It’s about time for an update…

Posted on June 6, 2013 by mypenwritesred

…but what to say?

I feel like I’ve been away so long. I haven’t even checked stats!

School
I’m about to finish up my 5th class, Organizational Management & Behavior. This, by far, has been my favorite class. Not only was my instructor engaged and full of real world knowledge, the topic fascinates me on a natural level too! Sadly, it’s ending Sunday, and I’ll begin Financial Decision Making… oh. joy. Don’t get me wrong, I love money. I love working my budget, even though I get super stressed and cry a lot when things don’t go either according to plan or I overspend (most often the latter…). But it’s not my favorite topic in business. I love the human aspect, developing people, helping them realize their dreams, helping them be better now and grow for a better future. For the next 8 weeks, I’ll make the best of a seemingly dull class and push forward to keep my 4.0. Yup… I’m very proud of those three little characters. Four. Point. OH! Thank you, thank you very much.

Home
Our 5-year-old has been accepted into a kindergarten jump-start week in July. Why’s this exciting? Well… mostly because – HE’S GOING TO KINDERGARTEN! This is bittersweet, as most parents will probably (hopefully) agree with me. The one kicker that I’m just geeked out about though is that they are mainstreaming him. For a year and half now, he has been in a special education preschool program. At three and a half, he was diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). He functions on the high-end of the spectrum, which I wish had come with a diagram in the beginning… sort of like this:

Anywho. Towards the end of this school year, we had an IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting with his teacher, speech therapist, and a kindergarten representative. His teacher had made a very hard decision, one that he pretty much teared up trying to tell us about. He decided that, in order to give our son a challenge and to keep from holding him back, he was recommending mainstreaming our son. Mainstreaming is one of those words that you learn when you start to speak the language… sort of like Christian-ese but for Autism. Mainstreaming means that they are putting our son into a regular classroom, not one designed for kids with learning or other disabilities. He will be with neurotypical (another Autism-ese word) children for most of the day, but will still receive speech and cognitive therapies for an hour or two per day. This, my friends, is very exciting! Nerve wracking, and hard on this poor mother’s heart, but exciting nonetheless.

Our 3-year-old will be continuing through the same preschool program. She was accepted last year due to a significant delay in speech and the tantrums that come with the inability to communicate effectively. We are anticipating the possibility that she may be kicked out sometime during this school year, as her goals are beginning to out-age her… in other words, she’s smart and progressing just the way she should be. She’s all caught up. And boy does she know it. Her imagination has begun to run wild and everything is an adventure, which is fun for me because I enjoy leaving reality for as long as possible with people I think are hilarious. And she’s hysterical!

Work
Work. I love my job. I love what I do. I enjoy helping others realize their potential, solve problems, gain knowledge, and otherwise enjoy a moment of a possibly stressful and frustrating day. Lots of changes are coming and I’m excited for them. These changes definitely come with some selfish questions – Where do I fit in the new picture? What’s my future look like now that these changes may affect my previous trajectory? How is it all gonna go down? It’s exciting and scary and fun and stressful in a good way.

Right Now…
…I’m talking to the husband about porn stars, gender roles, and mahjong.

Peace out,
Mel

P.S. I killed Facebook. It may just be too distracting for Finance…

Dairy: From Zero to Yum with Kroger Brand

Posted on February 17, 2013 by mypenwritesred

Another day, another Bzz.

As a BzzAgent. I sign up for campaigns, get products to try and coupons to share, all for one low price – time and talk.

I’ll admit, I have tried Kroger’s Greek yogurt in the past. I really enjoyed it the first time, but in an effort to save money, I didn’t buy it much after that. I know what you’re thinking – save money by not buying yogurt? Yeah… I tend to save money by depriving myself of things I probably should eat/drink/use so that those in my family can have more. Twisted, right?

Anywho – so I joined this Kroger campaign to try their line of Greek and Greek Lite yogurts, as well as their new CARBmaster line of dairy products. I had some good experiences and a not so good experience, so I’ll start with the good stuff first.

