Some random Pics

NOTE: * I started this post a while ago and am just now getting around to actually posting it! :)

How do you get a two year old to calm down and forget her disappointment from not being able to do something she wants? Have her wash dishes!  No...really! She currently LOVES to wash dishes. Even though we have a dishwasher I will put a few of her items in the sink with some bubbles, water and a sponge and she will be busy for quite a while - usually wanting to stay much longer than I have patience for. I had to take pictures to show her this when she is older and whines about having to do dishes. Look at how intent she is on it. Not only does she do the dishes but I usually end up getting at least part of my kitchen floor washed in the process!

I had purchased these matching sweaters for my girls last winter on clearance with visions of beautiful, outside, fall family pictures. Sadly the weather did not cooperate and with snow in October it was too cold to be outside for pictures. Once it warmed up in NOVEMBER the pretty leaves were long gone. Maybe next year? So I settled for some on the couch. Once again Miss Rebekah had other ideas. This is probably the best one of her where she is not crying, fighting or covering her face. Can you tell by how I'm gritting my teeth that I'm not real pleased with the behavior? SO there will more than likely be NO family picture in our Christmas card this year - so enjoy this one! :)

Here are Lizzie's 11 month pictures. She makes a pretty cute duck I must say! :)

I just like this picture of DH with his girls so thought I would share. That chair certainly seems to be the spot to cuddle. It's held us many, many hours with happy kids, sad kids, sleepy kids, naughty kids, newborn kids and so on. I will be sad if we ever have to say good bye to that chair! Many, many memories in it.

I recently watched my friend's daughter for a few days. She's almost 4 months old but since she was a preemie is still pretty tiny. I think she's about 7.5 lbs in this pic. Lizzie wasn't so sure about her. She certainly wasn't real fond of my holding her. When she was sitting in the bumbo seat she would bend down and look at her like "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

Lizzie is standing!  Watch out world! Only for short periods of time but I have a feeling it won't be long now!

There will be more update soon - Lizzie's turning one on the 14th so I am sure I will have many pictures and stories to share!

God Bless!

I love me some coupons!

I have always loved coupons. I find it even harder to pass up a "good deal" - sometimes even when the product isn't needed. However, now that I have a family to feed and care for my search for ways to save has taken on a whole new meaning (and life one might say). 

I remember as a child my mom joined a coupon club or something like that. She would clip all the coupons she could find and then get together with other ladies and trade coupons for items they used. It seemed like a lot of work to me - too much work to save $.10 here or a quarter there. I don't remember it lasting long but I think she did a lot of it while we were at school so it may have lasted a lot longer than I remember.

Today I am so thankful for the Internet. Not only can you now find a gazillion coupons online through a variety of different sources there are people out there who do all the research for you and post it on their blogs so you can find some awesome deals and match-up coupons with sales and all that fun stuff.

Often when I go shopping I have a pile of coupons like this.

Usually Target is the store where I use the most coupons. There are several reasons for this. First - it's the closest store to us that has pretty much everything we need. However, I will not buy most produce from our SuperTarget (Sorry Target) as 1) it is usually more expensive than other stores (at times double the price) and 2) I have not had much luck of it lasting more than a couple of days. It seems to come to them already ripe so if I need it that night or the next day I will get it but otherwise I will head out to Rainbow, Cub or Walmart to get more fresh produce (Today for example I watched them unpack huge boxes of bananas which in most stores are still slightly green when put out. There wasn't a green nanner in sight. They were all already quite yellow and a few with brown on them already. Good for banana bread but not so good if you want bananas for the week. I usually buy a small bunch of yellow bananas and then a larger bunch of green ones that will be ready by the time we are ready for them).

The second reason is that Target has a fantastic policy that they will take a Target coupon for an item as well as a manufacturer coupon at the same time. This can save you a whole boatload of money. You can find Target coupons at their website, however, they only have them on there a week and then change them. I have found this website that stores them until they expire so you can go back and print them if you forget or you decide you want more. Also you can tell it how many to print of each one and it will print only the ones you want. It's fantabulous!!! :) The website is called Organic Grocery Deals Coupons Generator. Use it, love it, save a lot of money!!!

