Family and Food

After holding onto my Fun Dollars for the entire first week of the pay cycle, I felt the weight of the money in my purse. Even though it was only five twenty-dollar bills, the psychological weight of having that much money was palpable. So, as we headed out on the road towards Chicago O'Hare on Monday, I had no qualms about buying lunch for everyone. I didn't want to be too picky or take up too much time since it's a four-hour trip (eight hours on the road for my father-in-law who was driving us) so I sprung for some Arby's. It was directly across the street from where we were filling up the van with gas. $21.00 covered it. I even remembered to leave a Fun Dollars business card on the counter top. (I bought a stack of cards before the trip and had been leaving them on tables, etc. during my trip.)

Three and a half hours later, my father-in-law dropped us off at Aloft, a modern-themed hotel across the highway from O'Hare. Our flight was scheduled to leave before noon the next day, and we had planned to spend the night at Aloft and take the shuttle bright and early. I was so grateful to get to spend time with my father-in-law, especially after the passing of his wife last August. This trip was such a blessing. Spending time with so much of our family really did my heart some good. I had really been struggling to accept my mother-in-law's passing, and being "back home" helped me move through some things. Even the simple act of eating at Arby's brought up memories of other family trips I took with her, almost always making a stop at Arby's while on the road.

So, as my father-in-law pulled away, I got a little teary-eyed. I half wished he had bought a night at the hotel so we could all hang out as a family some more. But I knew he had business as usual to return to after spending the week with us already. I love that the family Corey and I share is close enough to feel like a real family. His family is my family, my family is his. And that includes some close friends of ours too.

The sadness I felt seeing my father-in-law leave was quickly quelled when I learned that a dear friend of ours was coming to the hotel to hang out for the evening. She was a "groom's maid" in our wedding. As a long-time friend of my husband, he had her walk down the aisle and stand on his side at our wedding, right behind the best man, in fact. She now lives in a suburb of Chicago, so visiting with her was a no-brainer. We let the kids play in the courtyard while we all sipped drinks from the bar. Then we all went bowling at a "luxury bowling alley" called Kings and played a game. All the while, I kept wanting to use my Fun Dollars, but Corey insisted that it was still vacation, and she wanted to pay for part of our fun time as well.

I could feel the money "burning a hole in my pocket" as my father used to say when I was a kid getting my allowance. My opportunity to spend came again at breakfast the next day before our flight. Corey was getting the kids set up with their breakfast food while I paid. Since the tab came out to $20.00 even, I whipped out that twenty and felt the joyous surge of spending money.

Waiting patiently at curbside check-in

After our flight, we had all afternoon to make the two hour drive back to Sedona from Phoenix. We stopped at Olive Garden in Happy Valley for some soup and salad. After Corey had paid and left a tip in the little black book, he left for the restroom with Carrick. I took out another twenty and wrapped it in another business card and slipped it inside. The server was so sweet to us (especially the kids) and since we only had two soup and salads, plus a mac'n'cheese for Carrick, our tab didn't come out to all that much. I pretty much tipped her what our bill was. Even though we did not spend that much, she still gave us excellent service, and I wanted to reward that.

And now, we are home; back to our regular routines, eating habits, and familiar environment. While I still feel the weight of having left all of our family behind, I can look back on our two-week adventure and know that our time there was well spent, and so was my Fun Dollars.

Lunch at Arby's- $20.00 ($1.00 was from last pay cycle's cash.)

Breakfast at Aloft- $20.00

Tip at Olive Garden- $20.00

Balance this pay cycle- $40.00

Happy Spending!

Heading Home

At the end of our visit in Illinois I not only have all of my Fun Dollars in tact for this pay cycle, I also have $3.00 left from the previous pay cycle! Never in Fun Dollars history have I started the second week of a pay cycle with this much cash in my pocket!

This was not entirely accidental, however. I actually had planned to spend the entirety of my Fun Dollars to hire my friend to do a special Anniversary Trash the Dress session. We were planning to meet up at the state park where we were married, and hike around getting dirty. Unfortunately, the photographer fell ill the night before we planned to meet, and the rest of our trip was already scheduled with travelling and a wedding, so we were unable to reschedule it.

My Little Black Dress that I
bought with my Fun Dollars
last pay cycle.

