Chest Sprain & Stomach Bug

I feel like I have abandoned my blog.  I meant to update the site last weekend, but I was in too much pain.  Last Thursday, I started feeling some weird pains near my chest/breast bone.  When I went to urgent care on Monday morning, the doctor said I more than likely sprained my chest.  Yeah, don't ask.  I'm not exactly sure how I managed to pull that off, but I did.  It's starting to feel better now.  At least I can pick up Carleigh without feeling major pain.  I only get a nasty pain when I lift her up too high.  I'm just glad the chest pain wasn't anything more serious.  I can live with a chest sprain.

Yesterday I missed work due to a stomach bug.  I started feeling like crap on Thursday night.  I felt very nauseated, but didn't vomit until Friday morning.  Not to go too far into detail, but I just could not stop throwing up.  I was going to go into work at 8:30am instead of 8am, but the vomiting would not let up.  I hate missing work.  At least we are not swamped and on mandatory overtime.  We have been low on loans, so I know I didn't miss too much excitement.  Today, I am feeling much better.  It would have sucked to have been sick all weekend.

We have been going out to our house for the last couple of weeks to track the progress.  The foundation has been poured.  Exciting!

It's funny how tiny the house looks at this point.  As you can see from the house next door, the houses are anything but small.  The house should be done by the end of August or first week of September.  Just one more summer in this poorly insulated apartment.

New Home Purchase

We finally did it! Heath & I signed the purchase agreement for a beautiful home in Mountian's Edge. We decided to go with new construction. The technology for today's homes is amazing. We bought a Beazer home. We went with a two story home, but the laundry room is upstairs next to the loft. That will make laundry much easier on my knees. I don't have to run up and down the stairs with a load of laundry six times a day. The home is 1,843 square foot, three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, and a two car garage. I am so excited that we can do new construction for our first (and hopefully only) home.

We went with all black appliances, saddle oak cabinets and baltic brown granite. We are picking out our flooring next weekend and plan to go with a nice hardwood floor for the downstairs. Carpeting is okay for upstairs. We are not a fan of carpet in the high traffic areas. The carpet in our apartment looks like crap even after having it professionally cleaned. Our second choice for downstairs flooring is ceramic tile.

The master bedroom has a huge walk-in closet and the second bedroom (Carleigh's room) has a walk-in as well. Her closet won't be as large as ours though. It's a nice sized walk-in closet for a soon-to-be three year old. She's so spoiled. I never had a walk-in closet until I moved out of my parent's house.

Our yard is on a premium lot, so we will have a larger backyard. It will be big enough for a swing set, small garden, and some patio furniture. The home is also situated near the end of the cul-de-sac. We are two houses from the very end. If we walk past those two houses, we walk out onto the walking trails for the resident's of Mountain's Edge.

We looked at Lennar & KB Homes as well, but they could not match the value of Beazer. We are very excited with our purchase. We don't have a date when construction will start yet since our contract has to be approved by our sales persons boss. Once the contract is approved and permits are good, construction will take about four months.

We hope to have the house before Halloween so Carleigh can go trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood.

Moving on, we still have overtime at work for the time being. Our queues are getting lower though, so I'm sure OT will be cutoff for a little while. I hope to get 20 hours of OT in this week before we are cutoff until it gets busy again. We want to keep piling up our savings account for anything we want to purchase for our new house!

Learning Phonics

Carleigh was pulled aside for some one-on-one with a teacher at daycare. The teacher showed Carleigh letters to see how much she knew. Carleigh got all of the letters correct on the first round. She was the only kid in her class that got them all on the first try. The teacher was impressed and knew it was time to move Carleigh onto something a little more advanced. The teacher suggested Carleigh start a phonics class. So this week, Carleigh will be starting her phonics class two days a week with two other girls in her class. I'm very excited for her. She catches on quickly. I give thanks to Preschool Prep Company. I bought Meet the Letters, Numbers, Colors and Sight Words 1 & 2 from them so far. I plan on purchasing Meet the Phonics: Letter Sounds next. These DVDs work wonders. Carleigh loves these movies and asks for them all of the time. I'd like to buy her the workbooks too.

I'm still working a lot overtime. I put in 16 hours of OT last week and hope to do the same this week. My original goal was to do 20 hours of OT, but I cut it short because I was getting worn out. Turns out getting up at 3:30am and working until 5:30pm can make you sleepy by the time Thursday rolls around.

Tomorrow, I'll be faxing our updated loan application to our loan officer. We are hoping to have a pre-approval letter by the end of this week. We would like to start putting offers in on the houses we really like. The sooner we get out of apartment life, the happier we will be. I just want my own private yard and no shared walls. Of course, that also means a cheaper monthly payment compared to what we are paying here. This place is robbing us every month.

Influenster Love VoxBox

Influenster is a community for trendsetters. When you register at Influenster, you are able to unlock badges that fit your lifestyle. The more active you are, the better chance you have at receiving a VoxBox. The VoxBox is a complimentary package chock full of goodies.

Recently, I received a Love VoxBox from Influenster. It was really cool that I qualified for this VoxBox since I had just joined the site. My Love VoxBox came with the following items:

• Gillette Venus & Olay Razor
• Kiss Nail Dress - Fashion That Sticks
• Stash Tea Herbal Tea Sampler (18 pack with 9 flavors)
• Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk Creamy Devotion Bar (as well as a coupon for $1/2)
• Truvia Natural Sweetener

The first product I tried out of my Love VoxBox was the Gillette Venus & Olay razor. I enjoyed using this product because I didn't have to use shaving cream. It was a huge time saver for me. It left my skin feeling smooth and there was no need to use lotion after shaving.