For example, today I got a Christmas present for Rebekah. We decided to get her a Leapfrog Tag Junior. She loves to read books with us and this will give her a head start to reading them on their own. It's a little pen that you can hook up to your computer and download information for each of the books. Not only will it read the story but it also will do different sounds and songs and activities with the kids. You can also print off certificates, activities and coloring pages on your computer. I'm pretty excited about it.

Anyway, the Tag Jr. (which is for 2-4 year olds) was on sale for $28.99 at Target this week (Sorry this is late notice for the sale though I am sure it will be on sale again before Christmas). I got a $10 coupon from Organic Deals (look under the 11/25 list of coupons). I also got a $10 off coupon from Leapfrog. That was $20 off so got the Tag Jr. with one book for $8.99 (orginally $34.99). Also with the LeapFrog coupon was a coupon for $5.00 off each book You can print as many as you want). The Tag Jr. books are $10.99 normally but were on sale for $8.99 today so got each book for $3.99 after coupons. SO something that would have normally cost me a total of $67.96 cost me $20.96 today. Whoo hoo. That leaves more $$ for other gifts! :) It will be so great for her to have on the long trips to the grandparent's house. I can't wait to play with it myself but I already had my DH hide it so I wouldn't be tempted to open it and try it (I did play with the one in store though!).


The three books I got were these three:

(This is for anyone wondering what to get her for Christmas/Birthday coming up! :) hint, hint! lol) If you do decide to get a book for Bekah or a set for your own child/grandchild be sure to use those coupons!!! Every penny counts!

At the checkout today I saw the total on the screen of $219.08 and just about had a heart attack! That was way over my budget but I had hope! :) Then the young man asked me for my coupons. I gladly handed them over and prayed that it would be down to $120 which was my original goal. I try to keep track in my head as I go but I know I sometimes get distracted (can you believe it???). Final total..................$119.68

That is a savings of $99.43! I was pretty proud of myself. I can't take all the credit though. A few other sites that have been a big help are:


This is an awesome site. It's way more than I need but I have learned to scan quick and find what I need/want and can use.



This site has a lot of different stores - many we don't have up here in the frozen tundra but have found a lot of help on this site. One awesome thing they have is coupon policies for many of the stores. I have printed them out and carried them with me. I had one bad experience with Target once where both the cashier and then the manager told me I couldn't use the coupons as I wanted. I whipped that ole policy out of my purse and showed them exactly where it said I could do that and lo and behold they allowed it. I have only had the one bad experience but that was enough. Let's just say I will never go through Theresa's lane again (although I haven't seen her there in the past few months so she may be gone).

Red Plum

Coupons.com

SmartSource

A couple of tips with these coupon sites: You can usually print off two of each coupon you want. Either reload or hit your browsers back button. Keep checking back because often during the month and almost always at the beginning of the month the coupons are reset so there are new ones or you can print off more. We have two computers at our house so I will print two from each computer and if it's a really good coupon will print at a friend's or at work.

Here is another trick with the Coupons.com and the Smart Source Coupons. IF you sign up for My Points you can earn 10 points for every coupon you print and redeem. You can also earn 25 extra points for if you print and redeem 10 or more in a month. (I used probably 15 today -that's 175 points). What do you get with these points?  Gift cards!!!! For example you can get a $25 gift card for Target for 3800 points or a $50 gift card for 7500 points. They have them for pretty much anything you can imagine - well almost anything! Our favorites have been Target, Walmart and Red Lobster! (That's how we got Rebekah's play kitchen for her birthday last year). You can also earn points by shopping online (stores will give you anywhere from 1 to 10 points per dollar), subscribing to magazines and looking at ads. If you choose to do this first please let me know so I can recommend you (then we both get extra points) but also set up a different email as you will get a lot of mail. You get 5-20 points for looking at a web page. From there you can earn extra points by subscribing, buying, or taking a survey. I think last year my DH and I earned about $150 in gift cards. We then used some of those gift cards ordering online through the mypoints site and received more points for doing so! :)

Hope this helps some of you save some pennies! I'm looking for great ideas from all of you.