As I said before, I have tried Greek yogurt in the past. I love it. It’s texture is slightly different from regular yogurt, it has a bit of a gritty feel on the tongue, but the taste has an extra tang that I like. While Kroger’s flavors used to be relatively limited (Strawberry, Lemon, Honey, and Peach), they’ve added a few new ones, like Blackberry Yumberry. I’m picky about flavors, so Strawberry and Peach are great for breakfast with a banana or an apple. Though I’m thinking about branching out to try the Blackberry… On a side note, the Lemon and Honey flavors do just the trick in a morning or lunch smoothie! And as an added bonus, Kroger brand Greek yogurt is a bit friendlier on my wallet!

Just a few of the benefits of Greek yogurt:

Higher in protein than regular yogurt
Lower in sugar than regular yogurt
Great source of daily dairy… especially for those of us with dairy sensitivities!

Now to the CARBmasters line. This line of yogurt and milk is touted as a great way for folks who are watching their carbs to get their daily intake of dairy with less carbs and sugar than the regular stuff. However, I was not impressed. The texture is lumpy and the flavor was far too sweet for my taste buds. It also left me with an uneasy stomach, but I’m guessing that was due in part to the super-sweet, candy-like flavor at 7:00 am. The one good thing is that my kids LOVE this yogurt. Last night, they asked for yogurt instead of fruit snacks after dinner (SCORE!). They tend to eat non-stop, so we are only doing fresh fruit and vegetable snacks where we can, with added veggies at dinner. Salty snacks and candies are after dinner treats. But in this case, I feel much better giving them this treat more often!

This was a fun campaign, because let’s face it, I love food. I love to try food, to eat food, to enjoy food. So when I get to try something I know I’ll like along side something that’s new and a possible healthy change, I’m all in. Greek yogurt has now been added to my list of Things I’ll Indulge In to better take care of my own health.

Cheers to a new me (I hope)!

Is there anything you have substituted your usual brands for a new, healthier version?

As a BzzAgent, I received free product samples and coupons to test and share. I was in no other way compensated for this campaign and all opinions expressed here are my own. If you are interested in becoming a BzzAgent and receiving free products to test and share, check out the website at www.bzzagent.com or shoot me an email.

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 5, 2013 by mypenwritesred

Happy New Year friendly readers!

I’m in the dead center of my 2nd college class and it is taxing me to the max. On top of full-time work and two kids that tax me emotionally (along with my patience), 2013 is actually starting off quite well. I’ve joined the Debt Movement, a community of folks committed to paying down $10 Million in debt in 90 days.

I am happy to say that I paid off our first debt yesterday!
Only $4,000 left to go before we can start building the Savings while knocking out the Student Loans then off with the mortgage. My goal is to have that 4k out by April 30th… yes, it will be hard, but hey – if we don’t get it done now, we’ll be in a world of hurt later. By the way, that 4k is both credit card and medical debt.

This is the last weekend of my winter break, so I figured I’d hop in here and wish everyone a Happy New Year and thank my faithful readers (and random visitors – welcome!).

It’s back to school, back to work, and back to broke as we build our debt free future. WOOHOO!

Much love,
Mel

School is sucking the life out of me…

Posted on December 10, 2012 by mypenwritesred

…and making a liar out of me to boot!

I promised an early color week this week, but sadly, I must resist the need to overwhelm myself at this time. I am one for always taking on more than I can handle and today, I realized (with utter disappointment) that blogging has to come later. With school, work, family, and the holidays, I am simply exhausted.

I hope to be able to begin anew in early 2013 with a celebratory birthday color week!

Until then, may you have a very Merry Christmas, a safe and blessed New Year, and a peaceful holiday season in general!

Much love, my friends.
Mel

I’m baaaack…

Posted on December 3, 2012 by mypenwritesred

Did’ya miss me? Yeah, I know… you didn’t even know I was gone.

It’s cool… we’ve all been busy.

I took a much need, unannounced break from pretty much everything (except school and work), to figure a few things out, to be frustrated, to be moody, to be lazy. Yes, mostly that last one. But I’ve gotta find something profound in this!

