Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The day started nice and slow- the kids didn't wake us until 8, so we were able to sleep nicely. We talked with them a lot last night about how old they are getting, and how we were not going to open gifts until 8:30am, regardless of what time people were woken up, so it would be nice to let us sleep a bit.

They were quiet and let us sleep, which was very nice.

The kids got lots of gifts- the danger of being a frugal bargain shopper who shops early. I "finished" my shopping in early November. I kept picking up small things here and there, though, and the end result? Too many gifts under the tree. But, they loved them, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much.

The big gift of the day was the surprise I had been waiting to spring on Nick. It's been in the works for MONTHS, but I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't slip up and tell him. It had to be a complete surprise.

A few months back, I started making & selling hairbows online, and doing online advertising. It's hard work, but I make a decent amount at it, which is nice. Well, after squirlling the money away for almost 2 months, I was able to get what I knew he wanted, and what I knew we really couldn't "afford" if we were going out of our budget. But, my money isn't counted in the budget, and Nick really doesn't know just how much I make, since there's no set amount for the selling.

Anyway, what he has wanted for probably over a year now, is a new CPU. When we bought our house, he picked up a used CPU, and he and his friend did some work on upgrading the hardware. Nothing fancy, but it worked. Mostly. It has always had small issues.

Back in September, he started talking about whether or not we could afford to get him a new one. He priced them out, but at $500-600 for what he wanted, it was simply not in the budget.

Come October, we wound up with some extra money in the bank, and when we were at Best Buy, and I joked with him about wanting an iPad, he didn't hesitate to buy it. Then I realized that we just spent money on something I didn't need, while we had been talking about how we couldn't spend the same amount on a computer.

Then I decided at the time that I would save up what I could, and hopefully get a $250-300 desktop. Maybe not as fast or powerful as Nick would like, but certainly better than what he had.

After an amazing Black Friday sale, and a craft show, I suddenly found myself sitting on enough to get a nicer computer. I lucked onto a Cyber Monday sale for a nice unit for $575. That was at the top of what I felt I could grab, but it was nicer than anything else I had found, and came with a monitor to boot.

For 2 months now, I've been teasing Nick about what I had gotten for him. Was it big, small, expensive, inexpensive? Because he had no idea what I was making, he wasn't really sure what to expect.

I did mess with him a bit, though. I got a huge gift bag for the monitor, and pointed it out under the tree last night, and again today. But when it came time to do gifts, I dropped a smaller, rather heavy box on his lap, and made a huge deal about how that was THE present.

He was a big out of sorts when he opened it, and the box contained a Lions santa hat, a Lions shirt, and, for weight, 2 bottles of Arizona Ice Tea (big bottles). We laughed, then I handed him the bag.

He was ecstatic by the monitor, and I knew he'd been wanting to replace that for a while too. I had planned to wait a while before bringing out the wrapped CPU, which was waiting in Rae's room. However, Raegan was super excited and said, "Can I get the REAL one now?"

So, she brought it down, and set it on his lap. The look on his face when he opened it was priceless. His mouth dropped open, his eyes got huge. He's in love with it right now, but we can't fully set it up yet. His wireless networking thing doesn't work at all with Win7, so  he has no internet until we can get to the store  and grab a new one.

But, he's still having a blast with his first completely NEW cpu that he's gotten in probably almost 10 years. The last two upgrades we did were for me, and passed down. It's nice, though that he can get this, because his CPU has been dying for a long time, and needed it.

And, hopefully I can make a decent amount in the new year as well, and take us all on a vacation this summer. ;)