Preparing for Vacation

So my dad and I are going on vacation together this year!! And we are going to HAWAII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW exciting!? We are going to the island of Kauai, which I have been to before. I'm SOOO very excited to have my dad go with me, as he has ALWAYS wanted to go somewhere tropical! We caught the flights on sale for SUPER cheap and couldn't pass the trip up.

So I've been trying to prepare for our trip by sort-of semi-scheduling our time to make sure we get to do the things we want to do. The only things we decided to do were go to a Luau and take a helicopter ride. So last week I scheduled our Luau with Smith's Garden Luau .



and yesteday I booked our Helicopter tour with Mauna Loa Helicopter Tours!



Is this not GORGEOUS?! I'm so excited that I'm seriously beside myself! We are going on a 'doors-off' ride so I can't wait to share the pictures with you!!

I can't wait to go on vacation, but I surely do NOT want to wish the summer away. Summer is my FAVORITE time of the year and I wish it was summer all year long! :(  Oh well.....at least I have an awesome vacation to look forward!

I'm still here!

I kinda fell off the blogging train for a bit (even though i had just started). I had so much going on in that noggin' of mine that I had to figure some things out. But all is going well around the Shrum residence. I have several blogs that I now like to follow and it amuses and amazes me to see their daily lives written out on to their blogs. I love it! I wonder where in the world they find the time to write all of that or remember it all, but I do love following along to see their journies in life. I imagine one day I too will have several followers who will read my daily/weekly journey if I ever slow down long enough to post about it. I do think it's so cool that these people can go back to their blog and read about things they did last week/month/year and be reminded of that great time. what a wonderful *memory* that I SO need to take advantage of. :) I'm gonna start working on it. Little by little.

So the memory for today will be this:
Jimmy sold his Pappy's tractor today. His grandfather used this tractor for gardening and since we don't have a garden Jimmy thought his grandfather would want him to put the tractor and money he received from it to better use. A couple from Louisiana that just moved in up the street bought it. I'm sure they will take care of it and hopefully Jimmy will be able to put that money towards a bigger tractor!

Teen Mom comes on tonight. I like that show, even though it is drama. At least it's not my drama. :) It's time for me to warm up my supper and stretch (i'm super sore from weights class last night) and watch TV. Something I really don't do a lot of.....and I like it that way.

Have a great night ya'll!

Looking up

Ok, so after talking to my friends and reviewing finances I am feeling better about being comfortable bringing a child into the world. My stress level has gone down and my worries are being shaken. Thank you Jesus!! :) However, today there was one of the top 5 strongest earthquakes of all time in Japan. It has triggered a tsunami in Japan and tsunami warnings in Hawaii and all the way to the west coast of the US. How scary?! It seems that everytime I turn around there is another natural disaster happening in the world. Now....I have to say that I don't know a lot about the Bible (although I would like to!) but I can't help but wonder if all these natural disasters are the 'Beginning of the End'. I have wondered this for a while now and I've gotten different views and opinions on this topic from people I know. Some say yes, some say no. I have no idea. Only He knows. But, the point of that is that thoughts run thru my head and make me wonder if I want to or should we bring a child into the world knowing all these disasters are happening. I know you are supposed to have children to make the world a better place and to bring joy to your life. I just don't know if I want to put myself in a position that would be set up for heartbreak. I wonder if these thoughts go thru other people's heads when they think of having children or they think of the children they already have. Your main purpose when you have kids is to protect them. I know I think too much about things like this. I dwell on things, i'm terribly indecisive and I'm a product of my father who does the SAME thing. (Love you dad!) I just wish I had the answers to everything...but I guess that's life. That's the point of life is to go thru and just figure it out as you go. This is a HUGE challenge for me as for some reason I have become a person who plans their life away. I really think that one day something crazy is going to happen and totally ruin my plans and then I will stop planning. But until then, I still worry. I pray that my worries and fears will be eased......please pray for me to if you read this.

Am I meant to have kids?

I have come to the conclusion that I don't think we are going to have kids.....at least not for a long while. This honestly breaks my heart because I'm pretty sure my biological clock has started ticking. For the longest time (9 years) we have both said we didn't want any children but we are both only children which brings about many reasons to have a child, besides the obvious fact that we want one. But the truth of the matter is that I honestly feel like we can't afford a child. We can't afford an extra $400-600 a month for childcare and we can't afford for one of us to quit our job to be a stay at home parent. At this moment there is honestly no worse feeling than hearing my mother say "I don't know what to tell you. I guess you just need to have dogs". I love my dogs without a doubt in the world, but I do think it would be neat to have a little mixture of Jimmy and I running around. I'm sure both of our parents would be thrilled to have a grandchild and I would like to be the first to provide my granny with her first great-grandchild since I was the first of her grandchildren to get married. But it looks for now that we will wait a while longer until we get some bills paid. I honestly have no idea how any of my friends with children do it - financially. Are you all in credit card debt? Are your house payments $200 a month? WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I MISSING???!!! Why am I stressing over this stuff?? Is God trying to tell me to have a child now?? Is He trying to tell me to wait because He has bigger things in store? Is He trying to prepare me for when/if we do have a child?? I have no idea and I guess I honestly won't know until something different happens in my life. *sigh*......**BIG SIGH**.

