How to Piss off an Army Wife

This is list increasingly becoming the theme of my life, especially with Obama's "The troops in Iraq will be home by Christmas" speech, and all the holiday gatherings have ensured that the frequency of me being asked these questions have increased, but most especially #3. (All you non-military folks "home" means United States soil, it doesn't mean the soldier's place of residence, you've got to read between the political BS and look at the perspective of the person speaking if you want to really know what is really being said. I know I've been doing this for much longer than most of you, but if you've ever paid attention to politics you know you have to figure out the gist of things from the flubdub.) I don't mind answering it every once and awhile, but 5 times, in 15 minutes, for four consecutive days? Seriously? I might as well call everyone to attention whenever I go anywhere and say, "Listen up, here's the latest on what I know concerning when my husband's coming home..." so I can move on with my life and talk about things that are grounded in this world, not the world of political games. However, I understand people want to know things, so I'll keep answering these questions, but I would request that you please avoid numbers 1 - 3, I'm liable to "go off at any moment" if I have to deal with those three questions again. If you must ask me a question, I would love to answer #6, #9 (anyone who has ever read the clauses in life insurance knows why I want to answer this), #11, and #12 over and over again, I've got some good come backs for those all saved up and I'd like a chance to hone them before he gets back. :D

How to Piss Off An Army Wife:
1. Try and relate to her by saying how you know just how she feels because your husband is always away on business.
2. Be sure to ask her when her husband comes home if he's done with the military or if he has to go back.
3. Every time you see her ask when her husband is coming home.
4. Tell her how hard it must be for her husband to miss everything in his kid's lives while he's away.
5. As soon as you find out her husband is deployed take it upon yourself to tell her exactly how you feel about the war and how WE shouldn't be over there.
6. Follow that up by asking how she feels about the President.
7. Look surprised and say, "I don't know how you do it, I could never LET my husband do that."
8. If she's pregnant be sure to ask if the military is going to send her husband home for the birth.
9. Tell her she should really consider getting additional life insurance since her husband has a good chance of getting killed.
10. Remind her how lucky she is that her husband gets all that extra tax free money when he's deployed.
11. Ask her how she can be faithful for 15 whole months and if she worries about her husband cheating on her.
12. Inquire on whether or not her husband has killed anyone.

In an attempt to try to get me to blog more, I'm making it a goal to blog here every week about the money I save my family by being a stay at home mom. My goal is to do this for an entire year.

Let's start with this week.

Laundry cabinet:
I found a show room cabinet for $18, by modifying it for use as an upper cabinet (it was a base cabinet), making a curtain with scrap fabric instead of buying doors, after additional supplies it cost $25. The cheapest cabinet I found for this project was $60, labor to install it would have been $100. Total savings $135. The time it took me to do this is the same it would have been to have a bid done, then to have it done.

Brake & Rotor replacement:
On the same day I did this myself, my friend paid $300 for someone to do it for her. I paid $130 for parts. Total savings $170. It took me 1 hour, she waited 2 hours for her car to be done.

Dishwasher repair:
My dishwasher experienced repeated power failure. I removed 3 screws and the kick board, tightened some loose wire connections and had the dishwasher going. To have someone called out to my place: $75, not to forget I didn't have to wait for a repair guy, so I saved money on my power bill by not having to wash dishes by hand. Total savings $75.

I only ate out twice this week, so I saved at least $20 by cooking meals instead of eating out (low ball estimate).

I bought boneless skinless chicken in bulk for $1.49/lb instead of $2/lb saving $10.20.

I bought an online deal for having my safety and emissions done for $1o, savings $40.

I babysat for my sister every weekend, for at least 4 hours a night, for 8 consecutive years for free (and still do 12 years later when she needs it). As such, she and her kids now baby sit for me for free when I need it. I used them twice this week for over 6 hours, so that saved about $25 in baby sitting costs.

This week I spent $25 on a high chair (one on legs) from IKEA instead of spending what the average American spends on a high chair. Savings $35.

