We made the decision last week to go back to the athletic club we used to go to before we got serious about paying off the van (which was paid off in March or April). It's $109 a month for the 4 of us. It is more expensive than other gyms, but other gyms don't have pools and that is where I need to do that majority of my exercise due to my knee.

Today my daughter and I completed our fourth water aerobics class. I never did one of these the last time we were members and I have to say that we are both having a really good time with it. I was really sore the first two times, but I don't have that anymore.

The only thing I don't like is that there is a different teacher for every class. Some of the knee work is a little challenging, but we all go at our own pace and I don't do any jumping from just that leg and so far I am doing well. I feel stronger and I feel like my leg is getting better. I also am sleeping better.

I just wish my coordination was better. For someone who has great rhythm when it comes to playing musical instruments, I seem to have some issues with making my feet do something that my arms aren't doing as well. Like feet in and out when arms are going up and down. If my arms go in and out while my feet go in and out I'm fine.

I hope to start swimming laps again soon, but I would have to do that at night time or at 6 a.m.. Which is okay, but means I have to get all the farm chores done either later or earlier. But I always love swimming laps. It makes me feel so energized.

The only other thing I can really do at the club is the recumbent bike. Well, I could do the weight machines, but I don't want to. I will when I get stronger, probably. I'd like to strengthen my quads and the muscles around the knee cap. We do some work with weights in water aerobics, though, so there is some resistance training going on.

I hope this exercise will help with the weight loss. I've been stalled since the big loss earlier this year. I'd really like to see it going down again, which is why I'm not much fussed about spending the $109 each month for the club. Why do I always forget how good I feel after exercising? And while exercising?

I am just a wee bit behind there.

$500.00 Loan to Mom
$400.00 Mom's Utilities
__47.86 Life Insurance DH
__44.66 Life Insurance Me
__84.32 Car Insurance
_204.00 Meat from Farm
__50.00 Allowances
__65.03 Groceries
_205.00 Storage
__48.71 50 pounds of no spray potatoes for canning
__16.00 25 pounds of no spray carrots for canning
__15.00 20 no spray bell peppers for freezing
___5.00 10 pounds of no spray onions for freezing
----------------------
$1685.58 Total Money Out

Our back up refrigerator went out earlier this week. Because we use it a lot during harvest time and butchering time, which is now, it is really bad not to have the extra fridge/freezer combo. Since it went out after we had butchered 28 chickens, but before we cut up and froze the meat, it was a somewhat urgent situation. Not totally urgent because the meat was in ice and water in coolers, but that is only good for so long.

We priced new low end fridges and the best price we could find on one of those was $479 plus $42.63 in sales tax. That was way more than we wanted to spend. We went to an estate clearance place because they had a fridge for $159, but it smelled like freezer burn, which in my mind makes me think it will cause serious freezer burn. Plus it was ancient. Not all was lost there, though, because I did find a double boiler for $16.95. I have been looking high and low for one for my salve making and haven't been able to find one and didn't want to buy the expensive ones on Amazon.

We also went to a place that refurbishes used fridges, but they do a ten day testing period and while they had a half dozen fridges, they were all 1 to 3 days into the testing period.

The place that clearances previous model years were all over $500. There were quite a few on Craigslist, some for $200, some for new prices even though they were used. Most of them did not have the right dimensions for the space, though.

Finally we went to the Habitat for Humanity resale store and they had several fridges in working condition. Only two met our dimensions and one of those the freezer part was way too small. So that narrowed it down to one off-white side by side that was perfect for our needs. Grand total spent: $75. Well under what we wanted to spend and helped to support a good charity.

It works great, too. It may not be pretty, but a back up fridge in the laundry room does not have to be. And it's not ugly. It's just not pretty. I am really happy we found it. I would really not have been happy to have to have bought 2 brand new refrigerators in the space of 12 months.

It also does have the hook ups to have filtered water in the door. Obviously we can't do that here, but we might be able to do that in the future after we move. It's an option, anyway. I am very happy with what we managed to find with a lot of legwork and some outside the box thinking.

I haven't been doing these for a while, but felt like I wanted to get back to recording stuff in more than just my spreadsheet.

$1753.84 Travel BoA VISA
__100.00 Checking Cushion
__120.00 Physical Therapy
__203.77 Groceries (Trader Joe's)
___23.84 Groceries (Safeway)
__100.00 Cash for Week
___50.00 Allowances
__248.87 AMEX
___48.24 Pharmacy
__500.00 Down Payment Fund
___15.00 Pharmacy
---------------------
$3163.56

We will be buying some clothes tomorrow for DH and DS. I am hoping to keep it under $200.

On Thursday we picked up 1/4 of a beef cow (yes, cow, not steer) at the butcher's. The meet itself was $475. The cut and wrap was $195.71. Total cost was $670.71. It worked out to about $3 per pound for grass fed organic beef. I also got 40 pounds of tallow. I only asked for 10, but they give it away, so now I have an overwhelming amount of frozen beef fat to render.

