Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

I still feel like I am recovering from the stomach virus I had last week. I don't feel sick anymore, just exhausted and bruised and not quite myself yet. And DD got sick again. I think I may have to take her to a gastroenterologist this summer.

The school counselor called today and left a message on my voice mail. Of course I didn't get it until it was too late to call back (I tried), but I have a feeling it is about DD's absences and that she may have lost her semester. To be honest, right now I could not care less. I can't send her to school vomiting or with the other end of that equation, it's against school rules. And I also can't send her to school with a fever over 100.

If she loses her semester she won't graduate with her class, but oh, well. She would have been graduating at 17 anyway. We've talked about this possibly happening since she got so badly ill first semester and then again this one, so it's not like she doesn't know it could happen.

DH gets home tonight so he can call the counselor back tomorrow and we can see what is going on, since she called him as well, but he was busy at the airport in Anchorage trying to get his bag checked since he's bringing home a PVC cutter and that can't go in carry on. He only had an hour between the puddle jumper landing and when he had to get on the big plane in which to do it.

I honestly think my daughter should just homeschool next year, but she doesn't want to be away from her friends. Well, she's away from them anyway with the amount of illness she's had this year. If she does have to repeat (due to absences, not grades, mind you), she does have friends in the class of 2015, too. She doesn't learn well in the school environment. There are too many kids goofing off and talking during class and she finds it hard to concentrate around them.

We'll see what it comes down to. It could just be the counselor expressing worry, but since she's never done that before with DD's absences in the past, I think I'm right in assuming this is where things are going. DD is not a good enough student to pull off being sick and getting all her work done at top grades like I did in high school when I had a bad health year and was hospitalized.

Whatever will be, will be. It's not like we can fix it now, anyway. Unless they have summer school.

I'm cooking this week with an eye towards increasing freezer space. I will be roasting a chicken to use for lunches this week along with the leftover ham I cooked overnight. Ultimately I'll need to have enough space in the freezer for 6 whole rabbits that will likely dress out at 4 pounds each or about the size of a large whole chicken.

I also will make chicken stock with the remains of the chicken so I can freeze it in pints. One of my favorite ways to cook rabbit is in the crockpot with a pint of chicken broth made from our free range, organic chicken bones. I am almost out. I just have 2 pints left.

Anyway, here are the dinner meals planned for the week.

Monday:
Ham and potato soup
Green beans
Bananas

Tuesday:
Tacos (both crisp and soft tortilla shells)
Watermelon

Wednesday:
Salmon
Asparagus
Cantaloupe

Thursday:
Homemade pizza (onions, ham, pepper strips, pepperoni)
Cole slaw

Friday:
Pork chops
Fried potatoes
Cole slaw
Strawberries

Saturday:
Beef and broccoli stir-fry
Pineapple

Sunday:
Crockpot beef chuck roast
Blueberry corn bread muffins
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Broccoli/cauliflower

Not too much going on here today. It was a no spend day. I added $1.72 to the coin jar. I got a $5 giftcard from Swagbucks for Amazon, bringing my account to $135 in gift cards. This will be helpful at Christmas. I was also able to cash out today for another one. SB has been going pretty well this week. I hit the daily goal 4 out of 7 days. I would have hit it yesterday, too, but my daughter came in to have a serious discussion at 11:30 p.m. and I missed it by 6 points because I thought she needed my full attention. Oh, well. Some things are just way more important in life than an extra few points.

I haven't made it over to the food co-op yet. I think I probably could avoid it altogether, but just really want to buy some fresh wild salmon, so will be going tomorrow. I'll buy tortillas, freshly ground peanut butter, raw honey, and ice cream cones while there, since they have the type DS can have with his allergies. And maybe some Sundrops, too. Those are like M&M's only without artificial food colors, fake vanilla, and HFCS. I'll also see if they have Lima bean seeds. Lima beans are the only dried bean I can stand so I thought I'd grow and can some this year if I can find the seeds. I am hoping to spend no more than $100 there.

I also want to buy a watermelon and more strawberries from the farm stand. Although I should probably hold off on the strawberries since I managed to consume 2 pounds on my own since Friday. Okay, I had them with all three meals each day, but even I know that is an awful lot before they are fully in season.

I have a seven pound bone-in picnic ham in the crockpot to cook overnight, as I don't have any lunch meat for DD to take to school. She will be happy to cut a hunk off that come morning to take with her and DS and I will have breakfast and lunch taken care of (ham and eggs and hot ham and provolone cheese sandwiches).

I weighed the rabbit kits today. They are four weeks old. The biggest two are 1 pound 8 ounces each. The biggest last week was 14 3/8 ounces, so they have grown a lot. All kits are over a pound now with the smallest being 1 pound 1.5 ounces. Total litter weight is 8 pounds 2 ounces. Last week it was 5 pounds 4 ounces, so they have gained just 2 ounces shy of 3 pounds this week.

They are all very, very friendly so I think handling them daily since they came out of the nesting box was the right move. I am not seeing much skittishness at all. I am hoping one of the fast gainers is a female. Since I decided not to keep any of the 16 week olds for breeding because of skittishness, I'd like to keep one from this litter. Also, if I decide to sell any, extreme friendliness is a much wanted quality.

