Luke is ONE!

Our little Luke is ONE! This year has flown by, yet our life is so different now than it was a year ago. Luke has been a pretty easy baby since day one. For both of us, but especially for me, the transition from one kid to two kids was way easier than no kids to one kid. Part of it is just the type of kids they are. Luke is chill like George. Madeline is more high strung like me. The biggest difference was that we knew what to expect and were already used to life with a kid. 

My maternity leave after having Luke was such a special time for me. I'm getting nostalgic because I just looked at a bunch of pictures from when Luke was first born. I truly feel like I made the most of my 3 month leave. I was able to soak in the baby snuggles and enjoy a lot of one-on-one time with Madeline while Luke napped. I really enjoy working, but as a working mom, I sometimes feel like I miss out on things, so I wanted to take advantage of my time at home. While I was on leave, we did three sessions of music class at the library, took lots of trips to the park, hung out with Terrisa and Parker, and watched a ton of Daniel Tiger. Sounds exciting, right? As boring as it may sound, it was actually pretty awesome and has left me with some lifelong memories. Enough about me...back to Luke. 

As a big one year old, Luke is starting to babble a lot! He says daddy, mommy, uh oh, bye, and repeats other things here and there. Most recently, he repeated "peak-a-boo" clear as can be. He has also repeated "coffee"! He can wave and clap and points (more like reaches out) to things that he wants. He does a lot of walking while holding onto things, but doesn't walk on his own yet. He's slowly getting more brave and will transfer from one thing to the next. He likes to steal whatever Madeline has -- toys, food, milk, anything. He loves to eat and is a really good eater. He has been picking up food and feeding himself since he was six months old, so he an old pro now. He eats three regular meals and a few snacks everyday. His favorite food is black beans. His teachers at the daycare are just amazed at how much he loves beans. He is a quarter Mexican after all! He has 8 teeth (yes, EIGHT!) and is about to get two more. He sleeps through the night and still takes a morning and afternoon nap. He was into his paci for several months, but wants nothing to do with it now. He is a big boy and is in the 80th percentile for all of his stats. He is starting to become more attached to George and me, but quickly warms up to others. When we're hanging out at home, he likes to be on the move with his sister. They roam around the apartment and will play blocks or look at books together....for a second....until Luke destroys whatever she's playing with. He's a happy boy and is always smiling. 

We love you, Luke!

Here are some of my favorite memories from our first few months as a family of four:

Going home with our new baby...always such a nerve-racking car ride! 

First evening together as a family of four...

Going stir crazy!

Sibling love <3

 

 

The many faces of Luke...

What a sweet newborn he was!

Luke's Birth Announcement...

One year later....

Since it's just the four of us here in PA, we didn't do a 1st birthday party...we'll make it up to him later! It was actually kind of nice to skip the stress and work that comes along with a birthday party. We still celebrated him in our own little way. In the morning, before work and daycare, Luke opened a couple of presents. Madeline made sure to help him with that. During the day, he was spoiled by his teachers at daycare. His favorite teacher, Ms. Shirley, is so incredibly sweet and made him a little stuffed animal and fabric block.  In the evening, we went to a burger place near our apartment. Luke enjoyed some chicken fingers. He was so tired from his big day, that he feel asleep on the car ride home. We tried to wake him up for cake, but it just wasn't happening, so we postponed the cake until the next morning. 

The sleepy birthday boy. 

Cake time!

He loved the cupcake! It got messy, but he actually ate almost the entire thing. Here's the play-by-play in pictures.

Granna and Grandpa Lucas got Luke this walker. It was a hit!

Company

It's finally Friday. This week has felt so long. Wednesday felt like it should've been Friday already. Anyone else feel that way? I have to finish our taxes this weekend. I have worked on them a few evenings this week and just need to review things one last time. I want to make sure we get every dollar back from the government that we're supposed to! :)

The past two weekends we've had company and the next two weekends we're expecting more company! Dan, Alaina, and Sadie came up from Rochester two weekends ago and Emily and Stephen were here last weekend. On Tuesday, George's folks fly into NYC. I will talk about those plans shortly. It's been so fun to have company. Madeline especially loves it. After Emily and Stephen left last weekend, she asked if Parker and Paisley were coming next. I wish we could actually surprise her with a visit from them. Maybe this fall?! 

