Good days and bad days ...

Sometimes you have good days and bad days. Lately, we have experienced a good share of both so overall, I cant complain.

The girls have started back to school with a bang. Considering the news about the flu, I would have to say we've been lucky not to have a sick kid at the house. For that matter, I guess Big E and I are both lucky not to have caught the dreaded piggy flu.

I've managed to put another couple of hundred miles under my backside traveling the state for the past couple of weeks. I've been out training people of how to use wireless networks and about comptuer security principles. I have a few more miles to travel over the next couple of weeks too.

Speaking of traveling, Big E and Brooke will be headed for Washington DC in a couple of weeks. I am going to try and convince Big E to blog a few times during the trip. Also, Big E will be volunteering at the upcoming LPGA event in Prattville. I will definitely have to get her to blog about the experience and hopefully post a few pictures.

Little E got her first paycheck recently!!! Boy was she excited about actually getting paid. I guess we will be taking a trip to the bank soon to open a checking and saving account for her.

Big E and I have had a couple of really great nights recently on account of the new mattress set. Last weekend she said we were going out to look at new mattress sets, but what she didnt tell me was that we were really going out to BUY a new mattress set. See, in my mind, there is a difference between LOOKING and BUYING. However, she decided that our backs and necks (both of which have been sore lately) needed a change. I dont know if I like the new set though ... I slept till 10:30 this morning. If the new set is going to have me sleeping late and waking up without aches and pains, how will I know if I had a good night of sleep or not?

Little E has had a little car trouble lately, so I finally got around to running the vehicle to the shop this morning (after I finally awoke). The poor little fellow at the auto shop hated calling me back about the results of the diagnosis. I listened to him talk about the necessary fixes and as he faded into the recommended fixes, I simply looked at Big E and whispered "the car is gone". I kinda felt for Mathew as he tried to gently break the bad news to me about the car. The poor fellow spent about five minutes on the phone listing out all of the things but I never really listened past the cracked head, leaking gasket and some other thing that I knew meant the engine would cost more to fix than it was worth. Now, I have to go and break the bad news to Little E. I'm not sure how to tell her that her first car is dead after only 2 and half months.

Oh well, that is the chance you take buying a used high mileage car for a kid. I guess we will have to do a better job of checking everything out next time. Of course, netiher one of us are mechanics. BUT we can, as a team, change a flat tire without arguing!!! We did learn that Firestone will inspect a car and provide a report for $20 dollars. I think we will spend that money next time.

The really shameful part is that I feel Little E tried to warn us about the big issues in time to have them resolved, but neither Big E or I actually listened to her in time. Instead, we waited until is was a major issue and with cars that is unacceptable. Gun, foot, bang!!!

Again, you have good and bad days. Today, I've had both. Tomorrow, I plan on it being only a good day. Shape your world, and if you have kids, shape theirs in a positive manner ....

Now, I am going to spend a couple of hours taking my frustration out on a few zombies and other baddies on the Xbox ....... I love the smell of fresh kills on the TV screen ........

Savings ...

Big E and I have been on a savings trip of late. Maybe it stems from having Jessica starting college or maybe it stems from Obamanomics. Either way, we are seriously trying to cut a few expenses.

So, in the vein of cutting cost, here are a few of our shopping trips this weekend...

1. Publix trip 1 - The total value of the items purchased was 34.20 (that includes the taxes too). The total amount paid "out of pocket" was 15.87. That is equal to a savings of 54%. The savings would have been a LOT better but we did not have coupons for Lucky Charms (yes, these are essential).

2. Publix trip 2 - The total value of the items purchased was 59.84 (again it includes taxes). The total amount paid "out of pocket" was 29.60. That is equal to a savings of 52%. The savings would have been a LOT bettter but we did not have coupons for milk, lettuce, taco dinners (2), velvetta cheese, or marshmellows. In fact, if we only purchased items with coupons we would have been around 78% savings.

