This week has just flow by.  I am feeling pretty pulled in all directions to handle everything, but know what it will be lessened by the end of February when we have staff to assist. 

MONDAY –  Our last day to have staff to assist with Erik and I was able to work 12 hours that day!   I was gone from the house for 14 hours, but took some time off during the afternoon to visit my great nephew at the Children’s Hospital where he had surgery.   He had to have cranial surgery as the bone in his skull were fused.   You can follow my great nephew’s recover at his Caring Bridge Website.  He sure is a cute little guy.  He will be coming back to MN to have his lip repair redone and have his cleft palate repaired as well.   The lip repair done in North Dakota were wasn’t that good the surgeon here in MN said. 

TUESDAY –  I worked a full 8 hours on Tuesday.  Hubby came home early to meet Erik’s bus.  We had the Independent Living Skills worker coming that evening to meet Erik and us.  He will work on social skills and other skills with Erik once a week.  He will be coming on Fridays.

WEDNESDAY – I work a partial day and then came home to meet Erik’s bus.  I worked on my bible study for our evening class at church.  I started feeling ill in the evening and ended up not going.  Josh had called in sick from work as well as he had terrible stomach pains as well.  He and I hung out on the touch and watched TV.  We all love to watch the first few episodes of American Idol.  That is always alot of fun. And of course we had an intake meeting with a new PCA agency.  That went fine, but they don’t currently have any staff for us. 

Erik went to church and Tommy and I stayed home.  Erik is excited as they are going snow boarding next week for his small group activity.  I had asked him to come home with the details of when, where and how much, etc.  He did pretty good.  We aren’t clear entirely on how much it costs, but will send him with hopefully enough.  His answer was is costs between 40 and 70 dollars.  ARGH!!   I always worry about sending him with too much money as he will always make sure he comes home with none. 

THURSDAY –  I was feeling ill still on Thursday morning so I called in sick.   I just laid around most of the day.  I was home for Erik to come home and meet with the CADI Waiver worker about changing services for Erik.  It is all a bit overwhelming. 

FRIDAY – Since it was my birthday I didn’t plan on working . I didn’t do what I planned on doing, but did get some things around the house done.  I paid bills and worked on some budgeting.  Started getting some more things ready for our tax appointment.  I was home for Erik when he got off the bus. 

Erik went to visit with his mom for the weekend.  We celebrated my birthday by going out to eat at Bucca de Beppo.  It was very busy!!  The food was great as always.  Which reminds me I have leftovers to eat for supper tonight.

SATURDAY –  Our day didn’t really turn out as planned but all are happy about the change of plans.  I finished up my book reviews for the Cold Nights Hot Reads program at the library and then we headed off to the library.  We picked up a number of movies at the library and planned on staying in the house and watching movies for the day.  We also went to Kohls as my hubby needed some new work pants.  I found three new shirts for Erik on clearance and one pair of pj’s for Tommy.  I also bought three pairs of gloves for next year for Tommy.  Gloves and hats were 75% off.   As a treat we ate at the mall food court at Burger King. 

We came home and dropped Tommy off at home with Josh for a bit.  We planned on running to rent a Wii game.  We got our game and then thought we would go look at TV”s.   How we plan large expenditures is to live within our budget each month and come tax time we receive a HUGE tax return as we have extra withheld as part of our savings plan.   Each year we purchase one new larger thing for our home.  Last year we bought a new wall over unit.  Over the last few years we have replaced all of the appliances in our home.  This year we had talked about replacing our last appliance, our cooktop.  Now most of the appliances are really more important to me as I am the one using them.  The oven really was a health hazard as we had it tagged by the gas company as needing repair, but the stove was not tagged.  It is very old and ugly, but works.    

So hubby and I were chatting about another item he and Josh have been advocating for as our one large purchase from our tax return his year……a big screen TV.   Now mind you not something I want or need, but hubby would love this.   Hubby has done wonderful this last year living within the budget we made and we have no outstanding bills this year to pay off with the tax return.  I was even able to pay off all our hospital bills this year within our normal budget.   So I really believe Hubby and Josh deserve to have their choice this year.   We were at Sam’s club and looking around at all the TV”s they have on sale.   In January Sam’s always has zero percent financing so it worked great for us.  We purchase the item and when our taxes come in February we pay it off.   Since we wanted to shop around a bit, we went to Best Buy to check out the price for the same model there….YIKES!!  Twice as much!!!

We purchased a 52 inch LCD TV to wall mount in our living room.  We had told Josh we were going to stop off at the grocery store to get some things and asked him to watch Tommy longer.  This gave us a chance to buy the TV.   I called Josh from the store to tell him to get his shoes on to help his dad with groceries as it was really cold.   We get home and he comes out side….he is crabby about it all.  He opens the back of the Blazer and has a few remarks to make!!  LOL!! I can’t even repeat them here!   He was very surprised and very very happy. 

Hubby and Josh are just finishing putting the wall mount unit up and getting ready to hang the TV soon.   We will need to rearrange the living room a bit but it will be very nice.  I guess we plan on watching movies in style tonight!!

Now while most people want to receive all their money with each pay check, we tried that and it didn’t work for us.   We rather claim single 0 and have the government hold on to our money for us.   It is a forced savings plan for us.  When it comes to our tax return we know we will never owe in and can expect at least $8,000 or more back each time.  We ear march that money for things we need through out the year.  We pay our entire year of car insurance and any other bill that we can pay yearly and receive a discount.  

Well I am off to clean up the living room about and hopefully check out the new TV!