R. Tyler Horner

The Price of a Family

Ever since I was a young boy, I have dreamed of the day that I start a family. In my head, this was the day that I got married followed quickly by the day that mysteriously a baby showed up on the scene. As you can see, I hadn’t really planned out the timeline of how these things happen or what other things get affected by the appearance of another Horner living in my house. With our first child on the way in April, I’m beginning to understand not only the cost of having a child, but also why I’m more than willing to pay it.

Hospitals are of the devil. Sorry to anyone if you work in a hospital or really enjoy visiting the hospital, but that’s where I’m at with my limited experience in one. Haley had some unexpected health issues early on in her pregnancy and we’re just now paying off the absurd amount of money that one trip to the emergency room costs. With that in mind, I think we’re prepared for the actual monetary price of having a child (at least mentally). We know basically what our insurance will cover in terms of expenses and what an average birth will cost us. We have bulked up our savings to make sure we can handle the little things that you can’t forecast when having a child and we have planned to reduce our savings in general knowing that our expenses will go up in the near future. We have scouted out pediatricians in the area and will begin to narrow them down to the a couple lucky candidates for our future business. In terms of the money side of the equation, we feel like we are in a decent enough place and we’re as prepared as we can possibly be.

Unfortunately, having a baby is not just a dollars and cents type of affair. We attach emotion to everything in this world and we are no different. Our desire is for Haley to stay home with our children until they head off for school…public school if you’re interested. Financially, this makes our future a little less stable although only a little bit more. The cost of child care has gotten so high that if she did go back to working full time a considerable bit of the income benefit would head off to pay for someone to watch our child. On the other hand, if all she did was watch our children we would be headed into the negative every month which is never a good fiscal decision. We are going to use our first year of raising a child to better inform us of how we should handle being a family financially. By bulking up our savings and Haley working a part-time job, we should be able to weather the storm for a year and be able to reassess how we are after a year.

This is a terrifying prospect for someone like me who likes for the risk to be negligible. There is risk in doing things this way and there is at least a chance it could end poorly. The cost of my wife staying home may prove to be too high, but we would like to see if it’s possible. I’m sure I’ll be writing about this more as this year marches on, so stay tuned.

The DIY Bug

I’m wouldn’t consider myself a “handyman” by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, I know my way around basic tools and their uses in my house and I love to try new things. My wife and some friends went out of town last week and I took the opportunity (after talking it through with her) to upgrade some basic things in our house that we’d talked about, but hadn’t actually done.

The first thing that had to happen was I needed to clear out the room that we will be turning into a nursery very soon. No tools involved really, just a lot of picking up and moving. The room was my “office” which could also be called the room with the computer and everything else that doesn’t have a place in our house. Needless to say, the room was a wreck and full of all kinds of things. I cleared out all the trash and things that needed to get thrown away and began taking everything else to a holding area on the second floor of the house. Estimated time: About 2 hours. Estimated savings: I didn’t check how much movers cost for that short of a time.

The second thing that I chose to do was to install vented gas logs in our fireplace. We have a wood burning fireplace in our house, but we never use it because it never really gets that cold in Texas and we don’t really want to store wood in our backyard. I had made some returns to Lowe’s and had some gift cards to spend and I bought a set of vented gas logs, which essentially are fake logs that look like they are burning because of natural gas. Essentially the process is remove gas log lighter, put together log’s gas line, stack logs on top, and enjoy…but it didn’t go like that. I had the most trouble getting the original log lighter and once I got that done I didn’t have everything I needed included in the box. Needless to say, there were approximately 2 too many trips to Lowe’s to make this one happen even though it wasn’t that difficult. Estimated time: About 2 hours of actual work. Estimated savings: Conservatively, about $200 based on word of mouth.

Once the aesthetically pleasing project was done, I turned my attention to the nuts and bolts of all this, getting the nursery prepared. I then went about moving and putting together a twin bed in the nursery and a queen bed in one of our guest rooms. We want there to be a twin bed in the nursery for the first few months our baby is with us so my wife doesn’t necessarily have to hike back and forth so much for all the feedings. It’s my wife’s bed from college and it is a mess to put together, but eventually I did. Earlier this year, we upgraded to a king bed and it’s revolutionized the way we sleep (especially once my wife opted for a huge body pillow) and our old queen bed went into the guest room. This bed was exceptionally easy to put together. Estimated time: About and hour and a half. Estimated savings: This is why I pay movers.

