My Return

It's been a little over a month since my dad passed away.  I took a break from the blog because of everything going on in my personal life.  This blog may seem a bit jumbled.  I'm just trying to squeeze in everything that has happened this past month.

When I found out of my dad's passing, we loaded up our Jaguar XJ and began our road trip to Wisconsin.  We were going to fly, but last minute plane tickets for three people and an infant was astronomical.  The air suspension in the Jaguar started acting up once we were in Kansas in 20 degree weather.  Our desert car just can't handle the cold.  We had to stop our trip early in Iowa because the suspension to the car was completely jacked up.  It was awful and I didn't think we'd make it to my dad's funeral in time.  We were three hours from my hometown.  My best friend loaded up her SUV with her two kid's and drove out to Iowa to pick the four of us up.  At this point, we had been up since 5am the previous day.  We were all exhausted.

We didn't get much time to stay in town because we had to get back to Iowa and drop the car off at a dealership on Saturday afternoon.  My dad's funeral was on Friday.  My dad's Lincoln LS was at the dealership getting routine work done, so we went to pay for the work and take it to Iowa.  We got back to Iowa Saturday afternoon and had the Jaguar dropped off to look at.  We didn't find anything out until Monday because the dealership was closed on Sunday.  When we found out the dealership (Ford) was too afraid to work on the Jaguar, we loaded up the Lincoln and started our trip back to Las Vegas.  We just didn't have the time to sit around in Iowa to look for another place to work on the car.  We were already behind schedule because we had planned to drive back to Las Vegas on Sunday morning had there been no suspension issues.

Honestly, the dealership just didn't know what exactly was wrong with the car and didn't want to guess which parts to order if they weren't going to be the right ones.  If that makes sense.  So Heath ordered the suspension kit to put standard suspension in the Jaguar instead of air suspension.  The dealership said they got the parts today, so once the car is done, Heath will fly out to Iowa in a couple of weeks to pick it up and drive it back to Las Vegas.

At this point, flying back last minute would have been cheaper.  Living in the desert, you get spoiled by your well-behaved cars that can handle regular temperatures and not cold, frigid air.  While Heath's Jaguar was sitting in Iowa, he's been driving my old Jaguar everywhere and I've been using my dad's Lincoln.

We planned on purchasing the Lincoln from my mom and selling my Jaguar once we got the other one back from Iowa.  However, my mom told me this morning that she was just going to give me the Lincoln since my sister wanted my dad's pickup truck.  It was really weird as I've never had a car given to me.  My mom said she wanted my sister & I to have something to hold onto the memory of our dad.  No one ever drove that Lincoln much anyway.  My dad was a truck driver and wasn't home most of the time to use it and my mom was afraid to drive it in the winter because it's RWD.  So whenever I was back visiting my parent's, my dad always let me take the LS.  He always said it was "my car" anyway.  He said it got driven a lot whenever I was in town, which was never really that often.  It's a 2004 Lincoln LS Sport with 51,000 miles on it.  So yeah, rarely driven.  Now it can retire in the desert climate and be driven every day.

Life is still hectic.  It's hard losing a parent.  Especially as suddenly as I lost my dad.  It was totally unexpected and not something I was ready to deal with.  I'll probably use this blog to vent and get things off my chest whenever I need to.  It is my blog after all.

Tough Times

This blog has not been abandoned.  My dad passed away unexpectedly after a short illness on February 10.  Life has been stressful and hectic.  I'll update this blog when I feel up to it and ready.

Stuffed Animal Donations

A couple of days ago, a woman made a post in a local group I am a member of on Facebook looking for gently used stuffed animals.  Carleigh has a ton of stuffed animals that she rarely plays with and figured it would be a good time to go through all of them over the weekend.  It's for a good cause after all.  As I mentioned in my previous post, my house is unorganized.  This woman making that post saved my day and gave me the motivation to clean up one area of the house.

On Saturday afternoon, I took all of the stuffed animals from Carleigh's room and put them on the floor in Amelia's room.  There was more space in Amelia's room for all of the stuffed animals.  Carleigh came upstairs with me after that and I had her pick the ones she wanted to keep.  She decided to keep all of her Dr. Seuss stuffed animals, which I don't blame her.  Those are her favorite stuffed animals and they go along with the books she has.  I explained to her that other kid's would love to have even one stuffed animal as they might not have any at all.  So she picked a bunch to give to other kids.  I think it's really important to let your kid's go through their own toys for donating.  That way you can explain to them why you're doing it and it teaches them about giving too.  It's a good lesson for our young ones.

