It's hard to imagine that it was just 1 year ago that we decided to start looking at homes and that the following month we sold our Duchesne home and moved to this beautiful home in Roosevelt. We love love love this home. It has so many features that I LOVE! Like the crawl space with built in shelves for food storage and lots of room for storage of things like baby clothes and items we don't need but want to be protected. I LOVE the beautiful landscaping and the playground with the sandbox and slide and swings keeps the kids entertained for hours every day. I love that there is shade in our backyard somewhere from mature trees, no matter what time of day it is. I love that we have a guest room for my dad and other family to stay in. I love that I have an office workspace. Michael loves the garage. We love the pasture with water rights and alfalfa, clover and grass. We love our firepit area and cement slab that we can use for whatever we want. We just love it all. We love this beautiful property, but I find myself wondering all the time if we over-committed ourselves.
The last year has been pretty tight financially. That's nothing new, we've always been kind of tight, but since moving to this new home, we've had lots of new expenses keeping up our property and fixing things up the way we need for animals. We built a new shed, chicken coop, and goat pen for our animals. We bought a riding mower to mow our massive lawn. We had to buy 2 new hives to home our swarms of bees. We have to pay for our water rites. And all of our bills are more expensive- gas, electric, water, internet, etc. It seems the cost of living keeps creeping up, but our income is still relatively fixed. We ended up spending about $8k this year getting our property set up for the animals. And then we bought Michael a $25k truck by selling my CRV and using savings. Now I drive his 2007 Ford Taurus with like 160k miles on it and that shakes when you go 60MPH. We really probably should have waited on the truck, but Michael never gets anything for himself ever. And I know it means the world to him, so I'm glad he has it. It's his dream truck. But between that and all our new property expenses, now we've only got about $4k in liquid savings and that makes me a little nervous, especially with how up and down Michael's hours have been this year. We've used our savings a little too freely I'm afraid and now that it's gone it makes me feel a little vulnerable. We don't have a lot of debt, and that's good. But we also don't have money for unexpected expenses, and that can get stressful when you need new tires. Or a bed for your 3 year old. Or a new table. Hoping that situation changes soon and we can build our savings back up.
Plexus has been an answer to our prayers, both with my health and with our finances. I now make about $1500/month with Plexus and that has been amazing- but a LOT of hard work and stress. The last couple of months, it's been really slow for Michael at work and he's had little to no overtime. Almost half of our income from his job comes from overtime, so that's been stressful. If it hadn't been for Plexus, we wouldn't have been able to pay the mortgage. It's been a lifeline that was much needed. But has also put more pressure on me to perform. I know I can excel in this business, but it places a tremendous amount of stress on me, and takes quite a bit of focus and time. Everything else becomes second priority, and that's hard. That's a sacrifice I don't want to have to make for long. But I do believe this business is an answer to prayers for our family, and that it's also something I'm supposed to do to help others. So I'll keep chugging. But man, it's hard to be both a full-time mom, and then use my already very limited personal time- all of it- working. It is paying off though.
I won a cruise with Plexus last month, but decided we need the money more, so decided to cash it out for $500 instead. We are taking the Self Reliance Personal Finance class, and that has been incredible. We're trying to align our priorities in our finances with the Lord. We do pretty well with tithing and not going into debt. But we have room to improve with savings and living within our means. I'm hoping that my income will help to pay off a few small debts we have- $2000 on the credit card, $1000 for an ER visit for Michael, and about $2500 for dental expenses- for Levi's crowns and for my sleep appliance. Once we're out of debt, we hope to use my income to build up our savings again, and eventually purchase a family vehicle. Then we hope in the long run to be able to get Michael into a job where he can go to church on Sundays consistently, and where we can move to Bicknell to be closer to his family and grandparents. The Lord has helped a lot already. Just have to keep going.
So we are now expecting #3. I'm about 8 weeks along. It took us about 6 months to get pregnant, and the month we did get pregnant I was taking Femara. We thought we were having twins for a minute there- and talk about overwhelmed. I've never been so relieved to hear that I'm only having ONE baby!! I used to think multiples would be fun. But man, after having Levi and Alida 18 months apart, I wouldn't wish twins on anyone!! I am so GLAD I'm not having twins!
