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What is the right amount of activities for children?
It’s a complicated question with a lot of different answers!For me, I think I want to start with the end vision first. In our “Family Manifesto,” Matt and I said things like:- “We are family that maintains a daily pace of life the allows us time to laugh together, express our love and appreciation for each other, and enjoy each other’s company”
- “We are a family that patiently supports and celebrates each other as we pursue our passions and individual interests.”
So to me that implies that we should absolutely be introducing our boys to new activities but not in a way that stresses us out or consumes our… Read More -
Family Adventure: Traveling Internationally with Kids
Our next big adventure is to Australia! We’ll be going during Winter Break (which will be smack dab in the middle of summer there, which I’m excited about because I am way more a warm weather person than a cold weather one). We’ll be heading to an old coffee plantation that has been renovated into a home in the hinterlands of Byron Bay. Then we’ll be heading down to Brisbane.We are all so incredibly excited!I purchased some books to help us prepare for our adventure.… Read More -
Budget Preparation
Phew! I finished getting our budget ready for 2018. Here’s my process:
- Look at our previous year’s budget in Google sheets. (I have one column that specifies what the category is called in Mint.com, what the item is, how much it costs per month, and notes about how I arrived at that cost per month).
- Cross check each line item by looking at the past several credit card statements. I need to make sure we are actually spending what we say we are spending.
- Pepper Matt with questions about new charges that have been added to the budget over the year (like donations to the ACLU).
- Update our income in