But right now I'm not sure I want to sell any, since our rabbitry is still small and it'll be a while before we can cover our meat needs and have surplus to sell. I'd like to get to the point where we have enough in the freezer to have rabbit once a week and be able to sell live, too.

Once we actually get to that point I will probably start raising coturnix quail as well for both eggs and meat. For the time being our egg needs are nicely met by the chickens, but once we move we won't have them unless we want to start from chicks again and I'm not sure I do. Plus coturnix hit maturity at 7 weeks old and they are so much easier to dress (maybe 2 to 3 minutes per quail), they are much more efficient at converting feed to meat than chickens, and have a much smaller footprint.

The quail are something we are looking at for next summer, since we'd have to buy an incubator. We can convert the outdoor rabbit hutches to quail cages, though, although we'd still need to buy or make breeding cages. Hatch rates on quail are about 50 to 70 percent and most of them will not sit on their own eggs, hence the incubator. Either that are we get a broody banty or silky chicken. When eating the eggs, it's about 4 to 5 eggs to equal the equivalent of a chicken egg, but they lay every day which chickens do maybe every 36 to 48 hours. We'd need about 15 females to meet the family's egg needs and then several breeding pairs for hatching eggs that would then be raised to maturity for butchering.

Also both quail and rabbits fall under the pet category for petsitters, so they are great livestock to have if you want to be able to go on vacation once in a while. Petsitters/house sitters are easier to find than farmsitters and don't require a ton of care, though they do need some stuff done daily.

Some day I'd really like to be sustainable enough with the rabbits and birds that we could also trade for organic grass-fed beef, milk, and cheese, organic pork, free range chicken, and the more difficult fruits and vegetables to grow.

I transferred the $44.99 left in checking to the Emergency Fund, which now totals $3902.12.

Payments made:

$1000.00 to Mom
$1000.00 to BoA VISA
__757.82 to Car loan (extra to principal)
___90.00 Physical Therapy
___44.87 Phone Old House
___23.39 Electric Old House
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$2916.08

I also took out $100 cash for the week, $30 for the kids' allowances, and spent $145.07 on groceries.

I still need to make a trip to the food co-op and then I should have at least $200 left for the Wisconsin Fund.

I have made it 3 weeks on one tank of gas and still have a third of a tank, so I think I'll make it until next payday before having to fill up. I am glad of it since gas has hit $4 a gallon. Of course, the reason I still have so much gas is that my daughter missed nine days of school with the evil stomach flu (she threw up so hard one day she broke all the blood vessels in her face, giving her skin a freckled appearance) and that the chiropractor took a two week vacation. The only places I drove during that time are to the grocery store and the feed store and physical therapy (one of which I cancelled when I had the evil stomach flu).

I am steadfastly ignoring the laundry and the garden today. I woke up feeling exhausted, so other than taking care of the animals, I have done nothing. The kids had plenty of leftovers to eat so are fending for themselves while I just lay in bed. I thought I was over the evil stomach flu, but I think I may be going in for round 2. Ugh.

Today was the day of the weekly auto deposit of $10 to the Emergency Fund. The new balance of the EF is $3857.13.

Tomorrow is payday and I have $5 left in my wallet and $44.99 left in checking. The $5 will go into my EF envelope for later deposit and the $44.99 will be transferred directly to the Emergency Fund. I am trying to make it a habit to do this with all funds left at the end of each payday week. With that as a goal I have been finding that my urge to spend right up through the week has lessened. I really want to hit $5000 this month for the EF so I am trying hard

I have been doing pretty well with Swagbucks. The last 3 days I hit the daily goal, though I don't think I will today, being is it is at 100 and I'm at 13. I cashed out for one $5 Amazon gift card.

I relocated a $40 gift card for Safeway. DH's work gives one at Thanksgiving and one at Christmas. We used one in California, but had misplaced the other one. The nearest Safeway is 35 minutes away and majorly overpriced, but I am getting so fed up with the Haggen chain since they were bought out that I might actually venture up there.

Haggen used to be my favorite store, but it's really gone downhill since the remodel. Except the prices have gone uphill. And don't get me started on the stench coming from the fish counter. It was so bad on the Memorial Day weekend I decided I am never buying fish from them again.

We have six enormous lemon balm plants growing in the backyard (and some elsewhere) and rabbits can eat that so I am going to harvest some today to give to them. They can have up to two cups of fresh vegetation a day besides their pellets and hay. So far I have given them carrots and their tops, Swiss chard, raspberry leaves, radish tops and blackberry leaves. Lemon balm should be easier to pick then the other leaves (no thorns!) and of course are cheaper than carrots or chard. I am growing chard to give them, but its not got enough on it to harvest yet.

I think I'm having a relapse of the stomach virus I had last week. Either that or I ate something I am allergic to without knowing it. All I want to do is sleep. I am so tired. Definitely going to bed early tonight.

