We're finally into Spring and the weather seems to be holding at a more cooler temperature than I remember in the past. However, I'm sure that it'll soon get blistering hot.
I've been in a lull recently with being on the unproductive side of things. There are lots of "things" to do and get done, but with the kids' schedules being really busy the last month or two, it's been hard to get motivated to get other stuff done other than extracurriculars and anything school-related. Things seem to have finally eased up a bit, though. I'm looking at the calendar and for the first time in I don't know when, there's absolutely NOTHING scheduled for Wednesdays. Tuesdays are still quite stressful because of piano and Girls on the Run. Right now, sports are limited to soccer for Emmeline and Connor's 2 baseball things at PCO and McGuinness. I should really start considering side hustles to make some money as they're in school, but it's hard to pin down what to do.
Here are some of the things on the to-do list that just keep getting postponed:
- Mulch the yard fully
- Master bedroom new headboard
- Declutter
- Dentist appointments
- Get back to proper weekly meal planning
- Carpets possibly replaced with wood?
- Move money to a interest yielding account
- ...bunch of other little things
To add to this, I had to recently get our van brakes replaced because it was quite bad. Then, the day of/after, I found out that there was a screw in one of the new tires we bought like 3 weeks ago. 100% Hibdon tires did it while they were driving it around diagnosing it, but whatever. Discount Tire was able to fix it.
We just had our Spring Break trip to Santa Fe with the Bonds. It was fun, but the driving wasn't. 8 hours each way was almost just as bad as going to Colorado, but whatever. Was also only for like 4 days, so it just seemed like half the trip was driving. The airbnb was good. Maybe wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but the others liked it. The Bonds chose the casita and pretty sure that was the worse of the 2 living areas, although both seemed fine.
The other thing that is kind of disappointing is the money we have just sitting in one of the investment accounts. I think we need to finally just put it in SOMETHING because for the last 6-7 years maybe, it hasn't done anything. I was doing some calculating and we're literally just throwing money away, as with just a minimal 4% annual interest rate, that's a free $10k every 5 years. Then I got even more depressed playing around with seeing how much that money could have been if we had invested in something as simple as Apple stock and just letting it sit there this entire time. Because of how covid affected the tech stocks, we literally could have bought a new house in some scenarios. Even in the lowest performing scenario, we could have used it as a down payment to a bigger house, easily. We've been kind of hunting around, but the minimum we'd like to upgrade to is juuuust out of our price range. House prices are still crazy to me for what you get, but it does seem like it's coming down albeit slowly.
We are still, sort of, planning on a UK trip next year, but for some reason I'm not as motivated to do research and figure out ticket prices and such as our Japan trip. Randomly watching Japan videos makes me want to just go there again, but I think we need to try other places. It just doesn't seem the same, for some odd reason. The logistics seem to be harder to work out and I think the biggest thing is that since our airline points situation is different, it's harder to figure out where to buy tickets for the best deals. We'd like to do business again at least one of the ways, but I'm not sure if that's feasible with the tickets available, the routes we need to take, the airlines we need to take, etc. I hope we can, though.
Well, I've got some chores to do. The house has been a bit messy lately. The kids are supposed to help with chores, but they haven't really, so.
