Well if I go into work today, and remember, I have a couple of awesome recipes to post. We have been eating good over here – a couple of simple recipes overall that are not Taste of Home – but divine from a cookbook I have. A citrus chicken recipe (about the best chicken I ever have had) and a meatloaf recipe – with a bit of spice – horseradish and chili sauce – we love it.

I also updated the budget and will post it later – computer problems for now. I keep all our quicken data and financial stuff on a separate removable hard drive in the house so that data is not kept on our laptop – or on any of the computers with the Quicken program – just theft prevention. But the laptop has been giving me problems so I Can't access it. I got up early and looked at the budget variances for january but now the kids are awake so I am relegated to the laptop. They are watching Calilou for now and eating breakfast – LM is in heaven. I swear if I had a dollar for every time he said Calilou! LOL.

He had a horrid horrid night friday night but thankfully he slept last night. I am exhausted though. Kids are both a little sick – sniffly and coughs. Poor boys. Probably didn't help with sleep.

But yeah I have to go into work for a couple of hours at least. Just a mountain of work to dig through – will make the week more bearable. It was nice taking a break yesterday though – indeed.

Weather looks like it may be quite pleasant today and I am ready to get out of the house!!! I am so done with winter. Maybe tonight we can walk to the park or something – before dark – we'll see how it turns out – I see the sun so it is a good sign – woohoo. I hears 70s today – I am in heaven...

Well for whatever reason I am little miss travel agent. I think I need to learn some new tricks though. When I was in college and no one had heard of cheap tickets I flew to Vegas fro $60 and New York for $150. I did a lot more travel then (flexibility helped) but never spent much. Anyway, so everyone calls me when they need tickets. I apparently still have the touch because I will always find a better deal than joe blow average, but I think I need some new tricks. The discount sited are just so the norm any more, they aren't the best deals – I can't imagine finding a $150 ticket to NY either post-9/11. I don't know how much is just the industry changed or the travel secrets have evolved. But last summer MIL wanted to treat us all to Hawaii but she was absolutely driving us batty because it should be an easy direct flight but she was looking at cheap flights on dicount carriers (which I saw REALLY bad things about – delays and such – I can't even remember what it was – some terrible airline I have never heard of before or since) AND she wanted a layover in LA Ridiculous. With an infant we were like, well, can we please skip the layover at least – we will pay the difference. She was being real stubborn so I finally decided to take matetrs in my own hand – she insiste on paying for it all, yet being cheap. Sure fine, I understand when you are buying 7 airline tickets you want to be cheap, but just let us HELP already so we don't have a completely miserable flight. So I started looking at all the airports in the area, including ours, and found a sweet deal for about $400/person from Sacramento. She was quite pleased but I had heard to check directly with the airlines for discounts so we did and I think we ended up paying closer to $350/person. Plus it was sweet because they had to all drive up here and we just had a 5-minute drive to the airport ourselves. Can't beat that.

Anyway, I was so pleased dh and I have had it in our mind maybe we will take a trip to Hawaii in the near future – that is not bad airfare – it costs me more to fly to Kansas – LOL.

So anyway, last night my dad called for help re: tickets for the funeral in Kansas next week. They couldn't find anything below $700. I thought I had heard about bereavement fares being a thing of the past but I did tell him whatetever I found – I would call the airline directly for a discount if I was him. I couldn't fund much below $800 – cheatickets wasn't helping. But I pulled up qixo.com which is a more tedious search but I finally found if they flew from San Francisco and had 2 stops on the way back it was $600. They also had to leave later in the day and come back earlier in the day, not maximizing their time. Since they had already found $700 I figured they would stick with that. But I shouldn't underestimate my dad – mr. Frugal pants. He insisted he would take it – LOL. I am not sure how my mom felt about that. I imagine she was not too happy – they can easily afford another $100/each, and she does not fly well. So he called me later and told me called United directly and got a $500 bereavement fare – only 1 layover each way. So I guess my info was wrong – bereavement fares are still around. I can just imagine the argument ensuing over there if not for that - let's spend 10 less hours in kansas and take a 3-legged flight on the way back to save $200 total even though I make a very decent six-figure salary and have no debts or obligations whatsoever. Ah, some things will never change - LOL.

No Plans here for Valentines Day, or Superbowl for that matter. You know we tried to have a big superbowl party last year – since we have such a giant screen and all. We found most everyone had their Superbowl traditions already – we find it hard to get in on it – LOL. I am sure this year we could have had a big family turnout at least, but caught me off-guard/last-minute. Will have to try next year I guess. Valentines Day – we try to just do special things throughout the year rather than being relegated to the silly holidays. I am sure Valentines will pass by without a thought between the 2 of us, and we will be happy with that! We celebrate our anniversary much more heavily, we find that far more important I guess.