I ordered an electric razor off Amazon today. I haven't had one in over 3 years. I usually steal DH's, but he takes it to work with him, which means I don't have one while he is gone and I really hate using disposable ones. It doesn't bother me much during the fall, winter, and spring to have hairy legs, but now it's finally shorts weather, so I gave in and made the purchase. It was a $65 razor and with shipping it came to $82. Mostly because they didn't have a standard shipping option, only a two day shipping option. Oh, well, that was the one I wanted, one that was both rechargeable and usable with a power cord.

I also picked up a prescription today. It was $2.43. I am hoping to make it through the rest of the week with no spending. Well, I say week. I actually mean until payday on Friday when I will pay the bills and go grocery shopping. I shouldn't need anything between now and then. Still resisting the urge to pick up takeaway. The urge is always there, but I am getting back into the habit of cooking so it is getting easier to resist.

Yesterday when I went to the chiropractor who was finally back from his long vacation, I looked at my card and I don't have to pay the next month of the chirocare family plan until June 28th. He added 13 days to my card to replace the 13 days he was gone. Normally it's due around the fifteenth. Which means I don't have to pay it out of this month's cycle at all. It can wait until the next cycle starts up. And because the 28th is a Friday and they are closed on Friday's we won't have to start the next plan until July 1st. It will still come out of the 28th's paycheck, though.

Meanwhile, that gives me $225 to work with that I wouldn't have had this month. It'll go into the Wisconsin Fund. It comes out of the 6/14 paycheck.

I think I forgot to say what my last coin jar update was. It was $5.65. The way I organize my coin jar is that all loose coins go in the jar, but all bills go into an envelope that I keep in the dresser drawer beneath the coin jar. On occasion I'll get 50 cent piece or a dollar coin and they'll go into the envelope, too. Right now there is a 50 cent piece in with my ones. Anytime I get enough change together to roll coins, then the rolled coin roll goes into the envelope, too. Whenever the amount in the envelope hits $30 or more I make a deposit.

I hit my daily goal yesterday on Swagbucks. I am not sure how since it was 100. I guess I was on the computer a lot yesterday so had the SBTV running in the background. I didn't search much, but I did get the first LA collectors bill. I also cashed in for a $5 gift card from Amazon. I don't know if I'll hit my goal today or not. It's 80, but I don't know if I'll have as much time to spend on the computer today.

I have five things coming out of Friday's paycheck, $1000 to Mom, the car payment, the electric bill for the old house, the phone for the old house, and $1000 to the BoA VISA. Then for 6/14 paycheck I have $2000 to BoA VISA and vacation will be paid off, the internet bill, and $1000 to the EF. There might be a few middling expenses charged to the Visa as DH will be coming home right before I pay that, but there is plenty there to pay it in full. It'll be nice to get back to doing that each month again. I think we only had it paid off for 2 months before going on vacation. It might have only been for one.

The 6/21 paycheck will be the small one with just two day's wages on it. That will be split between groceries, miscellaneous, the sleep doctor, and a good portion of it to the Wisconsin Fund. It looks like FIL and MIL will be staying at their condo from their travel club when they go, so DH might be able to crash there with them. If he didn't have to pay for a hotel that would make things a lot easier.

I had thought it was in Milwaukee, but it sounds like the hospital FIL will be going to is in Madison. I'm not sure if they've got a date yet, but the further out in summer or fall they get it, the easier it will be on our financials to find the money for this. I know you have to schedule quite a ways in advance for these things.

I think June is just going to be a very smoothly functioning money month, so long as I don't throw caution to the wind and decide to eat out a bunch. It is not on the agenda for this week, that is for sure. I have too much lovely food to cook that I am looking forward to making this week. And since I finally got a full night's sleep last night, I'm not going to be too tired to cook it.

I am very much utilizing the fact that strawberries are in season this week. Technically they are not in season yet here, that'll be another two to three weeks, so I'm a little outside of my local foodshed. But California is at least on my west coast foodshed and I'll do an awful lot for fresh strawberries. Except, apparently, get them planted yet again this year.

Honestly I haven't been very good about getting my veggies and fruits in the local foodshed the past few months. I think I just had some major weariness trying after winter ended. It is nice to try to be more sustainable and ethical in my food choices, but sometimes you really just want the darn pineapple from Hawaii.

I am, at least, keeping my meats inside my local foodshed, which is the most important part of it to me. I haven't had meat from more than 30 miles away in over a year, I know exactly where it has been raised, how it has been treated, and by what farmer. That makes me happy. If my organic carrots come from Cali than so be it.

Anyway...

Monday:
Roast chicken
Roast potatoes and carrots
Baked asparagus
Strawberries

Tuesday:
Chicken enchiladas
Salad
Bananas

Wednesday:
Baked salmon
Green beans
Oranges
Fried potatoes (from leftover roasted)

Thursday:
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Cole slaw
Strawberries

Friday:
Meatball sandwiches
Cole slaw
Pineapple

Saturday:
Homemade pizza (ham, onions, bell peppers)
Green beans
Bananas

Sunday:
Barbecued chicken
Broccoli/cauliflower/corn/asparagus baked in foil packets

And my mortgage hit this morning, too. $11,910.21 remaining. I love the countdown, and every $1K down means something to me, but I have to say the one I am really looking forward to is 4 digits instead of 5. Under $10K will make my year. Whereas this just makes my week. LOL

I spent $55 on Saturday to buy 40 pounds of rabbit pellets, a 90 pound bale of local hay, 2 more water bottles and two more clamp feeders. I didn't spend anything today.