Maybe the next time I'm in town we can do Trash the Dress. I'm going to leave my wedding dress here in Illinois, just in case. So, due to the fact that what I had planned to spend my money on did not transpire, I now have all of it to travelling back home with me.

Also, I did not buy shoes for the wedding with my Fun Dollars. I asked for shoes as an anniversary gift! Corey took the whole family shopping the day he flew into Peoria because we all needed dress shoes. He said I could spend as much as I wanted to on shoes, an unlimited budget. A true gift, right? Guess how much this woman ended up spending? Out of the entire Grand Prairie Mall, I managed to drop a whopping $10.00 on my shoes! I could have bought them with my Fun Dollars! (They were actually $20.00, but because everything was BOGO, they ended up being half off.)

I already know what I am going to spend with at least part of my remaing Fun Dollars. I have the upcoming "Summer Fun Dollar Challenge", where I choose a winner from the people who tried to do a Fun Dollar system this summer. I will be awarding $50.00 of my own Fun Dollars to the winner. $25.00 of my Fun Dollars from this pay cycle will go towards that.
(Check out the post "Summer Fun Dollars Challenge from late May.)








I also would love to go garage-saling with my kids this upcoming weekend. My son starts school the first week of August, so it would be a really fun to take them out hunting for treasures. It's one of his favorite things to do with mom, and we haven't gone to a garage sale all summer long.

As for last week's balance, I spent some on snacks while we were travelling. I also hired Carrick to be my weekend photographer. I paid him $5.00 to take pictures at the wedding. The pictures used in this entry are all taken by Carrick. (Many of them ended up blurry and were of eyeballs or pockets. The ones used best captured the weekend.)

Balance this pay cycle-$100.00
Balance from previous pay cycle- $3.00
Happy Spending!

Weddings

This week is a big one for me. I get to visit with 90% of our family members (both Corey's and mine), attend a wedding, have dinner with an old friend, and celebrate an anniversary. And it's not just any anniversary, it's our tenth anniversary.

I know, you must be thinking, "Shouldn't you be on a beach somewhere?" It took me a couple weeks to get over the fact that our anniversary would not include palm trees and ocean breezes. I had to look at the facts and put feelings on the back burner. The fact is, Lily could not spend a week without her parents. Trying to get her to be okay without mom and dad while she stayed with grandparents would be a struggle (and probably a little traumatic) for her and those involved. She's just a little too young still.

The other fact is Corey's cousin is getting married two days after our anniversary. We knew about the wedding, and the date, last year. We have missed so many family get-togethers, Christmases, weddings, Bar-B-Qs, etc, that the thought of missing one more just because we live thousands of miles away seemed unbearable. Even though she's not my own blood cousin, it meant a lot to me to be able to watch her walk down the aisle. It's what happens after being in a family for ten years; you count them as your own family.

So, after we sold the house, I told Corey that we can plan our fabulous beach vacation (without kids) for next year or the year after that. We don't have to do something just because that's what you're "supposed" to do. We are our own family, we march to our own drum, and we will do what works for us.

Getting ready for our wedding, July 24, 2004

What works for us is spending our anniversary with family this year. We are going to go hiking at the state park where we exchanged vows ten years ago. I even brought my wedding dress to commemorate our "big day"...to be continued...

Coffee and water on the way home from picking Corey up from the airport- $2.00
balance from last pay cycle- $10.00
Balance from current pay cycle- $100.00

Happy Spending!

A Little Breakfast Story

I seriously can't believe that with all the stores, shopping, restaurants and things to do in the city, I managed to leave my sister's house with $13.00 in my pocket! I think that part of the reason there was so little spending was that I had grocery money to supplement my spending while visiting family. That really helped. But another reason my spending was down was because of the kids. This was my first trip to visit my sister that I had two children with me. I have been out to see her 5 different times, either by myself, or with just one child. But with two, there are many more considerations to take.

Kids need time to play. If I kept them cramped up in a stroller or in a shopping cart all day, I would have two whiney, cranky minions, waiting to explode. So we did other things besides just shop. We took them to parks, we played with the in the back yard, we took walks around the neighborhood. We really only went shopping that one day at Woodfield. We went in with a plan and made the most of our time there.