Of course Heath & I dug into the Ghirardelli chocolate. I'm usually not a fan of dark chocolates, but this Creamy Devotion Bar was to die for! I'm in love. My Love VoxBox included a $1 off two Ghirardelli bars coupon, so I will definitely be picking up some more Gourmet Milk Creamy Devotion Bars in the near future. Maybe this coming weekend if I can hold out that long.

I haven't used anything else out of my Love VoxBox other than the first two products mentioned. I'm going to take my Stash Herbal tea to work with me tomorrow. There are nine different flavors:

• Acai Berry
• Blueberry Superfruit
• Chamomile
• Cinnamon Apple Chamomile
• Lemon Ginger
• Licorice Spice
• Mango Passionfruit
• Peppermint
• Wild Raspberry Hibiscus

I'm looking forward to trying the Acai Berry the most. I'll probably make myself a cup of tea at 6am. Is that too early for tea? I guess it doesn't matter when you're working 5am-5:30pm.

The Kiss Nail Dress product is a stick on nail designer. I'll use these once my nails have grown out a little longer again. They are very 'bling' looking without spending a fortune at the nail salon. I may be working a lot of overtime, but I still don't want to shell out my extra money to get my nails done when I can just do them at home for free.

Last, but not least, is the Truvia zero-calories sweetener. I'll use my Truvia to bake Fudgy Brownies for Carleigh & Heath next weekend. I've never baked with Truvia before, so I am curious to see how well the brownies turn out. We probably won't even notice a difference.

Sign up at Influenster today. Become an active member for your chance at a VoxBox.

Working Overtime

It's been a few weeks since I updated my blog. We had family in town last week, so that kept me busy. Now that I've been released from training, I have unlimited overtime available at work. That amazing opportunity has me working 12 hour days. It's mandatory eight hours of overtime, but we are able to work as much as we want. All of this extra money is great. Who is going to complain about more money?

For this month, I wrote out a monthly budget and to show exactly where all of my money was going bill wise. I scheduled payments for bills out of each weeks pay. With that, I was able to pay off two credit cards. When I originally wrote out my budget, I did not include overtime pay because it was not available at the time. Now I'll have a lot more money to put into savings at the end of the month. And that is all from my pay only. Heath's pay for the month will give us a nice pile of cash to throw into savings as well.

We are saving for a house. We are using our tax return to go towards a down payment, but that alone was not enough money. With the tax return, this month's savings and all of my extra overtime, we should have enough money for a down payment in 4-6 weeks! We have decided to stay in Las Vegas/Henderson permanently. We wanted to move back to Illinois to be closer to family, but that state is a tax hell hole. No thank you.

On another topic, I am a member of Influenster and recently received a Love VoxBox a week ago. It was full of all kinds of goodies. I will have a couple of review posts coming either later this afternoon or tomorrow. I look forward to sharing what was included in this box. I encourage you to join Influenster too. It's free!

That dirty four letter word

Our family was enjoying a nice bacon & egg breakfast this morning when Carleigh decided to blurt out a dirty word. Carleigh's been in the habit of repeating everything she hears, but nobody at the table had said that word. It shocked me when Carleigh shouted, "FUCK!" Our windows were open. I just pray none of our neighbor's were walking by during Carleigh's F word yelling. She said it about four times and then stopped. Heath & I really weren't sure how to react to it. Of course we told Carleigh not to say that word, it's a bad word. There's just something about a two year old cursing that makes you laugh though. She has no idea what she's saying and since she's getting us to laugh, she kept yelling it. I told Heath we had to stop laughing and act like it was no big deal and she would stop. When and if she uses that word, or any other curse word again, we will have to use a time-out or some other discipline.

I'm sure someone reading this thinks Heath & I are bad parents, but let's face it, kids are going to say bad words. They don't know it's bad. They just heard it at some point in time and decide to repeat it. We are just very thankful we weren't in a store, restaurant or daycare! I'd be so upset if Carleigh used any curse word in front of her classmates. It was embarrassing enough having her shout that word in our own home. I do not want to ever hear her do it in public.

The cold from Hell

On Friday evening, I started feeling ill. It really didn't catch me by surprise since Heath & Carleigh were both sick. Now I have it and I missed almost the full day of work today. I made it a whole hour and forty five minutes into my shift before I decided to leave. It sucks. I hate missing work. I've been so out of it all day. My nose feels clogged, the cough makes my chest hurt and I have random headaches. My voice is barely there. The only medicine I have is DayQuil/NyQuil which has been working wonders.

I'm going to see a dermatologist tomorrow morning. My skin always has redness no matter what kind of cleanser I use, so I'm going to see what it is. I'm also annoyed with the mild acne I still get. I'm hoping the dermatologist has a great cleanser that will actually work. I don't care what price I have to pay.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day! Heath & Carleigh gave me some delicious Ghirardelli caramel chocolates. On my way home from work, I stopped into Walmart for tissues and a chocolate cake to share with Heath & Carleigh. It was a simple Valentine's Day for us. I'd rather not celebrate with a cold though. If I was feeling better, I would have made a homemade dessert rather than buying one.