The kits are growing well. Today I weighed the lot individually and they vary from a little over ten ounces to almost fifteen ounces. The entire weight of the litter is 5.24 pounds. They are 3 weeks old today and the adorableness factor has hit an all time high.



The weather is finally drying out the ground so hopefully gardening will commence tomorrow. It has been so frustrating trying to do anything in the wet. Hopefully we will have a long and beautiful Indian Summer to make up for the long and wet spring. We did last year and this year feels just like last.

I suppose if all I can do is grow peas, green beans, lima beans, lettuce, swiss chard, kale and kohlrabi, I'll be okay. I'll be happier with more, though. At least the fruit is pretty foolproof. Apples, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and Italian prunes are all on track.

I will probably buy strawberries from the place in Skagit County that were spray free again. I won't make jam this year, because I still have enough jam to feed a small army, so they will be for fresh eating, and for freezing both whole, and in cut up and sugared form. I'd like 30 pounds for freezing total. That should get us through the year.

We did well with blueberries and raspberries last year. We are just finishing up what we froze on the blueberries and we will probably have enough froze raspberries to last another month when they'll be ripe. I thought we were out but I found some buried in the bottom of the freezer with no frostbite.

I was very tempted to get takeaway today, but didn't. I have to keep it firmly in mind that in order for DH to afford to go to Wisconsin if needed, we can't be wasting money on restaurant food.

I spent a lot of time playing with the numbers last night and I figured out that if I start with the $205 I’ve already set aside, take the $900 that is in the funds (not counting the college fund), and then don’t fund the other four non-essential funds for July and August, which will equal $800, I’ll have $1905 with which to send DH to Wisconsin. The other $95 I can scrape up from somewhere.

We might actually be able to do it somewhat differently, too. I think I can take $700 from the 6/21 paycheck, $100 from the 6/7 paycheck, and $200 from the 6/14 paycheck, along with the July and August $800 from not funding funds, and not even touch what is currently in the funds at all. Plus the $205 we already have. That gives us $2005.

I might even be able to fund one of the funds each month if I am extra careful with the grocery budget. We have a lot of meat in the freezer so eliminating the June trip to the ranch to buy meat wouldn’t hurt anything. Plus we are going to have rabbit meat then so that will give us even more leeway. If I only use the grocery money for flour, tortillas, produce, milk and fish, we should be able to get away with using only half of the grocery budget for June.

The big thing will be not eating out much. DH is only going to be home for six days this month so that will help. And then once DS is done with homeschooling, I won’t feel so stressed and exhausted, so I’ll cook more and that will help, too. Part of my exhaustion is that I haven’t been eating as well as I used to and I need to get that back. Dinners have been okay, but there has been a lot of snacking on junk that needs to stop or at least be replaced with something better.

It is possible that DH won’t have to be there for as many days as I am thinking. It is even possible he won’t have to go at all, since neither of his parents have approached him about going at all. Just his sister said that their mom would like it. Of course, DH would probably still want to go regardless. We can squeak it out so if it’s something he wants to do, we’ll certainly try.

On an unrelated note to self: Put the tabs on the license plate. They expire June 6th and they don’t belong in the glove box!

And whoa, is the posting box different? And the font? Not so sure it's an improvement. It looks faded and more greyscale than black and white. Of course I'm sensitive to changes like that because of my vision problems, (I still haven't forgiven LJ for it's last mess) and this coloring is definitely irritating my eyes. Maybe I'm hallucinating from lack of sleep. Oh, do we have spellcheck now, too? The word for the eye rolling symbol is underlined. Well, that I do like.

Just checked my C1360 account and the interest hit. $2.35. I added it to the Emergency Fund. The new total is $3847.13.

So I added the $40.50 in the coin jar and the $31.96 leftover in checking to the EF. Along with the June deposit of $100, which I made today even though it's not June yet, bumps the Emergency Fund to $3844.78., so the normal goal would be to scrape up enough to get it to $4000, but since DH has overtime, June's goal is $5000.

I went ahead and funded my funds as usual today, even though I know that eventually that money will probably be wiped out for the Wisconsin trip. But I'm keeping it in the funds sections anyway until we know either way what is going to happen there. Available fund totals are now $1300 ($1000, if I don't count the meager college fund). This does not count the property tax fund or the propane fund, or any other fund that is a bill paying fund for bills not paid monthly. We'll only be taking from the non-essential funds like Christmas, Laptop, etc.

