Of Budgets and Babies

We had one of Ryan's friends over for dinner last night, and apparently I astounded everyone with the peanut butter pie I made for dessert. I'd never made it before so I'm feeling pretty good about delivering on a first attempt. Though I'm sure the pie probably killed all 5 days of the 30 Day Shred that I've done so far. I skipped one day earlier this week because Ryan and I needed some sit down and talk time, and then, of course, the dinner get-together last night was another skip. Heh. I'll get back on track tonight, though, with day 6.

Ryan and I feel like we need an "us" vacation. Totally wish we could afford to do something like one of those Outer Banks vacation rentals. But, alas, not only are we budgeting very carefully right now, we also know no one around here we trust enough to take Anya for a few days. Even an evening out alone would be nice for a change, but, again, we don't really trust anyone around here enough with our baby yet. I have one friend that lives about an hour away, and she'd probably be more than glad to babysit. But she already has a 3 year old of her own and is pregnant again so I feel a bit bad asking her to drive all the way out here and deal with our teething baby. Anya isn't as easy to babysit as she once was. She doesn't just sleep, eat, and poo anymore. Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing.

Speaking of budgeting we had a scare Thursday night when Ryan's car just decided it wasn't going to do anything besides run. His power steering went out, and all of the dash lights came on. It was pretty crazy. He managed to get home as it happened just down the street, but apparently the belt came off of the engine. (We discovered this after a quick phone call to my dad. Because I totally still call my dad anytime something like this happens - he can fix anything. But isn't that what all little girls are supposed to think? Maybe I'm just a Daddy's girl times a milliondy.) So luckily that's a pretty easy fix that Ryan should be able to take care of. But that got us concerned because we were already worried about replacing his car before something really crazy happens. So now our budgeting is probably going to get pretty strict because we'd rather replace it sooner than have a bigger problem later. We'll see what happens, but I do have quite the sum left over from my financial aid coming our way next month. And our taxes are probably going to be filed as soon as possible so hopefully that will help. We'll see where we stand at that point.

For now I need to work on installing Linux. One of my classes requires it. Lame.