2010 Journey

Okay, so all month we kept and recorded every penny spent and....WE STAYED ON BUDGET!!!!! We didn't go over any week. We are living on a straight cash budget that is with drawled every Monday-but this week we are changing to Saturday. Feels good. Our goal for February is to spend $36.00 less on eating out. Yes we have budgeted in our favorite thing to do...Eat out! February will be a costly month with my hair getting done and new tires for Jord's car, but I am hopeful we can still save %10 AND pay the extra budgeted amount to the car loan. I will let you all know next month.

#Two big change
I am making a BIG effort to get healthier food in this house. And LOWER our meat consumption. No I am not going vegetarian but just think we are eating meat A LOT. I have gone 2 days without any meat and I really can't say I miss it. Not that I wouldn't pass up a good steak mind you. I have to say though it is hard to know what to cook for dinner. Like tonight, I had some red potatoes that had to be cooked for they were about to start growing. Normally that would be a side dish for chicken but not tonight. They were a side dish to butter spaghetti, broccoli, and peaches. And the entire meal Lei kept saying what a wonderful dinner it was-broccoli included. This coming from the child who hates dinner. Buddy was not touching the broccoli but had a good time feeding himself the spag.

I also went on a trip to whole foods for the first time this past week. MADE my own peanut butter-why wasn't I doing that before!? Got some vege-dogs. That both me and Buddy had for lunch, and I would buy them again. I don't buy hot dogs ever so Lei was like, "Mom what is that?" I also bought some soy milk, vegan pasta, and some soy yogurt. These have not yet been tried. We shall see.

So anyway that was January. And I am NOW gearing up for a VERY BUSY FEBRUARY!

Me and my Dad

And 2010 Begins...

So the other day I was venting to a friend and I had stated that I loved 2007. That was my year; for reasons A, B, and C. So she says, "so make 2010 your year and get back where you want to be." Interesting thought...I have kind of played that over and over in my head and have officially decided to take her advice and do it! 2010 is going to be my year!
2010 personal goals
1. Lose the last of my baby Luke weight
2. Draw closer to my Savior by making it a priority to read the scriptures and have meaningful personal prayers regularly.
3. Follow our get out of debt plan. We should be car and school loan free by the end of next year if we try REALLY hard. This year's budget and payment plan have been planned and implemented since January 3.
I was going to list a few more but want to keep it simple, if I can do these 3 things this year I will be very proud of myself for sure. I will just replace the weight goal with a new goal when it is accomplished.

The famous coveralls

These coveralls were a gift to Kaleia about this age from my dad. They now fit Luke. The overalls happen to be the uniform worn by my father everyday to work. I can't look at them and not think of him. And yes Luke is holding onto toothpaste, his favorite toy.

von Moos Christmas Party

The second annual von Moos/Richter party was a huge hit! Thanks to Grandma Moos and Aunt Linda. I really wish I had taken more pictures of it.

Oakland Temple's Live Nativity (plus Kaleia)

We took a drive up to the Oakland Temple to look at the lights and to see the remodeled visitor's center. The lights were pretty, I thought they should have done more though. The fake nativity was gorgeous, life size, and all in white. They also did a live nativity for an hour. They read the birth of Christ found in the book of Luke and had the nativity act it out as it was being read. Afterwards I had Lei run up and take a pic. Inside the remodeled visitor center was nice. I liked the 5 min. video presentation of Christ's birth. Kaleia liked the interactive touch screen computers. You could press on a question and a little video clip would pop-up with the answers. They also had a table with many Book of Mormons laid out. There was one printed in each language, so we went on a hunt for all the languages of our family missionaries.
Jordan- French and Tahitian (Tahiti)
Max- Malagasy (Madagascar)
Spencer- Spanish (Peru)
Chase- Spanish (Paraguay)
Drew- English (Colorado)
Brad- Spanish (Mexico)

2009 Santa Pic...no tears!

No one was scared of Santa this year.

Carousel fun

Early Christmas at the Fogleman House

Christmas came early to my Mom's house this year. Sunday the 6th to be exact. We had a wonderful spaghetti meal (my Mom makes the BEST spaghetti). My sister and her husband flew in from Utah, Grandma and Grandpa Fogleman were there, and Uncle Chris and Jeannie were there too. It was a fun night full of games and presents. One of the gifts Kaleia got was this cute dollhouse from Grandma and has played with it everyday. Luke's favorite gifts have been this large light of car and this baseball tee game that is very LOUD (with no volume control button may I add). It ranks up there with the Christmas Elmo who comes out every year who sings the 12 days of Christmas.

Randoms before the procrastinated posts begin...

Lei has eczema and she is currently having a flare-up on her back. I couldn't find the special cream this morning so I was reading the back of an Aveeno intense anti-itch cream looking for anything saying "rash relief". She grabs it from me and pretends to read the back (with her little finger underlining the words) "this is not good for children. Don't put it on the back."

Buddy currently likes to spin himself in circles until he gets very dizzy and falls down...a dangerous thing I must say. Especially this morning when he has his toothbrush in his mouth.

I love when Luke pokes his head between the stair rails and calls: "LaLa!" his only words at the moment entail the names of the members of his family. Dada, Mama, and Lala.

We went and got our ornaments yesterday and Luke didn't get the Little Einsteins one, because it didn't play music. We picked him out a Charlie Brown one. It is Snoopy and Woodstock on top of his dog house. On Friday my child who doesn't like t.v. brought me the Christmas Charlie Brown dvd and grunted at the t.v. and ran and pointed to it. I put in on thinking the won't last more then a minute and he sat down and watched it twice! That is 25 minutes! Each time Snoopy came on he made his dog sound.