Over a year ago I started a goal of paying off my student loans. After about six months I made a decent sized dent. Then covid-19 hit. Amidst the confusion and uncertainty of this pandemic, we decided to hold tight to our money. Until we didn’t. Half of my student loans went into deferment. Bailout after bailout from the federal government, and with the money we scrimped together we saved the money to payoff my student loans in one year. Then a epiphany hit.

For over 10 years my wife and I have been paying into an endless black hole of student loans. While in college we accumulated nearly $200,000 in student loans. 10 years after starting to pay our loans back I still have $54,000 to pay off. Last month I had $57,028 remaining. We still have 15 years remaining before the rest is payed, assuming I paid the mimim. I no longer plan to pay the minimum. My plan is to pay them off in 3 years.

It’s been a fairly long time since I posted on this site.  I have a bunch of posts that I need to upload at some point in the future, but until then I have an announcement.  I started another site that is dedicated to another one of my hobbies.  You can find my new site at Bear Coral.   For over 10 years Jolene and I have traveled.  Throughout our various locations of travel, we have scuba dived around 50 times.  Each time we dove, I felt the urge to bring the underwater world to my home.  So, for a while now I have been dabbling in the saltwater aquarium hobby.

Today was a big milestone for Braeden.  He took his first steps unassisted.  Jolene was washing some dishes.  Braeden was pushing one of his toys he got for his birthday.  He pushed it just far enough away that he took his first step towards it without holding onto anything.  Jolene missed it.  About a half hour later while in the living room he was standing.  Jolene was next to him and he took a couple more steps on his own.

Yesterday Johanna and I were talking about Braeden turning one today. She said, “so Braeden will no longer be…..” I completed here sentence as she paused with the word “zero.” Braeden is officially no longer zero, and today has turned one year old.  His age will no longer be an accumulation of months, but years.  This past year flew by so quickly.

Over the past 10 years post college my faith in humanity has been deteriorating.  Pastors who you would assume would do great things, do the opposite.  Friends you think are friends, well often are not.  Family who you would think would have your back, would rather destroy you.  My world view has been destroyed by those close to me, as well as those from afar.

When I was a child the number one thing I wanted to was travel.  Now that I am old enough to afford traveling, we try as often as we can to see the world.  Having children does make it a little more difficult.  This trip we decided to go somewhere different, the US Virgin Islands.

If you live in southern California, you know the kind of heat we can get. This summer is no different. We don’t have a pool, so Jolene wanted to get something the kids could play in that would be adequate enough. She opted to buy a blow up pool.  Ever since the box arrived in the mail, Johanna has been talking about it every 10 minutes.  I told her she had to wait for Jolene to be off work.  So today was the big day to blow it up.

It feels like yesterday when we had Johanna watch fireworks for the first time at Jolene’s uncle’s home. Fast forward 6 years for Independence Day Braeden got his first dose of fireworks. We went to Jolene’s grandparents’ home to watch the fireworks. Luckily they live close enough to a big fireworks display.  We can just watch them from their backyard.  Afterwords we lit some of our own.

4th of July is here. The best part about this time of year for me is that our fruit plants have plentiful fruit on them.  Last year I wrote a little about our fruit on our homegrown blackberries and raspberries post.  This past year I split, repotted, and planted a bunch of plants near quadrupling my production.  This year we have had more strawberries than we had in the past due to the weather without adding more plants.  Johanna loves to eat any fruit that has the name berry in it.  Berries in the store can cost a lot of money.  Growing my own saves me a lot of money.