It is for making soaps and lotions, though, so it will all get used eventually. I might also use some for the deep fat fryer. Tallow used to be what all the restaurants used to cook their fries in before they all switched to hydrogenated vegetable oil for "health" reasons, only we know now that is far worse.

It has filled up 3 compartments in the freezer. It is amazing how little space it takes up. If I hadn't had the tallow it all would have fit in two compartments, which is 1/8 of the overall chest freezer space. It will last a long time, though.

We had the first meat from it last night for dinner and it is very flavorful.

We lost power on Saturday in the massive wind storm Western WA had. We were out of power for a little over 8 hours, so we ended up getting takeout from a place that still had power. We spent $48 for 4 people. If it had gone more than that day we would have gotten out the camp stove and started using it to cook on. We had hot water since our water heater is gas and the pilot light was still on.

I made a couple of videos from the day of the storm and the day after showing damages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FciaxrDMHtE

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ElDGouEDk

It got pretty bad in places, but most of the county has power back as of today. We lost a bush and had a lot of damage to some squash vines, corn, and tomato plants, but otherwise came through pretty unscathed. The animals were okay, especially after we put the shutter up over the windows of the rabbit shed. All of their roofs stayed on.

The first half week of school went well for my son. Although he is already starting to pull some of the same stuff as last year. We are nipping it in the bud, though. It's not my fault if he stays up too late playing video games after being told to go to bed. He doesn't get to be "sick" and stay home and sleep because he made wrong choices. He gets to go to school anyway. And his video game machine gets to sleep in my room until the weekend.

My mom had her 76th birthday on the 28th and then my husband had his 46th birthday on the 30th, but it was all very laid back. We had too much work to do to really celebrate. We had to clean 18 rabbit cages over the weekend, plus we were canning. Farm chores and garden preservation do not stop just because someone is now a year older.

It has been raining pretty non-stop for the last two days. Since it has only rained twice prior to this the entire summer, it is very good for the area, but I feel spoiled after such a nice summer for wanting it to stop. And I'm worried it will spoil and split the rest of my tomatoes. The weather is supposed to get nice again by Friday, at least for a few days.

Yesterday DH and I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. I am hoping not to have to shop again except for milk and bananas for about 3 weeks. It is pretty hard to do with the pain and fogginess from my broken nose and what actually probably is a mild concussion. Or else just a reaction to the pain medication. Hard to say, but I feel very out of it.

I spent $162.71. We got a few packaged meals and some other things that will make it easy to fill in around the produce coming in from the garden and the meat in the freezer.

We have canned a lot this week. My husband has done a lot of it under my supervision simply because I get dizzy a lot right now. But between the two of us we have canned:

7 quarts and 1 pint of beef
6 quarts and 1 pint of rabbit
6 quarts of zucchini and summer squash
3 pint and a half jars of green beans
13 pints of rabbit bone broth
6 pints of bread and butter pickles
6 quarts of garlic dill pickles

We also made a batch of rabbit jerky with the abdominal flaps that can be very chewy and basically are only good for being ground or making jerky. Some people make bacon with it, but I feel it is too chewy for bacon.

We plan to can hamburger and more beef chunks today and more rabbit tomorrow. I need to do another batch of garlic dill pickles as the cucumbers are getting ridiculous.

I have an order in with a local place for 20 pounds of no spray green beans. We are having issues with the pole bean crop so I wanted to make sure I had enough green beans canned for the year. I think between that and what we do get from our garden it will cover it. I will be buying some carrots soon, too. We are down to 4 quarts of canned carrots. The ones I am growing are more for fresh eating and a little dehydrating as they don't get very big.

We also have an order in for dill since the stores keep running out. They don't seem to be stocking very well for pickling season this year. They do have those super expensive little plastic packets, but one of those costs about as much as a huge bunch of fresh dill.

I bought a garlic braid since my garlic crop failed. It has about 40 heads of garlic on it, which will meet my needs for the year. I have 5 or 6 left on last year's braid so am going to slice up the cloves, dehydrate them, and grind into powder.

Fortunately a lot of this stuff I can do sitting down. I do have to be careful not to push too hard, but it is difficult when there is so much to do to get ready for winter.

I heard the other day that our beef share should be ready on August 28th or thereabouts. I am getting 1/4 of a grass fed, organic beef. It will work out to $4 per pound. We will can most of the roasts and some of the hamburger. I will also be getting 10 pounds of tallow to render for soap making and lotion making. Beef fat is very good for those things and very healthy for the body, as opposed to a lot of the chemically laden soaps and lotions.

Next month the meat chickens will be ready to butcher as well, so I'll be putting 30 chickens in the freezer. We'll also have 3 rabbits ready to butcher then, too. So lots of work coming up, but it will be so worth it to not buy much meat for a year at the store. And in the long run we save a lot of money buy buying in bulk and preserving or raising our own and preserving.

We will still have to buy sea food since DH's big fishing trip fell through. I was pretty disappointed as they were going to be fishing for King salmon and one of those would have been around 35 pounds, plenty for a year. But life happens and there is nothing we can do about it now.