3. Last, we made it out of CVS for only 15.33 today. For that, we managed to take home the following ...

2 Composition books with 100 pages each
2 Boxes of Panty liners
2 Revlon make up (lipstick and mascara)

Essentially, we only paid for the makeup today. In addition, we ended the day with more CVS money for next week than we started this week. All in all, that is a good CVS trip. If you aren't a CVS Extra Care bucks member, you really need to consider joining.

While that doesn't break down all purchases in detail, let me assure you that we did pretty good.

I've talked about stockpiling in the past, we are so far ahead with the typical personal items (deodorant, toothpaste, shaving and hair stuff, etc) that we have resorted to family and charity donations. We are doing really well with paper items too. To give you an example, unless toothpaste is free, we aren't buying.

We are struggling a little with some food items but only because I have concentrated on the personal items. In reality, I don't seem to find near as many food coupons as I do personal item coupons. With three girls that are going different directions, personal items are probably more important than food items.

What are you doing to save a little money? Leave me a comment with some good ideas.

A real quick one ...

Major announcement coming .....

Little E starts her JOB today!!! YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Welcome to Chik-fil-a can I help you?" will become the question of the day. I know she is excited and as you can tell, so am I. She can finally afford the gas she is burning each day!!!

WooooooooooooooHoooooooooooooooooooooo ...............

If you didn't get it in the title, let me say it again, woooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooo ...

Do you know what time it is? It's school time. That's right, its school time again and that means we are back to a normal schedule!!!!!!!!!!

I cant stress enough how much of a routine kind of guy I am. Does that sentence even qualify as English? It doesn't matter, its my blog and I will write whatever form of Stenglish (Stephen + English = Stenglish) I want to write. Back to the topic at hand, I am a routine kind of person. I know its hard to imagine that a father of three teenage daughters could call himself a routine kind of person, but with me it is true. I cant stand to be out of routine. Routine = Sanity, at least it does in my world.

Here are a few examples ...

1. I like to get up at the same time each day. Big E is working on my weekend wake up time, but its taken her 6+ years to get me past 7:00 AM.
2. I start every day with a shower!!!!!! I don't care if its a shower to go cut the grass, I will be clean and awake before I do anything.
3. I have the exact same post shower routine each morning. Those details probably should not be shared in public.
4. I take the same route to work every day.
5. I cant stand to have anything of mine moved or out of place. Dont even consider putting something on or removing something from my desk. I will hurt you .....

Now that I spell those few items out, I think the word neurotic might be a better word. Holy cow, that is only a couple of hundreds of items that I could easily jot down. Maybe that is why my beautiful bride and kids make soooooo much fun of me. I am weird!!!!

Nothing like a moment of clarity ....

Anyway, sure school starting means we have to buy school supplies, uniforms, etc. but it is all worth it. Besides, school supplies are SUPER cheap this year. Have you seen the low cost of paper, pens and folders this year? CVS has practically supplied us with half a year of supplies for FREE this year. FREE!!!!!!! In fact, we managed to accumulate enough supplies this year to denote multiple bags of goodies to charity.

Quick aside, if you aren't into CVS "extra care bucks", you need to learn about their program. Sure, CVS isn't the cheapest place in town but if you know how to use the program, it can definitely be worth the effort. I wouldn't even consider Walmart, Target or Publix for our various cleaning (human and non-human) items, makeup, toiletries, etc. In fact, with our stockpiling of items, I don't need to purchase shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothpaste, body soap and many other items for the next six or seven months.

As an update, our oldest (Jessica) starts at Faulkner University this week, the middle kid (Little E) is starting her senior year of high school and the youngest (Brooke) is entering high school. Can you imagine? I know at least two grandmothers that are wondering where all the time has gone.

We are really starting to look forward to fall football games with Jessica (Faulkner is in year two with football) and with Little E and Brooke at the high school games too. Of course, that means fall needs to hurry up and get here!!!!

