Money, Love, and Change

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!As you may know from some previous posts, we have a $250 self-imposed budget for Christmas this year.  We had a budget left of $227, and I have definitely made a dent in it.  Here’s the breakdown:
$41 - the [...]

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This is not a political blog, so the purpose here is not to reveal who my preferred candidate is, and why the other candidate sucks, etc. I just wanted to give you this heads up, so that you may be more inclined to read on.
This weekend, we went to visit some friends, and took some [...]

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Everything seems to be in the crapper.  With election politics heating up (and not necessarily in a good way), an economic bailout that I am pretty sure no one has a real clue about, and the American dream becoming less achievable for many, things seem to be “not so great”.
Or is it?  I think that [...]

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I think that we may be lucky, but we started potty training about 2 weeks ago, and we’re doing pretty well.  The kid sometimes does the potty dance, but accidents have been very few and far between.  He does wear a  diaper to bed and a pull-up during naptime.  Other than that, it’s undies all [...]

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I have been a tutor with Tutor.com for a couple of years now - they have programs through local libraries so that students can obtain tutoring using their local library website as a portal. They also provide tutoring packages for individual users; you buy the minutes that you need, and they are good for [...]

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I am really happy - I just got myself some “free” babysitting!  I have a neighbor who is studying for a math exam she needs to pass for teaching, and I offered to tutor her.  She’s got the concepts down, but just needs some help with test-taking strategies and finding some ways to solve the [...]

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We’ve been working hard on the “please” and “thank you” concept with the kid.  He’s doing pretty well.
He’s also at the stage where he imitates everything we say.  For example, when we run out of something, like milk or dog food, he’ll say, “Milk all gone”.  I respond with the usual, “Yep, we’ll have to [...]

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Like most parents, I read a lot about how to be a good parent. I’ve come to realize that a lot of it is crap. Some of it is good, but a lot of it is not.
Four of my friends have recently given birth (to happy, healthy little ones - congratulations!). For [...]

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After traveling last weekend, everyone was ready to take it easy.  We wanted to get out and enjoy nature this weekend, and were thinking about taking a short trip (less than 2 hours) to a state park.  However, on Friday evening, we pulled out our atlas, and found a nature center that was only 15 [...]

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If you’ve been following some of my previous posts, you know that a recent source of stress in our lives has been finding a program for the kid for the next school year.  It seems like some good karma has come our way, and we found something that is a great fit.
My kid is only [...]

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