What a weird year this has been, it's so hard to believe that so many storms can take place within one little family. So many trials, equally as many blessings, but as the year is coming to a close I can't help but hope for some calmer weather for the upcoming year.
Russ is still working 2 full time jobs but luckily that will be changing come January, this has been to say the least, challenging, but as I'll point out more than once throughout this post, with every trial comes a blessing. So with lots of work, comes lots of money. Is the money worth living without my husband? Definitely not, but I will admit, the financial flexibility has been nice.
Now speaking of money, we're lucky to have a little extra right now given that we've had a few expenses come up this month. The first being the expense of a court ordered name change. When we decided to change Zoey's name, we assumed the cost would be the same $20.00 we paid when we changed the spelling... not so much. Apparently you can only amend a birth certificate once, requiring any other changes to be court ordered, and the cost for that is $360.00. I left the courthouse crying. My advice for all parents; make the right decision the first time, this has turned out to be a costly and stressful mistake.
Second, our upstairs bathroom started leaking causing water to come down through the ceiling into our living room. Now just to clarify, this is not the same bathroom that this happened to 3 years ago (the master), it was the kid's bathroom this time, so again we had to file a claim with our insurance company to get it fixed. Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not excited to have a beautiful, updated new bathroom at the expense of the insurance company, but I am concerned about what might be growing within my walls due to the leakage, and am a little worried that my insurance company is starting to suspect fraud. Oh well, what can ya do?
Third, Russ' car died AGAIN! Another blown motor, and at this point it's almost becoming comical. I mean seriously, who blows 3 motors in less than 2 years? Well, we do. This time I was not willing to try to fix it so we threw in the towel and decided to sell it for parts and move on. I put it on KSL for $900 obo hoping to get at least $500 to put toward another car. Before I was even finished posting the ad I had calls and texts coming in like crazy! Turns out the year our civic was made it was built with a certain kind of frame that is good for racing so people like to rebuild and race them. It became a bidding war and in the end, we made $1300.00! Who knew a 14 year old broken car was such a hot commodity? Anyway, we found another really old piece of crap car for 1300$ that will hopefully last us another year or two. See, there's that trial blessing thing again.
My other recent source of stress has been my involvement in the home owners association. I joined the HOA board several months ago, I'm still not sure exactly why, partially I think it was because I had started to feel useless and needed something productive to do, but whatever the reason, I'm in it now and for the most part am enjoying it. So here's the stressful part, Our townhouses were not built to code and most have water damage due to leaking stucco, so 6 years ago the HOA sued the developer to get the money to fix our homes, the lawsuit is moving entirely too slow and the homes need to be fixed now which unfortunately costs money. Long story short, nobody wants to pay which has caused an uproar in the neighborhood which means stress for the HOA board. People are starting to come together now and things have gotten better and in the end I'm glad to have good neighbors even if the house itself sucks.
And, last but not least, on top of all this, I've had bronchitis for a month, Zoey has had an ear infection and Ryler threw up on my couch today (a good excuse to get the new one I've been wanting).
We're all on the mend now and looking forward to a peaceful Christmas. I hope everyone else is enjoying the season!
Russ is still working 2 full time jobs but luckily that will be changing come January, this has been to say the least, challenging, but as I'll point out more than once throughout this post, with every trial comes a blessing. So with lots of work, comes lots of money. Is the money worth living without my husband? Definitely not, but I will admit, the financial flexibility has been nice.
Now speaking of money, we're lucky to have a little extra right now given that we've had a few expenses come up this month. The first being the expense of a court ordered name change. When we decided to change Zoey's name, we assumed the cost would be the same $20.00 we paid when we changed the spelling... not so much. Apparently you can only amend a birth certificate once, requiring any other changes to be court ordered, and the cost for that is $360.00. I left the courthouse crying. My advice for all parents; make the right decision the first time, this has turned out to be a costly and stressful mistake.
Second, our upstairs bathroom started leaking causing water to come down through the ceiling into our living room. Now just to clarify, this is not the same bathroom that this happened to 3 years ago (the master), it was the kid's bathroom this time, so again we had to file a claim with our insurance company to get it fixed. Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not excited to have a beautiful, updated new bathroom at the expense of the insurance company, but I am concerned about what might be growing within my walls due to the leakage, and am a little worried that my insurance company is starting to suspect fraud. Oh well, what can ya do?
Third, Russ' car died AGAIN! Another blown motor, and at this point it's almost becoming comical. I mean seriously, who blows 3 motors in less than 2 years? Well, we do. This time I was not willing to try to fix it so we threw in the towel and decided to sell it for parts and move on. I put it on KSL for $900 obo hoping to get at least $500 to put toward another car. Before I was even finished posting the ad I had calls and texts coming in like crazy! Turns out the year our civic was made it was built with a certain kind of frame that is good for racing so people like to rebuild and race them. It became a bidding war and in the end, we made $1300.00! Who knew a 14 year old broken car was such a hot commodity? Anyway, we found another really old piece of crap car for 1300$ that will hopefully last us another year or two. See, there's that trial blessing thing again.
My other recent source of stress has been my involvement in the home owners association. I joined the HOA board several months ago, I'm still not sure exactly why, partially I think it was because I had started to feel useless and needed something productive to do, but whatever the reason, I'm in it now and for the most part am enjoying it. So here's the stressful part, Our townhouses were not built to code and most have water damage due to leaking stucco, so 6 years ago the HOA sued the developer to get the money to fix our homes, the lawsuit is moving entirely too slow and the homes need to be fixed now which unfortunately costs money. Long story short, nobody wants to pay which has caused an uproar in the neighborhood which means stress for the HOA board. People are starting to come together now and things have gotten better and in the end I'm glad to have good neighbors even if the house itself sucks.
And, last but not least, on top of all this, I've had bronchitis for a month, Zoey has had an ear infection and Ryler threw up on my couch today (a good excuse to get the new one I've been wanting).
We're all on the mend now and looking forward to a peaceful Christmas. I hope everyone else is enjoying the season!
I tell ya, when it rains it pours. Our 2010 year was a lot like your 2011 year. Hopefully 2012 will be a calm one for the both of us. :0)
ReplyDelete