No, No...Not physically but virtually, yes...we've moved this blog to Wordpress.
It means you'll have to resubscribe if you are currently getting e-mail (or RSS feed) updates of our new blog posts. You'll see a link for that on the new site...
http://alittlebitnuts.wordpress.com/
All the old stuff is there still so bookmark the new link.
Today marks the two-week final stretch! We have 5 chapters left and 14 days in which to submit them! It's really crazy but I keep reminding myself that by the time I turn 32 (on the 22nd) I will be done with this craziness and life can return to normal (ha!). Oh, if you get a chance, pick up the Sept issue of Family Circle. We are cited in the "45 Ways to Save Money" feature! WooHoo...my name in print in a national publication. Pretty cool :)
I am going to take a break next weekend to catch a movie, Julie & Julia! I love to cook and I love inspirational stories about everyday life...and I need a little getaway. Hopefully my friend Sara will join me (I'm envious of her baking!).
Danny's been pulling double duty on the weekends being both Mom and Dad while I'm sequestered in the bedroom writing.
Actually today we've accomplished a lot and I've managed to nearly complete a chapter! We got coffee from Dunkin', picked up our produce from Bountiful Baskets (and had so much we're sharing some with Sara's family), did laundry (hung three loads out to dry), made laundry detergent (Danny did most of this), fed everyone rearranged and cleaned Evan's room and got Caitlin down for a nap. Later they'll head out for some errands and I'll start getting dinner on the table.
We have some pictures and updates to post from the past couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
There is a blog I love. It goes beyond the typical rhetoric about personal finance and talks about things that really matter,topics about parenting, cooking, living and dreaming…and all from a guy who’s been down and out and come back on his own!
It’s The Simple Dollar (www.thesimpledollar.com) written by Trent. I look forward to his writing every day and I’ve learned a ton from reading his posts, advice and book reviews.
Speaking of book reviews…if you ever feel like you ought to be doing something other than what you are. Even if it’s as simple as running errands and you feel you ought to be doing laundry or playing with your kids…you need to read Getting Things Done by David Allen. See if your library has it. I bought a copy because the waiting list at the library was long!
Fabulous book that has made a huge impact for me in just a few short weeks!
For the fourth we drove up to Prescott (about 50 miles west of Sedona I believe).
We are still amazed at the variety of climates here in Arizona. We started in 102 degrees, humid, sunny and hot! Along the way we encountered some storms and the temp dropped dramatically to 62 degrees! In just 20 more miles we were back into sunshine and 86!
Prescott is in the mountains and has the feel of a mid-western town with all the trees and architecture. We had a picnic at the Prescott Frontier Days and walked around downtown.
We left in the late afternoon to head back home for fireworks in Chandler at Tumbleweed Park near our house. It was a fun day but we were exhausted!
We were a little bummed when we realized the desert is too hot and dry to allow regular folk to shoot off fireworks. It never occurred to us until that afternoon that we hadn’t seen any fireworks for sale or heard anyone shooting them off. Bummer!
For Father’s Day we took a day trip through Globe to Roosevelt Lake and Dam.
I personally did not see anything remotely interesting in Globe but maybe I wasn’t looking for the right thing?
Roosevelt Lake however was beautiful! We climbed up to see the ruins at Tonto National Monument but the bees were so bad we couldn’t get too close. It was quite a hike and pretty hot out but Evan was a trooper. The kids have their mini camelbacks and love them! We had a picnic by the water and drove around a bit more before heading home.
The drive back was very rustic! A single lane, winding gravel road on the edge of a mountain for about 30 miles! It took 2 hours but was beautiful. Oh, and we discovered Caitlin gets carsick :( poor thing got sick twice!
Here are the photos...enjoy (you can view all the pots in the slide show at once by clicking on the images).
Since the kids are older now and we have so many great places to go in such close proximity, we've set some vacation goals for ourselves!
So far, we're planning to go to San Diego for a weekend and make several smaller day trips. Danny and I are also planning to take a weekend trip just the two of us for my birthday. The last time we went anywhere alone was January of '05 (and I would argue that Evan was technically with us then, too!).
The San Diego trip will be for Evan's birthday (a trip to Lego Land and the Aquarium) and for our weekend trip we will either be heading to Sedona or taking a kayak trip on Canyon Lake.
Even though the places are close, the cost is high! Lego Land tickets are more than DisneyLand, and for our weekend alone we have the added expense of having someone take care of the kiddos!
So - our challenge? To pay for the trips (or at least most of them) wtih funds from a garage sale we are planning in July. We've been clearing out the clutter like crazy and it feels so good to get rid of all the stuff we aren't using any more. We have many boxes we've never even opened after our move.
We'll let you know how it goes!
Since all of our family is out of state, (sorry – all but ONE of our family is out of state :) and we live in a black hole when it comes to mail service…Caitlin’s gifts will be trickling in all week.
