Private school is expensive

Heather and I not thrilled with the state of the public schools here in Raleigh. Our neighborhood has been redistricted so we pass other schools to get to our kids and things don't match my expectations coming from a great school district in Pittsburgh. There are some great charter and magnet schools but they are pretty much entirely by lottery, so we have to hope we get selected. If our kids are not selected for a magnet or charter school, we can enter a lottery for our very nearby year round school or go to the traditional school. The other options, of course, are private schools or homeschooling.

We just recently have started to research private schools. We have a bias towards the nearby North Raleigh Christian Academy (NRCA) where many people we know have gone. We also have several secular schools like Ravenscroft. I actually found a great list of private schools that includes teacher to student ratios. The problem is we just have realized how expensive these can be. Excluding the new family fees, NRCA is about $8000 and Ravenscroft is $17,000 for grades 1-5. Since Madelyn and Anna will be back to back school years, this would be around $1350/mo for NRCA and $2850/mo for Ravenscroft. Wow! How do people do this? Ravenscroft is more expensive than my alma matter, University of Pittsburgh, is right now. Both are more expensive than Pitt was 10 years ago when I was in college.

Anyway, Heather and I were hoping we could figure out how to make this work but so long as we have a mortgage we don't see how we can. So, I guess for now we concentrate on getting rid of the mortgage and trying to get the right charter/magnet school.

Vote for my wife

So, Heather's blog randomly got selected as one of Nickelodeon's best local blogs. Take a minute and go vote for Raleigh Mom at this site: http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/parents-picks/raleigh-durham-nc-usa/best-raleigh-durham-local-blog.

The floor is on fire

As a kid, I had a great imagination. One of the things I used to pretend is that the floor was on fire and I needed to move my feet as quickly as possible to keep them from burning. This morning, I found myself playing a similar but opposite game.

So, we just remodeled our master bathroom. Pictures will follow this post. In remodeling, we added a new shower, new vanity, tile floors, and a new throne. We also debated adding a heated floor. See, my mom has one of these in her place and doesn't find it overly useful. After having talked with our contractor, he said they were very useful so long as you have a thermostat...which my mom doesn't have. So, we went with it. Installed is a Nuheat thermostat. Until today, I was questioning the value.

Well, last night got into the 40s here in Raleigh...for the first time since we had our new bathroom. Well, that floor got cold. Unfortunately, not all the floor is heated and, in fact, I need to walk to the "cold" section to get my towel for the shower. I found myself dancing over that ice cold part...like the floor was on fire.

Dryer Vent Booster Fans

Since we moved into our house in April of 2005, we have never had a perfectly working dryer. See, when we bought the house we bought a new washer and dryer as the person who bought our previous home had wanted ours. The GE dryer we had worked okay at first but just would not work on bigger loads like the same model we had at the previous house would. It got worse and worse where even a small load of laundry would have to be dried more than once. Eventually, it was obvious that the dryer had died at less than 4 years old. Before having a new one installed, we got Sears to come out and clean our dryer vent while cleaning the carpets. The things the technician said made it clear to us that the problem is only partially the dryer.

In our house, the washer and dryer are in a small closet in the middle of the house on the second floor. The vent goes up into the attic and out the roof. Overall, I have measured this vent at over 20 feet with a 90 degree turn at the very beginning and one 30-45 degree turn in the attic. Because of the position of the vent, the hose connecting the dryer to the vent also has a 90 degree turn. Thanks to our friend Scott, he got me looking into dryer vent booster fans.

Yesterday we had a Dryer Vent Booster Fan installed at out house by our friend and contractor Scott Smith of RWS Construction. The fan I choose was the Suncourt Centrax 4" booster fan. I did a lot of research on these devices and this was my favorite. I found this iaqsource.com site to be the best in terms of information and it includes one of the largest lists of these devices.

