I didn't think that it would be this long . . .

that Mr. Simple was unemployed. On the other hand, Mr. Simple has been quite busy most weeks. He had a friend ask him to do a bunch of painting at his house in late June and from word of mouth, he has had a painting job most weeks since then.

I have done some changes with daycare/preschool around here too. I now have two children that are full time - one little boy is 3 and has been here since he was 6 weeks, and the other is a little girl who is almost 2 and has also been here since she was 6 weeks. Then I have a set of sisters who come on MWF. The older sister is almost 4 and the younger sister is 2. On MWF, I also have a 3 year old who comes just in the mornings. On MWF, we do preschool activities in the mornings as well as go outside for at least a half hour, unless there is thunder and lightning. The schedule is working well for everyone, I think and now the amount of money that I make is consistent from week and that really helps with our budgeting.

Speaking of budgeting, since we no longer have credit card and car debt, we have much less in expenses. The mortgage and utilties is about it. Well, and swimming lessons for Super and swim team for Jelly Bean. Oh, and of course food, but we are trying to be frugal as possible with that and the garden certainly has helped with those expenses. The one expense that has been the most challenging is fuel for the cars. It, of course, doesn't help that gas prices are well above 3 dollars these days, but the fact that we regularly need to use both cars and the girls are both involved in things like drama club and girl scouts as well as the swimming stuff, well, I do quite a bit of running around. I know, I should probably cut down on their activities to save gas, and to save money. But they are things that the kids have done for awhile, and we are trying to keep some things consistent while we have had to say "No" or "Not now" on other things.

So all in all, this period of unemployment has been less stressful than I thought it might be. And I really think that all of this learning to be frugal and trying to be more self-reliant has helped too. Of course, that isn't to say that I wouldn't be thrilled if Mr. Simple got a great job that he loved and paid really well. :)