#thedertings

all thats left of the old box!  happy thursday..... 2 posts in 1 week, i may just become an influencer before the summer is over------haha! i do wish i knew influencing people with your own words would make you a paycheck 11 years ago when i started this blog, but i was a little too early to the game.... now onto why i am here again this week..... over the last year-ish our lights in the house would flicker off and on randomly----never knew when, didn't last long and honestly (clearly) we blew it off. i did look it up a few times when it was really annoying and found, maybe its a bad bulb, maybe a factory close by sucking all the power (we do have a factory or 2 near by, so we ignored).  then fall-ish our 6 year old LG (pretty expensive) fridge started freezing up. so we would have to take everything out and put the hairdryer in it to solve the issue of thawing out, then it would stop for a while and then randomly do it again----we have babied it to avoid buying a new thousand...

happy summer friends! i hope you all are enjoying the sunshine and doing or planning some fun things for summer 2021! i wanted to jot down some things that we have learned along the way with traveling on a budget.... if you know the dertings, you know that life is budgeted---(something somewhat funny happened friday night in vegas, i will share in a bit).  some do's for us: *we travel 5 days max! we do travel often on weekends thanks to family in SC & FL (those trips because of our peeps cover room and board)---- we do love to travel, but being gone for more than 5 days is too much for us! our most recent adventure we left monday morning at 7am (arrived at 9am in vegas) and came home saturday morning (left vegas at midnight)----so only 4 nights of hotels were needed! *we booked our plane tickets using air miles----we got miles 3 years ago when we each applied for an american airlines credit card (those cards are now closed with no balance)------with covid however----we shifted ...

 here we are again! its 2.10----the day in 2012 my life changed, you probably know the background story by now.....brooks "found" my secret debt-----over $30,000! yep not $3,000---$30,000! it is hard to believe its been almost 10 years since we started this debt free journey.... i always come back to this day because of how defining it was for us (me) back then and how its carried over to now...we have made a lot of dreams come true by this now blessing that happened 9 years ago! had he not found all of my lies and secrets....we may honestly not have our house or possibly our marriage. i know some think its crazy to share something like debt---money woes, whatever you want to call it, but for me its a testimony to what 1/2 of americans (maybe more than 1/2) are living with! believe me i learned real quick how easy it was to swipe a card and keep going----the hard part is not swiping a card and truly contemplating if i really need something! when i say debt free--- i should cl...

happy monday.....*for the record I started this 2 mondays ago, so its only fitting & OCD of me to finish it on a monday* this has taken longer than i wanted, but the title has been there for awhile. i am changed.  during the process of the last 8 months of life, i have changed, i am changed,  i have grown in areas and probably not grown at all in others, what i did this time last year is a fond memory of an old life! in the beginning of corona i longed for the old normal, now i long for that to never return. i found lots of JOY from being home and being happy in our home. i am fine to be home with the kids and brooks and just doing whatever and sometimes just doing nothing. nothing wasn't a part of the old life. being busy was what i thought brought happiness... pre-covid, we were on the road all the time, going here there and everywhere, and now.... i don't want or need that life anymore....it was a good life that we lived, it has many memories and many fond moments, but ...

here we are....day.....??? I don't know.. hope you and your family are adjusting well..... brit is in the living room/her office having acting class so I thought I would jot down some life moments from the past few weeks so that this is documented years from now.... picnics-we have had picnics in the Mexican restaurant parking lot, random picnic tables from a church on the side of the rode to a park that you couldn't play on the playground. stores-we are guilty of going to lowes (no judging)....we are in the middle of a basement/pool house redo and that was happening before covid----so it continues, my kids on the other hand have been out about 3x in weeks....I actually ran into big lots last week and brit was like why do they have those things up....those things being the plexiglass dividers...its also super weird to pickup food and everyone have a mask and gloves on....its all still so weird. homeschool/work---zooming, need I say more....I am zoomed out, but I tryin...

hmmm, it certainly has been an interesting week, right? this new life, is a lot of adjustment, right? I surely cant be the only one feeling it, right? positives- slow mornings for my kids with extra morning kisses, the no rush life... endless time, daily with my kids, its kind of magical.... pjs, no makeup, no hair (sometimes no shower) days.... laying in bed doing nothing at 8pm, strange concept.... accomplishing the summer to do list in....whats this month? March.... the calendar only contains activities for who knows how long of....just us, #thedertings.... negatives- this is scary the unknowns are scary I miss people people are dying is it floating around us right now? and we dont know it? I find it very important to document what we are currently living these days---we are making and living history. one day we will look back and it will seem so crazy that our worlds stopped and things were forced to slow down in order for things to heal. I can already feel a dif...

It is hard to imagine what life was a week ago.....think back it was Tuesday, some of us were on Spring Break, some were working a normal workday,  life was good, no chaos, no panic.....and now 7 short days later, there is chaos, there are many unknowns, life is changed forever from the way we lived 7 days ago....yes, things will hopefully return to normal, sooner than later (we pray), but we are changed by this, this is a new life.... I feel the need to document the current events because its like nothing I have ever lived, my kids have never encountered, most of my go to people are living this day to day just like me.....we are in uncharted waters.....the plans we even made Saturday are changed...last week we thought we could schedule weeks to months out, but now our lives are changing quickly.....we can no longer plan for days, we are living in minutes at the moment. We were supposed to have a teacher workday yesterday, which we did, but it went nothing like it was supposed ...