Nothing too profound really came… but I did a lot of things.

Thanksgiving
I ate a lot of turkey on Thanksgiving but even more potatoes… sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, raw potatoes… I love potatoes. They may be the end of the world as I know it. Thanksgiving tradition has evolved over the past couple of years in our household. Although our families live in the same town, we do things quite separately. Thanksgiving dinner is the father-in-law’s love, so we end up there most of Thursday. Deep fried turkey, sometimes-candied yams, home-made sausage stuffing, endless pots of mashed potatoes… everyone pretty much ends up passed out on top of each other on the couch, watching some movie that will keep the kids occupied long enough to let us enjoy our mild coma. This year, we were lucky enough to have a sister, her husband and their kids in town too!

Black Friday is the second half of our new Thanksgiving tradition. Although it has been a common event for a number of years for my mom & I, this year we made it the “official” my side of the family celebration… complete with my mamaw’s recipe for sausage gravy made by my very own daddy. My mom picks me up at 6am, we go to breakfast, plan our trip, laugh at the crazy-nasty attituders and compliment the kind, friendly fun ones, get a couple deals in the process, then meet my husband and kids at my parent’s house around 4:30 for good ol’ fashioned biscuits and gravy dinner.

Tattoos
Yup, I also got tattoo’d. What a weird thing to add to Thanksgiving weekend, right? Nah… See, I had this tattoo that needs re-finished and completed. Make sense? It’s like a floor, it needs a little help to make it look better then you could add some extra tiles and trim to make it complete. No? Alright, fine. I have a piece that needed some work and it was only the beginning of a larger piece I had started with my artist before he quit the business. I won’t go into that story because everything I know is hearsay and I’m still sort of bitter about it… Anywho. So, my sleeve is on its way to completion and I’m so excited! It already looks like a dream come true.

College
I’m wrapping up my first class for my Bachelor’s program in Business at Grand Canyon University. Fun fact: GCU was recently invited (and accepted) to join the Western Athletic Conference. I don’t really know what that means exactly, other than eventually, they’ll compete in Division 1 NCAA sports… I think. GO ’LOPES! My second class starts Monday. Yup – one right after the other. I’ll start the process to test out of 4 of my classes, (’cause I’m smart, yo) which will get me to graduation around October 2014 instead of January 2015.

Christmas
I am so excited for Christmas this year! I don’t know what it is – the lights around the neighborhood, the favorite Christmas movies and music, or the fact that my kids are finally at an age to understand and are overjoyed about the season! Whatever it is, I was so excited to our decorations up this weekend. I pulled out the boxes from the garage and the kids helped put the tree together. As we started pulling things out of the box, I realized I had packed a number of items in there that I had purchased at the Day After Christmas sale last year, which made my Sunday like a super early Christmas! I decided not to do any lights on the house this year, but I got a wreath and a bow for our gate and a beautiful, scratchy door mat for the entry way. The tree is up, the stockings are hung and I can’t wait for Christmas to come (I promise I won’t rhyme anymore…).

UP NEXT: Color Week
So that about sums up the past couple of weeks. Normally, at the beginning of each year, I have this “event” called Color Week. It’s basically a week that I make my lazy ass paint my face daily for the sake of feeling pretty. I wear a lot of eye makeup for the occasion, usually in bright shades of green, purple or blue. But this time around, I’ve decided to go a bit early. Why, you ask? Two reasons – I really want to, and I got some free make-up through BzzAgent. I think those are good enough reasons, don’t you?

So stay tuned next week when I’ll debut some funky eye make-up and daring lipstick… daring lips for me is anything more than Chapstick. You’ll see. My lips turn into this puckered mess with lipstick on.

Well, there’s a lot there to digest. So why don’t you tell me what you did over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend? Did you get any great deals for Black Friday (that you can share without ruining a surprise)? What are you most excited for as we count down to Christmas?

Peace & love this holiday, my friends.
Merry Christmas.
Mel