The woman who made the post on Facebook stopped by sometime on Sunday afternoon to pick them up.  She said I could leave them outside the front door and she would pick them up without hassling us.  I liked doing it that way since we didn't have to make sure we were home.

I'm looking forward to more organization and donations in the upcoming weeks.  This whole house needs it.

Hiatus

It's been over four months since I updated this blog.  I admit that I've abandoned it because I didn't know what topics to blog about.  Motherhood and gaming has kind of gotten in the way too.  My motherly duties and household responsibilities wear me out during the day.  When night rolls around, I'm ready to unwind and play some GTA Online with my friend's.

I'm starting the new year off with a makeover to my blog.  I'm trying to make it look more "professional", even though I'm not using this blog for anything but my ramblings and thoughts.  Below, you will find the topics I plan to blog about in the upcoming days and weeks.  These are topics that will actually keep me motivated and interested in blogging.

Upcoming Topics:

• Motherhood
• Wine
• Gaming
• Cooking/baking
• Home organization
• Fitness
• Photography

Those topics alone should keep me focused on this blog.  I'm sure there will be many other topics that will start popping into my head as the weeks go by.

Fitness is in there just because I recently got a gym membership to get out of my house a couple of nights a week.  Being stuck in your house with two kid's all week is exhausting.  I need time to myself.  It made sense to get out of the house and work on my fitness at the same time.

Photography will be pictures I take around my neighborhood/city.  I'm not a photographer by any means, but it's always fun to take pictures and share them with the rest of the world.

Since my house is so unorganized/cluttered in certain areas (the pantry... OMG!), I'll be using blog posts to show my before/after pictures of how far I came.  Maybe it will motivate others who are feeling overwhelmed.  Don't even get me started on organizing all of Carleigh's toys.  It's time to go through all of that stuff and see what can be sold/donated.  She has too much!

I hope to have another blog post up by this weekend.  Probably Sunday afternoon.

Our New Family Car

Since Amelia is taking her morning nap, I figured I would at least attempt to update my blog this morning.  I've got a slice of homemade cinnamon swirl banana bread and a cup of pumpkin spice coffee.

We didn't plan on buying another car so soon, but since I had one hell of a time trying to get a hold of the school district regarding transportation for Carleigh... here we are.  Honestly, I spent an entire morning trying to speak to someone, but was met with automated phone recordings and got no where.  Since the school district waited until the last minute to send out school information, this whole transportation dilemma wasn't a surprise to me.  I do not understand how these schools can be such slackers, wait, yes I do.  They take our tax dollars and then beg for more because they don't "have any money".  If only schools were ran like businesses...

Anyway, Heath has been looking at Jaguar XJ's for awhile and really wanted one.  He found the perfect one, but we weren't sure if we wanted to spend the amount of money the dealership was asking.  Heath continued to search for other XJ's, but we went right back to the one at the dealership.  Heath made an offer and they somewhat agreed on the price discussed.  So Heath went to the bank, got a cashier's check for the amount discussed, and we went over to the dealership on Friday afternoon.  Heath test drove it and told the dealership we wanted it.  We had two different people come in to tell us that we were basically stealing the car from them.  They made zero money on the deal.  They bought the car from an Audi dealership for a lot more than what we paid to take it off the lot.  The sales manager had to call the owner of the dealership to get approval for us to even buy it at the price that we did.  Who was going to say no to someone coming in with a check?  Seriously... lol  We are now happy owner's of two (yes, TWO!) Jaguar's.

We bought a 2006 Jaguar XJ8 Vanden Plas.  Here's some picture of our new sexy beast.  And yes, this thing is a beast.  It came with the 5% tint all around.  Huge plus!  It's a long wheel base, so it's about a foot longer than my S-Type.  There is so much leg room.  I thought my car was large, but no, this new car is the actual boat.

The car has mink floor mats.  That's right, PETA.  Our Jaguar has MINK(!!) floor mats.  No one is allowed to put their dirty ass shoes in our car.  I took this car out to do my errands on Saturday.  Since I had to go to Sam's Club and Albertson's, I wanted to see just how much room this car had after I put all of the bulky stuff in it.  I might just "steal" this car to go get my groceries and Sam's Club runs done all of the time now.

On Sunday, we took the new car for a cruise through Red Rock Canyon.  It was the most comfortable ride through the mountains we have ever taken.  Amelia slept through most of it and Carleigh was enjoying the views.  We will definitely be going back up there in the cooler months to take a hike on some of the easier trails in the area.

