Christmas in July

Next Thursday they will be having Christmas in July at Kid's Café. From past experience I know this entails a turkey dinner, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, and the kids each picking out some toys to take home with them. Kid's Café lasts from 11:00-12:30, and three days next week my kids will be in a history camp from 9-12 that is located about 20 minutes from the park. So we shall see if we get there in time or not. This week I bought some Christmas presents. Amazon's Prime Days have become contagious so to speak as other businesses have begun offering great deals on those days as well. It feels very similar to Black Friday in November. I bought some books for Nadia for Christmas and spiritual birthday gifts on Amazon and Target using coupon codes. Legos very rarely are on sale, but Amazon even had some Lego sets marked down 30% or more. I got two big Lego sets for Ian for his birthday and Christmas gifts. I always feel like we are drowning in Legos so last year I didn't buy him Legos, but Legos are his favorite toy so I bought more of something I think we need as much as a hole in the head. I also got two games which I will give as a Christmas gifts to nieces and nephews from Walmart.

Last week I put time into working on our budget in light of the fact our income will be less than 50% of what it has been for the past two years. I tried to figure out where we could cut back. Our clothing budget is already very tiny so I'm not cutting there! In terms of housing expenses I'm thinking for the foreseeable future we should only spend money on the house if it's really necessary (ex. if we need to replace the air compressor because it's broken). If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have gotten the deck replaced, but it's water under the bridge at this point. The category where I'm cutting the most was vacations. We spent very little on vacations in 2017 as I took the kids to Chicago for a week in April and to Long Island for a week in July that year, and since we drove and stayed with relatives, basically our only cost was the gasoline and tolls it took to drive those places and back. Next April I'm planning on extending the Chicago trip to include time in Detroit and Pittsburgh so the trip won't be AS cheap as the one in April 2017, but still it will be a lot cheaper than our trip to San Diego in May 2018. We will naturally be tithing less since our income will be a lot less. It's emotionally hard to cut back in that category, but it must be done if we

want to save money to pay for things like Ian's braces, a replacement for the van in a few years, a new roof for our house, etc. We also need to cut back in the "gift" category. There were some areas I thought that when I was working FT that we'd be spending more money such as paying babysitters so that we could go ballroom dancing, but since I went back to work we only went on one date (and never went ballroom dancing). So there won't be any change in that regard due to me returning to the status of stay-at-home mom.

Although it wasn't my choice to stay home this next year, one thing I am really looking forward to is being able to put my all into homeschooling. Feeling like I had to settle for "good enough" in regards to just about everything the past two years was very vexing but necessary as there weren't enough hours in the day for me to do anything to my fullest potential given how much I was juggling. I have been under the weather the past couple of days, which has lead me to go slashing through the calendar and deleting things that I had scheduled for this month and in August so that we'll have more days just at home sweet home. I hope to eventually take the kids to many of the places that I deleted for this summer. For example, I rescheduled a trip to the Erie Maritime Museum to April 2020 on our way out to Ohio/Chicago. We were going to visit a fort in Altoona this Saturday, but I scratched that. I didn't scratch the plan to visit the Landis Valley Museum on Sunday because we purchased an annual membership last fall so we can attend that Civil War event for free this summer. I deleted more things from our summer bucket list like picking blueberries, picking raspberries, seeing Junie B. Jones at Millbrook Playhouse, etc. I got a lot of fruit at ALDI for a reasonable price yesterday including blueberries. I'm sure some year we will pick them again but not this summer. The boys didn't end up attending VBS the last two nights, but they went tonight. I did all the chauffeuring to and from VBS this summer up until tonight. I took them there this evening, but Paul is picking them up tonight, which I greatly appreciate.

