Cross another goal off our 2011 list! We saw our lawyer Friday and, after some discussion and editing, signed our wills, power-of-attorney statements and health care directives. Paid in full as well! We also discussed the adoption of our children, and the lawyer is very excited to get started on it. He's enjoying the intellectual challenge of using existing laws to cater to our unusual situation.
He said he didn't need a retainer yet for the adoptions, which is kind of nice. I've enjoyed having that big cushion in the checking account; makes me feel very secure! I'll be an adjustment next year when it's not there anymore.
We parceled out our extra money to see what we could afford in terms of gifts to our service providers, gifts for parents, etc. Everything looks very good for the rest of the year. I probably won't put any extra to debt except the standard $1000 per month, but I'll try to put a bit more than that in January and February. Then I have to figure out our budget for parental leave, which might involve lower debt repayment for a couple of months.
We've already made the necessary purchases for earning $1500 of gift cards on our new Southwest cards! I paid for some prescriptions, NT bought a restaurants.com gift certificate that we're going to pay in our spending money for, and AS put a meal out on her card (that one will also be paid for with our spending money). Then AS started spending on her Capital One card; we'll get $100 bonus once she spends $500. We went out Friday night to celebrate finishing our estate planning, and we'll pay that with some of our surplus money.
One of the other things we decided to do with our budget surplus was to donate an extra $50 each ($150 total) to charities of our choice. That means we'll hit our charitable goal in November instead of December!
Anyway, on to my super-easy recipe! I found this online because we had some snowpeas that needed using up. You need about (I didn't measure and mine turned out great):
1/2 lb. snowpeas
1 T butter or margarine
1 T lemon juice
Pinch of Italian seasoning
Pinch of garlic powder
Pinch of salt
Melt butter in small dish in microwave and add lemon juice, seasoning and salt. Microwave the snowpeas with a few tablespoons of water, 1 minute at a time until tender and hot but still crisp. Drain snowpeas and toss them with the butter mixture.
Soo good! I like having a number of simple, tasty veggie side dish options. I've noticed most of my favorites involve butter and/or lemon. 
Various updates plus super easy veggie side dish
November 12th, 2011 at 11:59 pm
November 13th, 2011 at 03:18 am 1321154317
November 13th, 2011 at 06:21 am 1321165274
Seems to me butter makes everything better!
November 13th, 2011 at 10:27 pm 1321223279
November 14th, 2011 at 03:20 am 1321240844
November 16th, 2011 at 03:48 am 1321415311
my oldest and best friend's father 'took off' when she was just a baby. her mother remarried and had a second child, and the husband raised my friend and her younger sister as both his equal daughters. She call him Dad, because by all means he is just that.
later on, the husband and my friends mother separated due to the mothers drug habit. my friend chose to live with her non-biological Dad. Her Dad remarried, and the newly wed couple adopted my friend, and she changed her last name to her non-biological Dad's last name.
Confusing ... but your situation made me think of it.
(also, later on my friend was contacted by her real father on facebook and found out that her mother actually took her and told her father to never contact them or try to find them - he had been searching for her for years).