Speaking of kisses, Em got kissed by a bug about a week ago. And by "kissed" I mean "bitten to the point of infection." When I first saw the bite last Sunday I assumed that it would go away, but by Wednesday, it was still there and there was a knottiness underneath the skin surrounding it. I took her to the doctor, fully expecting to be told that it would go away with time and that I was being too cautious. You can imagine my surprise when the doctor prescribed antibiotics, told me to come back immediately if it changed for the worse, and said that if left to itself, it would have likely led to a hospital stay. (!!!) All that said, the knottiness is now disappearing, even despite the (ahem) not-so-helpful side effects of the antibiotics. If you can't guess what those are and why they would interfere with healing, let me give you a hint -- the bite is right on Emma's bottom. (And at the risk of TMI, Em is a pro at putting her pee pee in the potty, but we haven't been able to get her to do more than that in it. She sits there, passes gas, and cheers, "I go poo poo, Mommy!" I can't convince her that she hasn't done just that, which means that we're at a bit of an impasse with the potty training. Oh, well. She'll figure it out eventually, and what a surprise it will be to her when she does! Ha!)
I finished setting up our new budget last week and got all of the forms together for the next few months. We're going to see what kind of difference this makes on our spending in the long run, but I can already see a difference after just five days. For one thing, I've lost five pounds in that amount of time. I didn't realize that we were spending all of our money on ice cream and Cokes, but the scale doesn't lie, y'all! I'm really loving how this new system takes the guesswork out of finances, showing us exactly how much we have left for the month in each sub-group instead of leaving us to just look at a lump sum and estimate how much of what's left should be saved, applied to any remaining bills, used for food, etc. I'm eager to see how it works when we're using the system for an entire month, rather than just a half-month like this month (since we didn't get the information or put it all together until the fifteenth). I'm anticipating better spending choices, and more freedom to enjoy what we actually can afford, rather than guilt over eating a meal out, not knowing whether or not that money was needed elsewhere. I could go on and on about this, but I'll refrain. I'll simply say that I highly recommend Crown's resources (which can be found at www.crown.org), which make the daunting task of budgeting and creating a spending plan super, super easy.
We're almost completely done with our Christmas shopping. I think we only have three or four gifts left to buy, and Ana has already selected a couple of those from a magazine I showed her. (If you're one of the recipients of an Ana-selected gift, my apologies. Not that she chose poorly, but she was so adamant about her selection that she wouldn't look at anything else after she saw the picture.) I was particularly excited when I found the perfect book for someone on my list. The only problem, however, was that the book is out of print, and my list of online booksellers were only selling new copies at ridiculous prices. Like over $100 a copy! Even the author's personal website listed that they were out of stock. After spending an afternoon searching online for a reasonably-priced copy, I finally happened upon a bookseller who had a new copy for BELOW the original, in-print list price. I felt like I had won the lottery without even buying a ticket, y'all! Of course, it's going to take about a month to get here because it's likely being shipped from Timbuktu, but that's the good thing about doing your Christmas shopping in September. You have all the time in the world! (Or at least three months.) Woo-hoo!
We've been doing some yard work lately, using these previous few weeks of non-extreme weather to get some problem areas cleared out. Our home's previous owner put carpet (yes, carpet) in the flower beds to prevent weeds from sprouting up. Wes dug it all up this past weekend, and it amounted to ten garbage bags full of stuff. In just a flower bed! The backyard is problematic as well, with the added bonus of metal shingles lodged in the ground (???), so we're going to tackle that this Friday. My parents have volunteered to come up with their truck so that we don't have a thousand bags of garbage to leave out by the curb next week. I don't know that we're going to plant anything pretty out there until the freezing weather is over for the year, but it's nice to have it cleared out nonetheless.
We took the girls to their first football game this past Friday. A few of the youth from our church march in the Marlow High School band, so we went to the game to see them. Ana loved watching the game, the drill team, the cheerleaders, and the band. Emma loved watching all of the flying insects that came out when the stadium lights came on. To each her own, I guess. It doesn't seem like it's been that long since I was going to my own high school football games, but my last game was thirteen years ago. Hard to believe!
Well, I'm not sure I said much worth saying in all of that. But there's the update on life around here. I'm doing laundry today and hope to get in a little scrapbooking later. Snapfish ran all kinds of deal before we got on our new budget -- free prints on my account, free shipping, etc -- so I have a stack of pictures to organize. I think I've put the album together through June 2009. I don't think I'll ever be fully caught up, but this is close!
Hope your week is off to a great start!
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