Quarantine Update

We are still alive and kicking here after a month of being stuck at home. Elliott is able to continue working and was asked to help out on a special project which is allowing overtime. I feel so fortunate that we aren't having to worry about our income right now. The government sent out checks to everyone to help boost the economy and we applied that immediately to one of our credit cards. We've been able to pay off 2 of our biggest credit cards since the beginning of the year which is so exciting. Law school really dug us into a deep financial hole but we are starting to see the light and it's so refreshing. We have about $4,000 more in credit cards and then will start paying off the cars. It feels really nice.

We are getting the hang of home school. I felt like this meme accurately summed up how it feels. So many different programs and passwords! I wish there was just a packet to complete each week but instead it's different links for different assignments that lead to different videos, books, quizes etc etc. It was definitely a learning curve and some days are better than others but I think we've got it. The district announced school is officially canceled for the rest of this school year.

The kids all have weekly Zoom meetings to connect with their teachers and class.

This was one of the not so great days when Melanie decided she didn't want to do school.

We try to keep up on our Come Follow Me

Melanie working on friendship bracelets

One of our daily walks

I mostly am just confused about how to feel about this virus. Many are pushing to open everything back up with safety precautions in place like masks, and gatherings under 50 and others are saying it's too soon. It's really hard to gage what the right thing is and there are "experts" on both sides claiming their way is the best. Our economy cannot afford everything being shut down like this, but the virus is still so new with no proven treatment and predicted to return even stronger in the fall. We will just see what our future holds.

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Happy New Year!

We thought we’d bring some new energy to 2021 by completely tearing our house apart and getting our carpets cleaned. The cleaners were scheduled for December 30th, so we pulled everything out of bedrooms and gave the walls and baseboards a good scrub. In order to allow the carpets time to dry we didn’t want to walk on them so we used Elliott’s points and got a hotel up in the Woodlands. We stayed at the Marriott along the waterway and it was beautiful. There ended up being a storm that night which was unfortunate because we weren’t able to walk down the waterway and enjoy the whole scene up there. We ordered Shake Shack from Uber Eats and watched Hook all snuggled up in our beds. It was a perfect evening. Once we returned home we got to work putting bedrooms back together then later that night celebrated the new year! It’s become tradition for us to do taste tests with the kids blindfolded. We did different flavored oreo’s and ice drinks. We ordered Buffalo Wild Wings and wa...

Good Morning

Our kids don't sleep in. If they make it past 6:30 it's an extremely rare occasion. The problem with this is that Pete and I are not exactly morning folk. We make goals that say we will be in bed before 10pm, but after a week or so we are back to staying up way to late. Having Netflix is not helping either. We love watching documentaries and could watch them all night long. Every morning looks a little something like this. Our kids full of energy and ready to conquer the day, while Pete and I are wanting to kill ourselves.

December

There are a lot of words that could be used to describe 2020. Unpredictable, scary, death, political insanity, isolation, divisive, racial inequality, quarantine, masks etc. etc. It was really rough for us around June-October when we had no idea whether or not Elliott would have a job. Thankfully we were one of the lucky ones that didn't get furloughed. Financially speaking our biggest hit was that overtime was cut. We had big plans of paying off a lot of debt from law school and going on our first family trip to Disneyworld. Without that overtime we make about $2,000 less a month and it's quite a hit, but we are making it work. We canceled our Disneyworld trip and are living paycheck to paycheck but had Elliott been furloughed for an undermined amount of time I don't know what we would have done. I know there are many families in that situation and I wish we were in a position to offer some assistance instead of treading water. I feel very blessed and fortunate for where w...

Smith Family

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