80th

 On Thursday we got to celebrate this amazing woman's 80th birthday. My red Grandma! She is probably one of the coolest 80 year-olds around mostly because she owns pretty much every nintendo and the like in her home so her grand kids could always have a party there. Even as teenagers we loved hanging out at our grandma's house more than our own home. She would always have homemade cookies and popcorn for us. She is also the amazing lady who patiently taught me piano throughout my life. She is incredibly talented and intelligent and we are so lucky that she is our grandma (and Charlie's great grandma)!

We celebrated with her by going to Reinlander German restaurant where we indulged in fondue and bratwursts and were serenaded by a talented accordion player and vocalist!

And Charlie also got some grandma time 

PS. The accordian player reminded me of the birthday where I was serenaded by one of the best accordianists around....Leah, oh how we miss you!

Spaghetti

Every young child needs some good messy spaghetti pictures! I don't make spaghetti very often so I'm pretty sure this was Charlie's first time trying it...He loved it, and the mess was something to be proud of!

This kid cracks me up!!

And he's done!

That's all, just thought I would share!

Cupid, draw back your bow...

I have come to love it when holidays fall on week-days, I've somehow convinced Max that we get to have a week-day celebration and a weekend celebration, this also rings true for our anniversary and birthdays! This way, we can celebrate twice, as a family of three and as a couple. It's the perfect plan. That is just what happened this year for Valentine's day! On Thursday (day of) Max had to work all day and I was home with my fevery son. Lucky for me, Charlie is a strong boy that doesn't let a fever get in the way of his joy. For the most part he was just as pleasant as usual with only a slight decrease in sleeping and appetite. During the day Charlie and I made a valentine for Daddy! He was also content enough to allow me to make our valentine's ham dinner. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the way to Max's heart is HAM!!  

This year we even made it heart-shaped. The asparagus was supposed to be heart shaped too, I don't know what happened. 

And I just want to throw out a plug for those fudgey delicious cookies right there. Max and I have been trying to eat healthy and since I love to bake it has occasionally made this goal difficult. These cookies however, are "healthy." They are made with black beans and are still amazingly delicious. Try them! I dare you! Here's the recipe...Delicious Cookies!!

As it turns out, Charlie is a ham pig too!

That evening Max and I were able to spend some enjoyable home time together. 

On Saturday, We arranged a Valentine's date for Charlie and my mom. That way, Max and I could leave and not disturb their date. Clever right? Charlie and his grandma enjoyed a candle-lit dinner and some playtime. while Max and I got to hit the town. We haven't been able to go on very many dates in the evening when Charlie has to go to bed so this one was extra special.

We decided to make our date have the whole Valentine theme so we started by playing cupid at Archer's Afield. Max has been wanting to do this for awhile. This archery place was near where we grew up and has a lot of good childhood memories. I was a little intimidated at first when I couldn't get my arrows near the target but I figured it out and we ended up having so much fun.

The awkward pose of the night.

My best shot. 

When our arms got tired we finished and the night was still young. We then went to the mall for a Jamba dinner and in search for a Valentinesy item. We didn't come home with the item we were searching for but we did find an amazing deal on a wonderful king-size comforter which we have needed for our bed. That's kind of Valentinesish right? Anyway, it felt so good to be out on a wonderful date and not feel like we needed to rush home to get the baby in bed. We knew he was well taken care of so we could have a stress-free night.

And seriously, how does a girl get so lucky to have these two incredibly handsome valentines?

Tender moments

There are so many moments that I share with my son that just melt my heart. They may not seem like much but they become the reasons I feel so privileged to be a mother. I feel that I need to document these in order to always remember them because, I know, as he grows they will just become memories.