So what did I do with the rest of my Fun Dollars? I chipped in at breakfast. I had already gone through all of my grocery money, and it was the last day of our visit. My sister and her husband took us to a cute Greek restaurant in Hanover Park . It's kind of a tradition that we go out to breakfast at least once when I visit them. This time (they live in a new neighborhood since our last breakfast outing) The Omega House hosted our family breakfast.

Carrick and Uncle Dan, chillin' at Omega House.

My favorite item on any breakfast menu is the crepes.  From IHOP to local bistros, crepes win. This time, I chose the Crepe Suzette with strawberries and Grand Marnier. Holy cow, these crepes were amazing! And, for the first time in breakfast history, my crepes were bigger than the pancakes! They were enormous! Three of them! They covered the entire plate! I gladly handed my brother-in-law $13.00 to cover my breakfast (and Carrick's) after finishing two of the monstrous, fruit-filled delicacies. I took the third one home and kept it in the fridge. For dessert that night, I sliced it up and served it to everyone, bite-sized.

The next day, I departed on the 8:10 Amtrak out of the Naperville station. With Fun Dollars still in my pocket, I made a trip to the snack car for a few breakfast treats. Since I didn't get coffee that morning, I bought the last Starbucks Frappucino left. Carrick wanted a blueberry muffin, so I snagged one for him, as well as a box of doughnut holes for us all to share. The kids munched their little hearts out as the train glided down the rails.

Breakfast two days in a row, with some Fun Dollars left over, not bad. I found my shoes for the wedding today...to be continued....

Breakfast at Omega House- $13.00
Breakfast on the Amtrak- $9.00
Balance (last) pay cycle- $12.00

Happy Spending!

Trash the Dress

Seven years ago, a friend of mine began seriously pursuing her passion for photography. She was still new to the industry and had wonderfully creative ideas for her budding business. I had met her through her mother. I used her mom's bridal shop (formerly Bonnie's Bridal and Prom Boutique) as my wedding depot. I found my wedding dress there, ordered my bridesmaids dresses there, and ended up doing my internship for my bachelor's there. I was a bride-to-be working in a bridal salon. It was heaven. She couldn't exactly pay me for my services, so she compensated me with free invitations, garters, and anything else I needed for my upcoming wedding. I became friends with her daughter because she was planning her wedding too. We had joined the website "the knot" and hooked up with other girls in the area planning their weddings to swap ideas and enjoy our pre-married life.

After our respective weddings she and I kept in touch. When she started seriously pursuing photography, she approached me about being a model for something called "Trash the Dress". Women wear their wedding dresses, then do fun, goofy, and messy things in them while being photographed. It's a way to commemorate the dress besides putting it in a giant box in the closet to be forgotten. I didn't have my own wedding dress (even though it had been three years since our wedding.) It was still hanging in a closet at my parent's house.

Since I didn't have a dress to wear, Bonnie gave her daughter some dresses from her shop for me to use. She had two dresses that were from seasons several years old. One of them was large and beautiful, but too big on the bust. Another was simple, and it fit. I ended up in both of them, at the same time. I wore the small one underneath to pad the chest area of the bigger one, which I wore over it. It was a heavy outfit, but I managed to pull it off. 

We started out heading to a storage area across town. We were stopped by a train passing through when I spontaneously hopped out of the car and started posing in front of the passing cars. It was an exhilarating beginning to a tremendously fun day. I climbed on top of a dumpster, hopped in the fountain in the middle of town, climbed a tree in my in-laws' back yard, and even had my mother-in-law throw tomatoes at me from her garden.



We finished the shoot at the creek behind my in-laws' house. It was freezing cold, but the pictures of me laying down in the creek were totally worth it. The ten pounds of wedding fabric I was sporting quickly turned into 20 lbs with the added weight of the water. I look back at these pictures and remember how much fun it was to get dressed up, then get dirty.



The story doesn't end here. The next installment of Fun Dollars, begining July 21 will bring the tale of Trash the Dress full circle.

Here are some of the highlights from Trash the Dress: 2007.

Hit with a tomato by my mother-in-law.

http://wendiriggens.com/

Dress to Impress

I survived the flight with both kids, two and half hours in the air. Since we live two time zones away from most of our family (the rest are three time zones away,) we have to make the most of each trip out east. So, that means that I get to fly out for an extra week of visiting family with the kids because Corey can only take one week off of work.

