License to Drive

Okay, this isn't the road trip story. Yet.

Today I finally went and got myself a local drivers license. Since I'd lived here for about eight months I figured the timing was just right. Plus, I wanted to be able to get a library card and to register to vote. I could probably do those things without a license, but it sure makes it easier if you have one.

The DMV was refreshingly less crowded and unpleasant than the ones I had visited in WA. I had to get three licenses there: One when I moved there, one when I got married, and another one when the expiration date came up. I visited the DMV in Poulsbo, North Seattle, and ...oh, I think the third one was in North Seattle too.

The Poulsbo DMV was fine, and I barely remember it , really. The North Seattle DMV was on Aurora, and for anyone who's lived in the area, you know its not the nicest of roads in the state. It goes all the way north up into Canada, and it goes south into Mexico. (Its called highway 99 in most other places.)

Lets just say if you're a sailor and you want to have a good time, thats the street you want to travel. Adult stores every other block, ladies of the night, a strip club or two, and a movie theater can be found in between the car dealerships and local bars. Get the picture? (Actually, Joseph and I took the bus up and down that road for fun all the time, just because I'm weird and like seeing strange places, but thats me. There is a nice Russian chocolates store around there too. Anyway, back to the story.)

Before I went today, I made sure to scour the Utah DMV website, so I could be certain to have all the documents I needed and would not have to drive to the other side of town to go get them. Be prepared, thats my motto. Or did that come from somewhere else?

Anyway, it said I needed: my old license, my Social Security card, and two items proving I lived here. No problem, right?

Hmm. Not exactly. I knew from reading a friend's blog that if you had lived in Utah previously (which I have) that they just reassign you your old license number. What I didn't know is that, because I got married while I was living somewhere else, I would have to actually show them my marriage certificate! I found this rather ridiculous, as my current license and SS card reflect the name. Oh well, I guess its like when you change your name on your bank account after you get married. Whatever. I did mark on their customer service survey that this fact should really be listed on their website.

When I returned from retrieving that marriage document, the process went surprisingly quickly. I paid, signed a few things, got my vision test. I had to take a 25 question test on a touch screen, but because I already had been driving it was "open book". I found this rather funny, as I was sitting between to 16 year old kids who probably wished they had my manual. I reverted back to my middle/high school technique of holding the book close to myself and only opened an inch or two, to discourage any random glances. Not that they'd have the same questions I did.

After the first few questions, I stopped looking in the book for most of them, as they were mostly ridiculous common sense things. As I was quickly breezing through the screens, kind of chuckling to myself, I did notice the two boys weren't finding things so easy. Ha ha. Bet you wish you had this manual, huh?

In the end, I did miss two. One still doesn't make sense to me: don't you think you should turn your wheels toward the curb when you're parked facing uphill? The other, I just didn't know where to look in the book. Can you believe only about 44% of kids in Utah under age five ride in booster or car seats? I guessed 95%. I suppose I forgot that they're not required by law in Utah, and that some people aren't too bright when it comes to car safety.

After the test, I got my picture taken. It didn't look too bad, as I remembered to wear makeup and everything. While going about the business of smiling for my photo, I saw the blonde youth who had been sitting to my left approach the counter and announce that he'd failed the test. Good thing you're allowed two tries per day! Poor kid.

So I guess now its actually official. I live in Utah again!

Popee learns to crawl

Not to upstage Heidi, because her video was so awesome and fun to watch, but I just wanted to mention that Joshua learned to crawl last week too! I think the video is small enough to post this time , hopefully:



And coming soon....highlights from our weekend road trip! I know you're so excited.

Camera feature # 4,815,162,342: The video

Okay, the camera doesn't really have that many features, but I still like it. The feature we're exploring today is video. Perhaps some of you remember a video I posted from our other camera: pixelated, small, and not very clear. If you don't remember, I'll give you a side by side comparison, shall I?
Here is a video from our old camera, take in February. (I hope you can see this.) This is Joshua getting mad at me because I won't pick him up. He yells a lot.



