Three Best Things!

Have you ever played Three Best Things? One of my most beloved friends taught me how to play.

It is the best game ever.

The rules are simple:
You can play alone or with a large group
You can play aloud or in writing or even in your head
At the end of a day, a party, a trip, a walk, or whatever, you get to name the three best things from said event

That's it!

Play it with your spouse
Play it with a new friend
Play it with an old friend
Play it with your kids

It is amazing what you can learn about a person and their three best things.

My three best things ever?

These guys:

A Forgotten Love

As much as I truly love being a mother, sometimes I feel like my old self has gotten a little lost in all the late night feedings and diaper changes and endless loads of laundry.

Thanks to my awesome husband I recently rediscovered how much I love to flyfish. Rob called me early Monday afternoon and by 4:00 we were on the road to Stanley for my first ever steelhead fishing trip. (Thanks Mom for watching the girls for us!)

We got there in the early evening and met up with some friends who were fishing there already. We didn't have our rods or waders with us at the time since we had just walked down to the river to see what was going on so Rob just borrowed our friend Jerry's rod to make a few casts. Ten casts later he had already caught a fish. Amazing, huh?

Fish on!

Rob's first fish caught at dusk, just minutes after getting to the river

That night we slept in the car and Rob woke up at 4:30 (!) to get us the good hole on the river before anyone else. AND he let me sleep in as long as I wanted. So I got down to the river later that morning and Rob showed me where to cast and within 30 minutes I had caught 3 fish. Then Rob had me come over to his other spot and he stood on a rock, pointed at the water and said, "Can you see those dark spots in the water? Those are fish. Cast right above there and you'll catch one." Two casts later and I caught a huge fish. Have I mentioned how much my husband rocks? Because he totally does :)
He is the best fishing guide ever.

My first steelhead

Another one for Rob

And me

And Rob

And me.

Except for the slight wind that came up in the early afternoon, we had perfect weather (I have the sunburn to prove it) and we caught about 22 fish. We had an excellent time. It was so fun to go on a last minute trip with Rob and reconnect with him and I was happy to be reunited with my past self if only for one day :)



p.s. this is the kind of picture no one will ever show you from their fishing trips:
the one that almost got away!

Who's a Pansy?

Ellie's latest one-liners that made me giggle

Me to Rob: Ellie picked out a pansy to give to my mom for her birthday.
Ellie: Who's a pansy?

~~~~~~

Me: The opposite of dark is light.
Ellie: And sunglasses!

~~~~~~

Ellie: You're a eyeball head.
(Followed by a firm talking to about name-calling)

~~~~~~

Ellie: Mom, can I have chocolate milk without the milk?

~~~~~~

Ellie: Mom, my sleep gave me a grump.

Time Well Spent

This weekend was spent doing this

and this

and this

and this

and this

and this

while nibbling on this

and listening to this

We're exhausted and happy and ready for spring!

Where's Ellie?

I sent Ellie to clean her room last night after her bath.
Five minutes later I walk in to find this:


Look a little closer:


Hiding in her toy box reading. She is totally my kind of kid.

The Decade

I was thinking about this past decade the other day and I realized it has been the most amazing, eventful, emotional, and wonderful ten years of my life. I rang in the new decade while I was in the MTC training to be a missionary for my church and since then things have just gotten more and more exciting.

Here is the best decade ever as recorded in numbers:

18 months on a mission in South Texas for me
24 months in Honduras for Rob
208 letters between us over the course of 24 months
3 weeks apart in getting home from our missions
1 year, 1 ring and 2 proposals later we got married
8 years of marriage
6 years of school
3 college degrees between the 2 of us
13 moves
1 house
3 apartments
2 kids
2 miscarriages
1 dog
5 jobs
21 camping trips
1 happy family

Budgeting Advice

So I'm not great at managing money. I don't totally suck at it - I haven't put us in major credit card debt or anything. The only debt we have is our student loan debt from law school that we're trying to pay down as fast as possible. But I need advice on writing up and staying within a budget. I've written up several budgets but I never look at them again. Rob and I have already sat down together to plan our expenses and I'm really really committed to making it work this time. I did find this great budgeting site called Pear Budget and I love it. It's really simple which is great for me. I think it's really going to help me plan where our money will go each month.

So I'm asking you:
How do you stick to your budget? Do you do cash only? The envelope system? Excel spreadsheet? Do you review it all the time or once a month? Do you record all of your receipts somewhere? Do you have a category for random stuff that comes up during the month? How do you handle irregular expenses like doctor visits, birthday presents, impromptu road trips?
I've also noticed that I have a hard time staying within my grocery budget. How do you eat well and cheap? I've tried doing that turbo couponing where you combine the coupon with a sale plus some sort of promo where you get things dirt cheap but honestly, it took tons of planning and organizing and I soon realized that everything I could get on an awesome deal was total junk food like sugary cereal, cookies, granola bars and all kinds of processed stuff and let's be honest, if I want my family to eat empty calories I would rather make the goodies myself.

Any advice on budgeting you are willing to give me would be very much appreciated :)