Dear Becca & Grant, Becca & I went grocery shopping Monday evening because Mom wasn't feeling very well. We had a grand old time. I got Becca a child's cocoa from the Starbucks there inside of the Kroger store. Grant was more than ready for us to get home because he had ran out of formula earlier in the day and the main reason we went to the store was to pick him up a can. I got home and fixed him a bottle and when he saw it he perked up like a rabbit just realizing there's dogs on his scent. He gobbled down eight onces in no time flat.
Yesterday Becca came running into the living room crying. She had stuck some toilet paper up her nose. I got a pair of tweezers from my computer maintenance kit but she didn't like the look of them. I promised her I wouldn't hurt her and she complied with my request to stand still and look into the light. I gently put the tweezers up her right nostril and grabbed hold of the offending tissue and pulled ever so gently. I expected it to be just a small bit but it just kept on coming. I know I got three inches of snotty gross toilet tissue from her nose. I threw the paper away and told her never to put anything up her nose. She said that she had paper up the other nostril as well. That paper was a little farther up there but I managed to get hold of it without hurting her. It was only about two inches. How can kids get that much toilet paper shoved up their nose?
Friday I went to pick up Becca & Grant at Mamaw & Papaw's. I decided that I was going to get Auntie Lynn to give me a haircut while I was down there. I went down to Lynn's and told her to get rid of it all. Shave me bald-headed. I shaved my head once before but I looked much like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. I think it looks much better this time because I have a goatee that I have let grow since Christmas and it's starting to get some nice length to it. The long goatee gives my face a longer look. I no longer look like a basketball with a face with my head shaved. I think this is a good look for me. I'll have to shave it every day because I get stubble very quickly. That's why I am able to grow a beard so quickly. It gives me kind of a dangerous look although I don't know how intimidating a man with a white beard can be. I probably look more like Santa Claus with an updated beard.
After my haircut Becca and I went back up the hill to Mamaw & Papaw's. Jon and Jacob rode up the hill with us; it was way too muddy to walk. We had a real nice supper while we were up there. We had barbecued ribs, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, slaw with apples and rolls. After supper we sat down to watch the memorial service on television for Bill Keightley, the equipment manager for the Kentucky Wildcat basketball team since 1962 and one of the most beloved members in the program's history. He was the last link to the Adolph Rupp era. He was also Becca and Grant's first cousin four times removed. Which means that he was the first cousin of Bambi Dee who was Becca & Grant's great grandfather. I think that would have made him their first cousin four times removed. When you get that far out on the family tree determining kinship is kinda difficult off the top of your head and I don't care enough to sit down and think about it.
Grant has the tiniest little tooth bud coming through. I check every now and then and I was so excited to see that micro tooth trying to push it's way out of his gums. He's started to sit up for brief periods of time as well. He can't get into sitting position by himself but he soon will be able to do that. He's a huge boy. Ealier today, while she was at work Mom ordered a larger car seat off of Amazon.com for him because he's just too long for the one he has now which is the same one we used for Becca. We used it with Becca for a lot longer than we are going to use it for Grant-Man.
I've been promising Becca that we would stay up all night Friday night. She was so excited about it. She made it until midnight and then she gave up the fight. last time I told her she could stay up all night she only made it until 10:30. She's asleep right now on the sofa covered up in her pink microfiber animal print blanket sound asleep. She's snoring to who laid the rail. Who actually did lay the rail?
Mom got about 129 hours on her check from Cardinal Hill this past pay period. She worked way too much but she brought home almost $1,000. That really helps out a whole lot. That's one of the main reasons we coul dbuy that car seat without giving it a second thought; that and the fact that we have a tight rein on our budget and know more or less where our cash will be going over the next month or so.
Mom has decided she wants to get her Kentucky Medication Aide certification. She was thinking that it would be a twelve week course in the mornings so the kids would have had to be put in daycare for a few months. The course might cost as much as $1,000 so it was going to kill us trying to budget while paying for a thousand dollar school bill and having the kids in daycare for three months at probably $700 a month. I looked at the budget and started cutting to the bone. I slashed our grocery budget and cut out our dining out category, our new car fund, all of our sinking funds, everything that was not an absolute must was gone except a few dollars per week to our Christmas fund and five dollars per week for each of us to have some blow money. I was able to trim off nearly fifteen hundred dollars a month. I was surprised that I was able to trim that much off the budget. of course walking that fine line like that would have meant that Mom would have eventually killed dear old Dad. She already feels I'm too strict in my budgeting and maybe I am. I must remember that we are a team and I must listen to and address her concernsEarlier about where our money goes not only because it's the right thing to do but because she brings home a very large percentage of the money that's brought into the house. I told her that if she really has to order takeout while she's at work that she could go ahead and do it and we would take it out of our "Not an Emergency Fund", which is a category of my own invention. Everything that surprises us during the month that I didn't plan for will come out of the "Not an Emergency Fund" budget such as printer ink, printer paper, replacing small appliances, irregular bills I forgot about, budget shortfalls in other major categories and items such as that.
Anyway, back to the Kentucky Medication Aide story. I did a bit of research into the course. It's an 80 hour course with twenty hour of clinicals offered on Monday and Wednesday evenings from five to ten. So that works out to only about a month or so of schooling and it's in the evenings so we won't need a babysitter. The cost is $115 per course hour but I don't know exactly what they consider a course hour. I'm thinking her class will cost us between $400 to $1,200 plus books and supplies. We can do that with no problem. It feels weird to be able to say that I am not worried about laying down $1,000 but before we just spent our money until it was gone but now we are directing our money where to go and what to do so it seems like there's just more of it. I really love this budgeting stuff. I can't wait until we really start seeing account balances growing. Already we have quite a bit more in the bank than we normally would have. Mom took one look at the bare bones budget as I am calling it told me that we would figure something else out. Luckily we might not have to.
Mom wants to just do the KMA thing because as with the CNA thing she talked about it for years and one day got a wild hair and signed up and took the class. She says she doesn't want to spend forever planning on doing it when it would be much simpler just to do it. KMAs make about nine thousand more dollars per year than CNAs do. When the kids go to school full time Mom will be going into nursing school to become an RN and she will be a fabulous RN.
Well, I promised myself I wouldn't go on and on about the budget but I did anyway. Tomorrow Mom and I are going grocery shopping and maybe out to eat. I think Mamaw will be watching the bambinos while we are gone. We're looking forward to it. I'm gonna go tinkle, get me a little bite to eat and a bottle of water and then I'm going to go to bed. Daddy loves Rebecca & Grant!
