Just a 46-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). June is Crazy!
I'll share some tidbits but just imagine 5 other serious meetings and issues that we have been tackling this month. Gah! Last week was one of those weeks and this weeks hasn't been any easier.
Random Tidbits:
**Thank you whoever has used my Ting referral link. We are looking at 5 or 6 months of free cell service. Woohoo!
**We are planning a third bucket list type vacation for this year (versus the 0 that we usually do?). This is CRAZY!!
It's not overly extravagant and is why we are considering it. But dh told me about this wildlife encounter thing. I initially was just putting that aside for later but then he sent me a link and I looked closer. I said, "We have to do this during this year. There is no way they will be able to keep these prices or manage all this as word spreads about this place." We thought it would be $800 for 4 and didn't know how backed up they would be but in the end it's just $600 (4th person in group is free). Woohoo! We will drive and need a couple of nights of lodging. They had slots in September that we are trying to book. Totally booked up through summer. It's a really small outfit.
In the meantime... Some celebrity goes over there yesterday and blows up twitter with how awesome this place is. O.M.G. Kind of what I was worried about but didn't expect that to happen so literally the day after we started the reservation process. Let's just say I am feeling very happy with this decision!
Will pull this from our Hawaii funds if need be.
**I had a skin biopsy that turned out to be benign. I didn't expect otherwise but it's always nice to get that kind of confirmation. I'm trying to rest up and heal. Stitches get removed Friday.
Other Stuff:
**OF course, dh always overshadows me on the medical front. We received the shocking news last week that his brain tumor seems to be growing pretty rapidly. They want to do radiation this month. If we don't do anything it will be too big and he will need surgery again. (He had it mostly removed in 2010, with surgery. Last year we discussed radiation in 5-10 more years, just as a frame of reference what a huge change in situation this is).
For the most part it sounds pretty easy. The procedure itself. It just brings up a lot of questions for the long term.
The procedure itself was not so easy 5 years ago. Waiting has bought us a lot of time and advancements so this thing will be so much easier than when we last discussed, AND the kids are so much older and no longer daycare dependent. Heck, they can help take care of dh if need be, but doesn't seem to be a concern at all. The hospital is doing a team meeting to discuss best options but the Doctor we talked to thought he'd be done with this procedure the end of June, and that he'd prefer to do in our city. Waiting to see if the team agrees and to get a date.
All we can do is one day or one step at a time.
Financially we will have a lot of medical bills this year and next. The obvious to go is our mortgage pre-payments. That makes the whole thing *shrugs*.
It's hard for me to explain given our own personalities AND what it's like to wonder at some point if you would be around to see your kids grow up. It's not the vacations *at all* that matter to us. But it's just when dealing with all this we also can't muster up the energy to care if we pay off our mortgage possibly one or two years sooner. It's that financial stuff that matters the very least of all. (I am so grateful to have a conservative mortgage and to have paid down rapidly in good financial times, for sure, and that is some of it). The wildlife thing came up like the very same day as all this news. I admit it's also nice to be planning something so exciting while planning something so stressful. It's helped. & of course we aren't going to cancel the one big vacation (Hawaii) we wanted to do with our kids and already planned. (I can't say it's something we'd ever plan solely because of this type news, but we also aren't going to cancel it because of this). There's no thought or discussion here. We have an extra $3k earmarked to the mortgage and it's getting moved over to medical expenses. It was a split second decision that seemed obvious to the both of us.
June Crazy
June 10th, 2015 at 03:35 pm
June 10th, 2015 at 05:56 pm 1433959006
June 10th, 2015 at 06:46 pm 1433962005
June 10th, 2015 at 07:45 pm 1433965527
The Ting referral was me. I'm not entirely sure I'm going to switch everyone, but I moved my brother to it to try it. The rest of my family lives in a pretty rural area, so I wanted to see how their service would be before switching. Based on my usage calculations, it would save my about $80/month which is half my phone bill. My brother has said that texts come through, but he can't really hear on phone calls and it doesn't look like he has data service either. But they may just have to live without data since there's wi-fi at the house.
June 10th, 2015 at 08:29 pm 1433968166
My parents live in a cell dead spot and have always had an Airave (signal booster) to get calls to work. I don't know if that would help too or how much it is to buy one. Even when my parents had Verizon they couldn't use cell phones for phone calls in their house (though had a fine signal like everywhere else). They are currently using their Sprint Airave with Ting.
I received two other mystery referrals and two from dh's family and so why I have so many months free!
June 11th, 2015 at 01:33 am 1433986417
That must have been a big relief to get the benign news on the skin biopsy.
The wildlife vacation sounds amazing! I hope you take lots of pictures to share.
June 11th, 2015 at 02:16 am 1433988986
And I say take those vacations...you will never regret the memories you will be making!
June 11th, 2015 at 05:01 am 1433998875
June 11th, 2015 at 07:43 am 1434008619
June 17th, 2015 at 09:51 pm 1434577875
The wildlife vacation sounds really cool.