Time is flying fast

Wow January is basically over. I cannot believe it. Life is going pretty fast but God is keeping Brian and I totally in love and Really trusting him.

We recently tried an experiment. I was calling it our budget adventure. We long ago planned out a budget to see if we could live on just Brian's income alone. I have been reading some info and books by Dave Ramsey, and was enticed to try something. I wanted to see if we could live on the budget we made, and figured well we should see if we really can do it.

I am happy to say we did a good job. The plan was to basically only purchase immediate needs and only eat from home including taking our lunch to work the entire month. I have tried hard to try and shop from a list only and have a menu planned before shopping. I have postponed wants, even though I still want them. No buying because it is on sale, it has to be necessary. I don't have crazy storage for things so I have to be realistic with what we bring home. We started January 1st, and today is the last day. I have not crunched the official numbers but it is so nice to be a team financially with my husband.

Some bumps happened but we both stayed strong and I learned a few things. Our truck needed some repairs, $300. I took my family to dinner for Mom's b-day. We did go to a young marrieds dinner date but figured this is something we would want to do if we were on one salary anyway. It is tax time. Also my computer has been threatening to shut down eternally, and I will be needing a new one soon. Lots of threatening situations but all is well. God helped us keep focused and stay on track, even with a Pampered Chef party mixed in there.

I really am noticing how much time as well as $ we were spending just because we could. Target trips are not as exciting now but it is good to see our savings goals being met, which really motivates me. One of the big habits I have mostly broken is that I would often spend the time from when I got home to when Brian came home, like 4 hours, at the store doing errands. Basically it was my way of spending the time. But this month has shown me I was SPENDING a lot more.

We are not planning to live this bare minimum style for the rest of the year, but it did give us some new behaviors to follow. We are gonna keep trying to take our lunches as much as possible. I am gonna try to stick more to the only need shopping lists. Otherwise if we are purchasing something, we agreed we will have to talk to each other and pray about it at least for a day before we purchase.

I hope we hit a couple more milestones very soon. But it is nice to see some great improvements.

Trying

I know it does not go with Yoda's philosophy but that is another blog.

I know my last blog was rather depressing, so I figured I should at least make myself feel a little better. I also am going to try and be a little more current with my postings. I figured with November being national blog post month, or as Brian pointed out NaBloPoMo, that getting in the habit now may lead to a more successful time then.

Things are good. I am almost done with my ornithology course, one chapter left. The best part about that besides my time being freed up, is that I get my $300 back, that I spent to do it. I am feeling good about the course because only 1 other girl at work and I are at this point. We have even passed up the person that started the same course 3 years ago.

Just as I mention the idea of time being freed up I should bring up the re emergence of activities that went dormant for the summer. our young marrieds bible study group began meeting again, as well as my ladies bible study that meets thursday mornings. I enjoy both but they definitely will take some schedule adjusting.

Our Married study got moved to Brian and my date night. We have been better at being regular with date night and this is a commitment we hope to keep for the rest of our marriage. It has been great having a committed night in which to enjoy being datey with each other, not being errand filled or complicated by tasks and such. We will just have to adjust to our new night, which we already did this week.

My ladies study also has a new twist in that I am part of the leadership team this year. I am enjoying it and totally see how God can and is using me in this position. He is also using it to keep me from procrastinating and stay organized which is a new challenge for me. I am doing really well so far. I just have to pray I can keep up with it truly the whole year through. This leadership part has changed Brian and I's morning time together on thursdays, one of our only mornings together, but I think we will be just fine.

We are getting ready for one of best times of year for Brian and I . Halloween. We really like to have cool costume set ups. I love to put them together and modify pieces to make it cooler. I love getting the cool costume compliments. I just like feeling super cool on Halloween and I love that my husband likes it too. We like to be pairs or couples and so far have tried to stay with the red head girl theme. Here are some past hits.

Our first halloween together!

2007

Jack Skellington and Sally

Nightmare before Christmas

See, even zero our trusty ghost dog floated ahead of us as we wandered the neighborhood.

2008 was the emergence of

Peter and Lois Griffin

The Family Guy

I love Brian's Chin, it worked out pretty well.

2009

The Riddler and Poison Ivy

villans from the Batman series

The best part about this one is with a few updates it has become Brian's proudly worn Comic con outfit.

