Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
Well, Shane has finally received his first paycheck. (He is only paid twice a month, not every 2 weeks.) This of course naturally started us thinking of when would we be able to move out of his mother’s. Part of what we want to be able to do is buy a house in the future when Shane has his teaching position. To be able to do that, naturally we have to put money aside now, while he is making a good wage from his programming.
So how do you pay rent and put money aside? Well, you either find the cheapest possible place to rent… or you try to buy a cheap trailer house. To this end, we believe we have found something that could suit our purposes. It’s an older trailer house, 1976 or 1977, a 14×70 with 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 bath. It’s very rough right now, but at the price we would be able to go in and make improvements before moving in. Naturally we wouldn’t be able to make all the improvements we want right away, but enough to satisfy our immediate needs. Then we would be able to move in and plan to make other changes over time.
If this works out not only would we have the space we need (including an office for Shane), we would also be able to put money aside for a down payment for a home in three years when Shane graduates. Please wish us luck, we can use all the help we can find.
Yeah, I know, heart attack time right? Since moving back to Holmen I have been so busy trying to find a job that I just have not been able to do much of anything else. Then last month I got involved in writing some plugins for the Wordpress software which has taken up quite a bit of time. One of those plugins I wrote was for sharing recipes, called Recipe Share, on Wordpress blogs. For fun, I added that plugin to this site so I can share some of my recipes – there is one up already.
Allyssa is getting bigger and is really smart too! She knows the entire alphabet and can count to ten, though some days she needs a little coaxing to get through them all. She is also at that stage where she wants to be “naked”, well, except for a diaper, and refuses to wear clothes. She also refuses to sit on the potty so potty training is progressing very slowly, or not at all right now.
Her favorite movie right now is Cars. Well actually, it is Mater and the Ghostlight which is a bonus on the Cars DVD. I think I have seen that over 100 times already. It is kind of annoying too, because every time Mater breaks his headlight she has to scream out “he broke his light!” Oh well, she’s still the most wonderful part of my life right now.
The job market in the area is crap, and although there have been a couple of options, none of them have panned out. So, Laura and I have decided to use my knowledge to build a business. We are working now on a Business Plan and actually have about a half dozen customers already, so it just might work out. The trick will be to actually keep working towards that, and not playing games on Facebook (hint hint Laura).
Shoot, gotta get back to work now. In case you don’t hear from us in the next couple of months, just remember that it is NORMAL to for us to not update the blog, so things must be normal.
Those of you close to us already know about this, but next week I will be moving the family back to Holmen, Wisconsin where we can be with family and the activities we enjoy. It has been an interesting journey to Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City, but I guess the old saying is true, “Home is where the heart is”. It took a while for me to realize it, but I just need to get back to a place where I can do the things I enjoy doing and be with my family.
I’d like to say there won’t be a lot of posts for a couple of weeks with packing and moving and settling in, but a lack of posts seems to be the norm for this site. So get ready for this blog to be normal! Maybe once we are back and we have things to share we will post more. Then again, we will be sharing those things with the very same people who read this blog, so we may not feel a need to update. Geez, what is a person to do?
Currently I am not working, nor is Laura, except to build up our new business venture. Hey, we already have nearly a dozen clients so things are looking up. We will be focusing on the area around La Crosse, WI in the coming months, so if you know someone who wants a cheap web site, send them on over to $150 Sites, OK?
Well today we went and did a bit of shopping here. Our tax return finally made it’s appearance and naturally we went to spend some of it. We ended up at Micro Center. There we purchased a 26″ Sharp flat panel T.V.. Shane wanted to use it for both a T.V. in the bedroom and something he could use as a second monitor. While it works as a monitor, it’s not perfect. Basically the resolution is smaller than he hoped and it’s a bit too big to fit comfortably on the desk. He’s using it for now, but is likely to pick up a different monitor once the funds from his Pell grant arrive.
While we were out, we also purchased a Play Station 3. We had talked about purchasing a Blue Ray player, but of the difference in price it made more sense to pick up the PS3. While we purchased a second controller for it, we haven’t purchased any games for it yet. We decided it made more sense to get a GameFly subscription and rent the games first. We also have several PS2 games which we haven’t played since our PS2 died with a drive problem.
Besides all this, Shane recently introduced me to Mafia Wars on FaceBook. And from there I’ve also seen Vampire Wars and Pirates: Rule the Caribbean! I’ve found them to be rather addictive. As you can see we now have plenty to play around here.
We had been planning to go grocery shopping since we arrive back in home Tuesday night. Turns out that Shane’s out of state payroll check was being held by the bank for 5 business days, which meant it was suppose to available on Thursday.
Thursday night comes around, and we are all ready to go grocery shopping. Just before we leave, Shane checks his account. The funds were NOT available. Talk about being rather frustrating! Perhaps it is a good thing that there isn’t a local branch of the bank we are having the problems with. This way it makes even more sense to change to a local bank. Now we just have to take the time to do so, with both our personal and business accounts.
