Tax Refund Extravaganza

I was suspecting last night that Jane was getting sick...she had a runny nose all day and was starting to cough rather dramatically. Knowing that we don't have a very good thermometer (it takes two or three minutes for the reading--if you have small children, I'm sure you fully understand why that's completely horrible), I determined a while back that we needed a new one. While we were out shopping last night (details in a moment), we bought an ear thermometer. I felt completely justified in last night's urgency when Jane woke up with a temperature of 101.6.


Jane going to church does not sound like a good idea (or responsible parenting). My plan is for Chris to go to Sacrament Meeting, come home during Sunday School, then I'll go for Relief Society. I have been asked to teach RS today. I never, ever have before, and now of course, the one day I am, Jane gets sick. Anyway, Chris is still in bed and thus does not know my plan. Hopefully he'll agree.

Side note: Can I just say that I love it when Jane will cuddle with me for a few minutes, but I don't so much love it when she falls asleep on me? It's cute and all, but she's bigger than she used to be and my arms get tired. And the whole fever thing makes it a little toasty... She originally fell asleep on the couch (hence the picture), but shortly thereafter had a very explosive diaper episode. So, fifteen minutes and new pajamas later, she's asleep on my lap. I did give her some tylenol, so hopefully she'll take a little nap then perk up for a bit. In the meantime, I'll blog with one hand.

On with the shopping...

Our tax refund was direct deposited into our checking account (a modern miracle) a couple weeks ago. There are a few things we've been needing/wanting to get that were slightly out of budget range, and the tax refund gave us enough to take care of a lot of it. Here is a picture of what we bought yesterday:


The highlights: food storage, a new car seat for Jane, and a desk for Chris's new job (we didn't buy the laptop, it's just showing a picture of the desk.)

Food Storage...

For a long time, we've been talking about and planning our family's food storage. This was our pantry prior to shopping:


Thanks to the fortuitous overlap of the tax refund and Macey's case-lot sale, this is what our pantry looks like now:


It's a good start. It feels good to know that if something drastic happened, we wouldn't starve right away. And it's nice to know that we're following the counsel of the prophets.

Car Seat...

According to weight and height specifications, Jane has not yet outgrown her infant car seat. According to personality specifications, we're long past done. Jane gets rather upset when we put her in the car, and I can't say that I blame her. Who wants to sit alone and have nothing more than a seat back and maybe a little sky for a view? So, we've upgraded.

I've spent a lot of time talking to parents of toddlers and reading consumer reports and product reviews online. Eventually, I came to the determination that if you were willing to spend a fair amount of money for a higher-end name brand seat, you'll be fine, just make sure you try it out to see if your child fits first and be sure to install it correctly in the car.

We opted for the Graco Nautilus. The five-point harness goes up to 65 lbs, then it can be converted into a booster seat for up to 100 lbs. My hope is that it will last her until she no longer needs any kind of car or booster seat. My only disappointment is that she's sick today, so we won't be going anywhere to test it out.


And the desk...

Chris's boss lives and works in Boston. The programmers in Logan have all pitched in to pay a monthly rent on some office space by Stevens-Henager College in town, and they each provide their own furniture and equipment. Sadly, we recently delivered our unused desk to DI... if only we had known... We went to a few different stores yesterday looking for a reasonably priced desk, but nothing really fit the bill. Chris hasn't actually bought one yet. He's looking online and will be watching sales. In the meantime, he is going to use our card table.

If anyone knows of any good desks (it has to have drawers) around or any good deals coming up, please let us know!

And another side note to my already too-long post...


I just want to mention that, yes, we are fully aware of the dangers of child-in-bucket. Jane was supervised at all times and there was no water in which she could drown.