These are just a few of the pictures taken during our scenic drive.

Now that we have our second car, I can give Carleigh a ride to/from school every day without worrying how the school district will screw it up.  I really hope things get better and the school can redeem themselves.  I am not very impressed with their track record so far.  But thanks to their inability to answer phone calls, we have a lovely new car parked in our garage.

One Car Family

Heath & I recently decided to go down to one car.  The decision was mostly made because we had one car rotting away in the garage.  We sold the GTO.  Heath's car was a two door and did not fit our family of four.  My Jaguar is a four door, so yeah, we kept my car.  Obviously!  Heath had an offer on his car about an hour after posting it for sale.  He accepted the offer and the car was gone the same day.  It was so weird to go down to one car, but really, why would we need two cars if I rarely drive during the day when I'm home with the kids?  The GTO was worth more money to us gone than keeping it.  We paid off three credit cards with the money we got from selling the GTO.  We are so much better off financially with having only one car.  We will get a second car when needed, but as of this moment, one car fits us best.  There's so much extra room in our garage now too.  No complaints!

We also recently got rid of our cell phones.  We've had T-Mobile for ten years, but over the last two months, our cell service had dropped exponentially.  We tried to work with them to get the issue fixed, but no matter what happened, it just wasn't going to work out for us.  There's really only one cell tower in our area with a lot of people trying to use it.  T-Mobile's coverage map shows us as "excellent", yet we would rarely have any service.  Heath's iPhone always showed "No Service" or "Searching" and my Galaxy S4 showed one or two bars and on the Edge network.  Totally unacceptable since we are supposedly supported by 4G LTE out here.  We had a land line hooked up on Friday afternoon.  Going down to zero cell phones was weird, too.  But really, it's saving us so much money per month not having smartphones!  We will pocket almost $200/mo now.  Seriously, saving money is boss.

Our next goal to save extra money per month is to refinance our house.  We want to get rid of our mortgage insurance.  When we bought our house, we got an FHA loan.  The mortgage insurance is on the pricey side and we'd like that money in our pocket instead.  I'll be making the phone call to our mortgage company tomorrow to see what could work best for us.  It would be nice to have so much more extra money every month.

We went to Carleigh's open house for school on Friday.  My little girl is getting so big.  She's on the school schedule that doesn't start until September, so while most of her friend's start school tomorrow, she has to wait a few more weeks.  She qualifies to ride the bus since we live a couple of miles from the school.  The only thing left for me to do is call the school district to verify the drop off times for after school.  Our school district only shows the drop off times for full days.  My fingers are crossed that they aren't doing screwy scheduling for half day kindergartners.  If they don't drop off for half day kids, then guess what?  We will be off to buy our second car sooner than expected.  Oh well.  ;)

This blog was a little bit every where and I apologize.  Heath & I shared a bottle of wine with our salmon dinner tonight, so I feel a little out of it while typing this up.  There's just so much going on here right now.  So many changes and it's just crazy.  A good kind of crazy though.  I'll update this again when I'm more sober and able to make more sense.

Homemade House Cleaners

I know... it's been awhile since I've update my blog.  While I was away, I decided to experiment with homemade cleaners for around the house.  Of course, I turned to that nifty little website called Pinterest to find good cleaners.  I started making my own homemade cleaners to save money and not smell the harsh chemicals from store bought cleaners.  So far, I've only made two different household cleaners.  A granite cleaner and a regular, 409 type cleaner.  Both have done an exceptional job at keeping my house clean.  I'll be making my own laundry detergent in the near future.

My granite cleaner is made from this recipe found on One Good Thing by Jillee, minus the essential oil.  I haven't bought any essential oils yet, but I probably won't because I don't feel that my cleaners need it.  So here's the recipe:

1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
3 drops of Dawn
Water

Every household should have these ingredients in their household already.  I really love this cleaner.  It leaves my granite counter tops very shiny.

My all-purpose/409 type cleaner was found on Macheesmo.  There are four different recipes for homemade cleaners at that link.  But I use the all purpose recipe for my sinks and toilets for the time being.  It works great, but I do want to try the Bath, Sink, Tile Cleaner recipe as well.  Here's the recipe for the all purpose cleaner if you don't want to click the link.

3 Tablespoons vinegar
1/2 teaspoon washing soda
1/2 teaspoon castile soap
2 Cups hot water

Cleaning my home has become more enjoyable now that I make my own cleaners.  Once I get my own laundry detergent made and run a few loads of it, I'll give it a review and post the recipe here as well.