I have been saving up my Swagbucks for a while and finally had enough Amazon gift cards to pay for about half of the deluxe model of Excalibur Dehydrator, the one with both temperature settings and a 26 hour timer with automatic shut off. I was trying to go for the whole thing to be free, but then my piece of junk dehydrator quit working. I am in the middle of herb drying season and while I can borrow my mother's cheap piece of junk dehydrator, and did, to keep limping along, it was the push I needed to just go ahead and make the purchase.

I had $121.75 in gift cards and it cost $225. I also had to purchase the fruit leather trays because they don't come with any model of the machine. Well, maybe the $500 professional one, but no. I ended up paying a total of $156.63. Part of that was tax of $20.76 and then the trays were $32.62 (for 9) and the rest was the part of the dehydrator not covered by the gift cards.

With the fruit leather trays I can dehydrate tomato puree, mashed squash, even chicken stock all to be ground to make powders. Dehydrated chicken stock put through a spice grinder makes boullion powder without any of those nasty chemicals from store bought versions. As well as very tiny herb leaves like thyme or flower petals like calendula without having to worry about them falling through trays.

Right now I have 5 trays of basil dehydrating which will be followed tomorrow by more calendula, lemon balm, and yarrow. I am hoping that I won't have to buy many herbs this year at all and I will be able to make salves and other herbal remedies. I'm already on my way with the calendula:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nf1XLNCzj0

I did dry all of my oregano in bundles up on the wall and not in the dehydrator. If you'd like to see how I process that I did a video of it, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4hUBym8C2c

Herbs are so expensive for such a tiny amount, especially if you want organic. I will really be saving a lot of money this year by growing so many myself.

I'm really getting into herbal healing, doing a lot of research and trying to figure out what works best for my needs. Heaven knows the store bought remedies are not working well for me. While I don't think herbs are going to be a miracle cure, so far from what I've done myself with essential oils, they do seem to work. I will approach it with healthy skepticism until I have first hand experience with all of it.

I went to Joe's Garden and bought some broccoli and cauliflower and green onion plugs and got those planted today to replace all the ones I've harvested. I also bought some more basil plants. I spent $25.38 there.

I haven't been updating much on the garden output as I've just been trying to keep up with it and getting it eaten and/or preserved. But I've been keeping a tally and so far I've harvested enough food to equal $602.50 if I bought the same thing in the organic section of the grocery store.

And the zucchini, summer squash, peppers, beans, corn and tomatoes are just starting to fruit and we still have potatoes and winter squash, cucumbers, watermelon, sunflower seeds, and cantaloupe to come. We have now paid back the amount we spent on building the raised beds and the money we spent on bringing in three cubic yards of good organic soil. I am beyond thrilled at this garden year.

We had two litters of rabbit kits born this weekend. There were five whites born on the 3rd and 7 reds born on the 4th. The red runt died, though. It had no sucking reflex and couldn't nurse. But we still have 11 healthy kits. One of the rabbits didn't deliver though. Sometimes when it is too hot the bucks will go temporarily sterile. This is the second time this has happened this year, though it was a different doe each time. I am glad I am breeding 3 pairs at a time.

I've got orders for fertile turkey eggs. The first one will be filled tomorrow. It's just two. Then I have an order for 12, then 2, then 12 again. It's only 50 cents an egg. I could charge more, these are heritage breed turkeys and rare, but I am in it more for breed preservation than for making money. It's nice having a waiting list. I just wish I had more than one female so I could fill orders faster, but we don't have the space for it so that will have to wait until we buy our farm and move.

I'm not sure I'm going to get a chance to sit down and write one really long blog post this weekend to update everything, so I thought I'd try to get some snippets in of what has been going on and some things DH and I have decided on.

We moved 1 cubic yard of dirt today. We have completed one 8 x 4 foot garden bed and 3/4 of another one. Unfortunately the dirt place closes at 4 on Saturday and we didn't finish getting it unloaded until 3:45. I think it is kind of silly for a business that sells topsoil, compost, bark, etc., to close that early on a Saturday. Especially in spring. Especially when they are only open until 5:30 on weekdays. Especially when they are not open at all on Sundays.

So now we have to wait until Monday to get anymore dirt. It is okay, really, as I won't be planting those beds until May 1st or so, but I still wanted to get it done, have a few days for it to settle and see if we need to add more. We lost all day Friday due to rain and 35 mile per hour winds with gusts up to 60.

DH and I are going to build 3 more 8 x 4 foot beds this weekend. At least one will be built after supper tonight.

Yesterday we bought what we needed to get the irrigation system set up along with the wood for the beds we are going to build. It came out to $259.76. Plus the dirt for $25. It's a lot but we will be able to use it for years to come and we will be able to take it all with us (including the soil) when we move. And it is so worth it to have 2 foot tall beds.

I did all the shoveling on a badly hurt foot. I got it caught under something without realizing it as I was stepping upwards, so pulled it very hard up against the underside of a platform. It made a little snapping noise, but I don't think I broke anything. It was on the side of my bad knee and this also jarred and twisted the knee, which uses any excuse to swell up, and jarred the hip, too. I did this on Thursday.