As near as I can tell, there are a variety of differences between these devices. The basic differences, if I were to sum it up, are the power of the fan (cubic feet per minute or cfm), the way the switch works, and how protected it is from lint. For switches there were three types, manual, pressure sensing, and current sensing. Reading reviews of these devices at various places including Amazon led me to believe that the pressure sensing swicthes could cause the fan to be turned on at the wrong time (like a hot muggy day or a windy day) or not turned on at the right time. I decided immediately after reading all of the problems that I would stay away from these. This left the current sensing or the manual switch as my remaining options. I focused in on the Suncourt because of its price and the current sensing switch. When reading the iaqsource page on the Suncourt, I saw the following:

Boosting may be necessary when the total duct length exceeds the following:
No Bends - 25 feet
1 Bend - 20 feet
2 Bends - 15 feet
3 Bends - 10feet

Another important fact about this device included that it was UL tested meaning it was safe and should not catch on fire.

So, its installed, operates very quietly, and hopefully in a year I will write more about how I like this device. It took Scott about four hours to install but it is my expectation that the savings in electricity (and from broken dryers) that this device may give us will be fully worth it.

A sad reminder

I never knew Kristi Walker, but I wish I had.

Heather and I were a part of a group called Triangle Leadership Forum and "graduated" from that in 2006. It was a meaningful experience that to this day has sculpted our marriage, parenting, and my leadership at home, work, and in church.

Chuck and Kristi Walker were taking that same Triangle Leadership Forum journey to be completed in 2010. On October 22nd of 2008 we got an email about Kristi and asking us to pray for her. She remained in our prayers for the less than four months she had from diagnosis until she passed. I didn't know Kristi and knew little about her situation. I knew she was a young mother and had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

In the past few days I decided to learn more about Kristi and her situation just because I didn't know much. I read her obituary and found she was just 6 months older than me, a mother of three boys, and a local to Raleigh. Here is a professional blog on Kristi that tells women, even young women, why they need to get screened. For a mother of three young boys to have passed all I can remind myself is that God is in control and has a reason. Also - women should get checked consistently and early.

I am not sure why I am writing this other than I think that as many people our age as possible should hear this story. I will try to come up with something more cheery to blog about next.

Madelyn walking

This video of Madelyn walking is the great news of the day. She is 10 months old and just took her first journey over 3 steps and did it on video! I am a proud papa!

New Green home tax credit info

Warnings have come out not to trust salesmen alone as to whether their products meet green home requirements for the 30% tax credit up to $1500. Here is a website that talks about the specific requirements. If you are looking for specific information on heating and cooling for example, you could look at this table which has information about windows, storm doors, insulation, roofs, AC, furnaces, heat pumps and more that when installed can allow you to claim this credit.

Feedback on facebook worlds

I got numerous pieces of anonymous feedback and perhaps the best was that I needed to start using friends lists. I was sent this very good article on how to use friends lists and manage the different relationships you have with people. I am going to try some of these things out and see how they work but I think that article is worth reading if you use facebook with any regularity and are concerned with your privacy.

Facebook presents the colliding worlds

This article reminded me of the reality that facebook is really causing colliding worlds for so many people. I mean, I post personal pictures of my kids and have friends from high school reconnecting there. As Stephanie tweeted (below), we really might regret some of which is now popping up on facebook 10 years later.

A colleague from work also recently said on his blog:

I wanted to use facebook to share family photos etc which are, clearly, private so I had to enforce the family friends only on facebook as the photos are private (photos of family etc) in nature which are of no interest to anybody but close friends and family. So, this is what I'm up to in case someone invites me on facebook and wonders why I don't accept. Professional is linkedin, close friends and family is facebook.

I think thats a reasonable distinction but I am going to take it a step further. Those that I am friendly enough with at work to go to a movie with, have a beer with, or eat lunch with can "friend" me on facebook. But those using it as a business networking thing, perhaps I will respond suggesting we connect on linked in instead. What do you think?

I close with this seinfeld clip:

20 things I did in My 20s...

This year I turn 30. In fact, its less than 4 months away. I started thinking about all those things which happened in my 20s - some major changes...and I decided to write them down with some ages. These are in no particular order, just in the order I have been thinking of them

In my 20s I...