Tonight she opened gifts from two Great-Grandmas…
Gifts from Aunt Connie, Great Grandma Choo Choo and Great Grandma Casteel – THANK YOU!
On Sunday, Caitlin's actual birthday, we had a small party for her and invited Julie (my saving grace and the kids new best friend!) and her husband Denny.
Caitlin (and Evan) had a blast playing with balloons, eating cake and opening gifts!
Here are some photos of the afternoon. We'll put a whole bunch more up on the slide show as well!
What a nice Daddy :) 
So, the final cake!
Tinkerbell spent some time in the sun! We really should talk to her about sunblock…
Caitie's first dollhouse! She LOVES IT! 
Julie and her husband, Denny We had our first family tea party, too…
We’ve had so many today I think we may be a little bit British by now.
…and all the rest of the photos!
We had a great weekend!
Last night was the first part of Caitlin's birthday celebration...
We got a suite at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak and spent all day today at the water park there! We all had a blast...got a little sunburned despite the buckets of sunblock I tortured the kids with (actually Caitie is the ONLY one who didn't get burned)!
It's 745 and everyone is in bed. Here are some pictures of last night and this afternoon
A view of the "casitas" we stayed in. They are great little two story "houses" with kitchens and two bathrooms! Very cool :)
Main pool(above)
Playing a little miniature golf before the "dive in movie" started - you can see the lazy river to the right - it was HUGE, we spent a lot of the afternoon there! After golf, we went back over to the main pool where they had a projection screen set up for Madagascar II. It was such a perfect night! We stayed out there until 9pm...late for the kids, especially when they had such a busy day Friday!
Dinner Friday night. We ordered pizza from Spinato's, a local place that has gluten free crust on the menu! Yay for Evan
Kitchen of the casita...
Friday was a busy day! The kids both woke up at 5AM!! We had gymnastics in the morning where they ran themselves ragged. We got back home just in time to meet Julie and she took them to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, where they played again for quite a while.
When they got home it was just about time to leave for the water park!
Poor kids...it may be a long weekend.
For those of you who didn't know, we've been dealing with rental craziness at our house in KC. In February we found out our roof was leaking and we had hail damage (which isn't really a bad thing - we got a new roof!). But then, in March we found out there was mold in the basement and of course a leak to go along with it. So, it took a little over two months but we finally got all of that under control (a new rook, the leak repaired, mold removed and basement refinished) and listed the house for rent again.
Last weekend we found renters!! Yay! It's so nice to not have to make that mortgage payment this month.
Now we can start thinking about what we want to do here in Phoenix...rent again next year or buy a house??
Woo hoo! We made it!
I think Danny and I are actually moving backward in time.
I got a Blackberry in January, something I had always felt was not for me (I'm not that techie)...of course since our plan was the unlimited data plan I started texting Danny and Chrissy and everyone else although I still refuse to use the text shorthand/lingo so I'm slow as molasses when I text!
Now for BeCentsAble we are trying to use Twitter and Danny came home from work the other day and told me he had signed-up on Facebook...guess where he's been the past three nights?? And guess who else is on Facebook? Like, the whole world!
I always thought there was a generation gap keeping me from the social networks, chat rooms and instant messaging...maybe I'm really just "uncool"??
Our little Caitie will be TWO this weekend! It's hard to believe :(
She's so funny and outspoken. She talks really well now and has a great imagination. She loves to dance and climb and act goofy. When she walks around you can see she's just in her own little world. So opposite Evan. He's VERY aware of what's going on around him and listens to everyone's conversations...Caitlin doesn't seem to realize we're in the room most of the time and sometimes she downright ignores us!
We've been planning her party and wanted to share what we're doing. Caitlin loves Tinkerbell so as I mentioned earlier we are having a Tinkerbell party. I am making a Tinkerbell cake and we have Tinkerbell decorations and she's even getting Tinkerbell the movie!
On Friday we are going to stay at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak...they have a huge waterpark with "dive-in" movies - a specialty around here. We'll get to watch a kids movie in the pool. We're staying in a "casita", it's like a little cabin/hotel room with a sun deck and two rooms so the kids can sleep while Danny and I hang out!
She's getting lots of fun toys for her birthday...a talking Tea Party set and a dollhouse. She loves to sit with the Little People toys and feed them all lunch and dinner and her stuffed animals all get drinks of water and she feeds them the play food from their kitchen do I think (hope) the tea set will be a hit!
We'll be sure to take lots of pictures from this weekend and put the slideshow of updated photos back up!
Thank goodness Danny's a good sport and the kids are still young...it gives me the freedom to experiment!
We are developing our CentsAbly Green workshop for BeCentsAble and doing a lot of hands on research.