Worries

Today is just one of those days that I feel blah. I feel like I have so many things on my 'to do' list that I can't remember a single one. I feel like I'm missing out on great opportunities to save money and better myself because I'm not organized enough to get it done. I feel like we spend too much money and can't ever get ahead with our savings. I feel like my chest is heavy, with either burdens or anxiety. I feel like I can't ever get to do the things in life that I really want to, like travel to different places, because it costs too much and once again, I haven't saved enough. I feel like I'm never going to be in the right position to have a child because child care is too expensive and I have no idea where we would get an extra $400 a month to put a kid in daycare. Everything revolves around money and lately I just feel like we don't have enough. Maybe we are spending it wrong? We don't do ANYTHING except go out to eat on the weekends and we've even cut that back and are about to cut from 3 nights to 2 per weekend. We are trying to cut our lunch money spending. I just don't understand how other couples make it work and don't have the bills we do. Maybe they do and they just don't talk about it and we're doing better than I think. Money is a constant worry for me. We have a farm, which causes us to have to spend more money than a normal family. Farm equipment and animals are so stinking expensive. But I don't want to get rid of any of them because I love my farm life. I truly do. I just hope that God provides a way for us to be able to pay for it and have a family and not have to worry.

Maybe I'm over-worrying...ok, probably I'm over-worrying. I pray to God that he takes my worries away and I don't have to carry this burden. Maybe it's because I don't want ANY credit card debt what-so-ever (we've been in and out many times and are currently out) so I worry and stress that we are going to have enough 'cash' to pay for the things we need. I'm selling Scentsy to help pay extra on some bills and have extra cash, but I just feel like it's starting slow and I hate asking people to buy from me again after I hit them up for Tupperware sales last year. However, I do love Scentsy more and think that everyone should have one. :)

I guess I just want so many things out of life and I just don't have the means for all these great things yet. I like to think that I'm not one to "keep up with the Jones's" because I really don't care if my neighbor has a new car or new kitchen. I like my life to be simple. The simpler the better. But I guess right now, I feel like it's not simple at all.

I want so badly to take my daddy to Hawaii before he either gets to where he can't fly that long or I have a child and can't go (once again b/c I can't afford 2 tickets!). But I guess for this year we will head back to PCB because we have a free condo to stay in. However, with the rising price of gas, it might be cheaper for us to fly there at $113 one way. Good grief.....why does everything revolve around money?! I feel like I can't ever shake this feeling and I feel like I constantly harp on my husband for spending too much money. Which in turn makes me feel like he will leave me one day because I bitch too much. Lord....will these worries EVER end?! I just want to know that if we decided to have a baby that we would be ok. I just want to know that I'm not crazy for worrying about money and whether we have enough or not. We have enough to pay bills (that's always first) but it seems like anything extra is few and far between. Maybe I do worry too much. Maybe I need to let it go and I will feel better? I really know that I need to find a church and start going....I'm confident that I need a good group of ladies to relate to and a message that lifts me up. I have a best friend who I love dearly but she is in a different town. Jimmy and I need some 'couple' friends that we can do things with and rely on....well, I need that. I'll always have my bestest, but I think I need a support group. People to share my frustrations with who can make me feel like I'm normal with my feelings and then lead me in the right direction to feel better. I just feel like at our age groups of friends have already been formed and we're just a 'fill in' when we get invited to do group things. We don't really 'fit in' to the group because we haven't been in the whole time. Life is just so frustrating. Everything about it. I definitely will be going to the gym tonight because I haven't felt this down in a while. I just feel like I'm letting life's stresses take over and I just can't do that. I need to let go and let God. It's just hard when you're a control freak like me. Good grief.

Technology is great....most of the time.

So I got a new cell phone yesterday and....wow! I have been due for an upgrade since October, but I was holding out because I just wasn't sure I wanted to update to a 'smart'phone yet. Well, I finally took the leap and I am LOVING it! This phone can do all sorts of things. The internet looks just as it does on the computer, you can have coupons on your phone, scan barcodes to get a price....pretty much anything you can think of. I got an EVO shift, which is touch-screen with a slide out keyboard. I didn't want to pay the price for the phone, but decided I wanted the keyboard (and I'm glad I got it) because I'm not fully comfortable with 100% touchscreen. Anywho - I'm super excited about it.

I will say that Jimmy and I were having a conversation about money tonight and sometimes, ok a lot of times, I wonder what it would be like to be a Menonite. They seem to have no monetary worries and material things don't matter to them. I often wonder what life would be like if you didn't have the worries about spending money on things that "make life easier" but cost a small fortune (sometimes a big fortune). I wonder if the Menonites allow regular people to join there camp and become Menonites. I guess I could probably look on the internet and have these questions answered (how ironic?)... but for now I will continue to wonder. I'm pretty sure the people of the Menonites don't wonder what cool technology gadget will come out next and I honestly feel like that makes their life simpler and easier. If only life could still be that simple. I just don't think I could ever go from being 'normal' to a Menonite now. Maybe I would get used to it..... I dunno.

Friendly Stalking...

So my friends Laura and John are in Korea picking up their sweet baby Olivia! They have been patiently waiting for her for almost a year now. I can't deny that I have been incessantly stalking Laura's facebook page and blog multiple times every HOUR. I can't help it....i'm just so over-joyed for them! So tonight, I caught Laura on facebook and instant messaged her! You wouldn't believe my excitement when I got to chat with her!! :) I mean, I know they are fine and made it safely but there is nothing like talking to a friend who is on the other side of the world on such an exciting journey!! I love Laura and John dearly and honestly can't wait to hang out with them when they return! It seems we always catch up with them at Wal-Mart and their schedules have been so busy that we haven't had a chance to hang out before Olivia arrived. But that's ok because now maybe they will be home more! Ha!! I'm just so happy for them and want to spread their story because it is so inspiring. They are such wonderful people and I'm so glad they are our friends!! Love you guys!