Moving!

Um, probably anyone who reads this blog already knows this, but we are MOVING TO IOWA!  I'm pumped and horribly sad all at the same time...

So, Jake and I are thinking that our move date will be 3 weeks from today.  We have been semi-planning "eating out" our fridge so that we don't waste too much food.  Jake and I started communicating on gmail chat since he is currently at work.  Here is our conversation.  It was amusing.

Me: I just counted your string cheese.
Jake: Nerdiest statement ever written on the internet (and that's saying something): "I just counted your string cheese."
Me: I noticed you have more than I realized.  You have 40 left, and we only have 21 days left, so you should be averaging 2 string cheese's per day.  That should make you happy.
Jake: I just might eat non for the next couple of weeks and then gorge myself. :)
Me: No, then you will have constipation.  Grossness.  Constipation= more gassy.

Also, because I'm still grieving that this was our last fall in Colorado...

Shopping wins!

For $9 at garage sales, we got:

A Dave Matthews Band CD
A Jennifer Knapp CD
Sweet Home Alabama DVD
Unbreakable DVD
Orange County DVD
Jenga game
Create It Lego game (still in the plastic)

Then for $7 at Old Navy, we got:

Swimming trunks for Jake
A polo shirt for Jake
A pair of jeans for me

Boom baby!  At Old Navy I had $30 worth of gift certificates for using my Old Navy credit card outside of the store, and a 25% coupon.

I think I'm most excited about the Lego board game.  It's WAY cool.  I tried to look it up online and it seems like it's fairly difficult to get the game and it could be kind of pricy if you were to get it.  Score.  We paid about $5 for the game, and it hadn't even been opened.  Jake and I already played it twice and it's seriously awesome.  I'm sure our kids someday will love it too.

P.S. I looked at how much we would spend on everything at WalMart/amazon, etc. and I think our total garage sale purchases would have been about $80 total retail.  That's an 89% discount.  Good day.

P.P.S.Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to add in that at the garage sale where we purchased the movies and cds, they gave us a bag of mini peaches from their tree too.  How nice is that?

The end of the cleaners

Also, I have more to say.  Do you remember this post?  The whole dilemma with them is finally over.  Go ahead, check the date of that post.  It was a whopping 8 months ago when I took that dress to the cleaners.  I finally have deposited a check and made sure that it went through.  Here's the short story of what happened:

I took my dress in.  They ruined my dress.  They said they could fix it by cleaning it again, even though it meant that I wouldn't get to wear it for the event I was cleaning it for in the first place.  Cleaning it again did NOT fix the dress.  I talked with the manager, who insisted it wasn't their fault and they would send it in to the "lab" to discern where the stain came from.  She never called back, so I nagged for a while and she eventually told me they lost the dress.  How convenient.  Then she said she would replace the dress.  Then she wrote me a check for $30 less than the amount she was supposed to (it was a really random amount).  Then I told her I was going to write a certified letter to the owner and hoped I wouldn't have to take her to small claims court.  Then she talked to the owner and probably told him the truth and he wrote me a check.  The amount was the amount of the dress but they didn't refund me for the $2.50 I paid to originally clean the dress.  I decided that was probably the best I could get and didn't want to spend any more time with them.

The end.  My gosh.  The end.  There were so many phone calls in there and unreturned messages and lots of empty promises and lots of employees telling me how bad of a manager she is.  So much time to get money back.  This was the FIRST time I've ever taken anything to the cleaners.

My takeaway: never buy anything that is dry-clean only.

Moving soon...?

I've applied for so many jobs in Des Moines that I've lost count.  I mentioned to Jake how the last time I was really gung-ho about applying for jobs that I had a spreadsheet about which jobs I had applied for and when.  That could have been a good idea this time around so that I could follow up with people, but I kind of just don't care.  If they call me, then awesome.  If they don't and I forget about those jobs, then awesome.  I don't want to stress myself out about the ones that don't care about me.  I've already had multiple phone interviews and had multiple offers.  Just not good ones.  It does make me feel good though when I get offers within 10 minutes of the interview.  Too bad it's not for something I really want.

I also very much enjoy having phone interviews.  I mean, seriously.  How convenient is it that I live in a different state and can't therefore get dressed up and get all nervous and come in for an interview?  Yesterday I hadn't showered or put any makeup at all and was sitting at my computer while we chatted.  I had my resume right in front of me and a paper with answers to typical questions they may ask.  Kind of takes off pressure when I can just look down at the paper which has all of the answers I typically forget.  Boo ya.

I just hope that means that I will get a real offer and a real job soon so that we can move. :)  With me quitting a couple of jobs recently and needing to start the school year job, I'd really like to just not start and move to Des Moines instead.  Gonna be tricky though since I start my school year job tomorrow. Ha!  Well, hopefully soon... we technically have until mid-December before I start to wig for sure.

Cheap yumminess!

Btw, these are very yummy.  We had them for dinner tonight with some taco-seasoned chicken.  Cheap and delish!

Here's the link to the recipe. Burrito cups

Unsettled

Today was my last day at TJ for the year.  I'm not sure if I'll be returning next year (still waiting on the job front), so it was kind of weird saying "goodbye for the summer, but also maybe goodbye forever."  I'm supposed to officially start my summer job on Monday, so I have less than a week before it all starts up again.

Jake is waiting to hear about a job and if he is not successful there, then he will be continuing the job search.

This is totally not where I expected us to be at just under 5 years of marriage.  There's obviously a reason for the season that we are in, but I'm very ready to be settled.  The problem is, even if Jake gets this job it is only for one year and then we will be looking for jobs all over again.