This year, one of my husband's cousins is getting married. We have missed all the other cousin weddings on this side of the family so far. Not only that, but the wedding is two days after our tenth anniversary. When we found out when the wedding would be, the wheels started turning in my mind to plan our anniversary around a family visit. Week #1, I get to spend one-on-one time with my sister (and by one-on-one time, I mean with two children in tow.) Corey will be joining us next week at his father's house. That way he only has to take off one week of work. I get to visit my side of the family while he's still at home. (We were able to visit my grandparents today, as well as my parents and uncles since they live closer to my sister's house.)

I packed lightly for this trip because I knew I would be spending time with my sister. She lives ten minutes from Woodfield Mall, and we always go shopping there when I come to visit. I decided to kill two birds with one stone on this particular shopping trip. Anniversary and Family Wedding combined mean: Rachael needs a new little black dress. The last one I owned has long since left my closet. It's the 6th anniversary model, which came complete with baby weight. It's time mommy got a new one.

Not only did I come on this trip without dress, I also came without proper footwear. I left everything except for two pairs of flip flops at home with the intention of buying a new pair of dress shoes after I found the right dress.

I haven't found the shoes yet, but I did find the dress yesterday! My sister and I each pushed a stroller (one was rented from the stroller cart at the mall) and we scoured three stores for dresses. It was only three stores because I found one at the right price that looked "just right" at the third store. With a price tag of $23.00 I walked out of there quite confident in my purchase.

I also found a pair of earrings to go with it for $9.00 at Charming Charlie. I also bought the kids a cup of pretzel bites at Cinnabon before we got started. I didn't want anyone fussy because they were "hungry" while we were shopping. The pretzel bites gave them something to do, and gave them the "full" feeling, so we were able to knock out our shopping mission in total peace.

I also promised Carrick a trip to the play zone if he stayed in the stroller the entire time. He did, happily occupied with Angry Birds on my phone (a real treat. Since dropping my phone in the pool, I have not allowed games to be played on my phone.) He was engrossed in his fantasy world of flying feathered friends as I tried on dress after dress.

After finishing up, as promised, we headed to the enormous play area. Lily had awoken from her nap minutes before we got there, so they both enjoyed running around.

Corey doesn't even know what this dress looks like yet. I can't wait to see his face when we go to the wedding. After ten years, it's still fun to dress to impress.

 pretzels- $5.00

Little Black Dress- $23.00

Earrings- $9.00

Balance this pay cycle- $34.00

Happy Spending!

Week 2: Time to Spend

Since I have been recording my Fun Dollars, I don't think I have yet to start the second week of a pay cycle with $81.00. I usually blow through the Fun Dollars in the first week and keep about $20.00 for the second week. But this pay cycle, I have intentionally withheld a majority of my Fun Dollars for our family trip.

Tomorrow I fly out with both kids to visit my sister and her husband in Chicago. They live right around the corner from Woodfield Mall; a multi-level shopping mecca. It's almost absurd to think that $81.00 will go very far with the amount of shopping to be done there. But that's what I have, and I'll enjoy every dollar of it. Shopping with my sister is an event not to be missed, whether it's $20.00 or $200.00, it's the sister time that matters.

Ready to fly with her new suitcase.

I also talked to Corey about grocery money this week. Since I won't be at home with the kids this week, I get to take half of our grocery budget with me to foot our food bill. I can buy some groceries to contribute to the house of our hosts while we're there, as well as have some cash for a dinner out. I won't have to use my Fun Dollars for dining this time around. Hooray!

Yesterday, I did spring for a 5-piece chicken strip at Burger King, though. Carrick and Corey went to Flagstaff to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. I used the time of having one child in the house to do a thorough pre-trip cleaning. I didn't want to make food and dirty up the kitchen, so I took Lily with me for a quick lunch. It was worth the $6.00 to keep the kitchen clean and have someone just hand me food. All that movin' and groovin' with the house worked up my appetite.

Believe it or not, I really enjoyed cleaning the house. The thought of coming home after travelling to a clean house is its own reward. I'll gladly pay $6.00 for that.

Chicken strips at Burger King- $6.00
Balance this pay cycle- $77.00
Happy Spending!