Lazy Updates...

So a whole bunch of stuff has been going on the past month, but laziness has the reigns on us, so we haven't updated hardly anything...even facebook has been neglected.

Luke spends his days and nights working for work, and editing pictures of the wedding last month, along with a maternity and newborn session for friends of ours, plus designing save the date and birth announcement cards, and designing guestbook pages.

He will have the wedding finished this weekend, just in time to second shoot another wedding with Melanie Wright Photography, and go to the Cleveland Airshow who are featuring the Blue Angels this year! It will be Avery's first airshow :)

Last week we put our land up for sale. It's 4.656 acres close to the Ashland County border. It has a gas well that we get $100 a year for the lease, and it also has a spring on the property, along with lots of trees. We bought it 6 years ago with the intention of building, but buying a house, having kids, and a sinking economy put that dream on the backburner, along with the fact that it's another 20 minutes away from our friends and family that we barely see as it is, I think it's best to sell it and maybe buy some land closer to everyone else, and definitely over 5 acres. So, if anyone knows anyone that wants land, look ours up on Amy Marinello Realty!!

We had dinner at Jake's with friends and played at Cohan Park Saturday, and on Sunday, we went boating with Luke's parents to Famous Dave's at Cedar Point. The girls were in awe of the roller coasters, and were sad when they learned they weren't tall enough to be on them. We have lots of pictures, but they haven't even made it off the camera yet. Maybe one day...

It's Been Awhile...

Lots of things going on. Luke photographed a wedding on April 24th. Lori, a friend from when I worked at Lowe's, was his second shooter, and his mom also took some pictures. Overall it went really well, and he has lots of editing to do.

His brother's wife's family had pictures taken last Friday, so he also has those to work on, so he is keeping plenty busy. To top it off, we had a wedding consultation for his sister's husband's sister on Saturday. She is getting married at a gorgeous restaurant in December, and that wedding should be a blast!

We had Lilly's party yesterday on her birthday. She is now a big 3!! She goes for her checkup on Wednesday, so we shall see how big she really is. She received lots of clothing and toys, and we had a lot of fun with family. Hopefully no one is stopped up today. We went through 4 pounds of cheese cubes!! Apparently both families love cheese.

We have a full weekend coming up with Nick's 16th birthday and Mother's Day, then it's time to start packing!!

Why you may be asking????

Because as long as the weather holds out, we will be witnessing Atlantis blasting off from Kennedy Space Center on May 14th!!! We bought tickets for viewing it from the Kennedy Space Complex, which is about 8 miles from the pad (with no clear view of the pad). The causeway was sold out by the time we were picked in the lottery to purchase tickets. Now the tickets are going for hundreds of dollars on eBay!! Anyways, we plan on renting a minivan Tuesday evening, and leaving about midnight. Hopefully the girls sleep decently and we can get in 8-9 hours of driving time before they wake up for breakfast. We will stop for breakfast and stretch, then continue for another 4-5 hours, since we know the girls can pull that off from our trips to West Virginia. We will then stop again for a bit, and hopefully be able to pull off another 4-5 hours and make it to Daytona Beach by Wednesday night. As long as the Kennedy Space Center is having its tours on Thursday (day before launch), we will use our ticket to get in and check out the museum and tour (the ticket is good for 2 days, and the tour takes you close to the launchpad). Then we will probably check out Titusville and Space View Park, and get some pictures of the shuttle on the pad from 12 miles out. Friday is launch day, so we will be at the museum again and hopefully the launch goes off without a problem. We also hope to hit the beach, since I have never been to the ocean before, and if all of that goes well, then Saturday will be a free day, and we may hit the Brevard Zoo or find something else to do, then we will start heading home Sunday morning. We'll drive as far as we can, and find a hotel to stop at overnight, and get home Monday evening to return the car and get back to life. That's the plan anyways...we will see how well we can stick to it. It all depends on the shuttle and the weather.

A Week With Nana...and other updates...

