Deals Part II

I was starting to stress. Our vacation costs for the year were adding up and they all seemed to need to be paid for right away. We just got completely out of debt in February and I was not prepared to go that route again. As luck (and helpful family members) would have it, things are working out great.

Trip #1: Olson Family Reunion in Southern UT
We are having an Olson Family Reunion in June. I am so excited. We are staying at this really great ranch and the price includes our room and all our food. Back in September we paid a deposit and I thought that we just all would pay our balance when we got there, but it turns out that since we are big group we needed to pay the balance in April. So my Aunt LeeDean is in charge of collecting the money. This isn't really a deal, but I though that we still owed about $500 for the trip, but it turns out that the balance is only $330. Woohoo! Doable.

Trip #2: Aly and Ryan's Wedding in OR
As I mentioned Aly is getting married and we, of course, need to be there. Driving takes too long since Ian only has one day off for this trip and is really intense (13 hours). Luckily airplane tickets for summer are pretty cheap to be found and we were all going to be able to fly to and from the wedding for about $500. But it's still $500 that we didn't really have. Again, luckily, Denny got bumped from her return flight home from our house two weeks ago and got a $360 voucher for her trouble. She very generously donated her voucher to our wedding trip fund and I bought all of our plane tickets last night for only $154 out of pocket. Yay!

Trip #3: Anniversary trip to CA in November
A few months ago Ian and I attended a timeshare presentation and, in return for wasting the sales peoples' time, received 2 plane tickets to LA and $40 at Olive Garden. It isn't a completely cost free trip. We have to pay the taxes and fees for the plane tickets, but all in all I paid $95 for the two of us to have a mini 2 day getaway to CA for our anniversary. Now, someone to watch the kids . . . any takers?

So, all our trips ended up costing less than I anticipated and they are all going to be paid for in the next 30 days, which will be nice for when they actually come up.

I have not had the opportunity to do any other good shopping this week since Ian has been working late late late (like until 2-3am) for the past 3 days. Major bummer. We really miss him. Weston prays at dinner for "Daddy to get home safe" even when Daddy is home now sometimes. I am going a little nuts being alone so much. On top of that it has been cold and snowy almost this entire week. It's doing nothing for my attitude. I'm hanging in there though and looking forward to a relaxing Conference weekend with Ian home. I might even still sneak off and do a little clothes shopping after all.

Here are a couple pictures from our time hanging out at home this week.

The kids had a blast playing on the Aerobed. I blew it up to make sure it didn't have any holes or anything. As you can see, we even had a few hours of sunshine yesterday morning.
While I was folding laundry yesterday Weston saw his new Toy Story shirt that Aunt Aly gave him and immediately wanted to put it on. He loves it and requested a picture. What a ham.