Fun Friday

Every Friday at school is FUN FRIDAY!! It's great because we start off by making French Toast - yum yum - and then we play games. The little whipper snappers don't even realize they're still learning!! They think they're getting out of work!! HAH! 

Today we played:

The game involves: following a calendar, taking turns, being a good sport (they have gone from being the worst losers ever to now being fairly gracious losers - BIG progress!), patience, buying and selling property, reading all the game cards, adding and subtracting amounts of money, making decisions, taking risks, playing the lottery, paying bills etc etc. 

I was so happy with how they played the game together today. One girl used to be such a horrible loser she would threaten the other kids by making the "I'll slit your throat" gesture....yes, really. BUT now she can laugh it off when she loses AND when she wins she doesn't gloat quite so much.

To top it all off it was an actual PAYDAY for me too!! For all of five minutes I let my pay sit in my chequing account and then I whisked over half of it away into savings. I paid off my mastercard (groceries & gas plus a few odds and ends from Home Depot) (gotta collect those points!). After school I dropped into the LCBO to get my supply of red wine, then bought gas whilst shuddering at the prices and also purchased at few things at the Superstore. I still made it home by 3:30 where I promptly wasted some time on Facebook, fed the old decrepit cat and started my tax return. I finally have my T4 but I know it'll be awhile (ages and ages)  til Kazi gets all of her T4s and tuition amount from her college website. Getting the documents you need for doing taxes here in Canada can take a while (REALLY tests my patience!!). No one busts their butt getting things mailed out in a very timely fashion. That really irks me if you haven't figured that out by now. GRRRR! 

I'm just putting in time til I pick up a couple friends and we're going out to dinner! Yes, it's GREEK night at our local hangout - the Sweet Onion Grill. I am going to be SO ready for some great food and wine and music!! Yes, live music too while we eat! FUN FUN FUN for everyone today!!

What did YOU do today that was FUN FUN FUN for FRIDAY??!

The End is in Sight

Hello my friends! Yes, the end is in sight, the end of June that is. June ends for me on Friday, June 29th - the end of the school year, PAYDAY and the day to pack up the car for Prince Edward Island! (I hope! There are a number of details concerning my leave from work to be attended to this week - my expectations are that they will all work themselves out and summer will proceed as usual - I am an optimist!)

I'm not sure how it happened but I still have some money left in my account. It was a somewhat spendy month what with Kazi's graduation yet I've paid for everything and still have money left over! Every time I check my account there is more money in it than I expect there to be. And whenever I check my credit card I find that everything is paid for. It's like the parable of the loaves and fishes - it seems that I just cannot get rid of my money - there's always more!  Even now there is more $$ in my account than my records show there should be...about $125 more! I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop but nothing happens. This is totally the opposite of what normally happens - I usually forget an expense or two or three and end up in the hole because of it so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my luck has changed at least for June.

I am going by MY records and will NOT spend that $125; if it's still there by Friday then it will give me a couple of FREE tanks of gas for my long road trip!

With the advent of July I am entering my higher paid portion of the year! Woohoo!  No union dues to pay in June and July and by August all of my CPP will be paid for increasing my paycheques yet again. Happy days are here again! Which is good because summer is always more expensive - lots of $$ spent on gas, a hotel stay or two while travelling, lots of eating out and various excursions.

In June I paid off my half of our new TV - about $440.  I also paid off the new fridge and stove I purchased for our PEI home - total about $1600 and paid all outstanding charges on my credit card from our weekend mini-holiday in Niagara Falls. I must confess to an impulse purchase however, which I will pay off from my extra funds in July - I just had to purchase tickets to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse when they come to London in October - he is my musical idol and worth every penny!  I also put $1000 into my PEI Maintenance account to handle anything I need for the house over the summer. I now have about $67 to get me through to next Friday which ain't much, I know, but I don't need to buy groceries, probably just some gas for the car.

July's savings will be divided up between my Christmas/Gift fund (totally funded with $1500) and I will start paying back my TFSA ($1000 - I owe it a whopping $15,000 from paying off my EX - Line of Credit!).

I might be able to save more but will be keeping a larger balance in my chequing account over the summer to handle all of the extra expenses so that's a big MAYBE!

If it sounds like I am wrapping up June a little early - I AM!!  And that's OK! Unless he who cannot be named shows up! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!