Holding my sleeping boy: A week or so ago, Charlie had a low fever and it caused him to have trouble sleeping. He was waking up about every hour after we put him down. He was completely exhausted and once I picked him up, he would quickly fall asleep in my arms. As he gets older, I don't get to hold him while he sleeps much, so this felt so good to me. I contemplated how much he had grown and how there is no more room on my lap for his long legs. I felt his unconditional love he has for me and the safety he must feel in my arms.
      That same night, we decided to bring Charlie into our bed so he could be comforted by us all night. I have never really enjoyed having him in our bed because I usually can't sleep, Max held Charlie over by him and cuddled him until the morning. This was Max's tender moment. Especially now that he is working and doesn't see the little guy as often, he keeps commenting on how holding his still and sleeping son was truly special to him.

Books: Charlie has recently been more interested in books than toys. I have been trying to teach him respect for books and how to turn the pages carefully. We have read together nearly every night ever since he was about 3 months. When he was about 7 months he started to get extra wiggly so we read together but he usually wasn't in my lap. Some days, I wondered why I tried so hard when it seemed that we wasn't getting much from this routine. Now that he is showing an interest in books, I feel that we have had a little victory. At the end of the day there are usually several piles of books throughout our living room. Here are some pictures I was lucky enough to catch.

                                             
This one was extra special to me because he picked out one of my Armenian children's books. When I picked out 2 children's books at the end of my mission, I envisioned my future children enjoying them but it seemed like something in the very distant future. But this day, my son plopped down right by my feet and started looking through it.

He's also interested in the thesaurus!?!

I handed him a book to hold while I changed his diaper. Usually when I pull up his pants, he rolls over and wants to play but this time he was so enthralled by this book, he stayed there and continued to "read" it. 

Prayers: Charlie showed us that he knows he needs to fold his arms when we pray. We have prayed with him at meals and together at night for quite some time and we always emphasize that we fold our arms. Last night was the first time that we said "we're going to pray Charlie" and he willingly folded his arms by himself. I got a little choked up because I was so proud of him. Of course, he didn't keep his arms folded the whole prayer, but we felt that he is starting to get the idea.

Understanding: Charlie hasn't been too big on speaking but everyday he has shown us something new he understands. When we say "let's go outside" he will go to the door and wiggle the knob. When we ask "Where's the piano?" he will point or go to it and play a bit. He knows nose, eye, ear, and teeth and will point to them on me. He smacks his lips when we say "Can you give mama a kiss?" He sometimes puts his head on the ground when we ask him to do a somersault.and I'm sure there are a ton more! It is so fun to be able to communicate with my little boy.

 These are just some pictures from a sunny day at the park last week.

 Hide and Seek: All on his own, Charlie decided to hide in his changing table cupboard, at this moment I realized he isn't much of a baby anymore. Just like any kid, he likes to get himself into small places. He even tried to close the door.

That's all I can think of right now but we are incredibly impressed with this boy everyday and feel so blessed to have the opportunity of raising him.

No Debt

Let me preface that this is not one of those self-help posts like "Get through College without paying interest"  or "You can get out of debt." Also let it be known that we only have our undergraduate degrees which is a lot easier to get out of debt than any higher education. Especially when scholarships and financial aid are much easier to come by with the lower level of education. We don't want I mostly just want to have a record of some of our personal situations and choices that let us be debt free. 

First off, we chose schools that give a great education for a relatively low price. I started with a year at Portland Community College while living at home and working to save up for BYU-Idaho. I drove school buses right out of high school which allowed flexibility with my class schedule as well as a relatively high paying job for someone right out of high school. Later Max and I both went to BYU . Then Max transferred to UVU and it would have been extremely expensive but because we had been in Utah so long, we were able to claim residency and it ended up being about the same price as BYU.

We made sure we applied for grants for school. We were allotted a decent amount before marriage but got a whole bunch more after marriage. So I guess the moral of that is to marry young and poor and you will get more money from the government. Not the perfect system, but it worked for us. Even with the grants and our income from Max's summer sales we still ended up racking up 17,000 dollars in student loans. part was from Max immediately starting school post mission and also our last year when we had to do our internships during the summer and couldn't work. 