You wouldn't think something like that would hurt so much, but it does. There is a massive bruise and swelling. I wore an ace bandage ($5 for one that actually had clips and is reusable, those self-grip ones are useless after five or six wearings) on my foot and ankle and my knee brace while we worked. I am keeping ice on it while we rest. I can't really afford to stay completely off it as we need to get this stuff done while DH is home and before it is time to plant in earnest.

I went down to the credit union and made sure there wasn't a hold on the money deposited to my account from the house sale. I transferred enough money from the savings to the checking account and then went onto the website I pay the van loan on and paid it off. Yay! No more consumer debt!

Now all I have to do is wait for the title of the van to come and then I can go down and change our insurance. We won't have to carry as much now that it is owned by us. Of course we still have to carry liability, uninsured motorists, and medical and I wouldn't want to go with out that, but we don't have to carry comprehensive anymore.

If we get into an accident that is our fault and totals our vehicle we have enough in savings that we could go and buy a used car outright or fix most of the damage. But that is highly unlikely given DH hasn't been in an accident since 1995 and I haven't been in one since 1988. We are very cautious drivers. If we get hit it will likely be the other person's fault.

I do still need to pay the guy who remodeled the house, but I am not sure what is going on there. They have declared bankruptcy and it sounds like they want me to hold onto the money until after everything has run its course. I have only gotten this second hand from Mom, though, so tonight I will find out for sure. If that is the case then I will send the money to my online account which earns more interest. I really don't like the idea of holding onto it, as I'd rather have it taken care of.

I have a question about the house sale, maybe MonkeyMama might know. Do we need to do anything to declare it? Does it go on income tax for next year? Is there some sort of form we have to fill out and send in? The title company was kind of vague about it and while I did ask them, all I got out of them is that it has to be reported but not how. We are nowhere near the capital gains threshold.

I went in this morning and signed the last paper for the house. They said that the sale should be recorded and official some time tomorrow. I hope the money shows up in my account on Friday and not on Monday. I then will have to check with the credit union to make sure that I can use the money right away or see if there is a hold on it. I know with checks like that there can sometimes be a hold, but the title company wasn't sure about whether there would be a hold on a direct deposit or not. I wouldn't think so, but I will ask just to be on the safe side before paying off the van.

We did not have a payday last week, but I still made some payments from money saved over for this week's bills. These were all autopays.

$250.00 AMEX
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__44.66 Life Insurance Me
__74.41 Car Insurance
__48.75 Homeowner's Insurance
_186.00 Storage
__16.17 Power Old House
--------------
$665.29 Total Money Out

I won round 1 of my transformer 6 month dietbet. Don't know what my winnings are yet. I also signed up for another 4 week dietbet with the same group I did the first one for. It has way more support being a smaller group. The transformer has over 1800 people in it, so it feels extremely anonymous when it comes to support. So that was $20.

I have to make a list of people to call tomorrow once the sale has been recorded. So far I'm thinking:

Power company
Phone company
Security company
Propane co-op (DH will have to do this one, it's in his name)
Home Owner's insurance company (should get a partial refund)

There was no cable or internet hooked up out there so that's not an issue. The water/sewer has been taken care of by the title company since it is owned by the homeowner's association out there. It was mixed in with the sale and is current and up to date.

I will probably go to Comcast in person tomorrow. It is faster than trying to get through their customer service line. I will be over there anyway as my daughter has a doctor's appointment in the afternoon. I will also drop by the insurance office in person since it is by the high school.

The rabbit kits are doing well. The runt died. Not sure if I said that, but it did. I knew it would. It was just too tiny. But everyone else is doing great. Here is a video of the babies and some photos:

http://youtu.be/gDTZI_s-AWc

I am pretty excited about some of the upcoming things on the farm. I sent a check off today for $330 to a local sustainable farmer who raises rabbits as well. He's going to be importing organic rabbit pellets from Modesto Mills in California and has offered to let anyone in the county get in on his order, no shipping fees. Since he wasn't sure how often at first he'd be ordering, I got a 2 month supply, or 600 pounds. Well, technically, this is more than a 2 month supply at the moment, because we have no kits and are just feeding the 13 adults and 1 junior who will be an adult in another month.

But we have kits due on Saturday/Sunday, so in about 4 weeks that consumption will go up to 300 pounds a month. This does a little more than double our rabbit feed costs, but with the new small animal slaughter house starting to butcher rabbits this spring, I will be able to sell WSDA approved meat if I use them. Rabbit meat from rabbits fed organically gets upwards of $15 a pound. So selling one rabbit would cover the cost of 2 bags of feed. I have interest from people who I have not sold to yet, because of not having the WSDA approval.

I do not mind raising the feed costs, since our old feed that used to be GMO free no longer is with the heavy introduction of GMO alfalfa into the rabbit feed supply a year or so ago. Which, by the way, has coincided with increased kit mortality in many rabbitries across the states. It may not show up in humans this quickly, but with something like the rabbit population where generations are born in a very short time span, it can very quickly be seen. Not proven, but the anecdotal evidence amongst breeders is pretty high. Just another reason to thank Monsanto for their constant interference in nature and scientifically proven (by non-M researchers) lower yields (despite advertising higher ones).

