screen time" and that means their dad is going to have to set a good example! David definitely knows how I feel about this already and he kinds groans and says "I knoooow" whenever I mention it, but I'm not sure he realizes just how strict I'm going to be about it.

Now for my video game confession. While I could be very happy my entire life without ever playing a single round of WOW or game of Halo...I kinda want a Nintendo Wii. David has wanted one for a while now and he has been working really hard lately, so I decided to play the "I'm such a super-nice wife card" and told him if he can find one (as they are still sold-out many places) he can get it as an early birthday present. At first he was like "well, we should make sure we spend our money carefully." Yeah, that attitude lasted all of 4 days, and by the next weekend he was calling store after store to find someone who had a Wii instock. He even got up early on Sunday morning to go wait for an hour at a store that he had called and who told him they would have them instock only to have the store open and him rush in along with a bunch of other people and find out the person on the phone was a big nincompoop and didn't know what they were talking about. He was disappointed and surprisingly, so was I. I had been looking forward to my afternoon of virtual bowling!

So, if anyone sees David, don't tell him that I actually really do want him to get a Wii, it'll just give him way too much teasing potential! ;)

Friday, March 16, 2007

How does anyone afford a house AND children?

This is something I have been stressing about so much lately! David and I really want to have a house of our own and also have kids in the not-too-distant future. But houses in the area we live in are minimum $400,000 and they're appreciating at like 10% a year, which is insane! Where is this supposed housing bubble...because it's definitely not where we live! We can't afford that even on both our salaries...much less just David's salary.

Which brings me to another point. Growing up I never thought I would want to be a stay at home mom...I mean, I wanted kids, I just did not want to be around them all day long! But as I've gotten older it's all I think about. I know it's an incredibly hard job (and that's definitely what it is...a JOB...granted, a very rewarding one), but I also know that I don't want to work all day, commute back home and then only have a couple of hours with my children before I send them off to bed each weeknight. I don't want to miss out on their childhoods like that. But living off of just David's salary (which in my opinion is quite decent for a 25 yo) in this area is just unfathomable! Seriously, how do people do it? Even if I did work, full-time childcare around here is at the very least $10,000 per year, per child...so if you have 2 kids in daycare that winds up being $20,000+ a year! Not too mention the extra gas to get to and from a job. My piddly little social worker salary would barely cover that after taxes are taken away, so it really seems like there wouldn't even be a point to me working unless I found something too good to refuse. So, it would be hard to have a house and just one or two kids, much less the three or four that I actually want!

Even if we move (which is almost a certainty since we do actually want to own a home someday) and have a lower mortgage than if we bought around here, it still seems like it would be practically impossible to be a SAHM and own a home on anything less than 75k per year. It seems like you should be able to live on less, but when I get bored I run budget numbers (yes, I know, I'm a freak) and I've found it's pretty much impossible, expecially when you still have college loans to pay off!

Gee, can you tell I'm a worrier? I pray about this all the time and yet I still can't stop focusing on it!

So, I beg you, somebody please tell me to stop worrying and give me some magical tips on how to have a house and kids on a budget!

Thursday, March 1, 2007

anticipating our first cruise!




A few weeks ago David and I booked our first big vacation together...a cruise to Alaska in mid-May! We are very excited...partially because we really need a break from the everyday stuff to just relax and recharge, but also because we're going to be able to explore an amazing part of our country that we've never seen before!

We're going on the Holland America Noordam, which is their newest and supposedly nicest ship. We're stopping in Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria...and we leave from Seattle which is extra nice as we don't have to fly anywhere! For those that don't know me well, I am terrified of flying...I've done it quite a few times and I used to love it but, after a couple of bad experiences, it seriously scares me to death! It's something I'm working on though as I don't want David to miss out on visiting places just because I won't fly there. But for now it's kinda nice that for our first big vacation together we can just not deal with that stress!

Anyway, that's our most exciting(to us) news for now! I am going to try and update more often as it's good to see one's thoughts written down and it's something I've been slacking on lately. :)