So I am super excited for Halloween this year. I am getting all my bits and pieces together and hopefully will get to make it as cool as I dream for the grand evening. Any ideas as to who we are gonna be?

Back to regular life.

God has blessed my and Brian and I am truly thankful but boy life gets crazy. We have had some great opportunities come up and they all seemed to cluster together.

During all these opportunities life got super crazy. I just finished a super crazy few weeks and am glad to be back to my calmer style of normal. But through the busy the last month or so I learned some major things about myself, or at least saw them more vividly.

1. I am not a good home maker. I get exhausted and don't have a routine at all for getting things done at home so instead I avoid it and let it pile up. Then, I really want to avoid it and, yeah that does not help. I find myself feeling horrible about how my home is and then feeling like I am trapped in a downward spiral of mess. then only when we have a visitor coming do I panic and get it all cleaned up or hidden, only to pile up again. This hits me hard because I need to be able to take care of my home and family. I want to be the wife that can do it all, keep up with my house, and make healthy tasty food for my family, but I am a total failure. People say "Just wait till you have kids, you won't get anything done." I hear this and feel totally lame because that is already my problem, and we do not have kids yet. Maybe I need to hire a housekeeper for my own sanity but at the same time I am too frugal to do so.

2. I have a hard time saying no or missing out on a social activity. I have the social gene. I want to be involved i want to be included and I want to be at any little even or activity that I can possibly squeeze into my schedule. Most people don't have my schedule so most social events are not ideal for my life of getting up early or working on the weekends but that is the life I have so I still try hard to go to as many things as I can. I have had this problem since college and have not gotten a grasp of it. I put my life needs often on hold to be social which kinda leads to some of the above situations. Brian knows I need to be social but this is not one of his needs so he will go wherever I want for the most part. We talk about setting time limits but don't follow through. We talk about what we should and should not do but often still end up super busy. I even fit in my own crazy activities in the time Brian is not around which includes working out, a bible memory challenge with a friend and helping lead a bible study as well as doing an extra Bird course at home. Oh wow this is like an addiction for me I guess.

3. I don't sleep enough. I get up at 5am and pretty much go go go and get home at 7pm and then dinner like 8 or 9 and bed like 11. Most keepers are in bed by 8:30 or 9. Thus I am ridiculous in my attempted sleeping patterns in terms of my career choice, which is a pretty physically exhausting job. I recover a little on my weekend but I am fully and totally exhausted and can't hardly make it home from work on tuesday (my friday) awake, thankfully I carpool and don't drive those days. And some days of the week we are out till about 10 which does not even allow for idle rest time. It is not a problem of I have difficulty sleeping because pretty much if I sit still and rest my head on something I will be asleep in less than 5 minutes. This happens in meetings, while reading and also even in the movie theaters. I have tried to set a go to bed reminder alarm but I don't follow it and I have a hard time wanting to go to bed alone. Brian gets up 3 hours after me and is not tired when I am. He is still up doing things when I should go to bed so I often will want to be with him, since we don't have much time together as it is. This often means I am falling asleep on the couch or floor in the living room. Only to be aroused at 2 am to move to the bed when Brian is ready to sleep. I think if I got more sleep I would be a little more productive and things overall would be better because my body would be functioning at a healthier rest level.

I am not writing this to rant or complain. I am mostly writing to get my thoughts out and maybe start to see my issues and deal with them. To hopefully make some progress and adjust my needs via a good hard try and lots of prayer and reliance on God and His strength, obviously I have failed on my own. I will try and update and progress or new wins or failures to just keep the info going. I hope that normal life in the future for me would be a little less crazy.

I also figured I had not written in a super long time so here is a post. I will try and be more consistent but we will see.

The one I love

I love you Brian!

I guess I am just feeling mushy lately. All the events in our life recently have made me truly fall more for my husband and feel blessed. Yes he is a Geek, and boy can he be stubborn or cocky in public. But I have realized how special it is when we are alone. My real husband shows up. The one who laughs so hard at tiny jokes he can't stop and almost cries. The one who will put on a white button up shirt just to make me feel special. The one I can have intelligent conversations with and then play wii right after. The one who I can ask any question about the bible or faith subjects and he can spurt it out with great knowledge and depth as well as some specific scripture to go with it, it floors me and excites me every time. The one who makes me feel like and amazingly beautiful woman even when I am sure the mirror won't agree. And he is always up for a good snuggle, whether it is with me or the cat or both, which is pretty regular.

