Tuesday, August 28, 2012

On Being Poor

I don't want to stay poor my whole life ( I want my children to have opportunities, have a real house, etc.), but I have learned a lot by being so. I know people who's parents have bought them houses (while they were in school), and others who's parents paid for all of their schooling, rent, extra everything and  never worked. While my parents were certainly helpful (helped pay for rent when I lived in Corvallis, bought groceries sometimes, loaned us money, helped with car troubles, etc.), they did not do everything for me and I am grateful to them for it. 

 I worked several jobs through out college. I am grateful I had the opportunity to work, go to school and participate in many extra curricular activities. I had a very busy and fun college life. Tyler and I were married most of our undergrad careers and did struggle finically a bit, but being in school is not quite like the "real world". 

We are currently in a sort of waiting place. Tyler needs prereqs and clinical hours before he can apply to PA school. He is busy working full time and taking those prereq classes. While his job pays a decent amount, it is by no means a job we would want to have forever. We often are just scraping along. I am not going to lie, this can be hard. There are so many women who graciously put up with their husbands going through years of school, living in basement apartments, sometimes having over five children before he is done with school. These women should get some sort of award. I met one the other day and all I could think is: this lady is incredible. There have got to be days where she thinks about everything they do not have, but she was so positive about it. I am in/going to be in a similar situation and Elanor will probably be six by the time everything is said and done (and hopefully we will have more kids too!). While this is hard, I am so grateful for this experience. 

I have started to learn about money. I am terrible about budgeting and have never done it before. I am starting to and I am trying to find ways to save money. These "skills" I am learning are sure to come in handy. I have also learned how to do so many new things!  Such as :

1. I make my own laundry detergent, get recipe here. It works great, by the way!

2. I make my own hot dog buns and they are so worth it and so yummy! Recipe here.

3. I make homemade bread--I'll share the recipe with you sometime!

4.  We did cloth diapers, which you all know---and we did have to learn quite a bit about them.

5.  I make my own tortillas. This recipe does not call for baking powder, which we did not have at the time and wanted tortillas. We liked the recipe so much that we kept using it even after we bought some baking powder.

I am planning on making my own liquid dish soap and hand soap as well. You can check out my pinterest for some recipes, if you are interested.

I probably would not have made many of these things if necessity did not require it of me. I have learned and am learning so much. While I do look forward to having a house, Tyler having a real job, and some extra cash for trips around the world, I am so glad I have experienced being poor not only to learn new things, but also to better appreciate what I had growing up and what we will have one day.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Potty Training: the tutorial

I thought my title was funny, especially if someone pins this on pinterest. Maybe it is just me. Ha. This is a bit long, but if you are interested here is our little potty training tale:

We bought a potty when Elanor was 11 months old after reading Diaper Free Before Three
{We bought a Baby Bjorn potty and we really like it. It is simple, has the back and only has two parts. It is super easy to empty and clean, plus for when we have boys it has that little guard thing. It was about $30.}

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Beautiful Oregon

So, we are back and I will now be a much better blogger. We had a wonderful time in Oregon! We saw a lot of family and friends and saw and did many fun things. I am going to try and keep this post brief and mostly show a ton of pictures of everything we did.

We spent the first half of the week with my family:

We went to the beach (Elanor's first time!)

Elanor with her "Nan" (my mom).

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I have been watching the Olympics....

.....thus no blog posts. I have also been incredibly lazy about blogging, simply put I just have not felt like it. Sorry, folks. I have a lot of posts all written down in my head. I have a few recipes (I even took pictures), some Elanor stuff, a few mom posts/Elizabeth's ideas/rants BUT we are also going out of town on Friday (to Oregon) and will not be back until the 19th!  So, I will try to squeeze in a few posts before we leave.  

How about this be my Elanor post (because I know everyone has been missing her), yes? I thought so.


She has been wanting to do a lot of this lately:
As in, she does not want to sit in her high chair and would prefer to sit at the table. I only let her do this sometimes, because she is still a messy eater.

 Pardon the crazy hair... I believe she had just woken up from a nap and insisted putting this princess dress on (the one I promised I would put picture up of).