Babies, Berries and Budgets

     Do you see our glowing girl Lauren above?  Do you see our little man Tate (bump) growing quickly safely tucked away in his mommy's womb?  He is at the halfway point (20 weeks) before he makes his expected grand entrance into the world!  Lauren and Josh have been busy getting their home ready for their new little arrival.  Josh has lost his man cave, which has now become the nursery, but he is not complaining.  He is so excited to be a daddy!  Lauren is nesting big time and with how creative she is, I can't wait to see the finished nursery when they get it done.

   We have been harvesting lots of juicy raspberries off of our bushes.  I have given lots away, made raspberry gin, frozen some, eaten a lot fresh from the garden and have been adding them to yogurt.  They are delicious!  My oldest two grandsons even made a trail under the bushes so they could get the berries from "inside".  Steven, the youngest grandson, enjoys finding and picking them but does not enjoy eating them at this point.  His older cousins, Bradley and Isaiah, are more than willing to eat his share though so problem solved. ;)  The strawberries are just finishing up and I have dehydrated most of them although I have used some as a topping for pancakes and pound cake along with eating some fresh.  The blueberries only gave me a few berries this year, but the blackberry bush is loaded with tiny green berries at this point, so we will have plenty of those.



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   Now for the budget...oh my, has that taken a hit!  Jeff is getting his last paycheck before he is able to return to work and it is going to be much less than we had counted on since it still had all the deductions, including my health insurance, but was for half the usual amount since he is using the last of this vacation time and then was out of paid days.  Luckily we do have some money in savings to help cover the first half of August and IF congress comes through with the stimulus checks, we will be covered.  If not, we will have to rely on our credit card to get us through and I do not want to have to do that.  We have slashed our expenses to the core.  Luckily we are 2 months ahead on our car payment and we are able to skip a payment on our personal loan through our credit union.  Our pantry, freezers, fridge and HBA cupboards are stocked up and I made sure that we stocked up ahead of time on pet supplies, so the fur babies are good for another 2 months at least and to be honest, Jeff and I could live off our pantry, etc. for a long bit also.  No one is going to go hungry around here. ;)  Between Covid-19 and Jeff's recovery from his surgery, we are not going out much anyway.

    Speaking of Jeff's recovery, he is doing great!  He has been out mowing the lawn again and trying to rebuild his stamina after having to be off his leg for the most part for a few weeks.  He even hauled a 50 pound bag of dog food that we had delivered to us out from the post office and into our home.  I've been trying to feed him well with lots of good meals that have a good amount of protein.  Lasagna is one of his favorites so I made a large one that lasted us for 3 meals and another to put in the freezer.  We've worked on projects around our home, watched lots of movies, and had the family over a few times.  We even had Steven stay with us this last Saturday so his parents could have an afternoon all to themselves.  They and we enjoyed that time so much!

   Right now we are in the middle of a heatwave, so staying indoors for most of the day where we can have the swamp cooler going has been a blessing.  Thankfully the nights are much cooler so we have been able to switch over to the vent to bring the cool night air in so that I am able to sleep better.  I can't sleep if I am hot.  It also keeps our home cool until mid day and then the swamp cooler is called back into duty.  Overall, we are doing well at this point and we hope to stay that way.  Going to keep a positive attitude and be thankful for everything that we have been blessed with.