Well, my parents arrived on Saturday and left yesterday. We celebrated Hanukkah and opened gifts on Saturday. This year DD could actually help rip at the wrapping paper and she was genuinely interested in her gifts. We got her a Little People daycare/preschool playset, an American Girl bitty baby doll, a sled and a balance bike. Her stocking had Ugg slippers, two Winnie the Pooh movies, a shirt, 4 pairs of socks and two Little People figurines. My parents got her a Little People farm playset and my sister got her a doll bed. My brother's gift hasn't arrived yet, but he got her a set of stacking blocks. Overall, I think we did a good job picking out nice items without going crazy and spending too much money. Lots of the gifts will be good for many years and that is always a big consideration for me.
I stuffed DH's stocking with bike socks, mountain bike gloves, Exit escape room game, a $25 iTunes gift card, Yellowbird hot sauce and a cookie decorating class at Sur La Table. Plus I got him Kingdomino too. I got my dad a wifi enabled thermometer for the outdoor kitchen in their new house in Texas. And after a lot of thought, I got my mom a new bathrobe. She is so hard to buy from, but I remembered over Thanksgiving that she told me she has had the same bathrobe for over 15 years. It was definitely looking a bit shabby. Thankfully, she loved it.
And I did splurge a bit on something for myself. The university has a big computer sale twice a year that includes some accessories. I decided to upgrade to the new Series 4 Apple watch. The new Series 4 watch includes afib detection, which is something I really value since I have afib. It was only $10 off regular price, but I get to pay for it over 12 months, 0% interest via payroll deduction. It comes out to something like $36 per month, which I can easily afford to take out of my monthly allowance. Plus I just sold my Series 3 watch for $250. I used my Series 3 watch a ton over the last year and really loved it. I always used a screen protector and so it was still in great shape.
And when my parents were here, we got a ton of stuff done. My dad helped us put the cover on our travel trailer. It wasn't super easy to figure out, but I think now that we have done it once, it won't be as hard next time. We cleaned out the entire basement, moving everything to the area that will remain as unfinished storage space. And we also cleaned up the garage so that we can finally start parking both cars inside again. My dad helped us install ceiling fans in both upstairs bedrooms. We also installed programmable solar timer switches on the light switches that control the outdoor porch and garage light sconces. And we installed a few more TP-Link wifi light switches. This help easily saved us hundreds and hundreds of dollars in electrician costs, so I am pretty grateful.
To say thanks, we ended up taking my parents out to dinner on Tuesday. It wasn't really in the planned budget, so I will have to shuffle some money around and find somewhere to take from to cover it.
And finally, the basement project has officially begun! The builder got the permits approved from the Township without any requests for changes to the architectural plans. I met with the builder on Tuesday. We paid the initial downpayment of $17k. I think that is the largest check that I have ever written in my life. It is all coming out of the HELOC, so I will have to figure out how much we should start making in monthly payments towards that. Though we can't do it right away, in a few months we should have enough money freed up to start making payments of at least $1000 a month, but eventually I would like it to be even more since our goal is to pay off the HELOC asap to reduce interest costs.