First thing Friday morning though, we found the funds were available so we decided to go Friday night. We ended up with a late start getting out of the house. Since there is a Cinzzetti’s near the Whole Foods Market we were planning on shopping at, we decided to eat there then shop. It’s never a good idea to grocery shop on an empty stomach.
Cinzzetti’s is a bit different that many Italian restaurants, it’s basically an Italian buffet, and it’s wonderful. I highly recommend it to everyone. When we finished eating, it was 8:50. Our problem was that the grocery store closed at 9. Nothing like everything conspiring against us, huh? Well luckily enough for us 3rd time was the charm. We were able to actually get our groceries this afternoon.
Of course that isn’t the only thing we did this afternoon. Much to Allyssa’s enjoyment we also squeezed in some time at Loose Park. It’s one of her favorite places, since it has slides. Of course, chasing Allyssa around the park makes enough exercise for mom and/or dad. This picture was actually taken on Wednesday, the 1st. But it still shows how much she enjoys the slides.
Yep, you heard me, another move. Sounds like we will never get settled. 
The job in Schaumburg, IL with Verizon Wireless just wasn’t the right job for me. I thought it would be fun to not have to write code any more, but I ended up managing a couple of WordPress installs and that just isn’t what I want to do. When this new opportunity came up I had to take it.
Oh, yeah, this time the move is to Kansas City, Missouri where I will be working with someone I have known and worked with for over 2 years. I will again be writing code and building web sites and promoting the weight loss program that I know works – still down about 25 pounds from the first run and getting started to do it again.
We have spent this past week at Laura’s dad’s home in Holmen, WI, catching up with family and taking care of things that needed to be taken care of here. This time we have a condo waiting for us when we get there, so I packed up the necessary items from storage yesterday and will drive down tomorrow morning. The condo is a perk from the employer so we don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a hotel room while we look for a place. It’s a small, 1 bedroom condo but it’s much larger then then hotel room we lived in for 6 weeks. It’s also close to shopping and entertainment so we’ll save money on driving everywhere.
Hopefully this one will be the one that lasts a while. As soon as we get settled we will share photos of our new digs and try to keep you updated as life continues for the Lambert clan. Now that we will be nearly 8 hours away from family and friends this blog will become an important lifeline to keep you all updated on the trials and tribulations of raising such a beautiful young lady.
It’s been way too long since we were able to drive our car rather then the van, but as of today, we can! Those of you who know about this will want to hear about the hassle with the DMV I have dealt with this past few months. It seems our tax dollars, which are used to pay those idiots at the DMV, are being wasted. I will elaborate:
We bought the car on August 4th, 2008, but due to an accident I had back in 2004 when I did not have insurance, I was unable to register the car until I paid the damage judgment against me. This started a search for the person I owed the money to. Ironically, the DMV nor the court systems could help me find him, and any old contact information I had was long outdated.
After nearly 3 months of trying to find him, I suddenly remembered where he had worked, and thought to call there to see if they had current contact information. Fortunately, he still worked there and he eventually contacted me back. Problem was, he wanted all the money up front before he would release the judgement. I worked it out through family and friends to be able to pay him the full amount, but informed him if he wanted his money he needed to meet me at the court house in La Crosse and sign the satisfaction of judgement. He was more than willing to do that. This is where the fun began!
I received the satisfaction of judgment on November 13th and called the DMV the following Monday. The yahoo that answered the phone told me that he sees the judgment is satisfied and that I now need to file SR-22 insurance and pay a $110 reinstatement fee. This really frustrated me because when I called the DMV back in October to find out what I needed to do, that person said nothing about insurance or a fee, nor did the notice the DMV sent me when I tried to register the vehicle. If I had known about the SR-22 requirement back in October, I would have done it. Turns out it only added about $25 to our policy – not bad.
Then today I called the DMV to make sure the SR-22 filing was on record, and was told it was, BUT, the satisfaction of judgement was not. I flew off the handle – yelling at this poor woman, Mary, who quickly calmed me down and told me what I needed to do. I scanned and emailed the satisfaction to her, and she immediately called me back to get the payment of only a $50 fee. The $110 the other yahoo mentioned included the $60 to reinstate my license, which I didn’t need to do today. She then transferred me to someone in the registration department who expedited the filing of the satisfaction, and told me we could get temporary plates so we could use the vehicle. FINALLY, someone at the DMV who knows what they are doing.
To make this long story short, now that you’ve waded through the whole thing, Laura made a trip with the van to River Falls to get our temporary plates and we can now drive our more fuel efficient vehicle again. So, for those wondering, we will be back home for Christmas, though we will once again spend Christmas Day here at home as a family.