Someday, oh someday, we will be settled in for the long haul.

Boys and Dogs

I haven't blogged in a really long time.  From the looks of my previous post, some of you might be hanging on the edge of your seat to know whether or not Jake passed his exam.

As if any of you didn't already know about 2 months ago, but he passed. :)

Also, for the record, I want this dog someday.  South African Mastiff, otherwise known as a Boerboel.  Other mastiffs don't look that cute when full-grown (most have really droopy faces), but this one is amazing.  Also, their personality and habits sound delightful.  (We're not just going for the looks; we've been thinking about this dog for about a year now.)

Also, don't tell anyone but there is a house we drove by one time that had a dog that looked similar to this one in their driveway.  We recently found the house again so that we could drive by and look for their dog.  We saw it again today.  I hope they don't start to think we want to rob their house or something.  It's just an amazing dog.

Jake's exam!

This whole post is make sure that everyone is aware that Jake has his comprehensive exams on Saturday (2/25) and that you all should be praying for him.  He's super nervous and with it being a 6 hour exam, it's going to be pretty intense.  It's all written and has 3 hours of exam in the morning, then gets a lunch break, then 3 more hours in the afternoon.  His hand is going to hurt quite a bit.

If you all could be praying for:
1. Nerves
2. Clarity of thought
3. Diminished pain in his hand/wrist which could distract from #2
4. Him to realize that he can only do his best, and that life will go on if he has to retake any/all of the exam. :)

Thanks!

Oh, and p.s. here is the post I wrote way back when I was nervous about comps.  I think I was hiding my nerves a bit.

Deal of the month

I have been waiting for a deal on my hair gel/shampoo/conditioner since that stuff costs so much.  The hair gel costs $2.97 a pop and I go through one about every couple of weeks.  Pricy stuff.

Long story short, I found a great coupon and asked my father-in-law to send me a bunch more of so I could get a great deal.  I combined the coupons with some awesome in-store deals and paid only $11.14 for all of this:

Except for the fact that we had a gift card to this grocery store from the church who give us some free food, so we paid NOTHING for it.  Let's look at the savings.

Normal Cost: $55.64
Cost to us: $0

Score!  Thanks to my father-in-law and some luck, I'd say we got a great deal. :)

Challenges

We've been having a pretty rough couple of weeks.  We took our car in to get an oil change and came out with $4200 worth of damage we needed to fix.  That amount was basically all of our fund we have been saving up for years for a second car (which we desperately need).

I spent a lot of time crying last week and alternating being mad at/having peace with God.  It's really hard because I have been meticulous about budgeting since we need another car so badly, but apparently this is God's way of stripping the control that I have been holding on to.  I don't like it, and I don't know what is going to happen next, but I'm going to have to trust God (gotta love it when you're forced to do something that you know you needed to do in the first place).

Anyway, I had been planning to write about a cool savings that we got before this whole car thing, and I think I should still write it.  One more post to come.

Fridge Art

I recently took down this picture from my refrigerator... (I colored it in my math class.  The kids didn't really need my help the whole time, so I decided to participate as well.  Note the comment at the bottom from the teacher!)

...and put up this one.

I feel like the schedule is hard to see, but it's the best that I could do.  We now have a plan for the semester!  Notice how much time Jake will be spending in the library.  Also note that I am only scheduled to work 40 hours a week!  (I told Dick's that I needed some time off.)  I will still babysit on a non-consistent basis, so that'll bring in a bit as well.

You will also note that we are exercising 5x per week (and hopefully will be doing an 8-min ab workout every morning).  I haven't done much exercise in the last couple of weeks because I am still battling being sick (I had a sinus infection that turned into bronchitis, and I've had that for quite some time now), so starting this schedule is a challenge.  Jake and I played racquetball yesterday, and it was super fun.  I had a blast.

And to answer your question that I am sure you were thinking (ok, maybe not): yes, I am VERY sore.  Racquetball really took it out of me, but I LOVE it. :)

The cleaners

I have a dilemma and I'd like some advice.  I got a dress to wear for a wedding, but it is dry clean only.  I haven't ever taken anything to the dry cleaners, so I was really nervous to take it in.  I had been talking for a while before taking it in about how I was nervous that they were going to ruin my dress.

Well, we took it in because I had worn it previously and I was going to take it home to Iowa to wear when we went to Circa 21 (which was VERY fun by the way!).  We went to pick it up the day before we left for Iowa, and there were some dark markings all over the dress that looked kind of like grease or something.  I complained about it and was told that it was probably from the cleaning solution and that they would run it again to see if they could get it out.  However, that meant that I didn't get to wear the dress in Iowa since it wouldn't be done in time.  I was bummed, but hopeful that they would be able to get the dirtiness out.

We got a call that the dress was done and that a manager had personally looked it over and it looked good, so now that we are back in CO we went in to pick up the dress.

There are still spots on it.  How in the world did the manager not see them?!

So now we have to wait until Friday until another manager is going to be in so that we can talk with them.  What I want to know is what kind of liability they have to replacing my dress.  I still have the receipt from purchasing it and the original tag.  We didn't have to sign any papers when we brought the dress in to the cleaners agreeing to anything.  The manager originally told us she would reimburse us for the cost to clean the dress and give us store credit, but if she says that again I don't know what to do.  I don't want store credit because I obviously will not be going back to this same store.  I also won't be wearing the dress again if they can't get the stain out...

Thoughts?  Anyone with prior experience in this area?  I hate when my first experience with the cleaners confirms my fear!