Day 9789

Our tree decorated with the help of our 2 and now 4 year old.

           I don't know where you all are on your Christmas planning and gifting and all but we here are done.Well almost 100% done. We're done shopping at least. Thank goodness for that. I am not a big fan of crowds and waiting. Especially together. Our tree is decorated and while it might not be the tree I envision in my mind it is the tree that my darling little boys helped decorate. They of course want to open the gifts under said tree now (even if they aren't theirs). They even decorated some salt dough ornaments for the tree also. Saturday I went to a friend's and we made lotion bars and decorated some salt dough ornaments (which I said I would credit to my children if anybody asked, lol) and then I brought some home for the boys to decorate. I might do a post on the lotion bars later once I get the pictures from my friend, unless she does a post on it and then I will probably give you all the link to it. It was fun and we were there for only like 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Which isn't too bad for 5 batches and breakfast and ornaments.. At least in my opinion.
            I decorated the mantle also but I will not be posting a picture of it on here. At least not this year (and hopefully next year we won't be living here). So now that we are 11 days from Christmas and tomorrow is my father's birthday and the following day is SNOWBOARDING. Have I mentioned how much fun I find snowboarding. Even though I have gone much, nor am I much good at it I enjoy it very much. This coming Saturday my boss is having Christmas party at his house. Originally we were going to be out of town and therefore unable to attend but unfortunately ( I really wanted to see my friend up in northern Washington) it didn't end up working out. So it appears we will be able to attend.
             Also we are attempting to decided what we are going to do for our vacation this late winter/early spring 2011. DH is leaving it up to me (unless he decides that isn't the wisest decision).This of course will be a cash only vacation. In which I mean we will not be using credit of any type. Obviously we probably won't being using cash in hand only, but cash in bank via debit cards. To me this doesn't seem weird or odd. I have read and I follow blogs that discuss money and debt and the like. I do not normally do that here. Though I don't really devote this blog to any one thing, well except maybe life. Okay back on topic. I have never gone on a vacation where I paid for it in part or in whole by credit. Don't get me wrong I have used credit in my life, I bought my house via a V.A. Loan which when we sale we will make a hefty profit even in the housing downturn. I bought my car with an auto loan through my credit union. Yes yes I know I know it's better if you pay cash for it yaddah yaddah. I am okay with having these loans. I am even okay with having a credit card or two. As long as you can be responsible about it. By no means am I saying I perfect of I have it down. I am not and I don't. I have made mistakes and probably will make mistakes in the future (hopefully different ones then I made in the past or I didn't learn anything). But we are relatively young (26 if you must know) so we are still learning and figuring things out. Not to mention trying to find a mutually agreeable ground when it comes to what we want to do with out money. I say this all because in figuring out what we want to do for our vacation I might mention it on here. Not to mention references that might be made later on. So I mention it now when I have very few readers (so later if somebody asks about it later I can say see day 9789 hehehe.. okay not really).  Also so nobody who stumbles onto my blog will lecture me about the importance of savings. Trust me I know the importance. I have seen first hand what happens when something life changing happens and makes it so you can't work and have multiple medical bills (because trust me no insurance covers 100% of anything and some things cost an unbelievable amount of money even with insurance) and you don't have much or any savings. Or when somebody dies and doesn't have a savings left and no life insurance. It is expensive to bury a loved one not to mention hard enough on it's own. In times like these it's better to have a strong savings then having to but stuff like that on credit or depend on others to help you.

     Okay moving on to happier less depressing things.. Vacations.. I am truly a big kid at heart at least when it comes to some things so one of the things on my possible vacation plan is a little over a week in southern California at Disney and the like. I heart rides, rides the go up high, rides the spin, that drop, that splash and so on and so forth. I don't think there has been a ride I have ridden that I wouldn't and haven't ridden again. DH isn't as big on rides as I am (a lot of adults probably aren't) but he loves me and will humor me, plus he loves roller coasters so if he gets to go on some of those and we go somewhere that is warm and mainly sunny he will be happy.  Which brings us to option 2 a cruise to somewhere warm and tropical. Beyond that I am toying with the idea of going somewhere warm and tropical sans the cruise. We went on a cruise in the beginning of 2009 and we had a blast. So I am not against another cruise. Option 4 is to go to Europe and visit my sister. Though I am not sure that's the best time of the year to visit there.

A picture of another cruise ship from our Mexico cruise in 2009