Dan, Alaina, and Sadie came up on President's Day weekend. Sadie is a little more than a year younger than Madeline and a year older than Luke. Even though they're all spread out in age, they played really well together. Sadie could hang with Madeline (which isn't easy to do), but also took an interest in Luke which was really cute. She's all set to be a big sister in May! The highlights of the weekend included some time at the park, a trip to Chuck E. Cheese (Madeline's favorite place....but ugh, what chaos!), an adventure to old city to see some historic sites, lunch at Reading Terminal Market, lovely weather, and hanging around and chatting with Dan and Alaina. Besides each other, George and I don't interact with other adults very often here, so it was nice to just sit around and talk. I guess that's a sign that we're getting old, huh?! Thanks to Dan and Alaina for making the drive. We know it's not easy to do with little ones! 

Emily and Stephen (Emily's boyfriend) had an 8 day tour of the NE last week, which included 5 days in DC and 3 days in Philadelphia. Emily has a good friend in DC and also a good friend in Philly. I took Friday off and went to pick Emily and Stephen up from her friend's place in Center City. They had done all of the historic stuff in Philly on Thursday, so we just popped into Macy's to see the Wanamaker Organ and Reading Terminal for lunch, and then heading back up to our place. On Saturday, Emily and Stephen went to Amish country (Lancaster and the surrounding area), but we stayed back at home with the kids so that we wouldn't slow them down. On Saturday night, we took them to get Philly Cheesesteaks...when in Philly, you must! Again, it was so nice to just hang around and chat with them. Emily is so good with our kids -- they love their Aunt Emily. Thanks to Emily and Stephen for making the long trip out here!  

This weekend is our uneventful weekend, but we are gearing up for our next visitors. George's folks are doing a 2 week NYC/DC/Philly trip. We are joining them for a couple of days in NYC, 4 days in DC, and then we'll of course be hanging out with them here. Paul, Anna, Rachel, Marie, and Yolanda (George's grandma) will all be coming. Rachel will only be joining for the Philly portion. We are both taking some time off so it'll be a nice vacation for everyone! I've been looking forward to their visit since we moved. This will be their first time to all three cities. 

I want to blog a little bit about Luke's first birthday, but I'll do that in a separate post because I have to run. 

Before I go, here are a few pictures from the Moore's visit. I am annoyed with myself for not taking more pictures over the past couple of weekends. Emily did get some great pictures on her camera at least. 

What a cutie! 

Luke and Sadie do not look very impressed with the historic sites. Haha!

Madeline and Sadie placing their lunch orders at Reading Terminal...

Getting some baby practice in! 

Becoming Frugal

In my last post, I mentioned that I would share some things that we've changed to help decrease our spending. Two quick disclaimers: 1) We make tons of mistakes. I am going to highlight some of our successes, but for every success, I'm sure we make a mistake. 2) We live a very good life. We have found ways to cut our spending, but there are still "luxuries" in our life.  We eat out, we travel, and we have some nice stuff. We know that we are very, very fortunate. That being said, here are some of the changes that we've made:

1. Cell Phone: In July, we switched to Metro PCS for our cell service. Metro PCS runs on the T-Mobile network. Service is good (especially on the east coast), but maybe not as quite as good as Verizon or ATT. We spend $60/month ($30 per line) for unlimited talk, text, and data. That's about half the price of most other major cell phone carriers. We are iPhone snobs so we bought unlocked iPhones (iPhone 5 SE) outright from Apple. Even though we had to pay for the phones upfront, we calculated that we would hit the break-even point within a few months and then save $60+ every month after that. 
2. Haircuts: I cut George's hair.  My parents gave us a set of clippers and I watched several YouTube videos on how to give a men's haircut using clippers only. This only works if your spouse is pretty easy going about their hair, which George is. After 3-4 haircuts, I got the hang of it -- it's actually way easier than you'd think. It's not much, but it saves us about $15-20 per month. I have already given Luke one little haircut and will continue to do that, which will save us another $10 or so per month. Madeline and I will continue to go to a professional! :) 
3. Insurance: In March, we cut our car and home insurance bill in half by shopping around for insurance with an insurance broker. Haha, that sounds like a line right out of an insurance commercial. We have exactly the same coverage, but with a lesser known company. We save about $60-70 per month. 
4. Cable: We got rid of cable and bought a $20 digital antenna off of Amazon (one time cost) to get the major networks. At one point, we had Sling, which is an internet based cable provider. It was much cheaper than regular cable at about $25 per month. We really don't watch that much TV though, so we cancelled it. We do have access to Netflix (thanks, Emily!) and use that when we're in the mood to watch something. 
5. Eating out: George and I both enjoy eating out and trying new restaurants. It's a form of entertainment for us. We didn't intentionally make the decision to cut back on eating out, we were forced into it because our kids usually don't cooperate at sit-down restaurants and more often than not, the experience ends up being really stressful. When we do eat out, we stick to fast casual restaurants. Sunday-Thursday we almost always eat at home. It's easier, less stressful, and much healthier. On Friday night, we like to go to places like Chipotle, Qdoba, Jersey Mike's, or Zoup. Lately on Saturdays, we have been going to Reading Terminal Market downtown and getting lunch from one of the vendors there.  Obviously fast casual is cheaper than sit-down restaurants, plus we don't have to pay for a tip. We do spend more on groceries since we eat at home most of the time, but overall we save about $150 per month. 
6. Entertainment and Travel: We love to be out and about on the weekends. Almost every Saturday, we go somewhere or do something. George and I are both pretty adventurous and Madeline and Luke are already little adventurers too. We try to balance our desire take advantage of our time in the Northeast while not going crazy with spending. We bought memberships to the Philadelphia Zoo and the Please Touch Museum so when we are in town, we often end up at one of those two places. We broke even on the second visit to both. We have also found a lot of free things to do. For example, almost all of the historic sites downtown like the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin square, and Independence Hall are free. When we want to go on a little trip, we either do a day trip (doesn't always make sense) or we stay just one night in a hotel. For example, when we went to NYC in the fall, we drove up early on a Saturday morning, stayed in a hotel on Saturday night, and drove home on Sunday afternoon. 

So there you go! Hopefully we will add to the list over the next few years. I personally have some things that I need to work on to cut spending even further. Between the two of us, I am definitely the spender! I know that a lot of my loyal readers are really, really good budgeters and savers so I'd love to hear your tips. If I get a few responses, I will share them in another post! Goodnight! :) 

We're Debt Free!

Just like that it's already February! And like usual, February is already flying! January was a jam packed month for us. We spent 10 days in AZ, I turned 30, we attended Nick and Shelby's wedding, and work was pretty busy for both of us. I also took on a fairly big project for a small business that involved making about 500 headbands -- it consumed my evenings and weekends for the last 2 weeks of the month. This weekend, things finally slowed down and we have been laying low and relaxing. Tonight, we are having our own little super bowl party complete with chicken tortilla soup, guacamole, and smoked chicken wings. We even gave the kids a bath already...at 3PM!

Without getting too specific on the numbers, I'd like to share something that I'm very proud of.  George and I hit a big financial milestone this week. We paid off the student loan from my MBA and became debt free. Or for all of you Dave Ramsey fans out there....we're debt freeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! I should clarify that we are debt free except our home mortgage. No credit card debt (we don't even own a single credit card), no car loans, no student loans, nothing, nada! 

About 2 years ago, George and I took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University (FPU) at our church. My parents have been following Dave Ramsey for over 15 years and have always made sure to teach us the importance of wise financial decisions. And for the most part, George and I have made pretty decent financial decisions. We've never gotten ourselves into credit card debt and we live within our means. However, in FPU, we developed a deep, deep desire to have complete financial freedom. It sounds cheesy, but we started dreaming about having no payments, a completely paid off home, the ability to be completely pay for children's college, retirement in our mid 50s, the flexibility in our budget to go on nice vacations, and the ability to act on our desire to be outrageously generous. So, 2 years ago, we started our journey to financial freedom. 

Starting out, we had two debts: 1) my student loan and 2) our mortgage. Our first step, which took about 8 months, was to pay down our mortgage enough so that we could get the Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) removed. We were basically flushing almost $200 per month down the toilet on PMI. We put a nice dent in our mortgage debt and in December 2015, the PMI was removed. For the next few months, we hit the pause button and instead of paying off debt, we started saving for the cost of Luke's birth and some unpaid time off that I was planning to take after my paid maternity leave. In March, we re-focused and hit the gas to get my student loan paid off. We hit some bumps along the way and actually missed our goal by a month, but last week, we finally did it! It felt SO good to see a $0 balance. 