1. Fell in love (23) and then got married (24) to the most wonderful, caring, beautiful woman
2. Left my hometown of Pittsburgh on my birthday (23) and moved to Raleigh, NC
3. Bought my first (22) and second (25) home.
4. Lost a best friend and gained a best friend. (23)
5. Found out what it was like to be called daddy (27)...twice (28).
6. Lost family, a grandfather (22) and grandmother (25).
7. Reconnected with family thanks to blogs and social networking sites. (27)
8. Reached one of my early professional goals of being named a Senior Technical Staff Member (28) at IBM.
9. Saw my Steelers win two Super Bowls, the first on TV (26) and the second in person (29).
10. Became an uncle through birth (22), marriage (25), and soon birth again (29).
11. Gained a lot of great new family through marriage (23)
12. Graduated with honors from the University of Pittsburgh (21)
13. Traveled with my wife to Switzerland (23) twice (25).
14. Traveled to many other places like Jamaica (23), Hawaii (26), Bermuda (27), Montpellier France (26) and the UK (25, 27, 28).
15. Got my first dog, Cassie (23)
16. Taught a college class (28) at East Carolina University
17. Refinished our kitchen (27) and bathroom (hopefully 29)
18. Broke one bone - my foot (22) and still went skiing for a week with a broken foot
19. Purchased multiple cars, a Jeep Grand Cherokee (21), VW Passat (22), Honda Prelude (22), Toyota Matrix (25), and Honda Pilot (27)
20. Got out of debt (aside from our house) and lived debt free since (24).

Child Care credits/deductions

I was doing some reading up on the economic stimulus plan that passed the house yesterday, looking for specific details about how it might put money in the pockets short term for the non-business owner like myself. I read this article and a couple others which all mention the same sort of thing with no fine details:

The bill also gives most taxpayers breaks of $500 each on their payroll taxes and increases tax breaks for college tuition, first-time homebuyers and child care.

So, it appears that there is some notion of getting $500 tax credits on payroll taxes as well as additional tax deductions or credits that are given for college tuition, first-time homebuyers, and child care. I never read much on the child care credits and was wondering how sending you child to preschool might be accounted so I read up on it.

Preschool is a valid child care tax expense however there are implications which may disallow claiming it for certain people. The child care expense tax implications are all explained in only a way the IRS can explain something, by calling it "IRS Publication 503" which can be found here. One of the interesting things is that if you have a stay at home parent with no earned income you cannot claim any child care expenses including preschool. To claim all of the preschool expenses, the stay at home parent would need to have an earned income of at least as high as what you are attempting to claim as expenses or you can only claim as much as they make. Here is an example from the IRS with some minor edits.

Your earned income for the year was $18,000. Your spouse's earned income for the year was $2,000. You paid work-related expenses of $3,000 for the care of your 5-year-old child and qualified to claim the credit. The amount of expenses you use to figure your credit cannot be more than $2,000 (the smaller of your earned income or that of your spouse).

See, its designed to be a "work related expense." the IRS says this means that both of these have to be true:

• They allow you (and your spouse if you are married) to work or look for work.
  
• They are for a qualifying person's care.
  

But it seems that according to the IRS the stay at home parent isn't working unless they have earned income. Tell that to a stay at home parent and you might get slapped ;-) I thought this was the last interesting part:

Volunteer work. For this purpose, you are not considered to be working if you do unpaid volunteer work or volunteer work for a nominal salary.

Snow Day

Yesterday was the biggest snow day (~4") since I moved to Raleigh in 2002. Here are some pictures of our house and us in the snow:















Yes, much to my disapproval my daughter was wearing jeans in the snow. At least they were lined. She lasted about 10 minutes, she is a good little warm weather southern gal :-) I was wearing m snowboarding gear and Heather was wearing what she called a snow bib and what we would call something else like snow pants.

Interest Rates

So, like many "homeowners" I have been watching the interest rates plummet and preparing to refinance. I finally began the process of refinancing on Tuesday when 15 year fixed rate mortgages hit between 4.25% and 4.5% locally. Heather and I are on an aggressive track to pay off our house and so we had to make sure our closing costs were as low as possible. I called many companies and here is my anecdotal occurrences with each of them:

• One of my friends had luck with Citi using our employee referral program and I contacted them. I immediately had the phone answered and they took my name and number on Tuesday. On Thursday, after having not received a callback, I called again and got someone after less than one minute on hold. They quoted me nice rates, gave me their contact information, and told me they would be available Friday and Saturday morning. When i called Friday the lady's voicemail said she was on vacation.
  