I was eligible for a scholarship from BYU my last year, so that helped.

We never worked during the school year, if we had, we probably would have had less debt but I also think that could have jipped us of some education. I don't know how people work and keep up in their classes. Hats off to those that do! 

We knew from the beginning that we were going to be doing this on our own without financial help from our parents (as many students do, especially married ones) so he had to save our money appropriately.

Clark Pest control was an awesome sales company to work for. You always hear of summer sales companies scamming their employees but this company was real and honest and very generous to their employees. It is because of this company, along with Max's really hard work and long hours that we were able to earn so much, it is also from this company that we were able to have a Mini Cooper to use as a second car for a period of time, it is also from this company that Max won a moped which saved us during our year of different schools and different internships.

 

Some of these are huge blessings that you can't really plan for, but I know we were blessed for Max's diligence and hard work.  

We made it a goal that we at least wanted me to finish college before we purchased a second car. There were times when we really wanted to get a second car and started shopping around but Max continued to use the moped even in the cold dead Utah winter. 

We have also been blessed with only needing to pay rent 16 out of the 45 months we have been married (yes I did just calculate how many months we've been married ) This is due to circumstance and is another blessing you can't plan for. We never had to pay rent during the summers when we worked for Clark because Max would always meet his sales quota. When we moved back to Oregon we were able to live in and take care of Max's uncle's house while he was doing a second retirement in central Oregon. After our last summer in California we came back to take care of Max's grandma's property by exchanging TONS of labor for rent. Out of the 16 months of paying rent, 8 were spent by paying $375 for a tiny basement apartment in a kind of scary neighborhood. That was one of the sacrifices we made to make college more 

affordable, looking back we have a lot of great memories there. 

Choices

Everybody spends money differently and live different lifestyles. There are tons of right ways to use money and tons of wrong ways. These are some things that worked for us when trying to stay frugal but I just want to emphasize that we don't think people that choose to live with things that we choose to live without are bad! Everyone has their priorities and needs...

We've survived with one car for quite awhile. We're not sure how much longer this will work for us but we are happy that we've never had to deal with car payments.

We will only use credit cards if we know we have money in the bank to pay it off. We do not believe in paying interest to the credit card company. They don't deserve it!

 We shop around a ton for larger purchases We finally made our first big furniture purchase...A couch! In the meantime we survived with a camping couch and an ugly free couch. We don't believe in paying interest on furniture either. Homes, school, and cars are really the only things in our book that deserve to have a little interest paid on them.

He have become expert garage/estate salers We found our amazing dining room set, desk, lamp, mirror, projector and so much more for tiny prices.

We don't spend money on things we feel we don't need. For example, we decided not to get a crib and that Charlie would be just fine in a pack n play, we also didn't do anything to make his nursery cute, even though we kind of wanted to, but he doesn't care one bit! His dresser and changing table were purchased for about 90% off. He has received the majority of his clothes through hand-me-downs, a big thanks to Natalie and Lisa! Anything I have purchased is usually from a consignment store. 

 

We set goals such as we only eat out once a month. We haven't always followed this rule and we haven't gone out to eat every month either

We set a family budget for gifts at Christmas. 

When I became pregnant with Charlie we ended up using medicaid for our insurance in both Utah and Oregon. I know this can be a controversial topic but overall we felt it was the best for our family and that we were not abusing the system seeing as it is to help poor to get ahead and us being college students, we definitely fit that description. We have a different perspective now and we can never gripe about the portion of our future paychecks that go to medicare because we know how beneficial it has been to us. 

The student Loans: We only accepted subsidized student loans which meant we didn't have to start paying interest on them until 6 months after we graduated. All the loans were under Max's name because he was planning on graduating after me. So we had the goal to pay them off before any interest started accruing. 