The next step is paying off our house. It is obviously our biggest and most daunting step. We are estimating that it will take us 3-3.5 years, We have identified some milestones along the way that will help us sustain our excitement and intensity. Sustaining that "gazelle intensity" that Dave Ramsey talks about is the hardest part. As cliche as it is, we try to keep our eye on the prize. We spend tons of timing talking about how awesome complete financial freedom will be. We also have starting saving for and planning our celebratory trip. As soon as we pay off our house, we going to Disney World (w/ a stop in Nashville along the way to do our real debt free scream)!! 

In a later post, I will talk about some of the changes that we've made in both our budget and in our mindset, that have helped us so far. 

I'll leave out you with two pictures....

Here's my mom and dad doing their envelopes. My Grandma Warren captioned the picture on the back: "The Budgeteers: Stephen and Audrey Warren". They have been big cheerleaders for us and it is fun to share our successes with them. On Wednesday night, we called them to do a debt free scream :) 

See you in 2020, Dave! 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 2016 was quite a year for us. We both agreed that it was the most eventful year of our lives. At the beginning of the year, we were focused on having our baby in February and then having a low key year with our toddler and newborn (not that a low key year is even possible with a toddler and newborn). What we didn't know is that God had very different plans for our family. Moving cross county and taking a 6 day road trip with two little ones was no where even near our radar. But here we are, living in Pennsylvania. And even though it's not what we had in our intial plan for the year, it's been a great year full of adventure. I'm thankful for the year it has been and the opportunities that have been given to us. Here are my top 10 moments of 2016:

These are in no particular order, expect the first one. That one is my favorite :) 

1) Welcoming Luke into our family! Enough said.  

2) Watching Madeline warm up to Luke. She was a bit unsure of him at first, but now the first thing that she asks in the morning is "where's Luke?" 

3) Our evening in Memphis during our cross country trip. We ate delicious Memphis BBQ, walked around Beale Street, and then went to Graceland. We aren't even huge Elvis fans and it was pouring while we were at Graceland (like the place was completely flooded), but George and Madeline's smiles still stand out in my memory of that night. They were running through the rain and jumping in puddles as we explored Graceland. I was holding Luke and we tried to keep up. I guess you had to be there, but it was a great night. 

4) Going to the season premiere of Saturday Night Live in NYC. Besides the actual show, it was a super fun date night for George and I in our favorite city. Date nights are few and far between now that we don't live near family, so they're especially appreciated when we have one.

5) Touring the White House. 

6) Going to the Dave Ramsey show and meeting Dave Ramsey.

7) Weddings and Engagements: I love weddings and this year we attended a couple of weddings plus had some close family get engaged. Sarah and DJ got engaged in January and Hannah and Jeremiah got engaged in March. Madeline will be in Sarah and DJ's wedding in July and George, Madeline, and I will be in Hannah and Jeremiah's wedding in May. George was in Roy and Christa's beautiful wedding in September in Mesa and I attended Lindsay and Jeff's gorgeous fall wedding in October in Rochester. 

8) The anticipation of Luke's birth. The week leading up to Luke's birth, George and I spent so much time outside, walking around, trying to get labor going. I'm not even sure if it helped, but it was nice to spend so much time outside together. And February in AZ is gorgeous. 

9) Donut-ing. Our family loves donuts. Probably not something to be proud of. We love trying out a new donut shop and discussing our favorites. In 2016, we found a few new donut shops and re-visited some of our favorites. In AZ, our "go to" donut shop is Bosa. We also love walking to Bashas for their white frosted donut. We went back to George's all time favorite donut shop in NYC called Doughnut Plant. Here in PA, our new favorite donut shops is Suzy-Jo Donuts. My favorite donut of 2016 was the powdered apple cider donut (with a glass of fresh apple cider) from Kelly's in Rochester. In 2017, we hope to try Beiler's Donuts in Reading Terminal Market. The line is always so long so you know they must be good.  

10) Watching Madeline dance. I could watch her dance all day long. She's never taken a dance class (maybe in 2017), but the girl just loves to dance. Her moves are creative and sometimes crazy. 

Happy New Year, family and friends!