Tony and I have been going to school for one full year.  We started last fall and will continue at the community college until summer 2012 at which time Tony and I plan on packing our family up and moving across the country to Arizona.

Well since we started school I find myself using our HP inkjet printer a lot.  Not only do I print stuff for my crafting but now I print a ton of stuff for school.  It would seem as though I am hp ink cartridges monthly.  That is a cost to us of $35.  I am not totally happy with that.  With us trying to crunch numbers and spend as little as possible and save as much as we can, $35 a month for ink is kinda pricey.  That is $420 a year that could be used for gas or food on our trip out to Arizona.  We decided to make a vacay out of our travels.  We will take 5-7 days to get out there. Stopping each day and doing something fun.  With 4 kids I am sure they would enjoy it.  Whether it’s just staying in a hotel that has a pool and going swimming or finding something else fun to do.  We will drive for 6-8 hours (400-500 miles) and then stop for the day.  We will also need to make sure we have plenty of stuff in the car to entertain the kids.

So anywho, Tony and I have been thinking of getting a laser printer.  Just a black and white printer to print my shipping labels and school stuff.  We found  one decently cheap, I think Tony said it was even a wireless printer which is super cool.  Now we just need to make the purchase.  I hope the $80 we spend on the printer will in the long run save us money. 

Two years ago I bought mini laptop and I thought it was awesome how portable it was.  Well after about 6 months I had to replace it, something broke.  I got a new one and I was totally stoked, I really liked it.  Then the second one broke just after the fall semester so I had to get a new one.  I decided that I wanted to get a big screen.  I ended up getting a 17″ screen.  LOVE it!!  I just can’t believe I went through two mini portables.  So far I have had my ginormous screen laptop for 8 months and I have had no problems.    LOVE it!!

It amazes me how far we have come with technology.  I don’t go anywhere without my cell phone, heck we don’t even have a regular home phone.  Our house has one laptop, five tablets, and three desktop computers.  We would be lost without all of it.  We also have three cell phones.  We have a Wii that plays Netflix and that is all we watch; we don’t have cable.

Right now we have this really nice camera that Tony got just before we met.  Now it is an older model but brand new it was almost $1k.  I feel torn about getting like fuji digital cameras or something because the cell phones we own have 8 megapixel cameras which is the same as the camera we currently have.  It just goes to show how far we have come when our phones, that also make calls, browse the internet and play games, also takes photos with the same quality as a $1k camera.  LOL!!  I think it’s great!

I posted the other day that I deleted a program on my laptop which caused many of my files and folders and programs to just randomly delete.  One folder which was my homework folder was also deleted.  I was devastated.  Tony was able to find a program called Recuva or something like that which scans the computer drives for deleted programs and files.  Well it was a decently long process but I was able to recover some important homework and some of my craft stuff.

When this happened I decided that I needed to organize myself, my life, my computers, and my craft stuff.  I felt so frustrated and whenever I try to do anything it takes me forever to find it.

I began my day yesterday by organizing the files saved on my flash drive.  I had a ton of stuff and it was all over the place, nothing was organized.  That took a small part of my morning.  I proceeded to wash several loads of laundry, fold, and put them away.  I also washed several loads of dishes.

In the afternoon  started on my craft desk.  I haven’t used it in forever (I craft at the kitchen table) and so it became mostly a place that we just threw things.  It was overwhelming.  LOL!

Since we are moving next summer I decided to start packing some of my craft stuff.  I have so much, I don’t want to get rid of but there is no way I will use it over the next year.  Maybe it is a bit pre-mature to start packing but really this next year is going to fly by.  With school and everything, it will be summer 2012 in no time.  So basically I need to pack and organize as much as I can over the next year.  LOL!

So I will hopefully continue my organization today but I am not sure how well I will do.  My back has been killing me the last two days and I all I want to do is sit on the couch.  I do have to run some errands and get some stuff for our family Friday fun night.  Homemade pizza, jalapeno poppers and buffalo chicken strips while we watch Speed Racer cartoons.    I LOVE my family!!

For Christmas Nicki’s grandma bought our family a Wii and we have a handful of games to play.  We LOVE it.  Not only for the games but because we can get Netflix on it.  Lil Tony loves to watch all his shows.  Tony, Nicki and I have been playing Super Mario and have been enjoying ourselves.  I feel a bit sad to be back in school for the Spring semester.  No more playing until classes are over. 

The only thing that annoys me is the little sensor bar needed for the controllers.  It kinda looks like the xbox kinect sensor.  The problem is we have an old slanted house and when we have the sensor on top of the TV it keeps moving all over the place. 

Overall though the Wii is the best gift we have gotten in a long time and I thank Nicki’s grandma a ton for getting it for us!!!

Well it’s not really new, I think I have had it for a couple months but I do love it.  It is the Samsung Captivate.  I used to have the iphone and I totally thought I could love nothing else.  My brother had bought the cell phone for me and I certainly could not have said no to a gift.  And I loved that phone for the 6 months or so that I had it.

Tony was up for renewal and was doing his research on new phones.  He knew he wanted a Smartphone but he didn’t know if he wanted to go with the iphone too.  I think the great thing about the phones we have is that it is really similar to the iphone.  It has a market place to download apps.  I guess the only thing I miss is that since the iphone is so popular, there are a lot of apps that are specific just for that phone, I can’t get it on the cell phone I have.

Oh well, I am sure when I am up for renewal I will find the newest cool phone out there. 

So I may have mentioned before that we just don’t have a lot of space in our house.  I mean our kids rooms are not very cluttered and the living space isn’t but our room is pretty packed.  We have 2 desks and a king sized bed and a couple night tables.  We don’t have cable but we have a 36 inch flat screen in the bedroom that Tony uses for his computer and then we watch movies on it at night.  The problem is that the TV sits on his desk and that doesn’t leave much room for him to do school work.  We just don’t have room for any tv stands.  I think what we may have to just do is get a wall mount for the TV.  That way it is up off the desk, hopefully the kids won’t be able to reach it (they like to touch the screen) and it will just be up out of the way.  Maybe we will have to check those out.