recycle, reuse, refinance

Our next door neighbor was throwing out a perfectly good baby play slide, as pictured above, and a baby car. Since we are all about recycling and reusing anything we can, we jumped all over it. It makes me wonder though, do we really need to buy any of this stuff brand new? Surely, enough durable baby products have been produced that we could easily get most things secondhand with little effort and little to no out-of-pocket expense. A look on craigslist baby listing shows a bazillion listings for all things baby-related. And how much of these durable goods go to waste and end up in a landfill every year?

Erin and I try to be buy as many non-perishable items as possible secondhand, usually via the Internet. It saves us money and possibly helps keep the amount of waste down.

That being said, Kai loves his car.

The bottle-to-cup transition is going fairly smoothly. He does get soaked now at milk-time since he can't really latch on to anything, but I think he's getting the hang of it. It looks like he swam in milk when he's done.

My mortgage broker career has officially started. I have hung my license with Village Financial Solutions in beautiful downtown Orlando, and am working on some challenging refinances for my very first client. If I can get these loans to go through, I will be a hero to my client. Apparently, now that the boom has passed, not too many lenders want to loan money to purchase vacant land, much less refinance said vacant land. Wish me luck.