Adulting

We've been insured in medical and dental and vision now for over a year with my job, but I've only now been able to afford taking advantage of the benefits. Since we're long over due on many appointments and procedures , it's more expensive this time around..  but it will be more sustainable once we've taken care of all the major corrections. This week I took a lot of time off to focus on dental visits, dental work, car inspections, vehicle maintenance, vision appointments, picking up antibiotics at the pharmacy, and ordering glasses. When I would normally take overtime shifts, I opted to focus on catching up on maintaining our health and safety through reaping the benefits of our insurance. 

While Rhea went out to run many errands herself, I was able to spend a lot of one on one time with my main man, Josiah. He's a mama's boy and spoiled in that his mommy is always by his side whenever he wants something. He hasn't had a lot of father son time, so I enjoyed watching his nursery rhymes while he's sitting on my lap, holding his hands as he is learning to stand upright and soon walk, singing with him, and playing soccer with him. Which consists of me kicking the ball into the air and against the wall to let it bounce as Josiah chases after it in his baby crawl then picks it up and throws it on the ground again. Or he tries to eat it. That's also part of our version of soccer. 

Brought the SUV in for a safety inspection

Our SUV is 10 years old now and I've owned it for two, but we haven't had any repairs done on it until last September. These last repairs and replacement parts have been very pricey, but that too will level out once we catch up with all the repairs that we've fallen behind on. They changed a couple belts this week and now everything is running and sounding smooth. 

During the time the SUV was in the shop, the dealership loaned me a 2017 grey Toyota 4runner for two days. It was a very cool car. It was higher and everything was automatic like my own vehicle. The things I liked the most were the online xm radio that displayed the song and artist names and could group the stations by genre. I also was really impressed that my 40oz water bottle fit in the cup holder by the drivers seat. I have never seen a car fit that bottle! Rhea liked the back camera that showed behind our vehicle when we backed up. Other than that, everything was about the same as my car, so no point in going into a $30,000 debt when I already own outright a very similar vehicle. I did prank the family though when we visited mom and nanay and kuya, we pretended we bought the car instead of having it loaned to us for free. They all were obviously dissappointed in what seemed like a debt trap. Then relieved when they found it was a joke. The reactions were priceless. 

We were there at mom's house for dinner with the sisters and the Dulings. Christian is about to leave for his mission Spanish speaking to Nampa Idaho. Trey is a whole foot taller and his voice dropped two or three octaves. Both Izzy and Trey talked about the possibility of serving missions when they come of age. I'm very proud of them. The family recently fostered little Mia of the Ward family. Josiah is only a month and some change older than her, so it was cute to see them interact together for the first time. If all goes well, they plan on adopting Mia, which will be child number seven for the Dulings. I always hoped they'd have a daughter Josiah's age that he could potentially court and possibly marry one day because I love the Dulings so much. Our families have always been close. Hopes answered. Dinner was delicious. We had Kare Kare, meatballs & lumpia. 

This week Josiah had his first high fever and got super stuffy and achy. It was the sickest he's gotten his entire lifetime of 11 months. Mommy was worried for him, but took care of him well. And her milk and its antibodies helped him for sure return to full health in only ten hours. I took the night off. I had already been sick for over a week, and between Josiah getting his fever and everything else going on, I had gone two days with no sleep, and was indisposed to do another 12 hour shift on no sleep while both my baby and I were sick as a dog. 

I finally caught up on some rest and by the time I got back to work Thursday I was 90% healed of the comm center plague. It was good to not have to pop cough drops and DayQuil pills like they were air. 

Friday I became a trainer for the first time in receiving for a day and sub trained PECO K Payne while her normal trainer was out for the night. They added field trainer officer to my official skill set on the employee system and gave me the trainer pay bump for the night. That was unexpected but a great learning experience for me. She's farther in her training that I mostly babysat made sure she didn't make any major mistakes and coached her on the little mistakes while jotting everything we did down into an email to send to her normal trainer and to her supervisor. 

Saturday we went to Lolo Aniel's 90th Birthday. It was crazy to see Josiah who is 0, next to a wise and experienced man who is 90. There are so many deep tangents I can dive into that my mind wandered off into while I ate their buffet of Filipino food. Let's just say the food was amazing and leave that there. 

I attended a regional church broadcast with the wife son mom and grandma. Since we live in the same region we were all able to sit together and even next to the velarde family who's been a great help to Rhea. The velarde family brought her to church during the several months when I started working most Sundays and before Rhea got her driver's license. They've become close to Rhea and the baby. Like extended family. 

After church I ate bacon and eggs and played the Cashflow Boardgame with the brother. We discussed and planned how we wanted to become more financially sustainable by investing more in assets and less liabilities, to grow passive income even if only slowly. 

With Mom we started planning Josiah's first birthday party. It seems we're inviting a big crowd. I don't want it to get too big or be stressful, but it will be fun.