Note: I drafted this post October 16; it's now November 6. It's taken me almost a month to put pictures in it. (The pictures are from various days between September and October.)
 |
| Delight (only 5 years old) loses her first tooth! |
With the government shutdown coming to a close, I thought it might be nice to document how we survived the shutdown. Warning: this post may sound political, personal, and maybe pompous, but you are family so we should be able to talk about these things. Plus, I will throw in fun pictures just to make it more interesting.
 |
| True grew a beard for 3 weeks (in September). He shaved before his promotion interview. |
October 1 and 2: True had to work, though he is nonessential, because he was put on the excepted list to work one criminal case that was going to trial the next week. During those two days, he could not use his computer or phone for anything but work on that one case.
 |
| Liberty looking cute. (For the trained eye, we'd moved our couch to the other side of the living room for about a week. Then we moved it back.) |
The trial got moved to January, so True was furloughed starting October 3. Yay! I was worried that the shutdown would end before he got to be furloughed. True taught homeschool for the next two days, and the next week was Fall Break. I took the opportunity to write to all my representatives in Congress to tell them we were okay with the short-term inconvenience for the long-term benefit of fixing things. I told them I wanted them to pass a budget (and reminded them who they worked for--me).
 |
| Zeal fighting as Link (and making similar sounds). His green ruler sword is a blur. |
The next week, we had a stay-cation: we saw Planes in the cheap theater on Tuesday, went to the zoo on Wednesday, roasted hot dogs over a fire and camped out in a tent in the backyard on Thursday, and played putt-putt on Friday. (If you are wondering about Monday, True spent that day at a P&G diaper study with Zeal then took Liberty to the doctor and hospital for x-rays after she hurt her arm falling off the futon--she's clear!)
 |
| Liberty looking cute again--she does that often. |
 |
| Delight and Praise in matching outfits they'd coordinated themselves. They do that every now and then. |
Now, something the media failed to report on during the coverage of this shutdown was that federal workers had just been paid the Saturday or Monday before the shutdown (for the pay period of Sept 9-20). So while many people were feeling sorry for the poor federal workers, they really shouldn't have been. (Though, it is sad if people are living paycheck to paycheck making good money.) Many workers probably signed up for unemployment benefits; however, they will have to pay it back if we get back pay, which is what happened last shutdown. I definitely felt bad for people like Jason Brown and Carl Morgan (who works TSA), who were essential and didn't get the time off.
 |
| Liberty turned 1! |
Thanks to Dad giving me Financial Peace (probably when I was in college), we have been Dave Ramsey fans for many years, though we haven't done everything according to his plan. I recently got the Dave Ramsey free app so I could listen to his show anytime--I recommend listening to the archives since they are commercial free--and have been listening to him with True in the evenings and reading Total Money Makeover to True during the day. We've converted to envelope cash budgeting and stopped using our credit card... even though we paid it off every month, it's easier to budget when we're just paying for today and not yesterday. This has made our shutdown budget simple, clear, and fun (in a "family banker with money in an envelope" sort of way)!
 |
| Praise loses tooth number 6! |
 |
| Delight loses tooth number 2. The Tooth Fairy had to find this one under her pillow in the tent outback. |
Anyway, we had just decided to see if we could not buy any more groceries and live off our food storage when a deposit landed in our account this past weekend (Oct 12). It was a paycheck for the six days in the half pay period that closed before the fiscal year ended (Sept 23-30). What a blessing (and also probably overlooked by the media who wanted a juicer story than "Shutdown continues, federal workers paid again")! Because it was half the check, we budgeted half the food money we'd normally spend and bought fresh items (bread, milk, eggs, cheese, produce, miracle whip--we were out and had to resort to mayo, much to the dislike of the kids).
 |
| Biding time after Church. |
And that's where we were, happily adventuring our way through the furlough and enjoying our two weeks family time, when the government reopened.
What did you do during the shutdown? :)
 |
| Zeal ("You mean Link?" as he corrects us) turned 3! He got gauntlets, a shield, and a master sword. |
[Update: We got paid again, with back pay, on October 28. We'd stretched our one week of groceries for two weeks, with food storage, as we'd hoped. Grocery shopping the next day felt and tasted really good!]