I've been putting time into my lesson plans for next school year. They passed a law recently that changed the age you have to be in school from eight down to six, but it doesn't go into effect until the 2020-21 school year so it doesn't impact me because Oliver will turn eight in August 2020. One thing I haven't decided is where they might do gym and/or art class this school year. Ian and Nadia will be in a choir from late August through the middle of November, which involves a weekly rehearsal on Monday nights. Oliver will have gymnastics during most of those Mondays. Ever since our church started offering homeschool gym class on Fridays we've participated in every single session they've offered. In light of the fact our kids play on a basketball team, take ice skating lessons, etc. I've decided this year we will only do the gym classes some of the sessions not all of them. I'm trying to decide which sessions and whether to continue at our church or try the Miller Center for one session as they offer a homeschool gym and art class on Tuesdays. I'm not going to make any firm decisions until August when I find out Meadowbrook's schedule (the Christian school where Nadia has taken art the past two years). All I know is I want to be careful not to fill our schedule too much. I want to take life at a more relaxing pace. Ian will like that because he's a homebody.

Another budget category where we can cut back is what we spend on the kids in a year. Next summer I'm not planning on signing them up for as many camps. I'm planning to skip horseback riding camp. The kids are doing a 3 day history camp next week that Nadia and Ian did a few years ago. I wanted to do it one more time so that Oliver could also participate and before Nadia is too old. I don't plan to ever do that one again. I only signed the boys up for the chemistry camp this week because we will be studying chemistry this fall. I don't plan on signing them up for any camps at the Lewisburg Children's museum next summer. Nadia and Ian did the softball/baseball clinic a few years ago. Just like the history camp I mentioned, I wanted to do it once more so that Oliver could do it once before Nadia was too old to participate. The kids don't play baseball or softball in their gym class. Nadia was on a softball team for one season, but the boys have never played tee ball or baseball, so I wanted to do this four night clinic one last time so at least they all will have a tiny bit of experience playing baseball. Next year I think they'll each have one week of overnight camp (the boys will be together), one week of Camp Good News (day camp), and one week of theater camp (half-day for 5 days). I'm also considering a music camp for Nadia (and possibly Ian) that is connected to the choir they are joining this fall. The camp is only about 10 minutes from our house. Whether or not they do it will probably come down to if we can afford it or not. I'm thinking of sending all three of them to overnight camp the same week (Nadia to Camp Susque for 7 nights of girl's camp and the boys to Camp Good News for 6 nights). If we do that the last week of July 2020, it would mean they also wouldn't be in the history camp at the Taber Museum that Nadia and Ian did last year and all three are doing this year. So I will spend less time chauffeuring next summer which means we'll also spend less money on gas in addition to spending less money on enrollment fees. The kids had been talking about getting a dog, but that is also going to have to wait as I know from hearing friends talk (who have dogs) how much they cost in terms of vet bills as such. We've never taken the guinea pigs to the vet. Our only expenses for them are for their food, hay, and bedding.

The last budget category that I feel we can trim is entertainment. We don't eat out very much aside from getting takeout pizza, but we have spent more the last two years on tickets to concerts and such. I had already promised the kids we'd go to Uprise in September. I wouldn't have made that promise had I known I'd be staying home this fall, but I am not going to break my word. I did delete going to the concert at the Bloomsburg Fair from the calendar as well as a trip to NYC to see the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. I still want to take the kids there some year before they leave the nest, but it doesn't need to be this year. That was going to be our way of celebrating Ian's birthday this year. Instead we're going to spend one night at Great Wolf Lodge like we did last year. That will be MUCH cheaper than buying five tickets to see the Christmas show in NYC, and the kids loved it and had already been asking when we were going back. We might not be able to afford to go to as many concerts and shows as we did over the past year, but thankfully in the summer there are three free concerts in August. This past spring we attended a concert without paying much because Nadia and I were free (we volunteered with Compassion), and because we sponsor kids through Compassion we were given 50% off other tickets. I'm hoping something like that might be possible for a concert they are sponsoring in November that will feature Hillsong Worship, Casting Crowns, and Elevation Worship. That sounds like an amazing lineup!

I didn't take any of the pictures in this post. Some were from Camp Susque's Facebook page, and the ones from chemistry camp were from a shared Google drive. They also posted a video on the children's museum Facebook page that showed them sending 1,000 ping pong balls into the air with the aid of liquid nitrogen. I did take pictures on Tuesday on the riverboat and also at the bowling alley.