Wow, I don't ususally go three days without posting...I guess that just shows how little I've got going on right now. I'm pretty much just waiting for the end of the month to wind down.

I went grocery shopping last night and spent ~$107, brought down to $91 with coupons, and $50 of that was for my dad, so I'll get reimbursed this weekend when I see him. $41 for me is not bad, though I do need to stop at the fruit/veggie store this afternoon. Still I've only spent $292.64 so far this month (budget $350), so even with another $20 or so, I'll make it !

On the flip side, I went over on my gas budget. I was hoping to keep it under $300, and I'm already at $353.50, with 3 more days to go until the end of the month. My guess is that one of the cars will need to be filled up at some point during the weekend, bringing the total closer to $400 . I don't know that there's much I can do about this, but I'll look at it and make whatever small changes I can.

We've got a lot going on this weekend. I desperately need to take the kids for haircuts today after school (and make appointments for their Christmas pictures). Tomorrow, DD has soccer, then they're going to Grandma's again for a sleepover. Hubby and I are going to our friend's house for dinner (and we only need to bring a bottle of wine, which we already have) so it should be a spend-free day. Sunday morning, I've got to go to my dad's house to finish his shopping, then we're going to a Halloween Party during the day. Tonight I'm making the mushroom-chorizo soup for hubby, then tomorrow I'm making a butternut squash soup for the party.

I also have to get a grip on benefits for next year. We get them through hubby, and the medical, dental, and eye care combined are *only* going up $6/month next year. I say only because I guess I expected it to be a lot more. I can't complain, though, because his benefits are great. Also, I have to tally up my dependent care and health care expenses for his FSAs. I think I can reduce the health care to about $50/month (from $75). The dependent care should drop from $5000 to $4500. The nice thing is that his company picks up 5% of our childcare costs, so they give us the full $4500, but only take out $4275 from his check.

One last item, and it was a surprise and a bummer: My town raised my property taxes by $750/year because of the room we finished over our garage. They assessed it at about $15,000. We owe $450 extra on November 1st, then $150 extra on Feb 1 and May 1. Big bummer. I was counting on using that money for some birthday/Christmas gifts. That brings our total property tax bill to just under $8500, and that's before the reassessment that they did for the whole town. (Haven't been notified about the hit we'll take on that). Blech