Okay, now here's a video from the other camera. I hope it doesn't make it so you can't load this page! I was going to post a hilarious video of Joshua laughing at Elora, but its actually too big to load here...this one isn't as cool, but you can see the quality at least. (We don't have the software to edit and make it smaller, sorry.)


ps the only reason this video is so dark, is that i was messing with the lighting on the camera before Joseph took the video.
Thank you for your time.

Spending Money

Tax season...
2006: Car repairs, new digital camera, new tv
2007: New car, subsequent repairs
2008: Another new car, new digital camera, vcr/dvd player.

Are we seeing a trend here? I hate spending large amounts of money on 'stuff'. HATE it. I feel like people are looking at me like they think I don't know all about saving money, investing, and planning for the future.

But I do, I really do! I've been to so many meetings on financial planning- church sponsored or otherwise- that I should be an expert by now.

When I was single (I say this so often, I promise I do like being married) I saved money like nobody's business. Sure, I don't know a ton about investing, but I was able to go on a cruise and fly home twice a year without putting much of a dent into my savings. Of course, I was still on my parents insurance, I shared a house with four people (cheaper rent), and I didn't own a car or a computer.

Then I got married. And we had more expenses. We no longer had roommates so we had to get our own computer. We were moving out of the city, so we had to get a car. And insurance, both health and car kinds. Joseph wanted to go to school, so we needed to pay for that first year out of pocket. We had a baby, and while our insurance was good, a c-section still leaves you a bit to still pay for yourself.

And somehow, saving money didn't happen so easily, and my carefully saved funds slowly dwindled due to emergencies and bills. I'm very glad we had it, don't get me wrong. But according to all those money seminars, I should have thousands put away somewhere accruing interest for our exciting retirement years. Yeah right.

Eventually, I found a new dream. It seems that when you're married with kids, you can get a pretty good sized tax return. Each year we've been married, (excluding the first year when we didn't get one) our return has been progressively bigger. Maybe not large according to some standards, but enough to be excited about.

My dream though, may be a little different than reality. If we lived according to my dream, we would put away about ninety percent of our return, or figure out that investing thing. But it seems this time of year always necessitates the spending of our newly found wealth.

A great deal of it usually goes towards car stuff. (I know all about how buying a new car will save you money in the long run, blah blah blah, and I want to punch people when they tell me this. You realize a new car also requires payments, right? Nuff said.) This year we bought another vehicle, a van, and I hope its better than our last one because we spent significantly more on it! Our tabs were expiring on the WA plates our other car still carried..and since it required more repairs to even be registered in UT, we thought it more prudent to just get a new one. It seems nice so far.

Also, our vcr/dvd player was dying. This is definitely not a necessity...but we had to record LOST! We got one that will record to DVD this time too, so hopefully it will last longer.

Finally, we got a new camera. This was probably the least necessary of our purchases, but I had been planning on it for quite a while, remember? And I got a nice one, let me tell you. I couldn't justify buying an actual Digital SLR, but what I got was a Panasonic Lumix, which had all the features I could want. Check this out.

There is a tire swing one can see through the fence from where we live. With our old camera, I tried to take a picture, but you could barely tell the tire was there,as the camera couldn't zoom too far. Yesterday, I took these with my new camera:


Well look at that, there's a tire over there! Not only that, but I was able to change the lighting on the camera to make it darker, as it was too washed out normally. But wait, can I zoom in further?


My. Look at that! (This one wasn't darkened) And wait, theres more:


I am so excited! I could actually have gotten even closer, but then you couldn't tell what the picture was.
Then I used my new stealth camera to catch these paparazzi shots of Elora, from over 100 ft away:


Pretty cool, huh!
So while I hate that we've spent so much money in such a small amount of time, I am happy with the stuff we have. Someone I know once said that only poor people spend large amounts of money when they get a check in the mail. (I tried to link to it, but couldn't find the exact post, sorry.) While that may have stung a little, I guess we do qualify as poor students. I just hope we can do better next year.