  
• Two companies never returned my calls - Wells Fargo and Chase.
  
  
• The current company who holds my mortgage, HSBC, had rates 3/8 higher (4.875) than the next highest person I contacted (4.5%) and still wanted a full origination point.
  
  
• My credit union, Coastal Federal, was the only one who came through. They had low closing costs, low rates, and gave me no hassle. You can check their rates here. They charges 1/2 pt origination, no discount points, no application fee, and I locked in a 4.5% 15 year mortgage which is a substantial savings from my current 5.875%. Overall closing costs were around $2100 which in NC seems to be a great deal.
  

Also on the interest rate front, the high interest online savings accounts are rapidly dropping their interest rates in the 2.5-3% range. My credit union has a pretty cool program called "Go Green Checking". The biggest issue I have is that who wants to put your real savings, like emergency savings and long term savings for cars, in a checking account with a card you use frequently. See, you have to use this card 12 times a month, which means you have 12 chances to get your numbers stolen. Sure, Visa says it will replace your money if stolen but reports say that this can take 2-4 weeks sometimes. This is my emergency savings, I don't know if thats secure enough for me. Thoughts?

Not the water cooler

Everyone here at work is outraged. Why? Because as of January 1st, we lost our "drink subsidy" which was a benefit not very well defined but often used. I often don't write about work stuff, but I think it says something about the state of the economy. Allow me to expand...

In early December we all got a note saying that the drinks were costing the company too much and the drink subsidy would be going away. We had $.25 sodas, free cheap coffee, and water coolers. We have had these things since I have been here in RTP, so almost 7 years. As of Jan 1, the sodas went to $.75, coffee was pay per cup at $.50, and the water coolers disappeared.

The money is only the start of complaints. The water fountains which were not really used for the past 7+ years do not chill or filter the water, in fact the tap water in the kitchen tastes better. Sodas are < $.25 per can if bought in 12 packs at Target or Walmart on sale, so justifying that $.50 hike is hard to do while trying to claim they are just stopping the subsidy. So, many people seem up in arms.

My sensible side, Heather, says that in the grand scheme people are losing their jobs left and right and here we are complaining about the water cooler. I guess the more I think about this is it is our first loss of benefits. Some companies have lost their 401k match and others have even lost part of their salary. I guess this little benefit seems to hurt because it is something tangible daily...but if put in perspective, its not as bad as it could be... :-/

Thoughts anyone?

Does your stay at home wife get vacation?

Through a minor disagreement earlier this month, I came to the realization that while I get vacation days, Heather does not. She is with the girls every day. In the little time off she has gotten in the past two years, she has often spent them with others on girl's nights out or at church events. But, for Heather, true vacation is relaxation, serenity, and some seclusion. Our vacations now include the kids. Weekends include kids. Every day she is with the kids.

I for one couldn't stand working 365 days a year and it made me realize that we need a change of plans. I need to allocate some of my vacation days to allowing Heather to have days off. She needs a break to do whatever she wants that helps her to relax and get downtime.

Today is the start of my last vacation for the year. I have until January 5th off. We started this vacation with that new focus, allowing Heather to take two hours at the beginning of today to herself. I don't think thats anything like the full days off I want to make sure she gets in the future...but its a start.

Anyone else have a similar situation? How do you handle it?

Fun with Anna

Anna is totally our little helper these days. She sets the table, puts away dishes, throws away trash, and so many other things. Tonight we made strombollis and she helped me add the toppings and enjoyed playing with some pizza dough.



After that while getting ready for bed she started playing with a cardboard wrapping paper tube. I showed her to look through it, in part so she wouldn't swing it around, and she loved it. After seeing she was having trouble looking through it with one eye, I crafted it into a pair of binoculars and we went on an adventure around the house looking at things like the Christmas tree and stockings. Once she seemed to be getting bored of that, we colored the binoculars. In the end, she had so much fun she wanted to take them to bed with her.

You can only hope to contain me...

Its like Madelyn has said to us, "You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me." She has been everywhere. Today she figured out that she could crawl through the foyer and living room to get to the dining room where the dog's food is kept. Here are some fun pictures showing her everywhere:


Anna was helping put lights up outside, and Maddie not wanting to be kept out climbed to the window next to the front door to see her sister.