I love him and love being his helper. Being the one God made to fit with him and his specific needs. I love all the quirky things that make us the Bennetts.

We have had an awesome couple weeks and he has been an awesome partner in it all. whether it is house work. my homework or our fabulous nights together like the globetrotters and our home done valentines.

I know we are still considered newly weds and really have not had great struggles and strifes but we have also done a lot of hard work to get there.

Among all this I have also been reminded in almost every aspect of my life how great it was all the preparation we have done in our marriage. We both worked on ourselves with God before we even met. Then we got engaged we did our pre marital counseling. We also did a study during our first year of marriage called "love and Respect" and wow did we learn some awesome things that we use and bring up often. Then our financial study with Crown Financial. And now we are in a new couples bible study. I love the time we spend together doing these things but I also love when we can see how awesome our learning together has been and how strong we are as a couple.

I don't know if this is even a coherent blog but I just needed to gush a little and this seemed like an okay place to do so.

I know God made Brian special and had great plans for him even before he made the Earth. I am so thankful that God made me to fit into that plan. To share in the adventure. Thank you God.

We have become one...

I guess we are at least seeming that way to those around us. This morning I was discussing work events with Brian and a common thread emerged.

I was telling him how everyone at work (the zoo) refer to me as the computer whiz mostly because of my husbands knowledge and ability and the bit that has rubbed off on me.

Turns out that at his Job, (the computer geek central) he has been labeled as the animal info guy.

It is interesting at how on both sides we have been seen as having the skills of our spouse. I guess we are rubbing off on each other more than we realized.

I honestly get a little chuckle out of the whole situation. I also am thankful that I am not married to a sewage technician, since that is not nearly as cool to share info about with those around you.

I love my Nuggets!!

Meet the newest member of our household. 

It is a baby Chinese Button Quail 

It hatched yesterday

We have 2 and they are super cute and super tiny, as you can tell from the picture above,

 and it loves mac's!

Just exercising our RIGHT

TO VOTE!
I love my husband!
he stuck it on his nose first....I followed suit.

Feelin geek.. I mean great!

Most of you know I am married to a geek and a computer wiz. 

I am not a wiz in such areas, partially why God lead me into animal care.

BUT TODAY IS DIFFERENT!!!

Brian's Grandma just called, and like 90 percent of the time when family calls, she had a computer problem.

Brian was not home and was not at work to ask over AIM for any help.

upon discovering this she asked if I knew anything about computers. I said a little, but in my head I figured I probably knew more than his grandma did so it was at least worth listening.

My first instinct was to hang up with her and call him for the answer after she described her problem.

Instead me little wife to the geek gave it a chance and did a little tinkering and I not only diagnosed the problem correctly but within 2 minutes was able to assist his 75 year old grandma is fixing the issue!!

I think this is a great moment in geek wife-dom. I litterally want to jump up and down, I am so proud of myself. 

Our trip

okay so it has been a while but here are a few highlights from our trip to Guatemala!!

like: Our giant bathtub

We could both fit in it at the same time and all your body was under water so you were cozy
The red headed pigeon we saw on our walk over to the school Nancy works at.
THe really pretty cascading flowers that hung along the outdoor walkways at our hotel 
Coke was everywhere ....in cluding on the light posts all over town.

and of course the wedding was nice but I can't post any more pictures in this single blog so I will have to wait till next time or check out Brian's album.

A new year...a new disease

Well that is at least what it looks like.

This is what Brian's leg looks like 1 week into the new year. Is it a spider bite? Limes disease from a deer tick bite? the Bubonic plague?

Actually Sam caused it on new years day. haa haa
This is the trophy/badge of honor you get when you are super pale and play paint ball.
It is actually kinda creepy. I am kinda grossed out every time I see it. Maybe I felt the need to share my reaction.

This will so be my life some day

Sadly this is a little too realistic. I guess I am not alone in this world there are other guys out there as opinionated as Brian.