On Friday the 16th, Luke had asked if I had heard from my grandma on whether or not she was coming up that weekend from West Virginia. I had emailed her the day before, so he suggested I call down there and see what the plans are. Low and behold, grandpa tells me she is already in Ohio, and will probably be over that day!!!!! Surprise to us. We got the dishwasher loaded and started wiping the microwave and in pulls mom and grandma. Luckily, the house wasn't too out of shape, but I wasn't expecting her until Sunday afternoon, not Friday.

She stayed the week and the girls had a ton of fun. They walked up to the Gault Family Learning Center and played on their "playground". We walked around the block and picked up some leaves that we put in clear contact paper to preserve. We raked some leaves outside to jump into. They did lots of puzzles and colouring.

Luke and I worked on the bathroom a little bit, cleaned the basement just a touch, and got my Geo Metro hauled off for scrap :( I got $180 out of it from the guys that took it away, but I cried as they hacked away at it on the trailer before they even left our house! I told Luke, I had that car longer than I've been with him. I will miss it, but the frame was beyond fixing.

Wednesday was Nana's birthday, but we waited until Saturday to celebrate, since Grandpa came up Friday and they stayed over at Uncle Rob and Aunt Taresa's house. We had lots of ice cream cake and cheese :)

My doctor's appointment was Thursday, and we didn't bring the girls since Nana was up, so the doctor decided to do some swab test and check things out in there. She said the cervix was high and closed, which is good, since I still have 2 weeks before I'm considered full term, and my belly is measuring at 38, although I really believe that I look smaller than I did with both girls. I'm hoping for the second week of November (the 10th to be exact), but we will see how things pan out.

Luke had a senior shoot on Sunday at Silvercreek. We dropped the girls off at Rob and Taresa's (for more ice cream cake) and I went and held the reflectors and flashes for him. They will be coming over later this week for the studio session. He actually left about an hour ago to do another senior shoot at Lake Anna, and then we will have to schedule a studio session for them as well, so needless to say I will be busy cleaning all week!!

Hopefully I can muster up the energy. There are so many little things I want to get done, especially before the baby, and how he will have two seniors to edit, and I just hope he can get the editing done before I pop. I actually think the baby dropped a bit, must have been the walking at Silvercreek yesterday. Hopefully we can get some things finished up...if anyone wants to buy me some drywall and put it up for me, I will love you forever ;)

As always, pictures will show up sometime, we have lots of senior pictures to go through, so I'm sure the first pictures that will end up getting posted on this blog will end up being whenever the baby comes, and then we will catch up with everything else one day....

A Bad Day So Far...

Do you every feel like your world is falling apart around you? Today is one of those days for me…

I knew Luke would get sucked into working on Josh’s truck, and he’s been out there half the day with Chris getting the old transmission out, and getting the new one in. I wouldn't mind it so much if I knew in advance, and had prepared myself for being inside with the girls all day by myself, but when I have other plans that get interrupted, I get angry. There are plenty of things around this house that should be a lot more important than that transmission. I don't care if that truck has to sit here for a year until we would get our things done first.

We got our photo shoot done with Lexi for the front of her birthday invitations. Now I just need to get them ordered, and the collage we put together looks OK to me, but I don’t think Luke likes the way it looks on the invitation, so he will probably sit here for hours tonight tweaking it, and all I want are invitations ordered.

After getting most of the e-Bay items shipped off on Friday, the dining room still looks like a disaster. There’s photography equipment and books everywhere.

We charged wet bags and cloth diapers that I wanted on a credit card, and because I felt so bad charging something I wanted, I let Luke charge his lens. Unlike his lens, the stuff I charged is for the house, and will help save us money in the long run…and it’s 4 times less expensive than his lens. We have more things to e-Bay, including 2 lenses he won’t need since he has ordered this one, so he will get his portion paid off pretty quick. Chelsea is doing hospital training this month, so she is getting lots of hours, so February should be a good babysitting month for me. I’m not worried about paying for the balance, it’s just buyer’s remorse, and being a little upset that everything I tend to want is for the girls or the house, and everything Luke wants is for him. I know he is trying to start up a business and all, but if you don’t even advertise that you want portfolio-building clients that you will charge a next to nothing fee for pictures, you’re never going to have an established business.

