Hello Expected Check of Unexpected Size!

Thanks for all your feedback on date nights! I think we'll start asking our family members a little more often to come watch the kids (Since they ask to babysit our kids for us I guess they don't mind it too much!) so we can get out once or twice a month for date nights. And the rest of the month we'll make more time for each other at home rather than me being on the computer upstairs while he's on the iPad on the couch downstairs (like we are right now!). (BTW - did I tell you guys that we won an iPad2 last fall? I can't remember if I did or not but we did and we love it, the end. Heh.)

Anyway, back to the post title...yesterday in the mail we received our escrow refund check. I knew this would be coming but wasn't sure how much it would be. I probably could have had an educated guess if I had looked at our last statement to see what our escrow balance was when we sold the old house but well, I guess I didn't think of that. Anyway, we received the check yesterday, like I said, and I was really surprised at the amount! It was $1003! Wow! We deposited it right away yesterday but aren't completely sure what we're going to do with it. If you'll remember our last unexpected check we decided at the end to spend some and leave the rest in our checking account to replenish our buffer. I offered up one idea: to split it. I asked C if maybe we should put $400 in our emergency fund, $400 in our house savings fund, $100 to him and $100 to me to spend on anything we want. C has wanted to get some new jeans to replace some old ones of his. I'd like a new winter coat (which should be on clearance about now!) and maybe some new jeans as well. We'd spend this $200 on ourselves to purchase some (near) necessities and then give our monthly budget a little breathing room. And the rest would go to savings. We haven't decided 100% on this plan but I'm confident a large portion of it will be transferred soon to our savings. Yay for big checks!