Our Family’s New Addition…. and I need advice :)


Here’s Sophie!! She’s such a sweet addition 🙂

What a Sunday. It started for me at 5am waking up to Sophie pooping in her crate…. me not knowing, because it’s dark and letting her walk out of the crate instead of carrying her. It was gross, and made me want to cry, but we dealt with it.

She’s honestly done pretty well today on going to the bathroom outside…. I’m pretty proud! I must say though that dogs have HORRIFIC GAS! EWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! The kids have been having an absolute ball with her. They all run around the house chasing each other and having fun. Ella is hilarious and Jayden is so happy.

So, I’m funny in a way that I don’t like change. I hate it actually, and when you throw something new in the mix I feel kinda down. I’m feeling that way today and I’m not sure if it’s Sophie or if it’s a decision that I think we’re going to make. It actually could be a mixture of the 2.

A while ago I talked about an opportunity that my Grandma had offered us, which you can read about HERE. Basically I just never talked about it with her and made up my mind that it’s not doable. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to live in a *&it hole like Ely for 2 years. Just not happening. Well, she called today saying that she really needs our help, and I know this. I am the manager of this mobile home park there that is her’s, and I know that there are many things that need to get done. Things that I can’t make sure are getting done from Oregon. So, her new proposal is that we come for 6 months. This is a lot better than 2 years and is actually doable. If we leave when Jayden gets out of school then 3 months of that will be summer, in which we can take lots of little vacations with him. I won’t need to actually be in Ely for the entire 6 months, we can do 3 weeks there, 1 week on the road…. or something like that. The next 3 months after his summer break I’ll home school him until we return to Talent.

So, what’s my husband to do about work when this is all over? What are we going to do about insurance since I do have a Cardiac baby? This is why 6 months just might be okay. Gino can take a leave of absence from Home Depot for up to 6 months (I believe this is the max he’s going to check into this). At the end of our journey he will be guaranteed his job back at Home Depot, with no change in position or pay. Nice huh? For insurance we just pay Cobra and we will all remained medically insured.

The Perks?

  1. We get a 6 month vacation from life with guaranteed jobs after we’re done.
  2. Get to live for free
  3. All money I get paid just gets saved up
  4. We get to travel
  5. I get to spend time with my Great-grandma before she passes away
  6. Did I mention we get to travel????
  7. We will get to help my Grandma out in ensuring that the park is running smoothly and looking it’s best.
  8. We’d get to take the kids to the Salt Lake Temple…. Gino definitley needs to see that!
  9. All the above isn’t too bad right?

The Downfalls?

  1. Well, first off I’d be leaving all my friends that I’ve learned to love so much.
  2. I’d be leaving the beauty of Southern Oregon
  3. I would miss out on the first 2 1/2-3 months of my nephew’s life
  4. I’d be in the miserable town of Ely
  5. We’d have to change wards, which is something I really don’t want to do, but I think we’d be okay here. We are a very strong family, we’ve been through it all…. literally, and I know that we can make it through about anything. I know that we can stay strong in the church, and if Gino has issues with it I’ll just stay strong and set the best example I can.
  6. Jayden would miss out on the first month of school…. luckily here they don’t start school until September, so if we came back in October I’d only be homeschooling him for a month.

I think we might do it. We’ve been planning on moving out of this place anyways, since we’re growing out of it. So, in June we can leave and come back in October to a new home…. maybe even one we’ll own 🙂

I had amazing feedback on my last post regarding this topic, and I appreciate it all so much, so I’m begging for some here! Looking at the perks and downfalls, would we be dumb not to do this?

Getting Out of Debt is IMPORTANT!

It seems that nowadays in this world of ours we are solely leaning on credit. Credit has taken over so many people’s lives, and destroyed families. We learned young, and I’m so thankful that we did.

When I turned 18 my mailbox was flooded with approved credit card applications. I applied for probably every single one of them, and got approved and then went shopping. Unfortunately, Gino also lost his job, so then we lived off of our credit cards. We were a mess! Luckily, we were able to do a Debt consolidation and get our lives back on track.