Here's what came out of today's paycheck:

$300.00 to Mom for June utilities
__90.00 Physical therapy
__39.53 DH Life Insurance
__32.70 Me Life Insurance
__66.62 Car Insurance
__45.67 Old House Insurance
__41.16 Old House Security
_168.00 Storage
_600.00 Mortgage ($224.14 extra to principal)
_100.00 Cash for week
__30.00 Kids Allowances
_620.64 AMEX (gas and eating out)
__72.00 Water/sewer Fund
_100.00 Emergency Fund
__19.00 Garbage Fund
_100.00 Hawaii 2018 Fund
__19.00 Dues Fund
_100.00 Propane Fund
_100.00 College Fund
_100.00 Laptop Fund
_100.00 Christmas Fund
------------
3165.77 Total Paid Out

I have $241 in checking, msot of that will go for groceries and over the counter medicines to restock up after the three of us were ill.

When the mortgage payment hits the remaining mortgage will be under $12K. I am excited. $10K left seems closer than ever

Oh, I forgot, there was also a medical bill of $157.41 for my daughter.

Today was the $10 auto deposit to the Emergency Fund, which brings it to $3672.68.

I emptied my wallet and added $25.00 to the coin jar. Tomorrow I will take the bills and roll of pennies to the CU and deposit it. There is $40.50, which will put me over my May goal of $3700.00 by $13.18.

Depsite my earlier post and the financial setback family stuff may cause, I am still going to try to get the EF to $5000 by the end of June. $1000 from overtime, $100 from the normal monthly deposit, $40 from the 4 $10 Thursday deposits, so scratching up $146.82 from somewhere. Well, a tiny bit less since there will be a small interest deposit in my Capital One 360 account on the 1st.

There is $31.96 left in my checking account so maybe I'll throw that in there, too. I just feel some urgency to get to $5000. Not sure why. After that my next big goal will be trying to figure out how to get to $8000, which is one month's income. Ideally, I'd like to do that by the end of 2013, but not sure how practical that is, especially with saving the Christmas bonus for college expenses. Unless there is more overtime. I know I can at least hit $6000 by the end of the year if we don't have to actually use the EF for anything.

Being sick for a week has been good for our bottom line. I ended up with $205 in savings from money I didn't spend this week. I had originally intended for this to go for groceries. Of course, not eating for 3 days and DD not eating for 3 days, made a big difference in groceries, too.

So I am setting that money aside. I am not going to put it into the Emergency Fund no matter how much I want to. I am going to put it into a temporary fund earmarked towards FIL's upcoming heart surgery. He is going to be having one for a bulging aorta soon, which was a result of the myocardial infarction he had a couple of years ago. He is choosing to go to Wisconsin to do it. The best doctor for that particular operation is there. The second best is here, but I guess they don't want to take that chance, even though it would be massively less expensive.

So they'll be there for a while and MIL wants DH to be able to come for part of it. DH can't take off work so it would have to be during one of his home shifts. We really can't afford it without wiping out a lot of our savings. Round trip flight will be around $800. Several days in a hotel and food around $1200. So we're looking at trying to come up with $2000.

I won't take it out of our Emergency Fund. The EF is for our emergencies, not other people's decisions to fly halfway across the country. So I'm going to try to squeeze it out elsewhere. I figure if I raid some of our other funds, the laptop fund, the Christmas fund, the Hawaii 2018 Fund, the appliance fund and the college fund, that's $700. So that puts me at $905. I'd just need to figure out where the other $1095 will come from.

I guess some of it can come from the overtime week DH is working. I still want to save $1000 for the EF from that, but I figure I can at least put the freezer on hold again and the $1000 for that could be saved in the temp fund. I doubt he'll get it scheduled before the end of summer, so we can likely save the difference.

I am trying not to be resentful of the fact that we will have to spend this $2000 on something that is not our goals. I know this is important to offer support to the in-laws. But I can't help feeling like if it was me, I'd do it locally and save the extra expense. It's not like the doc here is bad at this surgery. The other guy has just done it more. But this guy trained under that guy so the skill set should be there.

It's one thing if there was no one available locally, but there is. At least FIL can do all of his follow up care here. I will work on keeping my resentment to myself. It is uncharitable of me and not something I want the in-laws to see, because I do love them like parents. Parents who often think with their hearts and not their heads, but parents nonetheless.

There is very little going on here. No spending, as I am recovering from a nasty stomach virus I had over the weekend. Definitely on the upswing, but I feel bruised and like I have been put through the wringer.

I did add $1.80 to the coin jar.

I should meet my goal of $3700 in the EF by the end of the month. Not much else to add. Things continue to go smoothly on autopilot.

The rabbits are doing well. They new kits are starting to come out of the nesting box now and explore the bigger cage and pester their mother. The chickens continue to lay eggs well. And I guess that's it.

Tuesday:
Barbecue chicken (I'm totally cheating with this. I am grilling boneless skinless thighs on the George Foreman grill and then pouring barbecue sauce on top of them. It's easy and fast and I'm definitely into that this week after spending the long weekend with a stomach virus.
Pineapple
Baked potatoes (in the microwave, again, a time saver)
Green beans

Wednesday:
Homemde pizza (yellow bell pepper strips, yellow onions, ham)
Pineapple
Cole slaw

Thursday:
Beef Ribs
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/cauliflower

Friday:
Bacon cheeseburgers
Fried potatoes (from leftover baked)
Cole slaw

Saturday:
Grilled pork chops
Watermelon
Fried potatoes (from leftover baked)
Salad

Sunday:
Beef chuck pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Drop biscuits with choice of homemade jams
Broccoli/cauliflower

Monday:
Tropical Chicken Stir-fry
Blueberry cornbread muffins

I received $10 in Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks raising my total to $130. I haven't spent as much time on them this month or last. I've been too busy with the rabbits. The kits are growing fast. This is them two days ago. They are 13 days old.