Also at IKEA I found cheap curtain rods that fit my huge front room windows for $10/piece. Previously I had spent $20/piece for our smaller bedroom windows. Savings on 2 curtain rods $20.

Military discount on my daughter's shoes from Payless was $1.30.

Membership gas rewards at Mavrik was $0.22

This week I also finished making my Halloween costume. The materials for it cost about $20, this is a shirt, pants, gloves, shoes, hat, and mask. This saved $45.74 compared to buying this in a store.

Diaper pail at a thrift store for $8. Savings $21.

Total savings for the week: $601.46

This week alone, when you add child care savings, I have already saved more money by staying at home then I would have made by working.



As this is my first day to do this I will calculate now how much money our family saves in a year on care costs for my child by me staying at home. The average day care here costs about $850/month for an infant, I cannot find the costs for a bilingual program, but I'll just add in $50 for bilingual, even though that's probably an under estimate (I'm bilingual). So $900/month for 12 months is a savings of $10,800/year. The last job I had before having my daughter paid, after taxes, $1200/month, which would have barely covered child care costs.

I also feed my 10 month old what I'm eating, I just make adapt it so she doesn't choke. That is a savings of about $45 a week by not buying baby food. The yearly savings of this is $2,288. I breast feed, which saves about $200/month. Total yearly savings on baby food and formula is $4,688.

So, between October 17, 2011 and Oct 17, 2012 I will have already saved $15,488 on the cost of raising my daughter.

With my husband deployed we were able to lower the interest rate on 3 of our loans/credit cards which saves us about 14% on our interest rates. This will save us about $30/month for the remainder of his deployment. He has at least 2 months left in this deployment, so I'll add that $60 of saving in now and adjust as necessary.

I will attempt to keep track of everything I save (including the interest savings as credit cards/loans get paid off early, if this occurs), but as calculating gas costs for separate trips would be a nightmare I won't add that in, but I probably save hundreds of dollars every year by combining most/all of my errands into one trip.

Running Savings Total (includes cost of food/child care savings for one year): $16,149.46

The Trap has Been Set

The trap is set, and we wait. Yes, that's right, as with this same day last year (not that you would know, since I'm a bad blogger) I have announced on Facebook that we're pregnant, again, you know, even though our baby is only 4 months old. This is what I put as my status update, "What happens when a married solider gets R&R in February? That's right, he gets a Halloween baby. I guess the whole, "breast feeding isn't a reliable form of birth control" thing was true after all. Too late to listen now!"

Last year, when we announced we were expecting baby #1, due on Thanksgiving day, on April 1st, 5 people believed me. The fact that so many believed was astonishing, considering that we've pulled this gag at least 3 times a year for 5 years. Can you blame us though? Let's face it, when you know what one or more of your LDS family members are going to ask you every time they see you after you've been married for 6 months, you have to make it fun, otherwise you want to scream and move across country, without telling them. :)

"So... When are you going to start having kids?"
"Well, we're pregnant now, we've just been keeping it on the down low."
"Oh?! When are you do? That's so exciting!"
"We're due in about....oh...22 months, Lela's really an elephant in disguise."

So, last year we bucked the trend, we told the truth on April Fools Day. Maybe we redeemed ourselves on the baby front, showing our family and friends that we can be honest about being pregnant, but I hope to squash any ounce of redemption we've gained because I want to always keep them on their toes.

So, the trap has been set, the bate is on the trap, and now's the fun part, because now we wait...

