Earning a Vacation For My Kids

My name is Brooke, and although I have a college degree, I decided that it was important to put my family in front of material possessions. So, several years ago, I left the Navy (where I was earning a very good living as a Lieutenant) to stay at home. That worked out for about a year, and I ended up going back to work for a couple of years as a day care teacher. Now, I know that I could have made more money, but it was important to me to be as involved in my daughter's life as possible. I left that job to homeschool full time when she was five.

Things were going pretty well for us, income wise. My husband was getting promotions, and he got another job that was about to pay him about $40,000 a year. He was going to school in the evenings, trying to get his college degree. We weren't making as much as I was making as a Lieutenant, but more than we had seen since I left the Navy. Unfortunately, that job didn't last too long, because they downsized the company a few months later. The recession must have been starting to hit Arizona, because he lost the next couple of jobs that he got to downsizing as well.

Last year, while we were still fairly shaken from the string of job losses, our house caught on fire. We decided to try to turn lemons into lemonade, so to say, and took some of the money that we got from our insurance company and lived off of it for the summer, while my husband tried to start a company with a friend of his, HR Wise, LLC. We weren't getting paid, as the start-up company couldn't afford to pay us. When September rolled around, our insurance money started to run out, so my husband went and got another job that paid.

So now here is where we stand. My husband goes to Arizona State University as a full time student, he also has a writing job where he earns between $1000 and $1200 a month (yes, that is below the poverty level, which is about $21000 a year), and he still works for free for the start up company, which is just starting to see a little profit, but not enough to pay him yet. On top of being a full-time student and an employee at two jobs, he also volunteers as the choir director at our church.

This is where my challenge to myself comes in. I started writing for the internet last December, when I was listening to Dave Ramsey. I asked myself, "what would Dave say we should do?" The answer, I'm sure, would be to get our income up. How do we do that? After all, my husband is already a full-time student and works two jobs. I am a homeschool teacher and homeschooling is very important to my family. The only thing I could think of would be to earn money at home. Which is how I found internet writing, which led to Squidoo as well.

My husband has found another job working as a camp counselor for this summer. Hey, he won't be in school, so he might as well fill all that extra free time with another job, right? ;-) While he is away, I thought that it would be the perfect time to take my kids on a road trip to visit the family. Our family reunion is on July 25th, so I want to be there for that. On top of that, living at my parents is practically free, so the main expenses that we will be having on this trip is the gas up and back, and hotel stays along the way. I would also like to take my kids to the Sea Lion Caves in Oregon, and maybe stop at Yosemite on the way back. The more money I save, the more fun our trip will be. Plus, when we get back, the business that I build online between now and then, will be able to help our family pay for the things that we need once we get back home.

Progress is slow... but I'll be able to do it. My husband convinced me to write for the same company that he writes for... they have to hire me first, but I do have over 10 years of experience blogging and writing articles, plus I have received awards for my writing, so I should be able to get the job. That will pay $10 an hour, which certainly will get me the amount that I need to get.

The other news is that my husband has been approved for financial aid for the summer semester. Yay! Last year we had to pay out of pocket, which we were able to do because our house had just caught on fire and the insurance company gave us a lot of money. So... we'll be able to pay for June and July's rent by the end of May, and hopefully August's rent before I leave for vacation.

These extra funds should make this vacation easy to afford... however, right now the vacation bank account balance has gone down. I spent my money on dd's gymnastics for May, and then I earned $50 for doing a psychology experiment, and dh snatched it to help pay for rent. So for now... not so good, but we'll be okay.

In the end, I earned our vacation the old fashioned way. I got a job. Not a regular job though. This job allows me to work from home. I pretty much do the same thing that I do freelance, except I get paid more initially up front, and then I don't get royalties. I get $11 for every page I write, and $16.50 for every blog article I write. Not bad. I'm working while we're on vacation, in fact. It'll help us get back.

When I began my trip, I was traveling with my friends. We left together on Friday night, and I drove as far as the Arizona line before my friend took over and I got a little bit of sleep.

When I woke up, we were in the Los Angeles area, although North of it. We stopped at Ventura Beach, where I took the crab picture.

The kids had a lot of fun, although I wasn't planning on them getting wet and sandy, so there were no spare clothes. All of the spare clothes were tucked away in the large suitcase that I had, which wasn't coming out without everything else in the trunk coming out. So my poor little boy was stuck in a diaper for the rest of the day, because I had nothing else for him to wear.

We got up to Northern California that night, driving up the 101. Now I have to say, that highway is really deteriorating. In Arizona, we have pretty nice roads, primarily because everything is so new around here. California has been around a while, and the 101 is falling apart. I had just watched a show on the History channel a couple of nights before about The Crumbling of America, and this road is a perfect example of that.

When we got to Northern California, just south of San Francisco, there were no places to camp. Everything was full. My friends were tired, and they were ready to throw in the towel and head back to Arizona. We ended up parting ways. I wanted to sleep in a hotel, they hadn't budgeted the money for a hotel. So we were going to call each other in the morning and see if they were going to continue their journey to the Redwood Forest and then on to Portland.

I ended up staying at a Motel 6 in Williams, California, and man was it buggy. I actually swallowed a fly while breathing in. Very vile, I tell you. But the hotel was okay.

Five days before we left for our vacation, I found out that my grandpa passed away. My kids had met him before, and we knew that he was in his last days, but I had been hoping that he'd last until we could get there.

He was 83 years old, so he had a long, full life. And I still have the two other grandmothers that were alive when I was born (my other grandpa died of Multiple Sclerosis before I was born), as well as my step-grandpa which I've known my whole life. So although any death is a loss for the family, at least he did have a long life... and I am pretty lucky because I still have other grandparents left.

Our last stop on our vacation was to visit the Grand Canyon. The last time we had been there was in 1998, and things had changed a lot since then.

We started off on the north side of the canyon, coming in from Utah. We drove to the North Rim in the early afternoon. We left about 3 PM, and made our rim-to-rim drive, down the Grand Staircase (along Highway 89A).

If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend that you take this drive. It is absolutely gorgeous. There aren't a whole lot of people on this drive, but it is beautiful. You descend down until there are canyon walls all around you. I don't think it's technically the canyon but that doesn't matter, it is wonderful. We stopped at a few places for pictures, and the kids got out at Cliff Dwellers.

We arrived at the South Rim around sunset, or 8 PM. The Mather Campground was full, but there was a spot just outside the National Park, in Grand Canyon Village, that had plenty of spaces. The next morning, we got up, went to look at the canyon, and earned our Junior Ranger badges (me too). About 1 PM, we left for home.

I was so excited to be headed back to Phoenix to sleep in my own bed that night. We had camped 13 nights while we were away. I was looking forward to being back to my computer, my Tivo, and all the comforts of home.

What I didn't expect was the smell that awaited us.

When I opened the door, the smell was absolutely horrid. Even though it was well over 100 degrees, I turned off the AC and kept the doors open to try to circulate some air. At first I thought that the smell was caused by the potatoes that I forgot to get rid of before I left, but after I threw them out, it was still pretty bad. Then I discovered the culprit.

The refrigerator had gone out while we were away from home. Evidently, it had tripped a breaker, and although the refrigerator didn't work, the freezer did. Stunk though. Anything we put in there smelled too.

I did get a new refrigerator out of the deal though. One of the rare times I'm glad to be renting. Once the old refrigerator was removed from our house, the smell cleared up.