They all have their eyes open now. In another week or so they will start jumping out of the nesting box.

There isn't really anything else going on. Oh, I paid the propane bill, but that money has been set aside for awhile so affects nothing.

Basically I'm just waiting for the 31st to get here to start on the next cycle of paying bills. Everything is pretty much on autopilot at this point.

I went to the sleep doctor today and we are trying yet another C-Pap mask. This one is smaller and is a much better fit. In fact I took a nap using it this afternoon (woke up feeling sick this morning and very tired, but it could just be the cottonwood blooming and the Scotch broom) and I didn't take it off in my sleep and I slept pretty hard for 3 hours. So I think we may finally have a winner. I had to pay $144 upfront for my visit since the doctor's practice quit playing nice with Aetna who is one of stingiest reimbursers for medical insurance.

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Yesterday was the day of the $10 auto deposit to savings. That brings the Emergency Fund to $3662.32. $37.68 to go to hit my May goal of $3700.

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The three people that were trapped in the bridge collapse yesterday are in stable condition with only minor injuries. It was a miracle only three cars went down with the bridge.

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4 out of the 7 rabbit kits have opened their eyes. The other 3 are working on it. They are so adorable. They are 12 days old.

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The carpet is going to be laid on May 30th, which hopefully means the finishing touches will be put on the house the weekend of the 1st and 2nd. I really wanted to put it on the market in May, but now if we get it on there by mid-June it will still be early enough to hit those buyers who want to buy and move in over the summer so they are all set for school for their children before it begins in the fall. Since it's a 4 bedroom home in a neighborhood with lots of kids, I'm assuming it will appeal to the family market as opposed to the Canadian vacationer or the American retiree. Hopefully it won't just sit there.

Of course I can't get my hopes up yet, because I'm sure they will find a way to make it take longer than it should. That's been the case since this began. At least the rug is being installed by rug people and not the people doing the rest of the work so they won't be able to back out of it for spurious reasons.

We go over this bridge all the time, once or twice a month. We were just on it 11 days ago. There are people trapped in the water. It is really scary to see something like this on the news, happening in a place I am so familiar with. First thing we did was make sure our neighbor was home safe. She works in Seattle and commutes over this bridge ten times a week.

That part of the freeway people are going 60 to 65 MPH. It's four lanes of traffic. I can't even imagine. I am just glad that rush hour was over when it happened because it could have been so much worse. My mother was going to be going over that bridge tomorrow on her way to visit relatives in Eastern Washington. It's a very unsettling thought.

I hope they get the people out soon. A couple are sitting on top of their cars and one person is trapped inside a truck. Head above water, apparently, but they are worried about hypothermia. It just seems crazy that something like this can just happen. One minute a solid foundation, the next plunging into the water.

I think I'll be glued to the news tonight.

I got an alert from my credit monitoring service today. I have it because of a past incident with a stolen wallet. Anyway, my credit score has gone up six points to 793. According to the report we are using only 12 percent of our available credit and the national average is to use 16 percent. Ideally I'd like to be at 800 by the end of the year, but I'm not sure what it would take to do that. Probably paying the van loan down some.

I feel like we are really positioning ourselves well to buy a new house in the near future. I am still thinking along the lines of paying off our van loan if we get enough extra when our house sells. It would be one less thing to worry about and it would free up some money for upcoming college costs.

McDonald's has started hiring again. I think DD should throw her hat in the ring and try to get a summer job. She has plans to volunteer at the animal shelter but that is only 2 hours a week and you can go in at whatever time you want during their open hours. She could easily do both.

Yesterday was so beautiful and today is so wet that the chickens are taking it as a personal insult. I am tired of the weather swings, but it could be so much worse. I feel guilty complaining about the weather here when I read the news and see the photos coming out of Oklahoma.

That sort of devastation seems unreal to me because I've never seen it in real life. The only things I have personally experienced are massive floods big enough to declare us a disaster area and the day the creek exploded and the town was under a black mushroom cloud. And even that can't compare to the scale of the tornado there. My heart and prayers go out to the people who have survived this devastation.

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I didn't sleep last night. I hate it when that happens. It makes it so hard to cope with the day in a good financial state of mind. So my planned homemade pizza turned into an XL carry out pizza from Round Table instead. $29.35. It has gone up from $27.18, what it's been for the last year. That left me with 65 cents for the coin jar.

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I am so behind on where I want to be with gardening. There has been so much to do lately between homeschooling and the animals and whenever I finally get that wrapped up, it starts raining. Usually May is nicer than this, especially in the second half. I know by mid-June it will stop raining and then we won't see much of it until the fall, but it always feels like forever waiting out the nine months of the year when it does almost nothing but rain here.

