As Promised: Raleigh sleep eating

Close ups

We have a goal

Ok, for the past two years, I think, I’ve been talking about selling our house and buying a different one. We always would say something like, “Yah, next summer we are going to sell the house.” And we’d repeat that phrase each winter for three years.

Well, now we have a solid goal to work towards. Purchasing a car set us back a bit, but we’ve been making double the minimum payments on our car since we purchased it, and if we continue doing that, we’ll have it paid off by June 2010.

Even paying extra on the car, we are able to put some money into savings every month as well. And Josh is now a part of a band that has a couple of gigs a month, so we have income from those gigs as well.

Our plan is to pay off the car earlier than June 2010 by putting Josh’s gig money towards the car debt, while still putting money in savings. After we pay off the car, all of that extra money will go into savings to build up the down payment for our next house.

Our goal is to purchase a bigger and better house with the following qualities:

2 stall attached garage

Fenced in yard

At least 4 bedrooms

At least 2 bathrooms

Kitchen pantry

Main floor laundry

Large yard that has room for a vegetable garden

However, we want our monthly mortgage payment to remain what it is right now. This means that we’ll have to have a significant down payment saved up before we would be ready to buy a house.

I think that we can have a good portion of that down payment saved up by Fall of 2010, with the rest of the down payment coming from the sale of our existing house.

I hope that we’re not shooting too high here with our goal, but I’m excited that we actually have a goal in mind. We are no longer blinding saying that we’re going to try to sell the house every year and then never do it.

Once a week, I review the houses for sale in our area to keep me motivated to save.

Ok, enough of boring financial talk. My next post with have some pictures of the kiddies and hopefully a very funning video of Raleigh falling asleep while eating.

Siblings for life

I love that Raleigh asks to sit with Leah.  He is such a good big brother.  Even though sometimes he can be a monster, he is really good with Leah. Every once and a while, he will kneel next to Leah and say “Come on Leah!”

Other things that I’ve heard out of Raleigh’s mouth are:

“Clap your hands Leah!”

“Dance Leah!”

“Wake up Leah!”

“I will hold Leah.”

“Oh, she’s so cuuuuute.”

“Come play Leah!”

Those are just some of the adorable things that Raleigh says now. Yesterday when I sneezed, Raleigh said “Bless you, Bless you Mommy!”.

A proficient little stinker

The terrible two’s have struck us. In the past week, we’ve seen the following from Raleigh:

All out tantrums…on the floor flailing hands and legs all about

Complete refusal to take naps

Excessive and dangerous climbing attempts

He even managed to push a big TV down from his entertainment center in his room.

The TV incident nearly gave me a heart attack.  Raleigh was wearing red that day, and when I went into his room to investigate the noise, I saw the TV with a flash of something red under it. Raleigh was nowhere in sight and he was making no sound at all. He didn’t even say “uh-oh” when the TV fell. So, immediately, my brain imagined Raleigh under the TV crushed, knocked out, bloody. I’ve never felt so horrible in my whole life.

Raleigh, it turns out, was just as shocked as I was (hence the silence) and he was in the TV compartment of the entertainment center, in the place of the TV, which was why I didn’t see him right away.

Now, his TV has been removed. We also had to put is mattress on the floor, he started to climb on top of his toddler bed/crib rails. So, the crib is up in our room and we’re going to go Twin mattress shopping later next week when, hopefully, the flooding has subsided. Leah will get Raleigh’s crib mattress, and Raleigh will get a fabulous twin mattress on the floor until his climbing stage subsides a bit.

And we’ve been keeping our eyes on him a bit more lately.

Above: Raleigh attempting to reach for his big black train that we took away from him because he was throwing it.

Below: Raleigh attempting to reach for his awesome big crayons that stain everything and his paint. These are put high up because they need to be supervised activities. Notice Raleigh’s crib mattress on the floor. Before we did this, he was standing on the railing of his crib leaning up against the wall attempting to reach these things.

  

Above: Raleigh playing on the awesome track that I designed and put together for him. Seriously, there are endless possibilities when try to make train tracks on this train table.

Below: Leah found her thumb!

Flood update

Luckily, our house is on the higher level ground in Fargo, so we are not expected to have to evacuate, but others are.

A small portion of Fargo (near Lindenwood park) needed to evacuate at 3 am this morning.

A large portion of Moorhead has been directed to evacuate. You can go here (http://www.areavoices.com/springflood/) to read about the announcements that I’m getting via the web.

Good luck to everyone out there who is struggling with building dikes, or creating sandbags, or who have had to evacuate.

I have a few coworkers who are in risky flood zones and I am constantly thinking about them. I just want this flood to be over so that we can start to rebuild the community again.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Harry!

 

For those of you who know me personally, you may have heard me mention a very long bicycle trip that I went on when I was 16. Well, my Grandpa Harry was the reason that I was able to have such an amazing experience.  He purchased a touring bike for me, he paid for the hotel stays and the food, and it was his fabulous suggestion to take the trip in the first place.

It was close to a 1500 mile bike trip and it took us 23 cycling days to complete.

Above: Grandpa demonstrating the strong headwind that we were biking into.

Below: Grandpa on his bike with all of his panniers on.

Above: You can’t tell that it is me, but I am standing on a the bridge over the Red River in Grand Forks. This was the summer after the 1997 flood there.

Below: Not sure what Grandpa has in his hand but he sure looks excited.

Above: Grandpa posing with the bicycle that he bought me. ( I still have it and I still love it)

Thanks Grandpa for such a great experience! And Happy 80th birthday!

Cutie Patootie

More smiles all the time. I love it.

She’s also getting better at belly time.

What do YOU think?

Do you think she'll be a TomBoy?

Or a Girly Girl?


I just haven't had any indicators ;)

P.S. The bonnet in the last pic was handmade by Grandma Deb. She looks absolutely adorable in it when she smiles. I do need to learn how to tie a pretty bow though.

Are you kidding me?

Yesterday it was raining...this morning we woke up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground. Now, this afternoon, about 1 foot of snow has accumulated on my deck, cars, and sidewalks. Ick.

We were supposed to be traveling to my parents today, but waking up to a travel advisory quickly squashed our hopes today. We're hoping to leave bright and early tomorrow morning now.

I took these pictures at 7 am, this morning. We have a lot more snow now.