The Cost of A Child

This is just too good not to share!

I have repeatedly seen the breakdown of the cost of raising a child, but this is the first time I have seen the rewards listed this way.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.

ut $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into: $8,896.66 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That's a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich."

Actually, it is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?
Let's look - -

Naming rights - First, middle, and last!

Glimpses of God every day.

Giggles under the covers every night.

More love than you ever dreamed your heart could hold.

Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.

Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.

A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.

A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites and making snow angels.

Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:

finger-paint,

carve pumpkins,

play hide-and-seek,

cuddle under the covers on a stormy night,

catch lightning bugs,

and never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to:

keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,

watching Saturday morning cartoons,

going to Disney movies,

and wishing on stars.

You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay on Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day. For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.

You get to be a hero just for:

retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,

taking the training wheels off a bike,

removing a splinter,

filling a wading pool,

coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs,

and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.

You get a front row seat to history to witness the:

first step, first word,

first bra,

first date,

and first time behind the wheel.

You get to be a little bit immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, logistics, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God.

You have all the power to:

heal a boo-boo with a kiss,

scare away the monsters under the bed,

patch a broken heart,

police a slumber party,

ground them forever,

and

love them without limits.

So, one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is actually quite a deal!

Disneyland!

I finally got my camera to work and time to download the pictures on the same day! Blogger wouldn't load as many as I wanted, but I got some of them in!!

A couple of weeks ago we took Computer Guy, Darling Wife and MissC to Disneyland to celebrate birthdays! We have season passes and won 1-day passes in a raffle, so we could all go - it was such a fun day! Disneyland was packed that day - Yom Kippur, we found out is a Los Angeles City Schools holiday! Oh well - the weather was beautiful and we had a super time in spite of the crowds. The park had just been decorated for Halloween, and although I am not a Halloween fan all the pumpkin stuff was really cute!

MissC was feeling a little puny that day, I think she had a slight fever and a little runny nose - maybe more teeth? She wasn't fussy, just not as perky as she normaly is! So we went with the day and showed her all the sights anyway! (You can see why hubby teases CG about being his bodyguard - he got all the height in the family!)



The view from daddy's shoulders was a lot better than down in the stroller!

We started in California Adventure and rode the carousel and saw that park first, had lunch there then went into the Disneyland side and spent the rest of the day there. There were so many people we didn't ride a lot of things, but we went on Small World - MissC liked that, then she slept through most of Pirates of the Caribbean - the line was long, so it seemed like a good time for a nap! We went out of the park into Downtown Disney for an early dinner - in California they are right next to each other. She perked up a bit at dinner time and was being silly with mommy - (this is not a mad face) - they were playing!




After dinner we went back into the park and saw the parade - NOW MissC came alive! She LOVED all the lights and colors and the music and dancing!! We finished the night with coffee and dessert on Main Street.



CG & DW decided to use the free passes we had to turn in on season passes - so they just had to pay the difference which wasn't bad at all! We have already made plans with them to go again in a couple of months! Miss C will enjoy it more when she is not feeling poorly and we will pick a day that is not a holiday for anyone so the crowds will be down! It will be past Halloween then and all the Christmas decorations will be up - that always makes the parks even prettier!

It was such a fun day - what an adorable family they are!! We are blessed!

To Those Born 1930 - 1979

I've seen this several times, and it always makes me laugh - so I will share it with you! My goodness - all this and we DID survive!!


We are the kids who survived the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking when we got older.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. If we were lucky enough to have a soft drink we shared it with four friends, all drinking from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because we were always outside playing!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then we'd ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot about the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, in fact - no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no IMing, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms....... We just had our friends and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, occasionally broke bones and no one sued anyone else. Our friends signed our white plaster casts and we were the hero!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We built treehouses and forts with hammers and nails and scrap lumber, not with kits from the mega home center.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays; made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out our eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just called out and walked in! We talked face to face - not on a computer.

If we did something bad at a friend's house, their mom would scold us, and our parents didn't sue them.

We got spanked when we deserved it and had our mouths washed out with soap when we said bad words and no one thought of turning their parents in for abuse.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our teachers were not our babysitters and we were expected to behave. If we got into trouble at school, we were in for more trouble at home.