Goodness, it's practically Tuesday. I used to be very good at posting these every Sunday. Oh, well. I guess I'll just post Tuesday through Monday this week instead. I am trying a few new recipes out as well as using a couple standbys this week. It kind of felt like we were getting into a rut so I wanted to change things up.

I'm trying two new recipes from the Owlhaven blog and the good California (organic) strawberries are in, so will be using those a good bit this week.

Tuesday--
Homemade Pizza (pepperoni, ham, onions, and peppers)
Cole slaw
Pineapple

Wednesday--
Thai Beef Chard Wraps

DH cleaned out his wallet in preperation for leaving tonight and I cleaned out my purse. Together we had $13.63 for the coin jar.

DH's work called an hour ago. They've asked him to work an extra week so this hitch will be a 3 and 1, instead of a 2 and 2. It will be nice to have some overtime that we can actually save part of it. I'm going to put at least $1000 of it into the EF. I am hoping to have $5000 in it by the end of June.

DH needs a new laptop and I've only got $200 saved towards it. It'll be $300 saved by the next time he comes home, but with the overtime we'll be able to make up the difference. We could do 18 months same as cash, but I'd prefer not to. I'm trying to get away from that sort of thing.

He's been babying it along for a while. His DVD/CD drive quit working a couple months ago, his head phone jack is broken (he's been using a USB head phone set), the battery only holds 5 minutes of charge, and there is something wrong with the internal wifi card because it doesn't matter whose internet it's on, it drops it every five minutes or so. By the time he got everything fixed it would be about the cost of a new laptop. This one is a few years old and doesn't have a service agreement anymore. I think it's running Vista or ME for Windows.

As for the rest of it, I'm not sure. I'll figure that out when we get closer. I could fully fund the appliance fund so we can buy a chest freezer when we are ready. I'm just not sure yet.

We paid the phone bill for the old house today, $45.03. The only other bill due for the rest of the month is the propane and I have the money set aside for that. I'll pay it on Friday.

Speaking of the old house they completed most of the flooring this weekend. There is only one bathroom left to do and it won't interfere with the carpeting, so we have the rug laying scheduled now. Finally. Did I mention that the guy in charge of everything sliced his hand open and had to get 14 stitches, last Sunday? It looks nasty. He didn't cut anything important like a tendon, though. He was lucky. It is his dominant hand, too.

Mom is going away for the weekend, so I'll be on full time chicken duty Friday through Tuesday. Most of the time I just let them out in the morning and check their food and water. Mom usually puts them away at night and gathers the eggs during the day.

The kits are growing well. They are now completely furred, even the area around their mouths, so only their noses are pink now. They are so adorable. In a few more days they will open their eyes. In two more days I can change the nest box litter. They recommend waiting until they are ten days old before you do.

Hopefully tomorrow we will actually get the garden started.

Our newborn kits are a week old already. They have sure grown!

We spent a good portion of Saturday at a meat rabbit expo. I fell in love with a New Zealand Red and a couple of the New Zealand Black rabbits. They are really beautiful and I wanted some, but we have made the decision to not buy any more rabbits for our little rabbitry until next year. We have enough to make a go of it, and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew.

Most of them were for sale for $20, so I will keep the expo in mind for next year when I am ready to buy rabbits. Rabbits usually cost $25 to $30 directly from breeders, but they were less at the expo just because they are trying to encourage more people to get into it and the whole homesteading movement with small, sustainably raised meat animals.

I wrote more about it on my farm blog, so if you want more details than that you can go there to read about it. My side bar has details how.

This payday was a small one and there wasn't much to do. The only bills coming out of it are $72 to savings for the water bill, and the phone bill from the old house. Oh, and we renewed our license tabs. They were $85.70.

We worked some more on the PVC hutch frame, adding a second layer. It's going to make things so much easier. In fact it already has. The new rabbits we bought last Sunday have one more week in quarantine before I can put them in with the other rabbits. That will streamline care again.

Yesterday and today all of the non-carpet flooring is going down. No more excuses, although the guy did have a good one, he sliced his hand open last weekend and had to get 14 stitches, he didn't use it. He was working only in a supervisory capacity today, but the work is being done. It's both bathrooms, the laundery room the kitchen, the dining room and the walkway from the front door to the dining room.

That means we should be able to call the carpet guys tomorrow to schedule an appointment. Carpet is going into the living room and the four bedrooms. The floors get too cold out there if you are only using the wood stove to heat with to not have carpet in the main rooms. It's not as bad if you are using the propane furnace, but I still always wore socks out there. After the carpet is laid, the doors go into the frames, new laminate goes on the bathroom vanity tops and then the house is done. We may have to do a bit of landscaping outside, but hopefully not too much more than add a couple of plants, keep the lawn mowed, and the ditches weed-eaten.

I hope this means we can put it on the market in June. I really want to have it ready for the summer buyers. It can take people up to 90 days to get approved for a mortgage sometimes, even with pre-approval, so even if we do find a buyer, unless they are using cash, it's still going to take some time. I just really want to be on the other side of this and seriously looking for our dream home/farm.

