Thursday, September 24, 2009

Turning over new leaves.....

What do you do when you suddenly find yourself unemployed? I panicked for about a day. Planned and schemed and budgeted and moved money for the later half of that day, and then set my plan in to motion the next day.

I recently lost the only family I worked for in family day care, without any warning, and for reasons I can't really go in to for privacy purposes. Needless to say it was a differing of opinions, a lack of information on household rules, and possibly also a bit of fault on my behalf because I am too relaxed about childrens behaviours. But anyway, I really can't go in to it, so please don't ask!

The night after I found myself without a job, it was pretty obvious to me that there aren't really any prospects in the employment land for me at the moment, what with:
*A two and a half year old son
*A pregnancy with only 7 weeks left to go
and
*A partner who works away.

So I sat down and made a resolution that night. I am going to become the full time homemaker I know I can be. My list of skills isn't very long, but the skills and interests that I desire to learn and develop are many. Meanwhile, as I develop those skills, I can sure cook and clean and look after the well being of my family!

Today I taught myself thriftiness - how to take my son Ethan out for $9. We went to the zoo, believe it or not! One of the most expensive places in Perth, at $19 an entry on average, but I already have membership, so that part was free. We packed a HUUUUUGE amount of snacks, including crackers, carrot sticks, cheese cubes, muesli bars, and a few little muffins that were hanging out in our pantry. Honestly, most of it is still in the bag because Ethan loves the free-reign he's allowed at the zoo and hardly ate, but still, he was too full to even contemplate a snack bar meal, so that was lovely! We payed $5 for parking (of which I left the ticket back in the machine when we left, to maybe get some parking karma later on!), and I paid $4 to have a ride on the carousel. That was the total cost. We got to see Tigers playing, Elephants and their keepers talking about their lives, gibbons flying from rope to rope, just to mention a few. Oh, I should always say that we went to the Australian Exhibit as well. Ethan loves nothing more than to go and see Kangaroos. So for our $9 we got about 4 hours or more of fun, Ethan is now sleeping and dreaming of how he was Captain of The Trip, and I got some fantastic photos of him in his new Fijian shirt that his Aunty Kylie sent him from her holiday.

So we've had a fantastic day and now we have an activity to do to remind him of it all tomorrow - we can make our own zoo from his blocks, cars and animals while we talk about where everything was and whether it was worth all our walking feet's efforts!

Hope you have a great weekend, and that you get some time to plan an outing so as to not spend more than you have.

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