Thursday, October 13, 2011

Teeth, Teeth, and More Teeth

Claudia had only two bottom teeth for the longest time. Then she started getting a Dracula tooth or fang tooth. I'm not really sure on the proper name for it but it looked funny. She would smile and there would be NO top front teeth, just one lone tooth over on the side. But just yesterday 3 more teeth on the top have started cutting through. Hallelujah! There is a reason for her excessive crankiness lately! I love this stage when they start to get more teeth, it totally changes the way they look. I can't wait to see her with her teeth grown in. My baby is getting so BIG and growing way TOO fast!

Friday, October 7, 2011

Bye Bye Cable tv..

....hello Netflix & Hulu. 
I've been doing a lot of research on-line lately trying to figure out the best way to cut our cable bill. After calling At&t u-verse I was able to cut our bill by about $15 a month. (Just call your cable provider and tell them you have found a better offer somewhere else and you are looking to cancel your membership and 99% of the time they will discount your bill to keep you as a customer.) It's worth a try. 

I still felt like what we were paying was more than I wanted to be paying. So I finally cut the cord with my cable company and now we just stream our shows. Now the kids watch what they want on Netflix. We have it streaming through our Wii in the family room and through our blu-ray player in the loft. And any current episodes of shows John and I want to watch we watch on Hulu.com We have not yet upgraded to the hulu plus, but I am sure we will soon. It actually feels great to not be paying such a huge amount for the t.v. The kids love having Netflix and being able to chose what they want to watch. I think in the future we will buy a Roku box to be able to have the hulu stream onto our t.v. but for now it's working just watching it on the computer. 

When I canceled our phone service I asked about upgrading our Internet since we would now be doing streaming exclusively. They had a promotion going so I upgraded our Internet from the slowest DSL to the fastest DSL and am only paying $6 more for the Internet then I was paying before.

Here is the break down of our savings. 

 $103.15 - This is what our total was before I got the $15 discount
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$88.15 - This is what we were paying (this is with our $15 discount they gave me for staying with them)
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$88.15  - Internet (slowest DSL)  + T.V. service (this included DVR on two televisions)
Now we pay :
$33 + taxes (not sure what those will be yet) for Internet (fastest DSL)
$7.99 (there is no tax) Netflix (streaming only) 
for a total monthly payment of ......
$40.99 that is a savings of $62.16 from my original bill
yes if we add hulu plus it will be an additional $7.99 a month. But that still would only be $48.98 a month compared to $103. 
I'm sure there are lots of people out there that pay more than the $103 a month that we were paying. 
I'm so glad that I finally made the switch. I was very nervous about canceling our cable but we are actually enjoying it! And I feel great knowing that I just cut a bill in half and am not really losing anything!