Today is payday, but I won't get to the payday post until later.

Part of my son's homeschool requirements is that he take a test every fall and spring to see that he's on track for his grade level. This is different from the MSP testing he did last week. He did this back in April.

Anyway, scores came out today and his math was 850 points above the state average. Our state average is above the national average, but I don't know by how much. He's very analytical and that part of his brain doesn't seem to have been damaged last June. He's a 7nth grader and this score puts him on the math level of an average 10nth grader.

His reading skills were about where I expected them to be. High in vocabulary and non-fiction comprehension and lower in fiction and long passage reading. This is directly related to his head injury and where the brain damage occurred. Vocabulary and non-fiction are again the areas where analytical thinking comes in, while fiction is where creative thinking comes in. Long passages he still loses a bit of focus on.

There were also some issues with the test itself glitching. It's one of those tests where it adapts itself to how you're doing. If it is too easy for you and you answer all the questions it gets harder. If it is too hard, it gets easier. Well, it kept going back and forth and what should have been an hour long test ended up being a three hour test. So towards the end there I know he was just kind of wildly guessing to try to get it to finish. I'm not overly worried about it being a little low.

He wants to be in a field that uses math heavily when he grows up so fiction comprehension isn't really going to come into much play as a real life skill. Still, we'll work on that and spelling this summer. There is no spelling curriculum in middle school be it public school or homeschool, which I think is really stupid. So I'll have him log on to Spelling City and play it through out the summer.

All in all it's been a pretty successful homeschool year, though. I look forward to getting his MSP results back. They track a little more realistically when it comes to reading and writing.

Today (well, yesterday, it's after midnight) was the day of the $10 auto transfer to savings, bringing the Emergency Fund to $3652.32. That leaves me with $47.68 to come up with by month's end to meet my May savings goal.

I've been taking care of the newborn kits. They are just starting to get a tiny bit of fur so they aren't all pink now, but starting to turn white.



And we (mostly DH) put together this:



What is that? The base for this:



The rabbits are very happy in their larger grow out cages.



There is a rabbit expo on Saturday that we are going to. DD will be at an overnight and we are hoping to ditch DS with DH's parents for the day.

On Sunday we went down to Arlington and brought home three new purebred, pedigreed New Zealand White rabbits from a different lineage for our breeding stock for $25 each. They are eight weeks old and it will take them a while to grow up. They are show quality rabbits. I forgot how small eight week olds are.

Meet Starbuck, Serenity, and Sweetie Belle.



Then on late Monday afternoon Piper kindled. She had seven healthy kits. They are the sweetest things, just these tiny, naked, pink squirmy bundles. If they weren't so squirmy I could fit three in one hand at a time. They make the cutest little noises. All of them had fat little tummies today so they are nursing well. Piper is such a good mama.

So right now with the seven newborns we have 19 rabbits in residence. That won't be the case for long though. Soon 5 of the 6 thirteen week olds will go to freezer camp, leaving only Lola to grow up and be breeding stock. It will be hard, but the whole point of this venture was to grow our own meat, so we would know exactly what went into it. We know what they have been fed and that they have been loved and cuddled and had happy lives. And we will know that those lives ended in a humane way.

DH is hard at work on a new frame for the new cages. We are keeping ahead of the space needs, but only just. I want to be completely ready for when I can move the three new youngsters out of quarantine and into the rabbit shed with the others after two weeks' time.

I am trying to locate a small livestock scale, so I can see the before and after amounts so I will know the dress out rate.

In six months' time I will have 3 breeding does and 1 breeding buck in one breeding line and 2 breeding does and 1 breeding buck in the other breeding line. Then I won't have to breed related rabbits to each other at all. It's not that big of a deal in meat rabbits, but a lot of people think it is weird based on human conventions. So if I ever want to sell live rabbits to people in the future, having bunnies from an unrelated doe and buck will make the squick factor not be there.

Aside from the $75 for the rabbits, I spent $30 for a new hay manger for them, and bought another $15 40 pound bag of feed. I found a new source for feed that uses no soy and no GMO. I found out about it from the breeder. And sure enough, one of the feed stores here carries it. And coincidentally they happen to have a meat rabbit expo going on this weekend, with a butchering demo. So we will buy a 50 pound bag of this feed when we go to it and start mixing the two together until the first is gone and then switch completely over.

So between the bunnies and homeschooling I have been pretty busy. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a chance to catch up on the blogs again.

Monday--
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Salad
Strawberries

Tuesday--
Pork chops
Fried potatoes
Applesauce
Broccoli

Wednesday--
Beef stir-fry (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, green beans, bean sprouts)
Oranges

Thursday--
Homeamde pizza (pepperoni, ham, onions, bell pepper strips)
Salad

Friday--
Barbecue chicken
Pineapple
Coleslaw

Saturday--
Bacon cheeseburgers
Cucumber slices or homemade pickles
Homemade French fries

Sunday--
Beef chuck pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Blueberry cornbread muffins
Green beans