My final project over my Christmas break was to install ceiling fans in all the guest rooms and nursery. Texas summers are typically pretty brutal. We had always talked about having ceiling fans put in, but never really needed them. This all changed when we babysat for some friends and noticed how warm it was in the room that became the nursery (although this had more to do with our A/C unit going out). So I went out and bought four identical ceiling fans and started installing them. The guy at Lowe’s said “the first one will be the hardest, but it gets easier” and boy was he right. The first one took twice as much time as any other and I had to install it three separate times before it worked correctly, but the rest were much easier. Took me bits of four days to finish. Estimated time: Between 5-6 hours total. Estimated savings: Around $350.

I think I ended up saving more than the estimated $550, but more than that I feel good about being able to install and fix things. I enjoy working on things and I love the satisfaction of knowing I accomplished something. The hardest part for me was convincing myself that the power was actually out and I wasn’t going to shock the mess out of myself when I touched the fan wires together. Next up is to prepare the nursery for a new coat of paint which includes fixing some wall cracks and filling in holes in the walls from pictures.

Four Christmas Celebrations in Four Days

Christmas is a season of seeing families you do not oft see and traveling for our small family. This season was no different, the difference was how close all of the celebrations were to each other. With Christmas falling on a Tuesday this year, Haley and I had to work until the Friday before, so everything was compacted before Christmas. Having survived this arrangement of the holiday season, I have to say that I enjoy working up until a few days before Christmas.

I posted som (blurry) photos of our first Christmas celebration with my parents, brother, and his wife, which started at the beautiful albeit crowded Gaylord Texan hotel where we took our annual visit to the ICE exhibit and ate dinner at the vaunted Old Hickory Steak House. The theme for ICE this year was Madagascar Christmas. I’ve seen the first of the Madagascar movies and was underwhelmed; oddly enough, this was the same reaction I had to the ICE show this year. We all agreed that in terms of the sculptures this might have been the finest we’ve seen, but I think that they are running out of classic Christmas movies to create so they’re going for kid friendly animated movies. After shedding the jackets you are obligated to wear and thawing out our hands we headed to the Old Hickory Steak House for our annual gorging. Between the lobster bisque, my brother ordering wine, and the bone-in filet I had for dinner you would think I would know when to quit, but no I had to order dessert as well and I paid for it later that night. Throughout the dinner we talked about how we will welcome the addition of our daughter next Christmas, or rather how she’ll be staying with a babysitter. When we returned home we opened our first batch of presents. The next morning we stowed our newest treasures with my parents and proceeded to my wife’s stomping ground for the remainder of our Christmas celebrations.

The morning of Christmas eve had us traveling down I-20 out of Dallas toward my in-laws house in Tyler, TX…yes, that’s right Tyler was headed to Tyler. We arrived at just about lunch time and caught up until it was time to head to my father-in-law’s family Christmas celebration at a local mexican restaurant. We ate a painfully slow dinner while watching the youngest of their family wander hither and yon around the private room we had been sequestered in. I enjoy talking with this side of the family for a little while, and since I hadn’t seen any of them since last Christmas it was fun to chat about life outside of Dallas. After dinner we headed back to the in-laws house for ‘Peppard Christmas’ and dessert. Rather than buying gifts for each person in the extended family, we each bring a (roughly) $10 gift card and play ‘dirty Santa’ (aka white elephant gift exchange for you normal folks out there). I ended up with a bit of spending money at 7-Eleven and Haley came away with a giftcard to Starbucks. We went to bed that night with overly full bellies for the second straight night and thoughts of two more celebrations on the mind.

Christmas morning is quite a tradition in Haley’s family. We all wake up in the morning and sit around the tree. Someone hands out a single gift to each person and we all take turns opening them and praising the person who gave the gift. This is quite a departure from my family’s Christmas where we hand out all the gifts to everyone present and let a Shark Week style feeding frenzy erupt until all the presents are opened. We all left this Christmas celebration with many new gifts and a hunger in our belly, so we began to cook breakfast consisting of my father-in-laws famous eggs, 2 types of sausage, and biscuits and gravy. We then spent the rest of the day trying to keep ourselves from falling into a food coma and researching various topics on the internet.

Later that night we headed over to my mother-in-law’s sister’s house with family for the last of four celebrations. We each get a single present at this celebration and I love seeing what I get. This year I got a devotional and a digital picture frame, which is just perfect considering we have a little one coming later this year. We then proceeded through the random east Texas snow storm into their main house for dinner of green chili chicken and various games around the fireplace. This is by far my favorite group of family to catch up with because you never know what they’re going to be talking about. This year the boys were talking about the custom boots they had ordered for Christmas this year.

The following morning the fellowship broke as Haley’s brother headed back to Ft. Worth (something about going back to work) and we headed further into east Texas to visit one of Haley’s best friends in scenic Longview, TX. We went to eat with them, took the tour of Longview, and played a game of Settlers of Catan (our favorite board game) before heading back to Tyler to pack up, spend one more night, and head home first thing in the morning. I love Christmas break, and usually at this point it’s more than halfway over, but we have over a week left and more fun left to have. It’s always a whirlwind, but Christmas couldn’t be better time to catch up with family.