The kitchen always upsets me. The wiring is dead in the kitchen, except for new wires running in there for the dishwasher, fridge, and freezer. We also have an outlet strip that we can plug small things into above the freezer, so the microwave works, and anything else I can plug in. Problem is at night, when you can’t see anything. The pantry area still has a ceiling light that works, but it doesn’t put out much light, so we have a trouble light that hangs above the stove, so we can turn it on for light, and the stove is plugged into it. The cord for the light runs across the floor in front of the cabinets and plugs into the bathroom outlet. That wire always hangs up my kitchen drawers when I push them in and it drives me crazy. Every time I put silverware away, there it is!

I must just be in a mood, because all kinds of little things just aggravate me today. Lilly won’t stop climbing on things, Lexi won’t help pick up toys, there are Cheerios all over the living room floor, and I’m ready to walk out the door. Sometimes the stay-at-home mom life isn’t very appealing to me anymore…

I think I'll go pound on the pantry wall. It's going to come down sometime anyways...

Welcome to our Family

So I decided to start a life blog for the New Year, to keep my family in check with the goals we are working towards. It also gives me a place to vent, and a place to hold myself accountable. So, lets get started with some background.

The Cowgar family consists of my husband Luke, myself (Holly), and our two daughters Alexis (2) and Lillian (1). We also have our dog Athena, our cat Socks, and some miscellaneous fish. We live in the very liberal artsy-fartsy type town of Wooster, Ohio.
Our goals and how we are achieving them are as follows:

1. Live as eco-friendly as possible.
Our town has blue trash bag recycling, so we put all recyclables in a blue trash bag and take it to the curb every week. There is also a yearly hazardous waste recycling in our county, so we save electronics, batteries (hoping to go rechargeable sometime soon), chemicals, and tires. We were composting our organic scraps, but since it’s really cold out now, we have really been slacking on that. We use CFL bulbs in most areas of the home, and are slowly making the transition complete (except Luke’s office, because he is a pain). We have bunches of cloth rags to use and reuse. We clean a lot of things with baking soda and/or vinegar. We make our own laundry detergent out of washing soda, Fels Naptha soap bars, and Borax powder. We don’t use dryer sheets, and in the nice weather, we hang out our clothes to dry. We do use some hand-me-down and thrift store clothes, as well as some new, (but new is mostly from other people or very much clearanced).

2. Eat as healthy as possible.
We buy cage free/free range eggs. We just purchased locally raised beef and pork (From SIL’s father and my Uncle). I plan to have a more productive and bigger garden than I had this past year. We try to eat more fruits and veggies. We try to stay away from high fructose corn syrup, MSG, red dye #40, yellow dye #5 (well most dyes in general), sucralose (and other refined sugars), and anything else we find out is really yucky for you. We also try not to eat out much, although Starbucks and Arby’s tend to be our weaknesses.

3. Get out of debt and be financially responsible.
I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for 2 years, and just recently picked up a part-time gig at the local K-Mart on nights and weekends. Not because I needed out of the house, but out of necessity to our current budget. Luke makes plenty to live by, if we didn’t have the debt we have. We got off to a rough start after buying a house, needing repairs done to it, having high deductibles and lousy insurance while having 2 kids. To top it all off, we were set to be consumer debt free by the end of 2008, but we suffered a miscarriage in May 2008. On top of that my beater car of 7 years had a structural break on the frame, so in about 2 months time, we racked up about $12,000 in debt, both consumer and car. We just lost control and ate out so much. We were devastated and didn’t grasp hold of the situation. We also had over $800 in medical expenses, since everything is out of pocket until we reach our high deductible, so needless to say, we need money…ASAP! On top of about $20,000 in consumer debt, we have about $5,500 for the car, and around $10,500 to Luke’s dad, because he was kind enough to loan us the down payment on our land we purchased before we bought this house. Then of course there is the land mortgage, which is around $15,000, and of course the house, but I don’t care about the house, because hopefully one day (sooner than later) we will sell it, but we do have some unfinished projects that need done. So, to combat the debt, we have a detailed excel spreadsheet for our budget, and we are snowballing our debt, curbing our eating out, lowering our grocery bill, cutting out some unnecessary expenses, selling on E-bay and Craigslist, and I baby-sit my friend’s daughter, so hopefully we will make some quick progress.

