Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!

This will most likely be an all out gush session on how amazing I think my husband is...but enjoy the pictures of him and Claire! It has been 10 wonderful months of being a father for Chris and sharing his heart with her has been a blessing.

The best feeling in the world is knowing that Claire has the best daddy! Since day one, Chris has been in love with our little precious girl and sought to protect her from everything. When he is away for work, he asks for pictures to keep him up to date on how she is and constantly wants to call just to hear her over the phone. He was made to love our family and we look forward to the future kids we will have together and teaching them all the fun things. We both miss how cuddly she used to be when taking naps and sleeping in our arms only happens on the rare occasion these days (usually at church).

I know he doesn't dislike matching, but he has more fun with some outfits than others especially when it is on Halloween and other people are dressed up too. But wearing Claire is much better than just matching her and it is fun to have her fall asleep in her baby carrier! Chris enjoys reading her books and putting her to bed now that mommy is doing her running late at night to avoid the summer heat. He has been supportive throughout the last few weeks of training, but has loved being pampered for Father's Day!

Other things about Claire...she just had another tooth break through this week, it was one of her top front teeth. Chris heard her clicking them together which was different from the other sounds she has made in the past so we felt her top gums and there was a little tooth poking through! She has learned some new sounds like 'wa wa' and when she is upset she can make the 'ma ma' sounds. Not much to report for mom, so we will end it here by saying we love our fathers and are grateful for all that they have taught us and done for us! Thanks for reading!

Simple and Easy Budgets

Update:

Our little family is surviving well this past week and looking forward to the next where Claire will be turning 10 months! Can't believe time is going so fast with her! She is learning at a breakneck speed how to get what she wants and uses the cutest facial expressions to show her feelings. If you ever over hear us calling her a little terrorist, know that it is with the most love and adoration we do so because we enjoy being terrorized by her. The way she can get into all the things we thought were unreachable is astonishing and I've had to learn very fast how to baby proof things. We try to contain the mayhem to the living room by creating walls, but she understands that we can go over them and often lets us know how unfair it is that she can't follow.

We had a lot of fun this weekend in the Pocatello run series! Chris was so great to help out by pushing the double stroller with the babies and running the 5K which gave my sisters-in-law and me the opportunity to run the 10K. I have been training with my Rexburg hill for the past two weeks but was not prepared for the Pocatello hills on the course! The last half mile was a brutal hill that got me the worst and I found myself needing a walking break half way up. Still made good time and finished just over an hour, but didn't win anything in the raffle...

Simple Budget

When I created my template, I had a few things I wanted to include that I didn't see many other people using, and I wanted it to be simple. I've included the template I use at the bottom if you want to get ideas, and to see what I'm talking about when describing it. I started by making separate incomes for Chris and I and included the other column because we had taxes come back and I didn't thin of it as just one of our incomes. My expenses are labeled with the major things and also leaves room for more in the future when we eventually start having more every month. Recently we've had more expenses I want in a row on it's own like passports, applications, traveling, etc because I can look back to see how much these things cost us.

My column includes a expected budget we want to keep and then what was actually spent, then I also included the difference column. Knowing the difference in what we spent and what we had planned to spend was something not many templates I saw did, but I wanted to see if we could pay attention to which thing we were over spending in. I mostly do my budgets the first few days of the month which means as soon as I finish the last months, I fill out our expected budget for the next month. I like getting an estimate of how much we might make and might spend to see if we need to be conservative on groceries or one of the other categories that are flexible.

 I use the notes section a lot and almost wish it was bigger the variable expenses like groceries, gas, fun, and other. I even have to spread to empty notes areas sometimes when doing the groceries line depending on how many times I had to shop. On an ideal month, I am only shopping once a week but there are also things I sometimes forget and have to make a short trip for since half of my brain is taken by Claire now. I've been using this template for over a year and not a lot has changed, the basic template is the same but some of the words are different in our expenses. I'm very satisfied with the way we do our budget now and hope some of my explanation can help others start budgeting because it can be easy! You can use this type of budget as a print out or a document on the computer so do what you want!

Monthly Budget    _________20___

Income	Budget	Actual	Diff	Notes
Lara
Chris
Other
Total
Expenses	Budget	Actual	Diff	Notes
Rent
Electric
Car ins.
Health
Dental
Phone
Tithing
Groceries
Gas
Fun
Savings
Other
Total
Results

Another week in our life

Late night movie! We took Claire with us to the drive in on Monday because Memorial day gave free movie tickets to military and their family. She was good for most of the time until right before she fell asleep, not having her own bed was tough on her but she got to sleep in daddy's arms instead. It wasn't normal for us to be out so late on a day I teach the next morning but it was important enough for us to have a good (free) date night! I didn't know we weren't allowed to bring our own food...which is a stupid rule any way....but I made some popcorn at home that we brought! I even made too much and had some left over after the movie.I was tired the next day of course, but it all worked out because Claire was too and slept a little longer than she has been in the last few days.

Speaking of that adorable child...she is doing great! Sometimes I can catch her looking sort of grumpy but even she makes it seem cute because she is just curious about life! I've been trying to keep her entertained throughout the day by changing up what we do at different times of day and making a plan instead of just going with her moods. I think her nap times have become more regular and predictable and she doesn't get bored and angry at me for what seems like no reason. I've made a simple schedule that only includes when she is fed, goes down for naps, walks outside, and other small play times. I hope to get better with having other things for her to do when she gets older and has more need to learn be entertained. For now it is working the way I wanted it to and I'll stick with it as best I can to get the hang of it.

A new month means more BUDGETING! The beginning of every new month is the time I like to do my budgeting for the last month because everything feels complete and has gone through the system for the most part. I usually wait for the last of it to filter through so I'll be doing it this next week and showing you the very simple budget I do to keep tracking our spending. Not much else to say about it or anything else that happened this week...not as exciting as the rest of our month, but it was nice to have a weekend off from going somewhere.