Category: family

  • Our Housing Nightmare: Coming Soon

    nightmare_bailey

    Kristen and I have doozy of a story to tell. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you call your congressmen. It will make you sell your stock in banks. Most importantly, it will show you the difference between media hype about the housing market and Main Street realities. If you liked The Perfect Storm, you’ll love our story.

    It will start something like this, “In America, we expect stories to have a happy ending.  But this is no fairy tale, this is a real estate story from Michigan 2008. Watch as our American Dream turns into a nightmare.”

    The last couple chapters of the real story are yet to be written. When it’s all officially done and the dust has settled, I will write all about it.

    Until then, my friends, just know that we’re doing fine. To be continued…

  • Eight years of parenting

    Megan and daddy making the eye contact that could last a lifetime

    Megan McLane

    Paul in a quiet moment right after birth.

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    It’s hard to believe that Kristen and I have been parents for nearly 8 years.

    It’s weird how a picture captures a moment. I can think back to exactly what I was thinking at this moment. I wonder what they were thinking. Megan was probably thinking, “When will you read a book to me?” Paul was probably thinking, “What can I eat?”

    The first 8 years of parenting makes me realize something that is said all the time, “It goes by so fast.” Indeed it does. What will the next 8 years hold?

  • The Shamu Show

  • Megan’s Hip Hop Performance

  • San Diego Zoo Pics

  • The move is done!

    Today was the last day of our lease at the old place. We really only had two items left that had to be retrieved. We had the base of our yard swing. Kristen loves this thing so I knew we had to get it taken care of right away. And we had our old car. Yeah, the one with the blown engine.

    Tonight we went over there to get both. The swing seemed like the easy thing, so we loaded that into the back of the truck, no problem. Next, we charged the battery on the Camry for a while and after about 30 minutes of trying I got it started.

    That’s when the race was on. Rather then pay $50 to tow the car I decided to drive it! Now, you need to know two things to appreciate this lunacy. First, we moved from the top of one hill to the top of another. So it was down 400 feet of elevation and back up the other side. (About a mile total) Second, the engine was running on two cylinders. That means there were two other cylinders busted and making huge bangs while the other two chugged along like a lawn mower.

    So, down the hill and off we go. The brakes are super soft since I hadn’t driven the car since October. Yeah, big hill and bad brakes. Smart move.

    Then, pulling onto University, I hear a nasty sound. As if a busted engine isn’t bad enough, the swing had fallen out of the back of the truck and was being dragged. I kept driving my car go-kart towards the house while Kristen figured out the swing. It was a freaky moment as we go separated. Not good.

    I pulled into the bottom part of our neighborhood so I could check on Kristen. She was fine, just getting everything secure. So I started driving up through the streets with my loud banging engine. Driving up a steep hill with full knowledge that your car could stop at any moment is kind of fun. Not only was I trying to snake through my neighborhood, I was keeping an eye out for places to ditch in case I had pull over and call for a tow.

    A few minutes later I pulled into our driveway and turned off the engine. A couple minutes after than Kristen arrived.

    Kristen and I were giddy in completing our task. We knew we did something dangerous and it came out OK. The kids were nervous about the whole thing but after a few minutes were willing to celebrate with us. I told Paul, “Sometimes to do things adventurous you do it not knowing it’s going to be fine. That makes the adventure more fun.” He told me “OK” but I don’t think he was convinced.

    Craziness over? Of course not! I needed to move the car a few feet to the right so we could park next to it in the driveway. Of course, the car wouldn’t start so we had to push it. Yeah, good times right there.

    This was one of those nights where we shared a lot of laughs. Most importantly, our move is now officially over.

  • Powered by the Letter “I”

    Two things dominated our Saturday. Ikea and iPhones.

    Actually, on the way to this epic fun we had lunch at In & Out Burger. I’m not a cult-fan of the burger joint but it was quick, easy, and not McDonald’s.

    ikeaIkea: There’s a pretty strong irony in our trip yesterday. When we moved across country in August we sold nearly all of our furniture. We had a rule of thumb that if it had been to California and back in 2002 & 2003 it wasn’t going in 2008. Then when we set up the house in August we made a massive trip to Ikea. We packed 4 of those big flatbeds to the gills and crawled our way to the checkout. They even had to break our receipt in half so that their strict delivery rules when get it all delivered.

    When we moved into the bigger place a few weeks ago we immediately recognized that the bedrooms all needed more stuff. Both kids bedrooms are huge and all they had was a dresser and a loft bed. So back to Ikea we went! We didn’t manage to get everything they needed yesterday. But we did add to each kids room a lamp, desk, and chair. Mom and dad also picked up some end tables, a TV stand for our bedroom, and a patio table for the backyard. It doesn’t look like Ikea has everything we need… so we’ll have to look at our second favorite furniture store, Target.

    apple-logoiPhones: Kristen and I have bounced back and forth on this forever. We didn’t upgrade when 3G released because one of our phones was still under contract. Then I really wrestled with the whole Blackberry vs. iPhone thing, then I decided in December I wanted an iPhone but I didn’t want to make a decision before I saw if Apple was going to release a new version. When Apple released a new Mac Mini, iMac, and Shuffle last week that was my signal that they weren’t rushing anything to production.