Since our Debt relief we have found a new way to live, which requires much planning together and sacrifices. Our new motto is if we don’t have the cash to buy it, then we can’t have it. We actually have made a dream list and work towards the things that we want. We make sure that we budget our bills, our eating out, our groceries, our fun, basically anything we make sure that it’s budgeted before we do it, or buy it.

There is a wonderful website that will help you with financial advice and help if you are in need of Debt help. BillIQ is a great website, and it’s free. Can’t beat that, right? We all love free, especially if we’re in a sticky financial situation. If you’re over your head they can help you to Consolidate debt , and from personal experience, it’s a great way to go.
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It really is a cool community!

Our economy has just been going downhill. Gas prices are starting to make things hard on everybody in our nation. Who wants to go on a vacation when you have to pay $4.00 per gallon? Heck, I don’t even want to drive to the store or even start my car for how much we’re paying for gas. It’s getting harder and harder and it’s time we start looking for ways to bring in a little extra money that can help us through this crisis. Or maybe you’re making the perfect amount of money every month, but you don’t have any leftover for savings for vacations or college funds. I will testify that what I’m about to tell you about will help you out with these things.

I’ve talked about SocialSpark before, but this was before my blog was approved. I have now had the opportunity to actually start taking opportunities and writing about them on my blog for money. I’ve been choosy and try to pick out opportunities that in some way apply to my life or my blog. I don’t want to scare all you readers away with a bunch of advertisements! I feel privileged that through SocialSpark I am able to continue to do what I love while making some extra money.

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If you’ve been interested in making money off of your blog to survive in this crazy economy of ours you definitely should check out SocialSpark

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Never go to the bank again

I don’t know if I’ve talked much about my job, but I work at home. I am an accountant and currently am managing my grandparent’s books for their businesses in Nevada from my home in Oregon. I love it! I love that I am able to stay home my kids and still do the job that I love. There are many downfalls to the system that we have going on here. I would have to say that the most major downfall of our system is the banking. We have checks that are flowing in all throughout the month. The banks for these companies are in Nevada and the income is being sent to me in Oregon. The procedure that we’ve been using is I send deposits off to Nevada. It can sometimes take up to 5 days for the deposits that I send off to clear the accounts. That can be frustrating. Especially when people are calling asking why their checks haven’t cleared.

I came across a solution and I think it is definitely something that can work wonders for us. I had no clue about this, but there has actually been an amazing system online with a company called DepositNow since 2004. What they can do for you is make it so you no longer have to leave your house to go to the bank, or in my case wait up to 5 days for my deposits to clear. You simply scan your checks with one of their check scanners, which they sale for 1/2 off of what they retail for, and they deposit it electronically.

If you’re interested in this, or if you know your company might be interested in this please reference my blog and you will receive $25.00 off of a check scanner!!

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A Possible End To Bad Credit

When I first turned 18 my mailbox was flooded with credit card offers. I did what I probably shouldn’t have done and applied for every offer sent to me. Gino lost his job when our son was 1 week old. It was the worst situation that ever could have happened, but it did. Thankfully, I was approved for every offer I applied for and we basically lived off of credit cards for 3 months. Not to mention, we also had done some shopping before he lost his job. We were in a mess! I ended up doing the most irresponsible thing and letting it all go. A couple years later I went back and paid most of it all off, but now I can’t get approved for ANYTHING. I actually was considering going into my bank and starting up a secured credit card where I put down $300.00 and use that as a credit card just so I could start building up my credit.

Living with bad credit is hard. It makes it so that you can’t live the life that you should be able to. We all need to own a home at one point or another. That isn’t an option for us right now. I haven’t even ordered a copy of my credit report, because I’ve been scared. I don’t know where to start. We can now afford our life, but we have this demon hanging over our heads, and I don’t like it!

I just received an opportunity to talk about a website on my blog and when I went to review the site I was actually pretty excited. It’s called Bad Credit Offers They offer bad credit loans and they offer bad credit credit cards. I think that this might be the perfect way to start. It’s better than just sitting on a bunch of bad credit, right? Baby steps… this is step 1.