**Taking a Staycation this week. Kids start school, so it's a good week to get a little extra time with them, partake in school activities, and then have some quiet and peace for half the week.

**We did a nice hike on Sunday, as an "end of summer" hoorah. Had a no-spend weekend as our only expense was gas (filled up the empty tank on Monday). My parents felt extra sorry for me and so bought us two meals while we stayed with them.

The hike we did was not far from where I lived through college - had never heard of the place. Figures... Went up in the mountains and there were some pretty crazy rocks for the kids to climb. Probably a dumb time to do something like that, but we all got out in once piece. Phew!!

**Yesterday I took the kids to get their 7%-interest accounts open.

It is all said and done, but because they are "kid accounts" I have to go in person to set up an external transfer account. ??? VERY annoying. & more annoyed that they had not told me this when I was there (I mentioned we had money to transfer over. & since it is the year 2013, I did mean electronically). That said, it appears that the kids can do mobile deposits. Go figure. It's still a pain, because I am trying to write zero checks, and had to write checks for them to deposit. But, I suppose could save us some gas for the long haul. I decided on principal that I did not want to go get my external transfer account set up. At least it's a very local branch.

We are going back today because BM has some coins to deposit. They told me change counting and depositing was free, under $250. Since we don't particularly use cash, we don't have change of that magnitude. Is fine for our needs. (I'd be surprised if each kid had $20 in change). I will have to talk LM into depositing his too.

The 7% is on first $500. BM is already up to $400, and is extremely motivated to get to $500. I don't think it's a 100% bad thing that they literally have to go to the branch to pull money out. Probably a good lesson for them. Though for the long run, they will both have $500 there and will probably save spending money in their other low-interest savings account. (Which I pull money from electronically, when they need it).

Today is quite the errand day, because I have a couple of returns, and am taking BM for his $5.99 hair trim. Meet the teachers, post office, and stuff like that. (Dh sold a game and the kids finished their Birthday Thank Yous. So we figured we'd drop by the post office while we are out).

We'd probably skip today since we know the teachers (one is our immediate neighbor!). BUT, BM is at a new campus and we want to go check that out. They can see where they are sitting and such and where their classrooms are. (The other is walking distance so we will just walk over. Can't say we'd go, otherwise).

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**I mentioned our AC was acting up, and we had bought a service plan to save a significant sum on our plumbing repair. SO, we called them out to tune up the AC yesterday.

I Was a little wary because our strategy (which I got from my dad) is to never tune up anything. Our stuff seems to last longer than average. Though, I admit there can be many reasons for this (one being that we don't throw away broken things; we just fix them). So my dad and I have had discussions about that - how the more you have people knocking around and messing with your stuff, the more seems to go wrong over time. Mainly thinking to appliances and cars.

SO... I wasn't overly thrilled about the whole thing. But, on the flip side, no one has looked at our AC in 12 years (since it was installed). & this was free...

So they came out yesterday and spent a heck of a lot of time fiddling with our AC. Hopefully it was useful at all. They did a thorough testing of everything and generally found nothing wrong (no surprises there since is very efficient and everything; not surprised to hear we have no leaks or so on). But recommended $800 in repairs - I believe it was replacing a couple of parts in the attic (The blower/not the actual AC unit). Overall, said it was a great unit and that they tend to last 20 years. So, phew!! I think it went about as well as it could have, considering we have had problems. We figured something could need repairing, but didn't expect more than a repair.

Oh, they also recommended that we replace a part on our heater.

Since it is mild this week, we went back and forth a bit on it, as this could maybe wait until Fall and lower prices, but decided to call out our AC/Heater guy. It's slow enough that he could come out today. Over the phone he quoted $450 for the same repair. To be fair, he did not look up the specific model, so not holding my breath too much. But would like his opinion, and expect him to be cheaper if the diagnosis is the same.