We don't buy alfalfa hay anymore as there is just no real way to track that unless we buy farm direct, which we may do this summer (and eventually will grow ourselves when we buy our 5 acre farm).

So anyway, I am happy to find organic non-GMO feed again for my rabbits. We will do a slow switchover, as a rapid feed change can kill the bunnies. But we have 200 pounds of the old feed left, so we should be good with a gradual switch over. Might have to buy an additional 100 pounds, but we will play that by ear.

Here is a short rabbit video I made yesterday. It shows the different nesting styles of my three rabbits who are currently pregnant.

http://youtu.be/nNU4PmlaP1Y

I made $80 in rabbit meat sales today. That brings the total sales for the month to $95 and $122.50 for 2015. That more than covers a month of feed for all of the animals, especially since we don't have any babies right now, but since I have a large amount of feed bought in previous months, I don't need to use it for that and it will go to the EF on Tuesday.

This week I also received my AMEX reward that is attached to my Costco card. It is $58.82. I have to go to Costco to cash it. I wish they would just let you cash it at a bank, but they won't. We will go there sometime soon, maybe Tuesday so we can avoid the holiday weekend shoppers. I don't really need much from Costco, maybe Ziplocs, but nothing else, so I hate to go all the way over there just for that, but oh, well. That money will end up in the EF as well.

We went to the farm today and got several pounds of pastured organic meat. For $280 I got 32.3 pounds of meat divided thusly:

8 2.5 pound pot roasts (20 lb)
4 pork chops (2.30 lb)
5 packages of bacon (5 lb)
1 rack of lamb (3 lb)
1 beef hanging tender (will have to look up how to cook this)(2 lb)

We will can the pot roasts later this week after they have thawed out.

Since we were down that way DH and I went out to an early dinner at Outback for a combination of Valentine's Day and my birthday. It was nice to have a nice dinner out without the kids. We rarely do. We brought home wings and bread for the kids and they also stole our leftovers. I didn't end up getting steaks after all on my actual birthday so I don't feel guilty at all about going out, especially since I set aside the money I would have used to buy steaks.

$1700.00 Bank of America
$1000.00 Loan to Mom
__225.00 Chiropractor
__103.00 Medical
___90.00 Physical Therapy
___42.88 Prescription
___50.00 Allowances
___20.11 Gas($1.84 a gallon!)
__100.00 Cash for Week
---------------
$3330.99 Total Money Out

It was good to finally get to payday. This year I am going to start much earlier on saving for the shut down that occurs every December at DH's work. As in, this paycheck. And in April when things cycle around so that we'll have an extra paycheck, I will put a good chunk of it into that fund as well. It was nice to be able to get through that time period without touching the Emergency Fund and I am glad we did not rely on the Christmas Bonus as that went to pay for the car roof repair and Christmas. There was nothing of it left for living expenses.

The paycheck is about $100 less for this pay period than it has been due to the new 401K withdrawal. Not too big of an amount to absorb easily. We'll see how it goes for the whole month before we decide to up it a percent, though.

Payday Report:

$800.00 to Van Loan (including extra)
_400.00 to Mom's utilities
__24.28 Electricity (old house)
__75.65 Internet
__48.60 Phone (old house)
__46.00 Security Monitoring (old house)
__41.94 Garbage (two months)
__13.75 Medical
__29.85 Medical
__66.61 Medical
_100.00 Allowances (two weeks, 2 kids)
_100.00 Cash for Week
_178.00 Emergency Fund
_100.00 Property Tax Fund
_100.00 December Money Fund
_100.00 Propane Fund (old house)
---------------
2224.68

The Propane Fund now sits at $700. The December Money Fund is at $233.55.

It was 50 degrees out today. That's practically tropical for this time of year. While the sky was pretty overcast, there were patches of blue and the sun peaked through from time to time and other times was backlighting the clouds in a gorgeous fashion. It is nice to have a break from all the dripping.

I didn't make it through my planned ten days without spending money. I bought a jacket today. I was able to get it today only at 50% off both the jacket and the shipping. I've been needing a new coat. I have my parka for the really cold days, but it is too hot to wear if it is over 40 degrees. But 40 is too cold for just a sweatshirt. It is also waterproof, which is a necessity here.

My other lighter weight jacket I use when I take care of the animals, and it is a good coat for this type of weather, but it smells like barn, plus it has gotten a bit ripped up by the rabbit claws. I don't like walking around smelling like barn in public!

It is a really pretty shade of blue and it will go very well with the new purse I got for Christmas. They are both a pretty jewel tone. I love jewel tones. The deep colors look good on me. I'm not one who can wear pastels or browns, oranges, or yellows. But the deep colors of blue, green, red, burgundy, and purple and the brights like teal, lime, turquoise, hot pink, and magenta, I can do very well. So I am happy to find a coat in a good color for me.

The diet is coming along. I have lost 6 pounds so far. I had a bit of bad day a few days ago and ate some fudge my son had made. By some I mean 4 pieces. It is gone now. I made the kids eat it and take it to school. So that made my loss stand still for a couple days. If it is not in the house I won't eat it. I shouldn't have let him make it in the first place. I need to be much more further along before I can resist things like that. I'm not against a treat now and then, but I need to stay away from chocolate.