These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility - and we are not perfect - but we learned how to deal with most things!

If you were born in these years . . . I salute you! If you were born later - it's ok to let your kids experience freedom, failure, success and responsibility - learning these things first hand is a good thing!

60 Things About Me

Well, I have finally passed that mile marker that you all passed so long ago! I have posted 50 blogs! Well, 60 - actually counting this one! It seems to be the tradition to do a "Things About Me" blog when you hit these milestones - so here goes - all 60 of them!

1. I am a 3rd generation native Californian
2. My horse lived in my backyard for about 10 years starting when I was in 7th grade, and I rode in the hills behind my house almost every day.
3. I love classical music
4. If I had the opportunity, I would go and live in England for 6 months or so
5. My first car was a 1959 Studebaker Lark - turquoise
6. The scar on my arm is from scraping the pavement with it when the go-kart my brother and I made turned too sharp because the steering wasn't finished and the seat wasn't nailed down and I wanted to test it anyway going down our hill when I was 13
7. I went deep-sea fishing with my grandfather 3 times - caught my fish, then got seasick every time
8. I don't do rollercoasters - or anything remotely like them
9. I have best friends - and I am blessed to have them
10. I have been married to the same man for 38 years
11. I love to body surf or boogey board in the ocean
12. I had to have surgery in order to get pregnant
13. It worked and after 2nd son was born, had surgery to not get pregnant!
14. I love to put a bit of heavy cream over ice and add diet root beer - tastes just like a float!
15. I love to sew
16. I hate doing alterations
17. I tried being a "seamstress", did NOT like sewing for other women!
18. I love making quilts
19. I took a pottery class in 1990 and got hooked - I have taken a ceramics class every semester at the local community college since then.
20. I am not an artist by "brain" - but I love the process of shaping the clay on the wheel
21. I offer to take pictures of folks with their camera if they want a picture of themselves together
22. My husband and friends laugh at me for doing this!
23. I am a mother-in-law
24. I cringe when girls talk about hating their mother-in-laws
25. I really loved my mother and father in law - they are gone now - I miss them
26. I love to take walks in pretty places
27. I could sit and watch and/or listen to water moving or a fire burning for hours
28. I love the taste of coffee - and will drink it even if it has been in the pot for a while, or has gotten cold in the cup.
29. I keep a book in the car so anywhere I have to wait I have a book to help me do it
30. I can walk/ride the cardio machines at the gym for a long time if I have something to read - if not, I can't do more than about 10 minutes
31. I think I am mildly ADD
32. I am easily distracted - but can keep track of several tasks at the same time
33. I love to go camping & hiking
34. I am NOT fond of spiders
35. Snakes don't bother me
36. Mosquitos and fleas usually don't bite me
37. I love big fireworks displays
38. I used to have a vegetable garden - I'm looking forward to having the time to have one again
39. I have had lasic on my eyes - twice - I can see - Wahoo!!
40. I did not need glasses at all til I was 35 - then slowly progressed to legally blind!
41. I recently bought my 3rd bicycle - a Trek - it's really neat - I should get a helmet
42. My next vehicle will either be another minivan or an SUV - I like being up high and having a lot of space for stuff and people
43. I work on a computer more than 90% of my workday
44. I love to travel
45. I love pretty much any day that I don't have to be sitting at this desk!
46. I love to cook when I have the time
47. I love to do things with my hands, ceramics, sewing, knitting, crocheting
48. I love relaxing before dinner with a glass of red wine and a piece of good cheese
48. I'm sensitive/alergic to most perfumes
49. I like the increasing silver in my hair - and I highlight what's still darker to make it lighter too
50. I am right handed, but use the computer mouse with my left
51. I love my husband
52. I enjoy playing golf and one of these days I'll play more often
53. I can hardly wait to quit work and move out of state and have time for my hobbies.
54. I worked part time for several mortuaries doing hair and makeup while the kids were in school when I was a stay at home mom
55. I hate funerals
56. I love hot & spicy food - pepperoni and jalapeno pepper pizza - yummmm!
57. I love going shopping by myself
58. My favorite way to spend an evening is with friends drinking coffee, and visiting or playing a game
59. I loved being a stay at home mom
60. I work out with a trainer at the gym twice a week