I am wondering how others organize their coupons. I have mine in a small accordian file and organized by type of coupon (such as frozen foods, dairy, healthy and beauty, etc.).

What do you do? What works for you? What hasn't worked for you?

Catching Up

How does life get so busy? I am not sure I will ever understand that at all. I thought having little ones would mean a lot of time at home and yet it seems most days we have somewhere to go or something to do.

I knew our warm sunny days were limited so I have been trying to get the kids outside as much as possible. Good thing too because this is what we awoke to on Saturday morning. On Monday we got another two inches - it snowed pretty much all day. It's mostly gone today already but Reba sure was excited to see it all. Her mantra that day was "snow, mama, snow" and "play in snow, mama, play".  Last Thursday I had my friend's 4-year old twins as well. The kids all had a good time together but I kow it's not something I could do full time. Despite the cold they enjoyed playing in the sand and on the bikes. Many chalk drawings were also added to our sidewalk that day. Sadly I didn't get any pictures of those. Reba likes to trace things so we had many bottoms and legs outlined that she had traced around the other kids.

Last Friday we went to the apple orchard. I was sure that this would be a perfect oppurtunity to get some fantastic fall pictures. Afterall are there any cuter pictures then little kids with pumpkins and apples and haybales on a crisp sunny day?  It took me about 20 minutes to figure out the clothes I wanted them to wear. Ones that would complement each other for the sister/sister pictures as well as be very fall like in their individual pictures. I should have known better.

First it was cold...about 45 degrees. All the other kids were in winter jackets but not mine! I just had fall coats as I had not yet discovered the whereabouts of the winter coats at our house (they have been found along with hats and mittens now). Poor Lizzie had four layers on - poor thing could hardly move her arms. It reminded me a bit of the little brother in The Christmas Story.

Here is my little farmer girl. She does like the horses. We haven't done a pony ride with her yet. I am sure she will love it after how much she loved the carousel ride this summer. I thought she was going to climb right up the fence and try to get in with the horses. She would have been stuck as there was probably a good 6-8 inches of mud in there.

I thought this picture was super cute. Her and two of her buddies watching the foal. She did get to pet it later. (She did have a hat but it was so big it kept falling off so she ended up going hat free the rest of the day). It would have been a much better picture had I gotten down and taken it from their level but my knee still isn't cooperating 100% and I wasn't sure I could get back up.

These are some of Reba's responses of mommy asking her to take some pictures. She wanted no part of it.

Liza wasn't much better. She just sat there and cried - little stinker. Regardless these will STILL be going in the scrapbook.

This is probably the best one I got of Reba with the pumpkins. She didn't know I was taking it so she didn't have time to protest until I tried to get the second one.

This week has the promise to be a little quieter - we shall see.

God Bless

What do you do on what could quite possibly be the last warm day for months and months? You play outside - in sand - with water - and bare feet - not caring if you get dirty, wet or turn yourself blue.

Bright blue sand from Walmart + Water from the hose = hours, and hours, and if mommy would let us, hours of fun!

If you notice Liza was not invited to this party. I did not want to be changing blue diapers for the next week so she was stuck on the porch in her walker. Poor thing. I kept telling her next summer, next summer - not that she has any idea how long that is. But then the neighbors came out to play so she got to go crawl around their porch and play with their toys so she was plenty happy. Don't think she even realized that she missed anything!

In other news...

Reba is starting to "try" new types of food. As many of you know we have had many struggles, tantrums, and meltdowns (Reba's had a hard time too lol) trying to get her to eat a balanced diet. She isn't sickly or super skinny so we aren't worried about health at all. Low nutrition can affect development but we aren't really seeing any evidence of that. Since her seizure due to dehydration in January we make sure that she drinks plenty through the day. She currently drinks more juice then is "suggested" by "the experts" but we still mix her juice with water and often give her the fruit/veggie combos as those are the only "veggies" she will eat.