I am glad that payday will be here on Friday. It has been a long, long time since the last one. But we made it through without having to touch the EF, which is wonderful. I feel very positive about our finances right now. I hope that feeling stays with me for a long time.

Recently DH and I made the decision to make a small investment in new dishes. We don't have a lot of plates and bowls anymore. The kids have broken a lot of our old set over the last few years and since it has been discontinued, it is almost impossible to find. In pricing new dishes of any quality (not china, but not melamine, either), I found them to be about $7 to $8 a plate.

So instead I went on ebay to look and see what they had in the way of old dishes in good condition and I found they had some that matched the stuff my grandmother had when I was a little kid. We were able to buy 13 plates, 10 of which were in mint condition for less than we would have paid for new, and they are all usable. The small chips in the 3 plates are fixable, though I would still like to get 2 more plates that are in mint condition.

Last night I found 12 matching bowls, so we will be getting those next. They have the same pattern on the outer rim, but the picture on the bottom of the bowl is different from the one on the bottom of the plate. They complement each other nicely.

They do have matching tumblers, but they are more expensive so I don't think we will be getting those now, but it is something to keep my eye on.

These dishes make me so happy and remind me of all the time I spent with my grandmother. And the whole family really likes them, too. The best part is they are dishwasher safe because of how they were glazed. The design won't wear off like with some of the older china.

We got the van back on Thursday night. The cost to fix was a total of $2439.89. That is a big chunk of money that I definitely could have used somewhere else, but at least we had it and didn't have to touch the emergency fund. And we got to drive the loaner for a week for free. The dealership actually loaned us the minivan they use as one of their shuttles to drive customers to and from the dealership when their vehicles are being worked on.

Today is the first day it has rained hard since we got it back so it will be the first test of whether or not the roof still leaks. It hasn't in the sprinkling that has been up to now.

The starter and battery seem to be working fine, though. We're going to give the van a long run today and go down to the farm we buy our beef from. Since DH ended up getting the extra weeks we don't have to pinch like I was afraid of, so we are going to buy some beef for canning. Having canned beef is such a time saver for me and very convenient when I am sick. Beef stew is so easy to make with that on hand.

We have been going through our canned potatoes pretty fast so I am also going to go out to Safeway this weekend and use some of the gift cards to buy several pounds of organic potatoes to can. I much prefer having canned potatoes on hand since they don't sprout. Less waste that way. And they can be used for everything, mashed potatoes, fried, hash browns, casseroles, stews.

We have gotten presents bought for DH's mom and dad, DD, me, DH, and some of DS's. We still need to buy for SIL and youngest niece since DH never did get around to talking about not exchanging with them this year. We also need to get our wrapping paper out of storage and bring it home.

I am still pretty tired and sinus-y, but a lot of the virus seems to be passing. Just wish the exhaustion would go. It makes it hard to do things or be enthusiastic about the holidays.

No, not really. But DH and DS flew to Portland today. They should be back home in a couple of hours. DH needed 500 miles to attain gold status on his frequent flyer program and did a companion fare for DS who would have lost his miles if he hadn't flown this year.

Gold status is pretty important to DH since he flies every 2 weeks and it frequently gives him upgrades to first class which makes everything so much easier when you are 6 foot 3 and broad shouldered. He also gets free digiplayers and headphones, better food, and if he wanted, free alcohol.

It didn't cost too much and they get to spend a father/son day. It's a clear day today so the view from the plane window should be pretty great.

They'll have a meal out in the Portland airport so will likely spend about $30 there and then parking for the day is $12. All in all, about $500 for DH to maintain his status and get his perks. Since one upgrade to first class would be about $1000, and he generally gets them 12 times a year for free with his gold status, that is a bargain.

$2000.00 BoA VISA
__400.00 Mom's Utilities
___22.00 HoA Dues
___50.00 Garbage (holding tank for January)
___75.65 Internet
__144.00 Water/sewer Old House
__800.00 Van Loan (includes extra principal)
--------------
$3091.65

I've got almost everything paid for the month. I will have a chiropractor payment of $225 in a couple of weeks, need to pay $1000 on the loan payment to Mom, and buy Christmas presents. A few medical bills and prescriptions will need to be gotten, but we're in good shape for that Then I just need to pay the the early January bills. We are in good shape due to my careful savings.

$1000.00 Loan to Mom (Nov. payment)
__417.00 AMEX
___29.13 Electric (Old House)
___47.92 Phone (Old House)
___45.30 Life Insurance DH
___44.66 Life Insurance Me
___71.41 Car Insurance
___48.75 House Insurance (Old House)
___41.16 Security System (Old House)
__186.00 Storage
__400.00 Groceries (Major stock up)
--------------------
$2331.33

I am still figuring out what to do with the rest of it. I have to pay for PT tomorrow and I'll probably send some to the Emergency Fund and the rest will go to next week's bills and some Christmas shopping.