We started by trying out several products from Shaklee and found their Basic H and Scour Off to be excellent and low cost in addition to being all natural. It only costs $.03 to make a bottle of cleaner from the concentrate Basic H vs $.30 per bottle we were paying for vinegar and water solution! Plus, it works VERY WELL and smells good :)
Next we made our own laundry detergent! I know - it sounds crazy but read on!
We both read The Simple Dollar (the author, Trent, is from the midwest and recently published a book - he's very resourceful!) and last week he posted a tutorial on making your own liquid laundry detergent for $.01-$.02 per use! That's compared to the lowest price we could find of $.17 per use with a low end detergent.
We make a 5-gallon bucket in about 10 mins and have tested it on a variety of stains (blood, chocolate, mud, grass stain, berry stain - seriously, these kids are messy!) and it works just as well as the other stuff at a phenomenal price and it's healthier for you and the environment. Guess What? it can be used on HE machines too. HE washing detergents are made to work with less water and formulated to suds less. The homemade detergent doesn't suds at all so it's no problem.
Now, we diverge from family experiments to my own personal experiments. Danny has't done this one yet.
I have been using baking soda and apple cider vinegar to wash and condition my hair. Way too out there for you? I understand. But, if you're game, try it out one day when you don't have anything planned - I LOVE IT! It's been 5 days now and my hair is fine, it doesn't smell like vinegar, it's not greasy or dry or frizzy or ... it's just fine, for pennies and I don't have to worry about build-up.
Here's the process:
1 TBSP of Baking Soda to 1 C warm water, pour over your hair making sure it gets down to the scalp, rinse well
1 TBSP of ACV to 1 C wamr water, pour over your hair, comb with fingers and let sit for 30-60 seconds, rinse.
The last major change we've made is to our choice of DW detergent. We have a truy horrible dishwasher and the water stains, detergent residue were really bad! We bought an eco-friendly dtergent from CostCo (their Kirlkand brand) for HALF the price of the same size box of Cascade and were blown away by how well it works! It's been about a month now and the dishes are actually cleaner, with no residue and no water spots! It's really kind of unbelievable. It was $5.67 for a 128 oz box vs nearly $10 for the Cascade.
And now the BIG LEAP, for the girls...guys, you've been warned - just stop reading right here
I've personally been using these for a couple of months and have ordered this and...NOTE: I was a HUGE skeptic but we got them for free to try out for the workshop so I did...I'm a complete convert. There were 5 others from the BeCentsAble team who tried them and we ALL (yes 100% agreement) love them and have sworn off the traditional method.
We're terrible, we feel awful, guilty, shamed...
What can we say? Sorry :( But, we're back now!
We are busy planning Miss Caitie's 2nd birthday. Caitlin loves Tinkerbell so we are having a Tinkerbell of a party. I think we're going to stay at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak next weekend. They havecute little "Casitas" (kind of like small townhomes), a great waterpark and "dive-in" movies. You can watch family movies outside at the pool. Sounds like a blast!
For Evan's birthday we are planning a trip to Disneyland (just 6 short hours away). We are really excited. Our summer garage sale will be a "Disneyland Fundraiser".
Caitlin is growing so fast! She's speaking quite clearly (and forcefully) and using the potty; really it's a good new reason to read a magazine (her favorite new reading source) and get lots of praise.
She and Evan started gymnastics last week and LOVED it. If you didn't know, Caitlin is the most flexible, daring and STRONG little girl! She did so well the coach was even impressed. Evan is
strong too, he can hold a chin-up for 5 seconds (hey! that's longer than I can hold one).
Again - we feel awful, but life is back on track. A girl named Julie comes over 3 days a week to hang out with the kids, feed them lunch, etc while I continue moonlighting as an author.
It was a beautiful Christmas for us despite all the raining and complaining around here! It was in the 50's all week and rained quite a lot but when you compare typical winter weather here with what we are accustomed to, it was beautiful!
Grandma got here on Christmas Day around 1pm. Danny and Evan met her at the airport. We had Christmas dinner (something simple) and relaxed!
The kids were very excited to get to spend some time with Grandma "Choo-Choo"...
On Friday morning they woke up around 6am (as usual) and Grandma was awake and I GOT TO GO BACK TO BED!!!! Hallalujah!
While she was here we went to Tortilla Flats for lunch and the Botanical Gardens (although it was a bit chilly) and the RLDS Temple in Mesa to show her the amazing lights! We also went to Casa Grande to visit some of Grandpa Glass's family, drove to the top of South Mountain for a view of the City, played Wii (grandma even beat Danny at one game) and Chutes and Ladders, and ordered in Mexican one night! Lots of fun in 5 very short days...
We had a great time...of course when she left the weather cleared up and it was nearly Summertime (72 and sunny!).
Here is a slideshow of the week's photos!