4. Starting up business ventures.
Luke has expressed interest in starting up a photography business. With the equipment we already have, we should be able to do it without needing to tie up any more money into it. He has 2 cameras, numerous lenses, photo editing software, and a lighting kit. He is still in the practicing mode right now, and we have a blog set up http://willowspondphotography.blogspot.com/ The money is in portrait and event photography, but he does enjoy nature photography more, and we hope to create a website soon that will feature some of his nature shots available as prints to buy. On another side, I completely dislike working out of the home right now. I worked for 7 months after Lexi was born, and it was the toughest months of my life. I missed so many family activities, my first Mother’s Day…just everything. I’ve been working at K-Mart now for a month and a half, and not a day goes by that I don’t cry because I have to leave the kids and work there. It’s taking a toll on life in general right now, and I think we would all be much happier if I was back at home, even if it meant paying off debt a lot slower. I think it would be fun to have a small home-based business, so there would be no need to leave the home, and we would have the freedom we had when I didn’t work. In the 6 years we’ve been together, I have talked about it off and on, so we purchased a web domain that we could use not only for Luke’s nature prints, but use for other products as well. Primarily, it would be the crunchy hippie stuff, like candles, soaps, and homemade trinkets of sorts. We need money and time to invest in setting it up, so right now it’s just a brainteaser, but one day it may happen.

5. Start the path towards home schooling our kids.
The girls’ cousins on the Cowgar side are home schooled, and that has been an influence on Luke and I considering home schooling. I love the idea of no set wake-up times, field trips wherever-whenever, and the ability to go into detail on things the kids find interesting, instead of them skimming over it in a public school setting. It gives Luke and I the opportunity to give so much more to the children education wise, that I know they wouldn’t receive at a public school. I want them to be able to learn things for real life applications, and not focus so much on mumbo jumbo that they may never use again. Luke and I are both products of a public school system, and not a day goes by that we wish we had learned something useful there. I have a few tubs of miscellaneous school books, teaching aides, and crafty supplies. I had every intentions of starting something up this fall, but I haven’t been able to manage the house, the kids, and this new job very well, so it just hasn’t happened.

6. Start living with less.
One look at our house, and you can sum it up with one word; CLUTTER! We have too much stuff, and not enough room. We hold on to things we will never use, or feel bad about letting go, and enough is enough. Luke and I talked recently about how cool it would be to get debt free and buy and RV, and then just live in it for a while and travel the country, since his job would allow him that freedom. Well we wouldn’t fit in an RV with all the stuff we have shoved in this house, so it’s time for a change. I have boxes piled in the foyer for a yard sale next year, and bigger items we have put up on E-Bay or Craigslist to sell. We cleaned the basement recently to organize it better, and we had boxes that had sat down there since we moved in…back in 2004! Obviously we have more than we need, so I am slowly downsizing and reorganizing the house. Hopefully this blog will keep me in check, and I can put some before and after pictures to help keep myself motivated to the task.

7. Live an adventurous life.
As stated above, Luke and I have talked about the RV experience once we are debt free, before building a house on the land. That being a few years down the line anyways, we need to make changes now to our life. We are hoping to be a lot more active outdoors, taking more hikes, attending more functions and classes at the surrounding park systems, and showing the girls appreciation for nature. It will also help out Luke with many opportunities for nature photography throughout the year. We are saving our tax return for a trip to Florida sometime during 2009, so we can see a shuttle launch before the current shuttles are retired for good. We plan to spend some days at the beach, and drive home, hopefully stopping in North Carolina at the Emerald mines, and making our way up to Washington D.C. before heading back home. I’ve never seen any of those places, and it would be a great family adventure for the girls.


To sum everything up, I am keeping this blog to keep me in check with all of these goals. I am hoping by putting everything on the table, out in the open, that it will keep me motivated and hold me accountable, so we can achieve these goals more easily. I guess it will also give the extended family an insight to our everyday life, and a journal the girls can look back on later in life. So sit back, hold on tight, and enjoy the ride…hopefully!