I did get her to eat some carrots the other day. I cut them up into tiny pieces and mixed them in with rice kripie treats. She bought the "orange sprinkles" the first day but after that she was done. Part of the problem I believe is that the carrots had more moisture in them than I expected which caused the krispies to lose their krispiness. They became stale quite quickly. Oh well - it was worth a try.

The other night she tried a bit of stuffing. She chewed it 3 or 4 times and then spit it out. She also tried a black olive after seeing daddy eat them. Nope- that wasn't a hit either. She did eat egg pie the other day though and was quite proud of herself. (Egg pie at our house is the same as quiche - it just sounds better to a 2 year old!) While talking on the phone to Grandma and Grandpa that night she repeated about 20 times "I ate egg pie". She was quite proud of herself. We were quite proud of her too.

We were going to take her to see a dietician but at $250 an hour we decided to pass. We will get there and someday we will sit and tell stories of all the creative things I have done. The other night we had brats and so I took a brat bun, put red jelly on one side and peanut butter on the other. Down the middle I put 1/2 a banana. It looked almost like our dinner. She wasn't so sure about it right away but after a few finger licks she decided it was yummy and she ate the entire thing. Whoo hoo! (See you can learn things from watching the Disney channel)! :)


Well it's getting late. Hope you all are doing well! God bless

Rainy Thursday Morning

It's rainy, it's cold, and I have three not so happy, enthusiastic children. Not sure what will be on for the day. We can't color because Reba lost the use of her crayons for two days due to her coloring the door, the wall, and the computer keyboard - all in one day. She also can't go play in her room because yesterday she she empty out part of her closet and three of her dresser drawers twice (once throwing them all down the stairs) and had started a third time when I caught her. She now has a lock on her door. We will try again in a little while.

The community center does have it's gym tot time today but it's from like 1 - 2:30 which is the middle of naptime and there is no way we are giving that up today!!!

I am going to try to make rice krispie bars today. it's been a long time. I love them and they aren't wise to have around the house. I am going to add carrots though. I know, I know it's weird but I got the idea when we got fall krispy bars at target. They had yellow and orange krispies in them and Reba ate them so I thought maybe I could add some very tiny carrot pieces into the mix and see if she will accept that. Her eating is still a huge issue in this house. It's affecting many things such as potty training and could potentially affect her development. We've been to the doctor and she is having us see a pediatric dietitian which is a week from Friday. I am currently keeping a food log for her. Not much on it. Yesterday she had 1/4 cup chex cereal, 4 oz grape juice, 1/3 apple with peanut butter and some peaches. Before bed she did have a breakfast shake but that is a pretty typical day. She's a tough one!

We started Parent/Child swimming lessons last Saturday. It went pretty well. Reba struggled some and didn't always want to do what the class was doing. I think part of the problem is that she is very familiar with the pool and is used to being able to doing her own thing. The concept of 'class' hasn't really sunk in yet! :) For example they wanted us to work on them sliding into the water off the side. Reba would have none of that - she wanted to jump in like she always does. I may have to take her to practice with her to get her used to having to do some of the skills while there. Seven weeks to go - will be interesting how she does. I'm not too worried because she will have to repeat this class next year as they can't start the independent classes until they are 4.

Liza is 10 and a half months old now. I can't believe it! She is developing her own personality. She's is much more demanding and needing of attention then her big sister was at her age. But we don't mind so much...just takes a little longer to get the dishes and laundry done! :)

She is pulling herself up and occasionally has let go when she is interested in something but as soon as she realizes she is standing on her own - plop! - down she goes. She is quite vocal and is currently standing by my chair voicing her opinions. She LOVES going up the stairs - we have them blocked but sometimes she can still crawl up and over - she is a determined child!

Here are her 10 month pictures - a few of them anyway.We did Reba's 9 month pictures in a similar fashion. As the photographer was taking her pictures she said I was just going through our sample book and there are several that are similar to what you are doing. Lo and behold those were Reba's pictures form 2 years ago. Reba's pictures are also in there from her ballerina pictures. In fact the manager said that they used those as an example at their district headquarter meetings to use to train people on how to add special effects and do multi-image sheets. She's a mini-model!

