Kitty & Kevin

If you're anything like me, you want to find all kinds of activities for your kids to get involved in as a way to educate, entertain and cultivate their physical and mental growth. For little ones, sometimes that is difficult to find. We've explored swim classes, sports, gymnastics...all great things, but we really wanted to look at something else for Lorelai to experience.



Music is such an important part of a child's life. Personally I believe that my involvement in music at a young age made me more successful and well-rounded! Due to involvement in choir, musicals and band I was able to gain confidence at a young age for public speaking, since I was familiar with standing in front of an audience. I also feel that reading music is such a great skill for children to learn as they grow older, along with familiarity with instruments, and to appreciate the arts. Not only that, music can help a child learn and retain information (example...do you still sing your ABC's in y…

Allow me to hop up on my soapbox for a minute. There are two phrases that make me cringe when I'm talking to someone who is working to become debt-free. They both start with "We're debt free"...and end with:

"...except for our mortgage" or "...except for our student loans"

Debt is debt. Yes, there is more expensive debt and more risky debt...but especially in the last 15 years even financial gurus who used to classify "good debt" or "bad debt" have changes their tune over the last few years.

Prior to the housing bubble and student loan rates increasing...good debt were mortgages and student loans. Bad debt were just about anything else...car loans, credit cards, personal loans, etc.

Now you're running into students who graduate college with a $100,000 of student loan debt, often graduating at an older age than our parents due to "gap years" or masters programs...with less time to make up the lost income, and fewer…

If you've followed us for a while, you know that when Kevin and I first got married at age 25 we had $100,000 of student loan debt that we paid off in 2 years. Then, by the age of 28 we had bought our first house, and were back into debt. We had a baby, sold our house and moved into one that cost about $150,000 more than our first...so we were...you guessed it...still in debt.

As it stands today I am now 31 years old. We do still have a mortgage, so we are debt about $80,000 as of right now. (Notice I didn't say... "we are debt-free...except our mortgage." As I hate that phrase. Debt is debt, and you owe money...and that's it. I'll discuss that later.)

With our lofty goals of having our mortgage paid off about 1.5 years from now...we still make a point to put as much money as we can towards our mortgage as often as we can.

We are using the exact same process as we used for our student loans, but things look a little differently for us being in debt in our 30&#…

It seems that every stage of parenting we are looking for a new travel stroller for our airport trips and family vacations. The tricky part about finding your perfect travel stroller, is you want a stroller that allows you to easily glide through TSA, maybe allows your children to nap on the go to allow for more sightseeing on your trip, and still work for your daily needs once your outside of the airport and exploring your destination.

Here are a few things we look for in a travel stroller:

-Compact
-Lightweight
-Easy to fold
-Few parts (less chance of breaking)
-Allows little ones to nap easily (as easily as you can while traveling)
-Under stroller storage available 
-Ideally a cupholder or some place I can set a couple small things (my phone, Lorelai's half eaten granola bar she just handed me etc.)

Each stage requires something a little different. Sharing a few of our favorites!



One Child, Age 0-12 months A car seat caddy is your absolute best friend. These are incredibly light, snap …

I never would have thought the scariest flight I've been on thus far would have been one of our regular Denver-Omaha flights, a trip we take multiple times each year.

The turbulence we experienced this week was nothing like what I had experienced before.

I found myself curled up around my 4 month old, while telling Kevin to grab a hold of our 2 year old. I knew in reality we probably weren't going to fall out of the sky, but we were being tossed around so violently, with long sudden drops, I was worried about losing my hold on my infant. The main turbulence only lasted 5-10 minutes, but it felt like forever. Even after, we had a rocky flight the rest of the trip too.


Once home, I decided to do some research. Have infants been harmed from turbulence? What should you do as a passenger in the event of turbulence? What should we be doing to keep our kids safe?

In short, the answer to my first question was yes...children have been harmed from unexpected turbulence, especially if no…

Southwest has been our preferred airline for a few years now, especially because of their perks like 2 free checked bags, family boarding, and their frequent flyer program. You may have seen us mention we've earned the coveted "Companion Pass" early 2018 which goes through the end of 2019. The companion pass allows me to bring a named companion for free on any flight of mine on Southwest. Kevin has been my primary "companion" and we've determined to have saved over $4,000 in the less than 2 years we will have earned companion pass.

Even without companion pass, we are somewhat experts in the cheap flight game, especially with Southwest. This year alone we've repriced tickets to get over $300 back on our flights, we also picked up $49 tickets to/from Chicago, and have booked almost $10,000 worth of flights the last 2 years, paying only about $1,800 out of pocket. Here are a few of our tips for how to get inexpensive flights on Southwest! 

Be flexible with y…