$250.00 AMEX
$400.00 to Mom for her utilities
__46.00 Salmon and canning jars
$100.00 Emergency Fund
__29.06 Power Old House
__47.92 Phone Old House
__75.65 Internet
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__44.66 Life Insurance Me
__74.41 Car Insurance
__48.75 Old House Insurance
__41.66 Security Old House
$186.00 Storage
$100.00 Property Tax Fund
$100.00 Propane Fund
$450.00 December Money Fund
---------------
$1789.41 Total Money Out

I do have a few other things that will be coming out of this paycheck, but they aren't due for a while so I will likely lump them in with next week's payday report unless I get the bills before next Friday. I will be buying the kids winter coats and umbrellas. I will be buying hay. I've got a couple of medical/dental bills to round up, too.

Yesterday we dug up the potatoes. We had planted 15 pounds of organic seed potatoes and our yield was 83 pounds, so a bit over 5.5 pounds per pound planted. While that is a good yield, I now know that we will have to plant far more next year to meat our family's needs for the year. We can easily go through 5 pounds of potatoes a week.



The baby rabbits are doing well. They are 3 weeks old and growing very fast. I am happy to report that all 19 are still alive and kicking. You just never know with kits and it is common to lose a few along the way. Rabbits have a fragile immune system which is why they have such a high birth rate and frequency, so the species will continue.

I do have one kit with an eye infection. It is pretty bad, but it does finally seem to be starting to improve. I bumped up treatment to 3 times a day instead of twice and it is making a difference, although there is still more stuff coming out of the eye than I have ever seen, that is after soaking it long enough to get the crusties off and unseal the eyelid.

I had to spend $30 on vet supplies, but it is worth it. If I don't do the work now, the rabbit will end up blind in that eye. I know that as a meat rabbit he doesn't have that long of a life, but I want the life he does have to be as good as possible, so fixing the eye is a priority to me.

I'll leave you with a cute, short video of the kits nursing:

http://youtu.be/oHp_MOx6tVg

and another short vid of what some of our odd potatoes looked like:

http://youtu.be/EVY2QZMVdD0

$8940.22 Beginning EF Amount
+__10.00 Weekly Deposit
-----------
$8950.22 Ending EF Balance

We got the roof and the ceiling leak repaired. The roof cost $160 and the ceiling cost $20 for his time since we had all the supplies on hand from the last time we had to do it.

The buyers have an inspection scheduled for Wednesday. We've got the permit application in and paid for ($80.70) for the wood stove. Apparently the people who put the stove in before we bought it never had it permitted when they put it in, so now we have to do it. Not that big a deal, but you'd think our realtor back when we bought the house would have caught that then. Or maybe the WA state laws have changed since then, who knows?

The only problem with that that I foresee is that there is only one guy who checks the wood stoves for three counties, so it might be a while. Hopefully it will be before the closing date, though.

Not sure when their bank will do their appraisal for the loan. Hopefully not too long. I'd like to know one way or the other. They do have way more than a 20% down payment though, so hopefully if the bank does think it is overpriced it won't be too much of an issue. Zillow thinks it is worth more than we are selling it for, so hopefully their bank will, too.

I know that they want to move in as soon as possible, so hopefully they will stay on top of things.

I am trying not to worry that it will all fall apart, but I'm not so good at that. And I hate living in limbo. It drives me right up the wall.

I am so tired. My body does not want to adapt to the new routine. I can't seem to get to sleep before 2 or 3 a.m., the sleep I get is surface sleep, not restful at all, and then I am having to get up at 7. And then after the kids get off to school and I take care of all the animals, I can't get back to sleep for a nap. I don't understand it, because I've been asleep by midnight pretty much all summer.

School is going great for the kids so far, though. They are both really enjoying their teachers and classes. And it is super nice to have the day to myself. Even if I can't manage to nap.

The garden is going gangbusters. The green beans are starting to produce, but not enough for canning yet. I think I may end up buying some this weekend and then if I have any of my own for canning it'll just be additional. Next year I will plant a lot sooner. Things just kind of got away from me in the spring and I didn't get going soon enough.

I plan on getting 40 pounds of tomatoes this weekend, too. While my tomatoes produced, it has never really been with much. The most I could can at any one time was 3 pints. I just ended up making spaghetti sauce and freezing it instead. But I do want to get some diced put up and maybe make a batch of ketchup. The Indigo Rose tomatoes have been fantastic. I am not one for eating raw tomatoes usually, but these ones taste sort of like melons with a rich tomato flavor added in. I will grow them again, along with the Russian Moskovich, but I will not grow the other two varieties I bought again.

I have some great zucchini, leeks, sweet meat squash, green onions, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi. The cukes are slow, but I'm getting 2 to 4 a week. I have more peppers coming but don't know if there will be time for them. I hope there will at least be time for them to be green if they can't get all the way to red.

On the spending front, I spent $90 at physical therapy today and $55.48 for a tank of gas.

I am expecting babies sometime between tomorrow and Sunday. I've got 3 pregnant rabbits due to kindle. I hope all goes well. Tomorrow is day 30. My rabbits have gone anywhere from day 30 to day 33. Average is 31 days, though.

