First Smartphone!

When Paul and I were first married, high speed internet was becoming more and more popular. I remember saying, why would I spend $30 (I think that's what the monthly fee was back then) a month to have access to the internet when I can have dial-up access for less than $10 a month. However when we moved in July 2004, we took the plunge and bought a modem. Of course once we experienced it, there was no way we were going back to dial-up access. As a side note, wow has the price of high speed internet really jumped up over the past fie years! In 2010 we were paying $34 a month. Our fee just went up again last month, and now we are paying $62 a month for high speed internet, and we have used the same provider since 2008. Ouch! I made a similar statement about smartphones a few years ago. Why would I pay an extra $30 a month to access the internet on my phone when I am already paying to have internet at home? More than a year ago we decided that the next time our cell phone plan was ready to be renewed, we were going to get phones that would make texting easier, and get a plan that included unlimited texting (it used to cost $5 a month to add that). We definitely have felt out of place with our flip phones, and we definitely have annoyed people by not sending and receiving texts.

Over the last couple of months I started to want a smartphone, and it turns out it's possible to have a smartphone plus one standard phone for only about $5 a month more than what we are paying now for two flip phones. The new plan includes some data, unlimited texting (we used to pay 20 cents per text), and unlimited talking (albeit we rarely even used half of the minutes included in our old plan). So we are getting a LOT more bang for our buck when it comes to our monthly cell phone bill. If we both had smart phones, our bill would go up another $20 a month. Paul doesn't use any apps on the iPad (rarely even touches the iPad), and he's not much for taking pictures either. So we decided for now to get him a standard phone that has a QWERTY keyboard so he can easily send texts, and I ordered my very first smart phone. Because we already have so many apps for the iPad, we decided to get an iPhone. I could have gotten an iPhone 5c for free. There was a cost involved for the 5s, 6, or 6+. In the past I've always selected a free phone, but I decided this time to spend $50 of my birthday/Christmas money for an iPhone 5s. It's supposed to arrive on Wednesday!

I also ordered a case for the phone on Amazon today, and that is also supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. The bike seat I ordered for Oliver last week is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I am planning to buy myself a bike on Wednesday at either Target or Walmart. Nadia can't wait to go biking together. My next big purchase will be a new laptop, but I'll need to save up some more money before I can make that purchase. For now my new "toys" will be a bike and a smart phone. If we discover we really need two smart phones, we can upgrade Paul's phone in two years, but for now I think one will be more than enough for us considering we've gone this long without any. Thus far I have sent about five texts in my life, I think that will be drastically changing in the very near future.

This morning Nadia started her second week of tennis lessons. There are seven kids in the class this week (compared to only three the last time). She is doing three days this week and making up the two days she'll miss (due to Annie rehearsals) during the third session in August. I finally remembered to bring bread to the park, and the boys enjoyed feeding the ducks this morning before they played on the playground during her one hour tennis class. After that we spent about 30 minutes inside the library before spending 30 minutes outside the library at their kids in the garden program. The kids did some weeding, cut down some sunflowers, and ate some fresh lettuce straight from the garden. Oliver picked a couple of tomatoes that weren't ripe yet. Oops! One year I want to have a small vegetable garden of our own.