My little take on the Inaugural Speech... 2013

Inaugural speech:

"Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time..."

Translation: make the words fit whatever we want them too.

"For more than two hundred years, we have..."

Added: ha until now!!!

"Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone..."

Well except for all the liberals.  :0)

"An economic recovery has begun..."

Is this what recovery looks like?

"For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it..."

Do you mean the "growing many" of illegal citizens draining our resources or the "growning many" of (non) legitimate welfare recipients, sorry didn't know which number you were referring to.

"We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher..."

Read make little bitty socialist robots.  Workers of the world UNITE!  Oh and fundamentally change America... Yep!

"...and the size of our deficit"

What did you do to reduce the size of the deficit???

"The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

Um for a few, sure!  For the rest um okay... Sure!

"The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm..."

Unless you are a certain ambassador.

"America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe..."

Unless you are Israel.

"For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts..."

Not gonna rant on that today.

 "Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote..."

Um really?  What does it mean??? Buy more voting machines?  I call waiting in line awesome because it means more people are voting!  And can you say early voting people ?? Less lines!

"Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country..."

It's called paperwork--- why does the government act SO keen on EVERYONE else doing so much paperwork besides actual immigrants?

..." it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness"

No you want to redefine the definitions!  And it is the pursuit of happiness not a guarantee.

Fiscal Cliff Negotiations....Thompson Style!

So unlike congress we here at the Thompson household understand

 INCOME - EXPENSES = NOT MUCH LEFT OVER SO WE HAVE NOTHING TO SPEND

 

 

 

 

Of course since we have actually ACTED like we have something to spend.... we ourselves are facing a financial cliff.  :0)  I don't think we are anywhere in the category of congress and we have no credit cards so we are not really accruing debt, but we have debt to pay off still and none the less we need to lower our spending. Period!

 

So a few nights ago night Dave and I headed out on a date night

(session of congress- which might not be all that different than a regular session? Eh?)

 

And we brought out the BUDGET ( do you hear gongs when I say budget?)

 

And we actually put on paper our expenses-- WELL I had already done it but we looked at it!

 

 

And then we both decided that we had to do something! ACTION! 

Oh wait are you confused Action is NOT generally performed in congress!'

Remember this is Thompson Style!

 

We made a note if it was SET (non negotiable because of pre set terms)

We made a note it is was NEGOTIABLE ( we could tweak or spend less)

We made a note if it was a GONER (cut out for the time being)

 

We quickly cut a couple of hundred over the course of the year--

For instance... we aren't at this point going crazy! 

We are not at a beans and rice/ rice and beans status yet! 

 Although its not a bad plan and if Dave would actually eat rice and beans we would totally go there!

 

But we have a Blockbuster account.  We cut one of the movies thereby saving us $60.00 a year.

We also have a NetFlix Account--

so we lowered it to streaming and ONE DVD out at a time saving us $96.00 a year

(yes, I know redundant but truly I use it for school mostly and the streaming will allow us to cut the big one CABLE)

 

and the big one CABLE (not Internet of course silly people) will save us around $1200.00 a year.

 

A few of those pesky monthly things you sign up for and find you don't really use (Jumpstart, Evanmoor, Club Penquin) will save us another $360.00 a year!

 

Cutting our gas budget (Dave driving the van a min of three times a week (assuming I am not driving very far at all those days!) will save us around $500.00 (plus maintenance and stuff on the old truck!)

a few other things and it equals to about 4000.00 dollars savings this year.  NOW it will not all be saved... we have some medical bills to pay, we owe lovely family members from a previous van repair and a few other smaller things will eat up that "savings"... BUT what it will do is allow us to NOT be quite so paycheck to paycheck.. hopefully!  And it will allow us to get our emergency savings back up.. most were used for medical and a different truck expense--- but we had them!

Anyway... all will not go as we plan.. we KNOW that from experience but still we have a plan!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is brought to you by the letter T

T- is for the thankfulness I feel that my husband gets up out of his warm bed and goes out into this big harsh world to provide for our family.

T- is also for television and how much I do not miss cable one little bit yet!

T- is for trying... Trying new things and trying to expand on what I can do has so far resulted in a new found recipe we all like and a beautiful wreath of felt for the front door!

T- is for trust.  Trust and acknowledgment that HE will provide.

T- is for truth.  We had a little truth session with Kaitlin last night and it was wonderful and eased my load.... It also I believe strengthened our relationship.

T- is time... I am trying desperately to use my time wisely!

And lastly T- is for training.  We are on the routine train and trying hard to stay on the tracks--- it's that whole Laying Down Rails mentality!

the post where I....

am annoyed because I had set a goal to blog each day this year (lofty I know!) and our Internet has been down for days and days and days.  (if you know me IRL this is a hardship, truly). 

So I am starting off this years post while sitting in my sisters office while Kate is in choir!  Internet! YEAH!
I have another post that I had started pre-Internet down, but decided I will post it next.

So Happy New Year.  Can you believe that it is 2013?  I cannot.  I am in shock.  I wrote my first check of the new year at choir this morning and printing 2-0-1-3 was just overwhelming to me.  I mean this year feels like it flew by!!!   I realized a few weeks ago that this year Emily would turn 10 and I would NO LONGER HAVE A CHILD in single digits..... (((sigh))).  It hit me hard.  I want to tell Dave if we got busy we could have another single digit before Christmas THIS year... but I don't think he is going to go for it!  I think I could count the puppy as a single digit, right?  NOT quite the same!

I have big plans this year... I always have big plans of course but this year they aren't so big that maybe I CAN accomplish them!  Its the hope anyway.

My WORD of the year is going to be PERSPECTIVE.  I have chosen this word for multiple reasons.  But I think for right now it works for me.  It is truly a gift from God in many ways.... I kept reading posts about peoples WORDS of the year and I was getting down because I just wasn't coming up with one... I guess I wasn't feeling it!  I would literally read signs going down the road and hope something would pop out at me.. speaking to me.  It didn't happen. But sitting at the table with Emily the other day, reminding her to have perspective (something I have gotten in the habit of saying often to her lately) and I thought THAT speaks to my heart too..... so perspective it is!

Two goals besides the (GOAL 1)post daily goal (I know you are still laughing Brenda)


GOAL 2:
Cook breakfast daily (or at the very lease be purposeful in setting out breakfast-- meaning it might be cereal but I have to get the bowls out, spoons out milk and cereal... and SIT at the table!  I will say that I am on day 7 and doing great.... really loving it!

We have had pancakes/ sausage muffins, a french toast bake, waffles, eggs and sausage, cereal (one morning but they went with nutella muffins I made the night before) fried egg sandwich and biscuits from scratch (which turned out pretty darn good!)

GOAL 3:
School well. (I know this is very wide, large goal and what does it really mean, right?)  Well I am no longer school Mary Faith -- which is a good thing IMHO and of course moves that stress off of me!  However one good thing that came of schooling Mary Faith was simply accountability!  I had someone dropping off a kid three days a week that needed schooling... I had to do it!  So I want to keep up with how well we have been schooling and not allow myself to be a slacker!

I will post more on this later...

I gotta run to pick up Kate though in a minute and leave the Internet (sadly) so I will post more next time I am near a building with Internet!  :0)