Liberation

We always thought it was nice to have a good amount of money in our bank account. Just in case there's a rainy day. Then, we realized that we had money in the bank, which was making about 1/2 %, and several loans that we were paying 6% on. How does that make sense? Plus, if something does happen, we could always sell one of our cars. It didn't makes sense to use anymore, so we broke down and paid off the suburban. It felt so liberating to send that check in!

The coolest thing about the whole situation: in the future we can put the old car payment towards our student load. We figure that instead of taking another 10 years to pay those off, it will only take about 2 years. That will save interest too. Then... if we get really crazy, we could actually start making extra payments towards our house. Imagine that.

On another positive note; we started the kids on their new chore charts. I can't remember if I already wrote about this, but apparently it's important to me, so who cares? Every day after school they spend about an hour reading, and cleaning. I'm always coming up with other things for them to do. It's great, because now I don't get behind on stuff. If something needs to be done, I just add it to the chore cards. Of course it doesn't always go smoothly, and I have to coach them through most cleaning tasks. But, they are getting better, and needed less and less help every day.

I have been working hard the past 4 days to get our pool water balanced. I have added like 3 gallons of acid so far!! and I'm not even close to the suggested Alkalinity levels. I must have started at like 500, and the goals is 100. I'm currently at around 300. Tomorrow, the pool store will test the water to see if my test kit is accurate. I also bought this thing called a "poolskim"... man .. did I write about this already?... i simply can't remember, nor want to check. Anyways, it attaches to the return vent of the pool, and sucks in stuff floating on the water surface. It seems to be working great!! I also fixed our hottub. After we drained the pool, the water was flowing in, but no bubbles were coming out. At the pump station there was a pipe that sticks straight into the air, which shoots out water if you plug the jets. So I figured I would blow into that pipe, to see if I couldn't get the pipe to start sucking air into the jets again. I didn't really think it would work, but it totally did!

Summer brings another one of my favorite things: the tv show "So you think you can dance". I really watching great dancers dance. Of course the first auditions bring good entertainment too.