    With that, we headed to Fashion Valley Mall‘s Apple store to make our purchase. Though the store was slammed we were able to find a person who was perfectly happy to help us out. While the in-store activation thing is a bit annoying I can imagine this is the way to go on the macro level for Apple/AT&T. I wrapped things up in the Apple store while Kristen shopped at Crate & Barrel for a new blender. (Thank you community group for the gift card!) I’ll do a full review later for the iPhone 3G, but I will say my initial expectations were exceeded. Before I got to the car I had already synched my phone with my gmail account and installed a Facebook and Twitter app. The hardest part about the set-up was getting my contacts synched between gmail and Address Book on my Macbook. But now I have all of that taken care of and all of my contacts sorted into tidy groups. Next up is getting Kristen’s contacts and my contacts to synch… wouldn’t that be cool? If only it talked to our Highrise account…

    We spent most of the evening putting things together from Ikea. Twist, twist, twist, screw gun, screw gun, screw gun. All fairly simply and everyone is happier. We still have a long way to go until everything is put away from this last move but it is progressing nicely and we’ll be hosting a housewarming BBQ some time after Easter.

  • The McLane Stimulus Plan

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    Since it’s clear the Obama Administration is going to be giving 100% of the stimulus money to failed companies like GM and AIG and nothing in cash to the middle class, Kristen and I had to make our own bail out plan. (Sorry for the dig on Obama, I was a big fan of Bush’s free money system!)

    Our challenge was pretty simple. How do we live on 70% of our income for the next 24 months? If we could do that, this is what we would have at the end of it.

    – No debt

    – 3 months living expenses in the bank as a rainy day fund

    – 1 months living expenses in the bank as general savings

    – Still faithfully giving to our church

    Our 2008 scenario was like this. Prior to moving to California we lived at about 105% of our income. Basically, we had been swallowed by inflation and struggled to recover. Each month we went a little deeper into debt. When we moved to California we had about 4 months where we lived at 200% of our income. Why? We had two houses, we moved 2500 miles, and stuff like that.

    Our plan, live on 70% of what we bring home after taxes. Roughly, the breakdown looks like this. (+/- 2% per month)

    10% of our income to paying off debt accumulated in 2007-2008. (Our credit cards jumped from 17% to 29.99% last year, we alone in that?)

    10% of our income to savings.

    10% of our income to regular charitable giving.

    This is where the McLane plan differs from the pop culture financial planners. Most of them would say, “Concentrate on paying off the highest interest thing first, then focus on savings.” I’m not going to lie… I can’t bring myself to not save and spend that much paying down debt while not putting anything into savings.

    We’re about 3 months into this plan. It seems to be working for us. For those in love with budgeting, it’s a semi-budget. It leaves about 20% of our money as flexibility… which really works for us.

  • Behold, the Faux Hawk!

    faux-hawk

    It’s kind of crazy but my kindergartner wants to be the cool kid in his class. A big part of that has been a fascination with having cool hair. (We do live in Southern California, you know.)

    For the last few weeks Paul didn’t want to go to school because “the kids won’t like me.” Of course, that’s not true because as soon as you drop him off he has 4-5 kids who want to play with him and they just start running around the playground like laughing hyenas.

    Then a couple days ago the light bulb went off when Kristen discovered Paul was trying to use my deodorant as hair gel. What he meant by “the kids won’t like me” was that there was another boy who had cool hair and since he didn’t have cool hair he didn’t feel like anyone like him. More light bulbs went off as we realize how much time he’d spent in the bathroom, and that he’d always been playing with the soap gel. Our 5 year old wanted some product for his hair.

    So last night Paul and mom made a trip to the store and acquired some hair gel. This morning I showed him how to use it. Instant coolness erupted in our house. Paul was ready for school 15 minutes early and was ready to race up the hill again to school.

    Problem solved. Or problem created? We shall see.

  • We’re Moving

    Big fun for the McLane family! In a couple of hours I will drop off the deposit on a new rental house. When we moved here in August we knew that the house we landed in was too small. Coming into it we only had a few days to find a place when we visited in July. We did the best we could with the time we had. Fortunately, it was a 6-month lease and you can survive just about anything for 6 months.

    The new place is pretty close to where we currently live. As the crow flies the move is about half a mile. So nothing significant will change for us. Same school for the kids, we’ll shop at the same places, so on and so forth. We’re a little closer to work, a little closer to church, a little closer to San Diego State.

    What’s awesome about the new place? Going from 2 bedrooms, 1 bath to 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bath!

    The kids will each have their own rooms. Their new rooms are, by far, the biggest rooms they’ve lived in. They are understandably excited about their new rooms. Megan likes that her closets doors have huge mirrors. Paul is excited that above his closet is a cubby hole that we’ve convinced him will be his bed. Mom and dad are excited too. It’s a house much more conducive to hosting people which makes us happy. Nice living room, a dining room, a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a half bath off the kitchen, (and the master bedroom) a two-car garage, and a bigger backyard with fruit trees. It’s less money in a slightly more desirable neighborhood. Also fun for us is that it’s fully carpeted… ahhh.

    What’s not so awesome? Well, since it’s less money it’s a small step back in condition. The appliances are a little older, the kitchen floor is hilarious in its 80s awesomeness, the main bathroom wreaks of powder blue, and I have to take care of the yard. (No more gardener!) We’re also going to live next door to our 80 year old landlord. He seems like a nice enough guy, let’s hope he turns into more neighbor than landlord.

    It looks like we’ll start moving around March 1st. Since we don’t have a ton of stuff we hope to fully be out of the current house by March 7th. (A little rental overlap… so we can take our time!)