As you may have noticed I switched to using nicknames for the girls. It was too confusing for some (and sometimes for me) to use middle names.
Hope you all have a blessed day!

Not Me Monday!

Well, I'm back to doing Not Me Mondays!  One would think that it would be a super long one since it's been a while but I figure I can leave all the "old" ones out and just focus on this past week. I am sure if I think hard enough I can come up with enough "Not Me" moments.

For starters it is NOT me that is currently allowing both girls to eat Chex cereal in the living room so I have a little peace and quiet and can type this rather than do the dishes or vacuum a dirty floor (that now most certainly does not have tiny bits of Chex cereal all over it).

It was NOT me that after breaking a glass bowl on our kitchen floor trusted that my husband and the broom got each tiny sliver of glass and continued to walk around in my stocking feet. Therefor it is NOT me that currently has two tiny holes (one in each foot) now.

It was NOT me that took advantage of the daycare at the community center that after my physical therapy today I did not allow my children to stay in there an extra 30 minutes so 1) I could work on my Bible study in peace and quiet in the cafe sipping a cold diet coke and 2) so they would be extra tired out and take an extra long nap this afternoon.

It was NOT me that took 8 days to finish a weeks worth of laundry only to finally have it upstairs and still waiting to be put away causing a large mountain of laundry to have formed on our bathroom floors.

It was NOT me that rather than being angry with my daughter smiled when I saw that she had colored on every drawer of her dresser. It did NOT give me a little bit of pleasure as it hit me that "I'm a mom!" and this is what mom's deal with. (And if my daughter DID do such a thing she would have wisely chosen to do so with chalk so it was easily wiped off with a sock).

It was also NOT me that took an hour and 15 minute drive prior to our Mom and Tots group at church because my children were so crabby and whiney that I knew that if they didn't nap before going someone would have wound up in the looney bin and that person most likely would have been me! I am much more frugal with our gas money and would never drive just to get my children to nap!

It was also NOT me that bought my husband not one, not two but three Glenn Beck books because I wanted to read them too! I am certainly not that self-centered!

Well, I think that is enough for now....I am sure there will be new opportunities for more next week!

What haven't you done?

2.5 hours of Controlled Chaos - Otherwise known as Awana! :)

Last night was my first official night as the Awana Sparks Secretary. The directors and leaders of our church have often described it as 2 hours of Controlled Chaos and now I understand what they mean. It was wonderful! There is such energy and such joy there it is hard to put it into words. It is an amazing feeling to be a part of a group of almost 200 who are being positive, encouraging and learning/teaching about Jesus. In a lot of ways it reminded me of when I worked at camp (Phantom Ranch) - just much more condensed. However, the feeling was the same.

Although I have known about Awana since I was a child I was never a part of it. One of the reasons we chose our church was because of the Awana program they offered. After all I heard about it I knew that was something I wanted for my children. Not only does my church provide Awana for our children but also for many, many children in the community. I would say about 80% of the children involved are not from our church. We have almost 150 children that come every Wednesday night. It is amazing and I can not wait for the girls to be a part of it.

For those that don't know what Awana is you can check it out here - Awana.  In a nutshell Awana stands for Approved workmen are not ashamed as taken from 2 Timothy 2:15 of the Bible. Joy will start next year as a 3 year old and will be involved until 6th grade as a participant. After that she can become a LIT which is a Leader In Training program that allows Jr. and Sr. high students to help out and learn to be leaders.

I must admit that I felt a little teary-eyed as I watched the Cubbies go by (the 3 and 4 year olds) and imagining Joy there next year. I am sure she will love it. Both girls will be there some nights in the nursery program now on the nights Les is working late.  

I am working with the Sparks which are students in grades K-2. I forgot what it is like working with kids that age. After years of teaching high school it's quite different! :) There was not much down time as I am still learning how to do everything and get myself organized. I figure by Thanksgiving I should be good to go!! (Christy, as a former Sparks Secretary I will take any suggestions!).


Well, I am off to PT. Still doing that for my knee surgery. Have a ways to go but hopefully will be as good as new in the next month or so!

