Start saving money for your retirement.

First, Sheila made some blocks for Lincoln. They turned out great.
Second, with Lincoln on the way and after hearing one side of a phone conversation between Sean and Sheila, I want to suggest something to all of the families. Putting money away for your retirement should be started immediately. I know all of you have different incomes and expenses and I am not telling you what to do with your money. However, starting a retirement account when you are young(ish) is smart because you will save a lot more money in the long run. You can save a lot of tax money by using a pre-tax IRA and not even miss the money from your check!
I have been working with a financial adviser for about 10 years. The first year he charged me $400 and invested some money in pre-tax accounts, thus saving me close to $600 in taxes, saved money on my car insurance, gave me 2 free tickets to the Saturday round of the Memorial golf tournament plus hospitality suite (worth roughly $250), and invested my tiny savings into a much better mutual fund that had a higher return. I know the golf tickets were a fluke and my situation was not typical but he saved me money. He now talks to Sheila and I about 3 times a year and is available other times, if we need him. His name is Marc D. Arnold and he works for Ameriprise Financial in West Virginia. His number is 304-352-8200. Call him and tell him I sent you. If you don't want to talk to him go to your local bank or find another financial adviser to talk to. The first contact is free and they can tell you if they can help you or not. You may be surprised at how easy it is to save some money FOR YOU OR YOUR KIDS. Best of luck everyone.

House improvements

With the baby coming, we needed to rearrange the house, clean the office (3rd bedroom) and decorate the baby room. All of our games (350+) were in the baby's room on a couple of decent wooden shelves, a few less decent wooden shelves, 16 or so milk crates, on top of all that and a few left over ones in the floor. We did not want to keep the "wonderful" shelving system that we had.
So we took the 2 decent shelves and one other shelf into the office and put books and stamp collection on them. We moved some white plastic shelves into the baby room. We got some new cabinets with doors last week. We moved all of the games from the baby's room to the office. We had been preparing for this by reorganizing things in smaller boxes, selling stuff on ebay, taking 5 boxes of English books to Sheila's office at work, stacking things tighter in the closets, doubling up the book on some shelves, taking more stuff to the shed, and actually throwing away a few things.


So now the office is still crammed full of stuff as you can see. There are 3 tall cabinets on the left full of games and the 2 decent shelves in the center from the other room with books, and 2 smaller shelves stacked on each other for my stamps on the right. The boxes in front are depression glassware that I still need to get rid of. On the side of the room that you cannot see are 2 more small shelves, a small computer desk (I am using it to type the blog) and a small table that Sheila uses for a desk. It is a very functional office and game/book/stamp storage room with barely enough room in the floor for 2 guests to use.

The best thing is that we got the baby room clean enough to paint. The theme will be jungle animals. Here is what it looks like with just the paint. The top half of the room is a dark baby blue. The middle is a chocolate brown asymmetric stripe. It is hard to see in the picture but the bottom of the stripe is parallel to the floor while the top rises or lowers across each wall. The top of the brown in the corner behind the shelf is about 8 inches lower than the top in the 2 corners you cannot see. It is very apparent standing in the room. The bottom is white. The idea is that the brown is the earth and the blue is the sky. There will be cutouts of these patterned animals/trees (those on our amazon gift registry) stuck on the wall.


So that is what we have been doing for the last week. This week we are going to work on my syllabus and lesson plans (I have no idea what I an doing) and go to Tenn Game Days in Nashville this weekend. The next 4 weeks Sheila is off while I will be teaching a class. She is supposed to work on photo albums from our wedding and honeymoon, work on the composition book she is writing, make a lot of crochet squares for a baby blanket, and plant the spring flowers in her garden. I will be teaching and selling glassware and stamps on ebay.

P.S. If any of the kids (or parents) want to start a stamp collection in the future or need stamps for a school project, I can help.

Competition

Angel Thank you for signing up some thing must have gone wrong we never got the thing saying you signed up. You will be able to work towards winning the next few competiions we will be doing.

The next competition we will be holding is to see who can get the first online donation. Even those who won't be in Vernal for Relay this year can fundraise online. So lets get to work and get some online donations coming our way!  Ready, set, Fundraise Everyone!!!

It's a Boy!

I just wanted to put this on the blog for history. I hope all of our faithful readers already know that Sheila had an ultra-sound last Wednesday and found out that we are having a boy. We have decided on the name Lincoln Matthew Davis. Everything else at the Dr. was normal. Sheila is having a lot of pain in her hips when she sleeps and Lincoln is poking and prodding more but those things seem to be normal. Sheila has been using one of those "u" shaped pillows in the bed. It is like sleeping with 2 more people. She is going to try sleeping on an air mattress to see if that helps her hips. I am sure I will sleep better in that big bed without that big pillow. I will keep you posted.

Relay for Life

Okay guys we have our team all signed up for relay for life now we just need to get all our team members signed up (aka all family members.)  So go to our team page link below and sign up. That link should take you directly to our team page. Thanks guys it's going to be a great year to relay!! If you have any questions just call us.

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/mortonfamily

Speaking of apple devices, all of the kids in my friend's mom's preschool have their own iPads. It's crazy talk right? That's what Melanie thought, so she asked the kids' moms and they said "yes they have their own iPads." Melanie told me and Aubrey and we were like "what?!! We don't even have iPads! They are preschoolers and they do!!" Anyway all of their parents are completely phsyco.

Big News...

Well, Wayne and I have some news to share with the family. I was trying to decide the best way to share it with everyone without having to gather us all for a family picture, and then I remembered the updated, modern, technological "read me" journal that we have created here at blogspot.
We have been thinking about this decision for a quite some time now. Times are changing fast and we're not getting any younger. And now that Wayne is graduated, he has a little more time on his hands.
With miles getting so big, so fast, we thought it was time to enter the next stage of our family: time for the addition of a precious, tiny new treasure.

It must be obvious what we are referring to, but for those of you who are a little more dense..... we got iPhones!!!