ICE at the Gaylord Texan 2012

A Grinchy Kind of Season

I sat down recently to see what was on the television and stumbled across “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and it took me by surprise. I’m not sure exactly why seeing as how it is less than a week until Christmas, but it did just the same. What was also surprising was that it was not the terrible Jim Carey version of the movie, it was the original Dr. Suess version of the movie which I hadn’t seen in a long time.

I love the holiday movies of my childhood. I love every Charlie Brown and Muppet version of them and for the most part dislike all the modern revisions of them. As I sat and watched I realized that it’s my job, in part, to instill the love of these movies in my daughter. I want her to have the same love for the holiday season as I do and for better reasons than the ones I was raised on. I want her to enjoy giving gifts just as much as receiving them and I really want her to be thankful for the gifts she has been given.

My family also has a tradition of going to see the Ice presentation every year at the Gaylord Texan, and I realized that this event will no doubt change next year with an eight month old. In a way I will miss these traditions, but in another way I’m excited to start a new chapter in my life in a few short months.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m a Tolkien guy, but I wasn’t always one. I read The Fellowship of the Ring about a week before seeing the first movie and really hadn’t ever considered reading it before then. I found that book good, but oddly slow moving so when I went to see the movie I had rather meager expectations. Then I sat in a San Antonio, TX movie theater and watched one of the most awe-inspiring movies I had seen. The book literally came to life (with a few things left out and the end of the movie being a chapter into The Two Towers, but I digress) and it made me want to read the other two as well as The Hobbit again every time a new movie in the series came out. I’ll admit that I’m not the quintessential Tolkien fan because the movies drove my desire to read the books and I haven’t read all the “history” books that go along with The Lord of the Rings, but I do get pumped about these movies and The Hobbit was no different.

I tell you all that nonsense to tell you that I’m completely biased when it comes to reviewing any of the Peter Jackson adaptions of The Lord of the Rings. I’m never going to say that he needed to leave something out or should have added something that was not in the movies (except for Tom Bombadil, but that will have to wait for another blog). I also kind of go all out for these movies. In college that meant going to the midnight premier even though there were Friday 8:30 AM classes to reckon with the following day. It’s sad to say, but the wife and I just don’t make it to many movies any more. One because she falls asleep in movies and also because we’re attempting to save money since we have a baby on the way. All that goes out the window though when The Hobbit tickets were released. I got online and bought tickets at the iPic Theater across DFW from us because I knew for sure that would get the wife to come with me. If you haven’t been to one of these theaters, I highly recommend it but that’s for another blog as well.

I’m not going to spoil the movie for anyone, although I would recommend you read (and thereby ruin the movie for yourself) the book before seeing the movie. Below is a short list of things I noticed about the movie:

It’s definitely a Peter Jackson film. What I mean by this is that he has a certain style about him. I love it, but I can see where other people may have an issue with the 48 frames per second frame rate, the lighting of many of the backgrounds, and the creative license that he takes with some of the story line.
I do not interpret the books like he does. There are parts of the movie that have a higher level of stress than I ever imagined when I read the books on my own. It makes me question my own reading of the books from time to time, so maybe I need to read more critically next time.
The level of detail is astounding. In this instance, I’m not talking about the frame rate, I’m talking about the wardrobe and props. I’m the guy that sat around and watched all the different extended features DVDs that came with the Lord of the Rings and as I watch these movies I can see the differences in armor and weapons of the different races.
I need to go to New Zealand. This country looks amazing in every one of Peter Jackson’s movies. I realize that not every place is a post card waiting to happen, but I feel like I need to go and see these places for myself.

I was really blown away visually by this movie and it’s the first movie I’ve ever been in where I didn’t mind wearing 3D glasses for the entire movie. I loved watching the movie come to life in real time, not just the cartoony way it did in my childhood. I highly recommend the movie and I’m looking forward to the next two installments in the coming years.

Anticipation

I’m up early this morning writing because I have to be everywhere at least thirty minutes early. In this case, since I’m driving to school from Denton to beat the basketball team to the gym, I decided to be here around forty-five minutes early. Today is one of my facovirte days of this year because I get to go to the basketball tournament with the 7th graders as well as go to see a much anticipated movie tonight.

I do love basketball season because of the complete change it is from football season. The grind of football season is almost too much for me every year because of the immense time commitment. Now that the pace has slowed a bit I have been able to get my feet under me and can relax from time to time. I also enjoy basketball because there are fewer kids and I get to know them really well. Most kids come in with some basketball knowledge so it’s more about developing skills rather than teaching new ones. When you wrap all of those facts together you get a pretty enjoyable part of the school year.