I'm SUPER tired right now. I still function pretty well most days. But around 2pm every day I just crash. Super inconvenient for Michael because that's when he wakes up and we usually have dinner. But lately I've had to sleep. I'm just glad he's here so I can rest. I hope I get more energy after the first trimester. We're due about the middle of April- so I've already decided I'm not planting a garden and we're getting rid of the bees. Time to streamline unnecessary stress. There will be another time for those hobbies! Plus, we keep getting bee stings- the last one was on Michael's eye and his eye swelled shut and we ended up in the ER. No more of that. They can keep their honey. We'll be beekeepers in another stage of life.
Our dog JC also had puppies (black lab pups) and Lily had 2 litters of kittens this year, but we took all 7 kittens and 3 pups to the shelter. I just couldn't handle all the poop and didn't have time to sell them online. Got the cat fixed finally- now we need to fix the dog. It's a time for streamlining everything.
Anyway, life is good. I feel like I'm in this stage of "pull out all the stops and do whatever it takes to earn some financial freedom for our family", but it makes me kind of sad that I can't focus on my kids. They spend a lot of time playing by themselves and watching cartoons, and I still think they get plenty of time with me. But I wish it was my best time, and not just my leftover time, like it is most the time. I'm already maxed out taking care of cooking, cleaning and just keeping life and the house not a TOTAL disaster. Add on top of that the stress of sales goals, end of months and end of quarter deadlines, and working my tail off to rank up and get promoted. That means that my kiddos and hubby don't get a lot of focused mom time- and I never get time to truly unwind either. All the earnings go straight to living expenses and paying off debt, so not a lot of time to celebrate or take care of myself. I feel like we're all pulling together hoping this Plexus business helps us achieve our family goals- so it will be worth the short term sacrifices. But I hope that it is not permanent.
My dad just came up for his annual Labor day trip. He flew in and drove out from Bountiful. Every time I see him I feel so aware that he is aging. And for some reason, I feel a scarcity of time with him. I feel like I won't have him for long. I don't know if that's just because I'm paranoid from all of the unexpected deaths I've had in my life the last few years, or if it's intuition. But I'm really trying to soak in all the time with him that I can, and letting my kids spend as much time as they can too, because I really feel like I won't have him for long. We had a blast with him. He took us to the Dinosaur museum in Vernal and bought Levi a dinosaur excavator- that was probably the best thing that's ever happened in his life. He LOVED it. We also went up into the mountains in Uintah canyon where Michael proposed 5 years ago. Then we took him down to Bicknell to see the ranch and just enjoy southern Utah. Went to Capitol Reef and got a pie at the pioneer house and had a little picnic. Played with the kids in the stream there at the park and just enjoyed our time together. Pam and Chad were great hosts of course and we had amazing home-made food and vegetables from the garden. Dad was in heaven. He loved it. It was so nice to spend time with him.
Now summer is over and Levi is starting pre-school tomorrow. He's so advanced in his language skills that he'll be in with the 4 and 5 year olds. I'm excited for a little free time with him gone 2 hours twice a week. But I just agreed to watch the twins and baby of a friend of mine while she teaches....it should only be 10 hours a week, and we could certainly use the money, but I'm a little stressed about it. I'm hoping it will help me be able to have focused time with my kids when they are here, and when they leave I'll be able to focus on my business as well. We'll see.
Levi's scheduled to get stainless steel crowns next week. I'm scheduled for a consultation about jaw surgery on Tuesday. We hit our deductible with Micahel's last ER visit for the kale smoothie, so now we're doing all the medical stuff we can this year. I guess we'll max out our deductible for next year as well though with the new baby, so I guess there's no hurry. Alida also got tubes in her ears. She hasn't been talking as much as she should and we wanted to make sure it wasn't because she couldn't hear. She seems to be saying more things, and understands us well, but still only uses a few words. I guess she'll talk when she's ready. She sure is cute and affectionate. And determined. And exhausting. Love that little girl.
Well, I really could write so much more, but I am exhausted, even though I took a nap today. Gotta love pregnancy. I've been off work all week so I'm feeling stressed about everything that's been piling up- all the new customers that need my help, all the old ones that need encouragement, needing to find more new ones and focusing on finding and developing business leaders. I'll feel so much better when I can stop procrastinating and get some work done instead of just thinking about it.
I'm hoping we'll get a little relaxing getaway for our anniversary, but we'll see.
Hopefully I'll get to write one more time before the end of the year!