I should start a Wife's support group.
our candy deprived children could play together.

Geek home improvement

Apparently this is the proper way to test the smoke alarm. 

I guess I should be glad that it was only a replica or I might have a skylight now.

Like reuniting with an old friend

I love this site and it has been way too long since my last visit.

In my brain recovery/veg time after work today I went for a visit.

Now there are lots of new videos since my last romp around the site sometime before I got married.

One of the cool things you can do is suggest things for them to blend. well about a year ago, Brian and I made a suggestion and today i found out that they listened. 

Ahhh, it is nice to see your ideas in motion!

Zookeeper appreciation Continues

Here is a lovely picture of Me with Dottie the Clouded Leopard on my lap. Pretty cool.

Well one of the coolest things I found this week was a package of fruit snacks and a little note from my mom. Thank you for the special zookeeper week surprise it really was special!! 

Never has it been done before

So today is system administrator day!!!

woo hoo, don't miss the parade.

So I made special Unix and debian (amoung others) cookies for my husband and his crew at work!

Enjoy!!

It's system administrator appreciation day. I appreciated mine did you appreciate yours.

I accidentally posted just the title and my siblings took it the wrong way. 

I MADE COOKIES PEOPLE!!!!

look at the other post.

Ah a week for me.

July 20-26th 2008 is National Zookeeper appreciation week. 

Woo hoo! a whole week to honor those who like me, scoop exotic poop.

It has been a nice week so far filled with free food and a bit of fun but boy was I exhausted yesterday (my friday).

I am now working on a special project for my husbands one day ( no week for him) of appreciation.

Friday July 25th this year is System administrator day. I guess I should make some specialness crammed into one day for him.

Well I should get working so I can get my projects done. 

Go appreciate someone today!!

okay I am alive

Yeah I know I seemed to have disappeared off the planet.

I guess Really I got swallowed up by Sand Diego

 county and have finally emerged.

so here are some quick up dates,

      I am doing okay at my zoo job. I am learning a ton and getting lots of new experiences. I do miss working with the mammals a little though. I have had to start doing exercises   after work due to my decreased lugging, not as much raking and no wheelbarrows needed.

Brian and I are still not sick of each other even after almost 4 months together.

Our home, guest room included is finally organized and feels so nice to have things with a place.

My car is paid off thanks to Brain's company getting purchased.

I am becoming more iPhone savvy, oh no my husband is rubbing off.

I miss church and my social life. When I do get to go to church it is Saturday nights and I don't know anyone, except my husband who normally sits with me.

I guess I will post a picture.

This is from our honeymoon but many think it should represent a true bad hair day. This is why conditioner was invented.  

 

A princess or a tom boy

That is what she will be.
Paige Marie Luster. Born this morning. Yeah the mystery baby that my sister was carrying revealed herself today.
Oh a little girl. I am so going dress shopping, in the baby Section that is. But with 3 older brothers and and older male cousin, she may be a starwars/paintball queen. either way I am super excited to have a girl closer.

And my two other neices will be closer soon too!!


WOW! I just realized I have 4 nieces and 6 nephews, oh that is 10

And this little one went.....

Pigs... I have been a fan of them for about 10 years now. But Now we have an infestation.

It is kinda a family tradition when a sibling gets hitched to raid their home while they are honeymooning.
We we were not spared. and everyday since we got pack we have had a little surprise hiding somewhere unknown.
Thanks to My brother and and Accomplice our home was infested with Neon pink pigs in Lieder hosen. They did have a small brick house but obviously had out grown it. because they were and are still everywhere you would ever think and those places you would not.

Here is one of the culprits below.

I have more descriptive pictures to share later (my mom has them right now, in her camera)
but here are some of the places I found them:
ON the celing, in the sheets, in the toilet paper/paper towel rolls. hanging in the pipes under the sink. under the kitchen cabinets, in the ice dispenser of the fridge, on top of the ceiling an blades. staring at you in the shower, in DVD Cases, chopped in the blender, in our luggage, inside of presents, oh and so many more places.

I enjoy finding them everyday and will honestly be sad when they have been discovered. We have already found several hundred, I will have to get a full count.

We have not discovered one yet today. I know there must be one hanging out. Where could he be. I give you an update when he is discovered.