Two of my Barnevelders are laying eggs now. They are about half size, but are getting bigger. They are cute, perfect little eggs. All of the ducks are laying now and Addy's eggs are finally full-size. I am getting 1 to 2 chicken eggs and 3 to 5 duck eggs a day. I sold 2 dozen duck eggs earlier this week for $5 a dozen. I am selling enough duck eggs now to pay for one bag of organic layer feed a month. The ducks and chickens go through a bag about every 2 weeks.

Tomorrow is payday and I am very glad of it. I've got a lot to get done. It'll be nice to be able to get most of it out of the way without the kids underfoot.

We went school clothes shopping today. I am exhausted. And I only went to two places. My husband took the kids shoe shopping by himself and they each got a pair of tennis shoes. I had physical therapy. Afterwards we went to Joe's Garden and got a bunch of produce that I'll be putting up.

Then we went to Good Will. My daughter found 2 blouses, a pair of pants, and a belt, and my son found 2 t-shirts, 1 pair of jeans (Calvin Kleins shockingly) and 2 button down shirts (he is so preppy) that looked like they had never been worn. I found 4 blue bowls just like the set we've broken most of and my husband found a metal pirate ship that was gorgeous. It was such an impulse buy, but at $8 I really didn't feel like saying no. He does so much and asks for very little.

After that we went to Kmart and did the bulk of their clothes shopping. We'll still need to find more jeans for my son, they only had one pair in his size that fit right, and they'll both need sweats when they show up in the stores, but otherwise we got everything we needed except winter jackets. We spent around $500 on clothes and $62 on shoes. Ugh. My son had basically grown too tall for all of his clothes, though. He would have needed them even if we were still homeschooling, though I would have spread the purchases out more.

By the time we finish buying school supplies, lunch boxes, backpacks, ASB cards and year books, we'll probably have spent $1000. Double ugh.

$1000.00 to Mom for Loan
$1500.00 to BoA Visa
___55.46 to Paypal
___90.00 Physical Therapy
__130.00 Animal Feed
___80.00 Canning supplies and an electronic timer
___90.00 for buying potatoes/peppers/onions for preserving
___15.38 medical
___48.60 Phone (Old House)
___75.65 Internet
__144.00 Water/sewer (Old House)
___96.56 Prescriptions and OTC medications
-------------
$3325.65

We also ordered 3 new rabbit cages this week and 12 urine guards. It came to $221.35 and they are supposed to arrive on Monday. Hopefully, they will.

$120.00 Physical therapy
$300.00 Groceries/animal feed/canning suppies
$757.82 Van loan (plus extra)
__27.88 Power (old house)
_100.89 EF
_100.00 Property Tax Fund
_100.00 Propane Fund
__20.00 Dues Fund
_400.00 to Mom for utilities
__89.95 Medical
_164.24 Vision (Glasses payment, 3 months same as cash)
__54.35 Baker Lawn Care (Old House)
----------------
2235.16

We have decided since it is so hard to get up to the old house right now and because the weather has been constantly in the mid to high 80's, to hire a guy to mow the lawn at the old house when it gets out of hand. So about every 3 to 4 weeks. He did a good job and he lives in the area.

I didn't do last week's payday report, so I am going to combine it with this weeks, and just do one big one.

$1500.00 BoA VISA
__272.00 AMEX
_1000.00 Loan from Mom
__400.00 Mom's utilities
__100.00 Emergency Fund
__125.00 HoA Dues
___30.64 Electricity (Old House)
___48.60 Phone (Old House)
___75.65 Internet
___55.25 Garbage Two Months
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__225.00 Chiropractor
__180.00 Physical Therapy (2 sessions)
__173.68 Medical
__225.00 Chiropractor
___30.00 Prescriptions
-------------
$4540.82

I also spent $75 on feed and hay for the animals and about $500 for groceries.

Yesterday I spent $34.36 on dinner. It was 85 degrees and I didn't even want to set foot in that end of the house, let alone the kitchen. I hate not having AC here. Even if we only used it on days like this it would be so worth it. Today I have to make dinner, though. I'm down to $10 in my eating out money.

Yesterday I got 3 eggs and today I got 3 more eggs, so the total of eggs I've gotten since the ducks began laying is 29.

I do not know if I will get any berries picked today. Nothing was picked yesterday either because of the heat being so bad. Today is only supposed to get up to 77, but it already feels like it is going to be the same as yesterday. I will try this evening though, because stuff is ripe.

My first tomato is almost ready. I have plans for it, too. It isn't very big, about the size you make when you touch the tip of your index finger together with your thumb, so I will be dicing it up and using it in omelets along with some homegrown green onions and some cheese. I am looking forward to that. Growing it is fun. Eating it is better. My first cucumber is almost ready, too. It'll be nice to have something from the garden that isn't leafy and green.

I am hoping to barter some produce with a lady who makes goat cheddar. She raises her own meat and eggs so I can't barter with that, but she said she was open to produce. So far I haven't had enough of anything to barter with, but hopefully I will soon. She doesn't sell it, only barters for the things she needs. I really like that idea.