After we’re done with the tournament, the wife and I are headed to The Hobbit in 3D, which I’ve heard is really good. I’m a complete J.R.R. Tolkien fan. I used to read The Lord of the Rings every year in January, but I haven’t had the time to do that in recent years. I did make a point to reread The Hobbit in the past months in anticipation of the first of three movies. I’ve been told the way they filmed it and the pace of the movie have derailed some of the majesty of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I’m pretty much going to see anything he puts out at this point. We’re going to see it at one of the iPic Theatres tonight, which makes it even more of a special night. Who doesn’t like private, leather recliners to watch a movie on?

I’m planning on reviewing the movie tomorrow, but I’m just pumped that I’m seeing it opening weekend at this point.

Lights

Lights, a photo by Tyler.horner on Flickr.

I’m finding myself daydreaming more and more about how having a child is going to change my life. As I was driving home this evening I kept getting hung up on Christmas lights. I’ve never been a fan of going and putting up lights for a month or paying someone entirely too much money to do the same. But is having a child going to impact that?

Growing up my parents did very basic all white Christmas lights around the eves of our home. My grandparents both did the same but with colored lights. As I drive down the streets of my neighborhood I’m seeing more and more lights as well as all kinds of blow-up santas, moving LED lights, and creatively wrapped trees of all colors. Is my child going to beg me to put up similar things? Will I be willing to sacrifice multiple days outside rigging various electrically unsound devices to please my child? Or will I willingly want to do all these things to watch the fleeting smile of my daughter? Who knows, but I’ll find out in a couple of years (I’ll wait till she asks me).

Baby Teeth

My wife started complaining about how bad one of her teeth hurt last night. I blamed it on the fact that she hadn’t been to the dentist in a while, but she laughed that notion off. I didn’t really hear much from her for the rest of the evening, but little did I know that was the calm before the storm.

I woke up this morning to a messy kitchen because she had been up late into the night looking up home remedies for toothaches. Apparently I didn’t know the one about putting vanilla extract on the tooth will help numb the pain. I went about my morning routine and headed in to work…did I mention it was below freezing and lightly snowing in north Texas?

I got to school and began to get ready for our basketball game today when who would come walking across the gym? My wife brings my lunch that I’d forgotten, and tells me that she had an appointment with a dentist to look at her tooth. At this point I began to prep for the worst. She reassured me that they can’t do too much to a pregnant woman, so I calmed a bit.

I forgot to cover her class for her accidentally, but she told me that her sinuses were so inflamed that they were pushing on the roots of her teeth and that’s what’s causing the pain. Luckily, her doctor was able to call in some medicine for her and the dentist was going to get paid through the insurance, so everything is fine. I didn’t know all this could happen over one little tooth ache.

Dim Sum, Ducks, and Trains

I’m finding myself observing how little kids act as I go about my day to day activities, and it’s making me more and more excited to welcome our baby girl into the world. Some friends of ours invited us to our first dim sum, basically Chinese brunch, and then to go visit the North Park Mall Train exhibit today, and we said we’d love to. Their son is almost 2 now, so it was fun walking around and seeing him interact with all the stimuli of a mall alongside hundreds of other children of all ages.

Dim sum was actually really good, but I was happy someone knew what to order, because I sure didn’t. Somewhere during the meal I channeled my inner Andrew Zimmer and ate my first chicken foot. It wasn’t what I would call ‘bad’, but I can assure you it’s not something I’ll crave any time soon. We sampled various types of dumplings and noodles and it was all really fantastic.

We then headed to North Park Mall in Dallas for walking, talking, and trains. I remember going to the model train exhibit at the Galleria Mall when I was a boy, and it was very similar to the one we visited today. Tons of awesome trains and models wound around the venue and it was packed with parents trying to take pictures of unwilling kids and mothers grabbing the hand of little children before they grabbed a train straight off the tracks. I was happy to see that Big Tex’s legend will continue after he met a tragic end this year at the State Fair.

While we were walking around the mall we stopped at a little group of ponds that had turtles and ducks floating around in it and kids stopped in their tracks mesmerized by the little animals. It was funny to see how boys and girls alike looked in wonder at a few turtles that barely moved and it gave me a minute to think about baby Horner. I wonder if she’ll be an animal lover, if she’ll be shy in front of the camera like her father was growing up, or if she’ll love wandering around the mall when she’s little. I wonder how I’ll react when it’s my daughter screaming when she doesn’t get her way, when she wanders off in a crowded place, or when she gets a little too close the the ducks in the pond. I wonder so much about my baby girl and I can’t wait to meet her.