Day 341 The Perfect Mom Project

My delayed blog today is caused by our somewhat spur of the moment decision to take a short family trip. We have all been feeling the need to do something and after some intense deliberation Mark and I decided that after visiting with Scott and Ashleigh to golf tomorrow, we will head even farther north and relax on a beach for a couple of days. We just want to get away, take some time off from the usual and spend some time with our kids. This meant that we spent the morning pulling together our plans and our suitcases, so that we could hit the road, which in turn caused me to miss my usual blog deadline. As I write today we are traveling toward Ashleigh's house. We are looking forward to more time with our lovely daughter and our son-in-law Scott.

 After we leave Ashleigh's ,we are taking the younger girls, to a beautiful area in our state that they have never seen before and they are looking forward it, although they are looking forward to the part that includes the beach more. We will have just a couple of days of some down time before we start the quick slide into the school year. This morning as we worked on our budget for the trip, we also discussed needed items for the coming school year, and they include two graphing calculators, two yearbooks, and two packages of school pictures. There is also a need for two new backpacks since the girls backpacks are several years old. Let's see $200 for the calculators, $130 for the yearbooks, $60 for the school pictures and probably about $60 for two backpacks. That's $450 dollars before school even starts and we still have to shop for fall clothing! I will have to remember to mention my financial sacrifice to my girls the next time they tell me something is not fair. Maybe I can pull out one of my Mom's famous quotes "Life's not fair!" or her other favorite that still has me scratching my head "Children should be seen and not heard". Yeah, good luck with that one, I cannot imagine who thought up that children should be seen and not heard, but if that is the case then I have one of my own useless quotes, "Kids should not cost so much money!"

 Regardless, they do cost money and so do parent's, especially when they decide they need to get the heck out of town. As we wing our way north to spend some much needed family time, we are ready for some sun, fun and golf. The golf part will be a stretch for me, but it will be a nice change of pace. We are ready to stretch every dollar and every hour into a good time too!