A Fresh (safe) Start

I started a new blog for a few different reasons. I guess the main reason is that we don't live in a perfect world. Our last blog was very open about our names, locations, etc. I am a very trusting person..sometimes too trusting. I have a hard time believing that people would intentionally be evil - although I know it's true. I know that there have been times in my life where I have hurt others - intentionally or not. However, it is beyond my comprehension that there are people out there that would stalk and prey on innocent young children.

We recently had a speaker at work that talked about personal safety. He was a police officer from the area and he had some really good ideas. I think some of his ideas (such as not having any pictures at work of your children or family) were a little far fetched. As a police officer - then yes, I could see that. But I think there are a lot of jobs where you would probably be okay. However, his talk made me realize that I need to be a little more cautious. Hence the new blog, ...a fresh start...a new beginning of hopefully a more consistent blog (although I have learned to not make promises). On this blog I will be calling our children by their middle names...just so you know.

When trying to think of a new name for our blog I tried to be creative. There are some cute names out there - but nothing I could compete with and you can't really "copy" a blog name - especially if you are a regular reader of their blog. I thought about "Just another mommy blog..." but that seemed a little self-deprecating and I want to be more then "just another..." So then I thought about what is important in my life, and what do I write about; what is important to me.

My family and my faith are my two most important facets of my life. They are the pieces that I want to share the most of, that I want to be most known for.

So my next step was to find a verse from the Bible to represent both. I thought of several. One of which is my all time favorite and I consider a life verse - Jeremiah 29:11-13. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. But that didn't seem to fit just right.

Later that week I was reading a book and this verse popped out at me. James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father." and the light bulb went off!

That is a wonderful verse to share with others to describe our life - my life. I have been blessed with many wonderful things! I am in continued amazement with how full my life is. For those that are new to my blog here is a super quick replay of my life. (I'll start after college to keep it short).

The Lord led me to a unique teaching job. As a result of that I ended up owning my own business educating students. I was making good money and was happy but by early thirties I had given up hope of ever having a family of my own - or even getting married. In the Spring of 2004, just before my 35th birthday, a friend recommended that I try E-Harmony. I went online, looked at it a little, filled out the profile and was pleased with the matches I received but still didn't hold out a lot of hope. I signed up anyway and paid for a full year. Well, much to my surprise soon after joining I started conversing back and forth with a gentleman who reminded me much of my father. August 28, 2004 was our first date -- it lasted 10 hours. Valentine's day, 2005, we got engaged and we were married August 27, 2005 -- 364 days after our first date!

I had warned Les that I would probably not ever be able to have children. I have HAIR-AN syndrome and so doctors had told me that the likelihood of me conceiving naturally was slim. I had spoken to my doctor about some fertility medication and Les and I had talked about adoption. Imagine our surprise and joy to find out I was expecting the day before Mother's Day, 2006 (while on birth control). Our oldest daughter Joy was born December 22, 2006 and came home on Christmas Day!'

In April 2007 Les and I purchased and moved into our house.

In November 2008 our second daughter, Grace was born.

In January 2009 we got a mini-van.

We are certainly looking forward to 2010!!! :)

I know that I have no one to thank but God for these blessings. It certainly isn't anything Les or I did to receive such gifts. We certainly don't deserve them but we are thankful each and everyday for them.

I am not a theologian. I do not pretend to understand how God works. I am not the person to ask "Why, then, do bad things happen to good people?" or even "Why do good things happen to bad people?" Have we had heartache and pain - sure. Have we had it even close to the extent of others -- no way. I can't explain why. I can't explain why I was born in America, given the family I was given. I just know that I need to be thankful to God each and every day for what He has given me. I also know that He is in control. That God sees the big picture. My job is to continue to trust in Him and do what I can--to train up my children in the Lord, to be a neighbor and a helper and friend to those in need, to give of myself, my time, my money.

So anyway...welcome to my new journal. I am hoping that now that it is fall and we are settling into somewhat of a routine my time for blogging and reading your blogs will increase! I hope everyone had fantastic summers!

God Bless!