Educating the Wheelers

Audrey and I will be heading up North to my parents’ house this week for three weeks of extended family fun and vacation. We do this about 3 or 4 times a year for a variety of reasons — it’s a big vacation for Andrew, who can work work uninterrupted on whatever projects he might have in the hopper; and it’s a big vacation for me, because my folks are super-helpful with EVERYTHING and Audrey loves them and I get to relax. It’s a win-win for everyone. And since we’re gone so long, Andrew will often fly up for a weekend himself to visit us visiting. Heh.

We can usually get the flights pretty cheap, so the big frugal challenge for us is how to keep Andrew well fed without breaking the bank. [In other words, no Central Market deli 5 times a week at 15 bucks a pop for lunch or dinner, as tasty as that would be.] The food budget when Audrey and I are gone is usually much higher than when all three of us are there since I can’t do the planning and cooking.

The first thing I do is start about a month beforehand scanning the circulars for loss-leader frozen pizzas and the like, and fill the freezer with tasty, easy to heat up meals for dinner. Then yesterday, I had Andrew select a handful of recipes for me to make for him that I’ll individually package for him so he can grab them on the way out the door to work. But that sort of thing will only last a week.

He came grocery shopping with me yesterday, which he doesn’t normally do, and we got a bunch of basics for building sandwiches and tacos and whatnot, so hopefully he’ll just have to pick up mostly produce and dairy for himself while I’m gone.

So, with this preparation, he should have more breathing room for “treats” while he’s on vacation without the expense of every meal being a treat, so to speak.

Looking ahead, these are my goals for 2006:

* Give birth at home to a healthy boy end of April/early May.
* Settle on a name for said boy with Andrew
* Read and exercise every day with Audrey
* Relax and enjoy parenting/my kids

* Drop our mortgage principle by at least an extra 10k
* Up our automatic monthly emergency fund contributions an additional 25%
* Continue maxxing out our 401k and Roths.
* Straighten out our life insurance/will situation.

I think I’m sandbagging a bit, so I might have to update these later. Heh.

We had a great Christmas, and a relatively inexpensive one. Admittedly, that’s pretty easy to do when you only have one kid so far and she’s only 2 years old. She had a lot of small presents, and a fair chunk of them were from the local used toy store. I wrapped them in shiny foil-like packaging, and I think she liked playing with the boxes and bows and stacking them in different places more than she liked opening them. In fact, I’m thrilled because she wasn’t too interested in opening them. We’d cajole her into opening one, and then she would just want to play with that one, not open another. So it took us two full days of that to open her presents. I’m not complaining!

I waited until, hmm, it was either Wednesday or Thursday to get a Christmas tree since that’s when they go on big sale. I was able to get a really nice looking pre-lit artificial one for about 60 bucks. We used two cannisters of Big Lots plastic glass-looking bulbs [important with a toddler, and only 15 dollars total] and a Big Lots star for the top, 4.99. My mom donated an old hand-crocheted skirt for the bottom, so we came in under 100 dollars for a nice looking tree we can use again.

Once Andrew and I decided that we didn’t want to deal with the hassle, stress and expense of a traditional American wedding, we started kicking around other ideas. Vegas, Justice of the Peace, etc.

There were a lot of other strange factors involved, but suffice to say that we needed to do it quickly before my quit date at work, which was rapidly approaching for our move to Austin. So we went down and got our state of CA paperwork, that was about 75 to 100 dollars. Then we got some wedding bands. Here we splurged a little, that was about 600-700 dollars total for the two of them.

A friend of ours is a minister [well, minister enough for legal purposes. Heh.] so he and three of our friends met up with us at a local Japanese garden for a small ceremony. Parking/Entrance Fee: 9 dollars.

After a five minute exchange of vows and rings in a beautiful, tucked away corner of the garden, we headed to a small Italian restaurant and treated everyone to a big lunch and official marriage paperwork signing. Lunch and Drinks: about 150 dollars.

Our parents received email notification that the deed was done [they knew it was coming, at least], and about 3 months later we had a big, big party at a restaurant near my Grandma’s house in Upper Michigan as the reception. That part was a gift from my parents and it was modest, though not cheap. Probably a few thousand dollars. Not bad for a hundred guests.

All told for us, less than 1000 dollars. And we’re just as legally married as folks who spends tens of thousands of dollars. We used the difference on the down payment on our house.

My Grandmother was appalled that I didn’t let Andrew buy me a diamond engagement ring. I didn’t really want one, but he thought it’d be a good idea to go and try them on, just to “make sure.” So we did, and I was sure. The idea of spending several thousand dollars on a trinket just blows my mind. Oh, yes, but it’s a “symbol” of our love. Yeah, right. It’s a symbol of the effectiveness of DeBeers’ decades of marketing effort. What a racket.

Additionally, I was really disheartened to see some of my normally less materially competitive friends scoping out other women’s rings and ranking them. It all felt very high school.

So, we started off on a good foot with no diamond. Instead, we got a nice-looking pearl ring for about 70 dollars. I told him that if he really wanted to spend a little cash on me, he could upgrade my computer. And he did. Heck, if I’m going to get a gift with high depreciation, it might as well be something useful!