Last summer we decided to work for Clark Pest Control for the very last time seeing as there were no promising fire jobs in the near future and we could take this opportunity to completely pay off our debt before Max even graduated. Max has always been successful as a salesman so we decided that we would divide up the amount owed by his eight paychecks he would receive and pay that amount off with each paycheck so the loan would be gone by the end of the summer and we did it! We didn't come home from California super rich but the money we had was ours, not borrowed. We don't like being in any kind of debt so this felt good! 

Life Changes

We have just been showered with blessings these days. It's almost overwhelming. Then we remind ourselves that we will gladly accept any blessings that Heavenly Father wants to throw at us.
As my few blog readers know, Max was quickly approaching the deadline for completing his final college course. Without this course Max would receive 0 degrees, with this course Max would receive 1 bachelors and 2 associate degrees. When we came back from California at the end of August he had about 4 months to complete this course. This is also when we started renovations on the house we are currently living in. We were just planning on getting the house livable then move in and max could got started on his math. The house needed a lot more work than met the eye and weeks turned into months. but we (mostly He) worked long hours so we could have a comfortable place to live. I guess the point of that back story is to prove that he wasn't really procrastinating the math class he had been working really hard to take care of his family and that is why he is an amazing husband and father. Ok,, so Max officially took his last final a week ago but really worried that he may have failed it. As of Yesterday we found out he passed just fine and can now receive his degrees. The major blessing came when Max was offered a job that started the day after he took his final. This job was created by the owner of the company specifically for Max. (yup, he's just that darn desirable) We have a friend from our ward we grew up in that has a construction company. Max had run into him at Home Depot as we were just starting the renovation on our house, Nic (the construction company owner) asked max if he would be interested working as a laborer with his company. Max let him know that that may be a great idea when he finished working on the house and while he was applying for fire fighting jobs ( a process that can take years) As Max was finishing up his math class he gave Nic a call. Nic said they had cut down on Laborers for the winter season but he still wanted to meet with Max and discuss other possible ways to use him. After they met, Nic felt that he wanted Max for more than a laborer anyway. With Max's newly attained degree and all of his sales experience, Nic thought that could be put to better use. (That always feels good when someone wants to promote you with out you even asking right?) Long story short. Max is basically working in a management position as Nic's personal assistant and will soon take some of the burden from Nic. He is learning a lot about business ownership. He has only been working a couple of days so far and has had a lot of training and spent time helping make bids and writing up the proposals. He has also been able to add to the company with some sales techniques that should help them to get more business. Max is pretty excited that he has a chance to work with such great people and even use a little of his creativity. This opportunity came at such a great time for our family and feel so blessed.
In the meantime i get to mostly be a stay at home mom again. I was about to start with 4 new piano students on February 1 but we decided that I was more needed at home now and had another teacher sent to them. I still currently am tutoring one student and have 2 piano students with in-my-home informal lessons.
 

Piano Man

I know that most little kids get excited about making music on whatever instrument may be lying around however, I still get so thrilled at how excited Charlie gets about the piano and I feel so blessed to finally have a piano in my home after my many transient college years. Whenever I start playing, he feels that he needs to be right there with me. He likes to work the keys and then crawl under my feet to work the pedals. He likes to wave his arms and dance to the music, and sometime even sing. This melts my heart. I finally felt brave enough to let him sit on the bench by himself and play his heart out. He had a blast and probably could have stayed there for longer than I let him.  

                                       
Later, he figured he could start climbing and that was when he had to get down!

Also, we've been playing in the mud and rain. I might get sick of cleaning muddy feet and jeans in the near future but he just gets so happy to be outside and he's only young once, so I say "Let's get a little Muddy"

And while I'm on the topic of the happenings of Charlie, let's talk about his Vacuum obsession. If the vacuum is in the room, he has to be touching it...it's like there is a strong magnetic field between them. I'm trying to upload the video of this but it doesn't seem to work....Oh well, just imagine vacuuming with a permanently attached child. Pretty Funny.