2008 Recap

Sam and I haven't been up to a whole lot this past year. Dec 2007 we moved in w/his sister to help her as she went through a divorce. He was finally hired at the Utah State Prison and started March 31, we were so excited that he finally achieved the first part of his dream of becoming an investigator. I worked for Discover Financial Services from the end of January to the end of April, when I was hired as a nanny for a family in Kaysville. We had some problems with our ex-brother-in-law during the summer, but we were able to resolve those issues so no harm would come to anyone in the house. September brought us around to so unexpected events. Firstly we went looking at puppies, just to look, and ended up buying 2 parakeets, Molly and Petey, (we couldn't have dogs). Secondly an increase in rent came around, so we decided it was in our best interests to move into separate places. Sam's sister and her kids found a nice little 3 bedroom apartment and we began the process of house hunting. We expected to be into a place within a month, so it came as a surprise when we ended up at Dolly's for 2 months. Even though we got discouraged and had a number of contracts fall through it was all worth it to find our nice little condo in South Salt Lake. We moved in in Dec 2008 and finally are almost settled. We just need to figure out how to get rid of some excess stuff so we can free up our spare room. :) We've made it nice a cozy. It's not perfectly organized and will never be in Better Homes and Gardens, but it's functional for us and it's a nice change.

In December I made a turkey for the first time. It was the best turkey I've ever had, I may be biased, though. It had great flavors and was moist. In November I made rolls for the first time, and though they were really huge, they were good. Basically, since I haven't been swamped with school work, I've been able to challenge my culinary skills and I'm finding I am a really awesome cook. Amanda and Mike come over all the time and we love cooking for them. We had some of their friends over when we received the best compliment ever, "You're really good cooks. You should open a restaurant." Very flattering, but our skills need to be honed a bit, especially mine.

Now we're back in Salt Lake and we have 2 running cars we're seeing more of our friends and getting more done. We're hanging out and no longer feel like the Logan Lepers. We try and have a date alone once a week and have M&M over at least twice a month - usually it's more. With Sam's new schedule, 12 hour with rotating shift every week, it's gotten harder for us to see each other, and to spend time with family, but we're only in our second week of this new schedule, and it will get better. Once we've got it down I'm sure this blog will become unimportant, as we may have time to get on the phone and chat with everyone!

The only other thing that's new in our lives is that I am now the Treasurer for our HOA committee. Right now we need reform and with new blood I'm sure we'll change things for the better. Get a better sense of community, help everyone to be more courteous and neighborly. We're hoping to stretch our budget to accommodate any problems, make improvements and add in monthly get togethers.

The only thing we're hearing about another deployment is for 2 detachments from Sam's unit in 2010. For those who want to know, if his detachment isn't called up, but they do ask for volunteers, he will be going again. No doubt about it. It's his job, even if he is only a Reservist, and we know that it means serving even if you don't have to, especially when you do want to, so you can improve life for others.

On baby-watch news: we still are waiting, no matter how many rumors are going around (most are started by us lol). However, Mary is due at the end of April, Sarah is due at the end of March, Sam's brother and his wife are due in August, I think. As for Dolly, she lost Lazero at 24 weeks. Her water broke at 20 weeks, and was hospitalized in the beginning of January. We don't know the cause of death, but we know why he died. If he hadn't gone when he had, and if Dolly hadn't had a C-section she either would have died or would have been in the ICU without knowing why. It turns out that, even though she was on mega antibiotics, she got an infection. No one knew it was there, there were no signs until she went into labor. Everyone was sad, but we all thought we weren't as sad as we should be, because Lazero became our hero and we will always be grateful for his sacrifice because it means our sister/mom/wife/daughter/cousin/aunt is still with us to lead and guide us.

Overall, life is treating us well. We're learning so much and having a blast with all our new opportunities. I'm trying to get better with this whole blogging thing, but as I can't even write for myself regularly, it's an up hill battle that I'm happy to face head on.

Attack!

This blog is to make sure everyone is kept up to date about what's going on in my life. I shouldn't be to busy to call everyone all the time but I am, so there. *raspberry* The only person who really gets the most updates is Grandmaflea, but that's because she's the grandma.
The update for today is.... I am under attack! Sam is throwing clothes at my face as he rummages through dresser and the closet for clothes to wear. Jeans shouldn't make contact with my head, ever, it hurts.
The attack probably will continue later but with new people. We're bringing Xavier and Xander up to spend the night! I couldn't be more excited. Those little boys are going to be fun, even if they do attack me sometimes. They've never been here, so it's going to be an interesting night. Maybe it'll get Sam and me to bed before 3am, that would be nice.