When attempting to take Lily's picture, Maddie crawled over to get into the picture. She cannot be stopped!


Maddie likes to try and chase her sister up the stairs. Lucky for us, she hasn't figured out how to get up the steps.


Finally, a way to contain her, in her high chair. Here she ate so much she got tired, and went to sleep. :-)

Micro-blogging and life update

Just a week after beginning, micro-blogging has taken over my blog power. As you can see on the right of my blog here, I have been micro-blogging and able to keep streaming whats going on in my life. It does mean though that my actual blogs have become less frequent and perhaps more meaningful.

Anna and Madelyn are still as adorable as ever. Now, they play together all the time. We thought it was Anna wanting to play with whatever Madelyn was playing with, and perhaps it was at first. But, after telling Anna to play over with her stuff away from her sister when she is playing too rough, Madelyn immediately crawls to Anna and is all over her toys..so it seems they both want to be together, its adorable. Here they are playing with dolls together:



This month may end up a blur by the end. Heather and I have activities every weekend and nearly every day on the weekends. We are looking forward to it all though. More updates another time..

Thanksgiving and new life

Happy Thanksgiving! This morning I got up with the girls at 6:30 and let Heather sleep a little bit longer. I am thankful for the fun time we had in the last hour before I wrote this. I found myself with a lot to be thankful for this year, a beautiful caring sweet smart loving wife, a couple great healthy active very fun kids, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, an interesting job I like most days, a warm and inviting home, and so many close friends and people I can talk to. Yesterday, I hung out with Derick, one of my closest friends, something I am very thankful for having been able to do.

But, as I thought of the many things I was thankful for, I thought of all the new life we have experienced around us this past year. I perused my facebook list of friends and found that at least 8 (Heather, Suzanne, Katie, Jill, Nicole, Kate, Regina, Ann) of them had babies since last Thanksgiving and 3 (Stephanie, Jessica, Jessica) of them that we know of are pregnant including my sister in law. Among Heather's friends there are about 6 more babies that were or will be born in the Sept-Dec timeframe. Some of my friends at work have just had babies like Aditya and others like Millie are just about to have one. I am thankful for all that new life that God has put in and around us. I lost my count at about 15 babies born in 2008 and 6 waiting to be born in 2008/2009. What a glorious time and I am excited for the potential more to come in 2009. But as I looked at my own little miracles this morning, I was thankful for them and the joy they bring to my life.

Micro-USB and the LG Lotus

So, I missed this minor technological revolution, where Micro-USB, just standardized last year, started to replace mini-USB in devices. So many of us tech guys knew that mini-USB was too thick and would need replaces one day. I for one didn't realize the day was already here. Welcome micro-USB...may I not have to buy a bunch of new cables now.

How did I find out about micro-USB being the new chosen form factor? We went phone shopping...

Yesterday, I got Heather a LG Lotus from Radio Shack. I started to feel bad at the lack of connectivity my wife had. She is a gadget person at heart and we just never spent the money to get her really connected with a sweet phone..or even text messaging. That changed yesterday when we got her the LG Lotus and changed to Sprint's family data plan, $130 for 2 phones, 1500 anytime minutes, free nights after 7 PM and weekends, unlimited text, unlimited data, and a handfull of other features which are standard on all the cell providers. Its a real cool device, beautiful screen, nice camcorder ability, and a 2 MP camera. But, the one issue is that I was used to the Blackberry which has infinite application support. Not the cool games that are on the iPhone, but Google Talk, GMail, Twitterberry, etc. So, Heather's phone surprised me not having as man applications for it. However, the mail as integrated with the phone was cool. Google Maps, YouTube, and others things have native support. Maybe its just a matter of time, the phone has only been out for a month. But, its a cool device which Heather will gladly show off to you.

As for those who knew I considered a move to AT&T. I have been with Sprint for almost 10 years and I thought about changing. In the end, AT&T's plans would have cost me $25 more for the same thing. I have corporate discounts both places, so that may not be for everyone. But, Heather loves the new phone and if finally connected to the modern era of communications...and thats really what matters. :-)