Changing subjects, we have been pretty busy around the backyard lately. Big E finally broke down and paid a fencing company to come out and replace the fence along the back of our yard. Elizabeth and I have been working (SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWLLLYYY) on replacing the planks on the fence since we moved into the house but she could take it no more. The fence looks awesome!!! With the fence done, we began planting a row a Crepe Myrtle trees along the fence. I love crepe myrtle trees (and azaleas too) so we are planting a full row of them across the back of the property to ultimately created a screen between us and the neighbors. I cant wait to see the trees in a few years after they've had a chance to grow. Big thanks go out to my mom and dad for letting us dig up their extra trees and plant them here.

With all of that said, I got to go!!!! 1 vs 100 starts live in a few minutes and we are playing tonight. What is 1 vs 100? Well, you've seen the game show, but now you can play it on the Xbox. Each Friday and Saturday, they have a live show with around 30,000 people playing for prizes. A few weeks ago, we were selected to be a part of the 100 mob. I wish I had a video of Big E's reaction to being selected. Regretfully, our mob did not win any prizes that time, but we had a blast playing.

One last update, last Thanksgiving we purchased a new washer and dryer. The washer is one of those front load fancy deals. We have been monitoring our water usage since then and I am proud to say that we have cut our water usage in HALF despite having Little E come to live with us full time as opposed to part time. Based on those water savings, you could actually use the water savings to pay for the dryer in a matter of a couple of years. Now, that is awesome and its green.

Till next time, learn a lot, leave my stuff alone, and root for your favorite team, see ya......

Rocking out with ...

If you read my ramblings often enough, you may have noticed music is a fairly regular theme. Today, music is the theme again. Today, we will be rocking out with Rockband.

Unless you are living under a rock or you are old enough to remember Elvis' first single, you have probably heard of a game called Rockband. Basically, Rockband is like playing karaoke but in addition to singing you can also play guitar (buttons not strings), drums (reasonably close to playing a real small drum set) and bass guitar (again with buttons). The goal is to play in synch with the song and to sing (usually poorly) in pitch.

In reality, it is really amazing to me that technology and creativity have come far enough along to allow total musical misfits (that would be our entire family) to have a family concert night pretending to be our favorite guitar player or singer.

Enough of the description of the game and on to the main reason for the post, Big E is completely nuts for the game. I don't mind her obsession with the game. Heck we paid a LOT of money for the game (and we will spend even more buying new songs, etc) so seeing it put to use is a good thing but she is obsessed with being better than everyone else.

She has actually started to play this game by herself. Many games are designed to be played by one person and some are actually better if only one person is playing alone. However, when was the last time you heard to one person band? OR in Big E's case, a solo drummer band?

Big E is the best drummer in the house. The only other person to play even half as good as Big E is Jessica and she isn't around that much to play with the old people. Now, Big E has gotten good enough that she is actually trying to play drums and sing BY HERSELF. Today, I walked in from work and she was playing a show for the dog and cats. If she gets any better, is she going to ask for a contraption to play guitar too?

I will try to get some pictures of her in action soon. In the meantime, if you have Rockband or you know someone that does, try playing the drums and singing at the same time. Let me know how that works for you ..... for me, I ended up beating the microphone with a stick and screaming into the bass drum, neither of which worked.

So long till next time ...

It was a slow day ...

Today, we had a first in the house. I figure we will have a lot more of those in the future (three girls and all) ...

As for today, we had a LATE fathers day plan finally happen. Big E and Little E took me for a round of golf. This was a special round of golf, as it was Little E's first round of golf. So, anyone with any knowledge of golf understands why I say it was a slow day, things didn't move to fast with Little E. However, Little E didn't play too bad.

Afterwards, the girls took me for some crab legs and wings. I REALLY ENJOYED the day.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend, but its back the grind in the morning.

Happy Independence Day

Happy fourth of July to everyone. I hope you all have great plans of BBQ, hot dogs, hamburgers and more on the grill with friends and family. Whatever you do, I hope you have fun and are safe.

The family and I have a few friends coming over today for a little cookout. We are going to grill chicken wings. For the sauces, we have multiple types of wing sauces that we will place into ziploc bags. This way everyone can choose their own sauce or have multiple sauces.

Enjoy your weekend.