Hi all. It's Laura again. I know it's been a while since I've been around here and I do apologize. Life has been keeping me busy.

in March. I had the opportunity to go out to California and visit my two nieces. That was amazing. LJ who is going to be three in one month is such a good big sister. The love she has for HR is really incredible. LJ was a little hard to reach at first, but after a few days and a little help from my brother, we figured out how to get her to connect with me. After that it was a lot more fun. HR is just the sweetest sweetest little girl on the planet. She's just so full of happiness and joy, and as I've seen her grow over the last few months, that doesn't seem to have changed, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how she continues to grow. HR is almost 8 months old and is crawling, and LJ of course is going to be three in July. And she is just really learning and growing at the Montessori preschool.   It's fun to watch the videos my brother sends me of them.

I've been working on planning and anticipating my trip that I'll be taking here in about six weeks to Chintoteague Island in Virginia. I'm getting very very anticipatory of being able to go out there and see the ponies.

Something new I started recently is I decided to try my hand at making a YouTube channel. It's something that I've thought about in the past because there's several different topics that I thought I might be able to have something to say about, but until now I just have not really done anything about it. It's going to be kind of a more of a Hodge podge of a channel where I do reflections about life, where I talk about recipes I try or that I create, where I talk about stories from my childhood or stories that my dad told, talking about travel, all that kind of stuff. I'll probably also talk about things like dealing with my Mom’s dementia And how people can find ways to do for for caring more about their senior family members. It's still kind of a work in progress. Exactly what I'm going to be doing but that's kind of the idea behind it. I've lots of ideas has already. So hopefully I will not run out of content very soon.

If you'd like to check it out, you can look up, rooted and growing with Laura. My goal is to post twice a week. Likely Wednesdays will be more of a reflective post or something about faith. And then Sundays will be possibly recipes. Maybe book reviews. I don't know. Kind of a more general one.

DH will be retiring here on August 3. He is very very excited and getting less less patient with his coworkers as he's nearing the final day. I'm really curious to see what he is going to actually do with the retirement. His stated plan is of course selling speakers, but he also has really even getting into dealing a Stocks and recently. He's had some pretty good success with some of the stocks that he has chosen to invest in. 

I'm really going to try to come back here more often ,

Hello!

This is Laura, previously of Keeping it Frugal in TX. For whatever reason, I can't seem to login to my other blog. 

I looked at the last entry and was shocked to see it was from 2023!

Lots of changes since then. 

Work - I've now been at my current employer for a little over six years. About four years in my current position. I absolutely love my job and the people I work with. (We help seniors to stay in their homes as long as possible. My job is making sure we're following state and federal regulations as well as a lot of administrative/data stuff. )

 I just turned 50 years old a few weeks ago! It feels kind of bizarre. The one thing I really looked forward to- was getting my shingles shot!! Which I did!

DH is 59 now, and is looking forward to August when we've agreed he can retire. He still works as a delivery driver. He loves going on road trips to pick up speakers and other electronics- some that he resells right away, and others that he's keeping as stock for when he's retired. He's mostly gotten rid of his fish - only two 40? gallon tanks left. Plus his turtle. 

We are down to two cats - Pepe (12) and Kari (14).  Kari has been fighting kidney disease for the last year or so. 

I've gotten much more involved at church. I'm the head money counter, on the costume committee, on the finance committee, and the secretary/treasurer for our community service ministry. 

My brother has had TWO children! My first niece was born July, 2023, and my second niece was born November, 2025 They are seriously precious! I've been spoiling them rotten- from afar unfortunately. I haven't been able to talk him into moving out of CA yet. 

Mom, who had been in an ALF with declining mobility and dementia, continued to get worse. In August 2024 I moved her here to NE after she developed bedsores which the  ALF staff were not able to handle. Unfortunately, she had already declined so much that the staff at the nursing home weren't able to do anything to reverse it. She passed in November, 2024. 

I dealt with her probate most of 2025. It was finalized in August. I was SO glad to be finished with it!

In 2026 I have three, possibly four trips planned. First will be to CA end of February to see my nieces! Then in April DH and I will be celebrating our tenth anniversary! (Possibly go to Branson. )Then in July I will be doing a bucket list item- going to Chintoteague Island in Virginia for the pony running! Lastly, we possibly might do another CA trip around Christmas.