kid models

A few weeks ago my kids had to come with me to my photography class because Greg was doing something and couldn't watch the kids.Well the model didn't show up so they asked if one of my kids could do it. I thought Ashley would be the easiest to work with so I volunteered her.
She very quickly got annoyed. Can you tell? LOL!

She hung around for a little while but then guess what?

The one who hates to get his picture taken BEGGED to be the model.

And he was a ham!

It was quite hard to keep him still!

Then right before class ended I tried to snap a couple of Mason. He didn't really want to co-operate and I couldn't pose him just right.

I love my kids!

Somewhere out there

A week or two ago we went to see Seusical put on by the Nashville Children's Theatre. It was fabulous!!!! We all really enjoyed it! Then a few days later the Cat in the Hat showed up at Chick-Fil-A for family night. The actor is Jeff Boyat. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong Greg, he will be acting in Greg's next production play he is putting on at Lipscomb in February.Then a few days ago we had a beautiful moon! I almost called my Mom to look up at it where she was. Do you remember The American Tale? I couldn't help but sing the song that was sung when they were looking up at the moon? Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight.



Well here it is as a reminder:

Only a little boy David

On Sunday Greg and the kids did a skit about David and Goliath. Aussie was David.

Here he is trying on King Saul's armor. Ashley and Mason were peasants who told the narrator "Greg" about Goliath and how big and scary he was.

A friend of ours, Will Lasley played King Saul. And Greg also played Goliath.

I think everyone really enjoyed it!

Volleyball

Ashley has started taking volleyball lessons.

She is the smallest on the team. She was really discouraged at first because she couldn't make a point when just about everyone else had. But today she did great. And everytime she hit the ball whether it went anywhere or not, the whole team stopped and cheered for her. I think that kind of embarrassed her. Last week I took a few pictures and got a whole lot of blurry. I took a few more pictures this week and got a lot better shots, but just wished I would have snapped fast enough to get the ball in the picture.

The boys chose not to participate, once they saw how fun it was they wanted to join too. But it was too late. Then yesterday I got an email in the morning telling me about a boys team that was starting up that day and better yet it was FREE! So I took the boys yesterday and they had a great time!

Warning- Many blog posts coming tonight!

This is a warning! I've just realized I have tons of pictures I haven't shared. What have I been doing? Who knows, but it hasn't been updating my blog. So here is one of several updates that I will create tonight.

So let's start here. I talked about Harvest Sunday in a previous blog post. Here are a few pictures from that day. We sat up close that Sunday so each of the kids could carry up their bag of groceries.

Bags covered the stage! It was a wonderful sight!

Dear God, Please bless each and every person that receives these bags. May it be a great meal that they wouldn't normally have. Please let this food physically nourish them but may it also spiritually nourish them. Please let them know they are loved!

In Jesus name, Amen.

Thanksgiving Week

Well I finished the table and last night I got the idea of making felt cupcakes. Well I had the idea in my head, but last night I tried to figure out how to make them.
This is the first one I made. I think it might actually be cuter than the rest I made today. But it is a bit bigger than the ones I made today.Here are the ones I made today. You can take the cupcake out of the liners. These are pretty small. Have you seen those Brownie Bites? They are that size if you know what I'm talking about.

I love creating! I feel alive and really happy when I'm doing things like this.

I suppose I ought to think up something to make the boys.

I'm looking forward to Black Friday. I know many people hate the crowds and well even though I'm not a crowd loving person myself, the adrenaline rush really gets me going. Aussie wants a bike for Christmas and the one he wants is going to be 1/2 price at Walmart. Oh I hope I get it!!!! I'll be there early waiting in line.

I do wish we could be with family this Thanksgiving. I get a little down not celebrating with anyone. The kids are going to help me cook a Thanksgiving lunch. They want to dress the chicken up like a turkey! They are going to make feathers. This will be interesting. I'll certainly take pictures!

AG table knock-off

Well Ashley has asked for this American Girl doll table which costs $85 and comes with some really cute play food cupcakes and apron.
So I have been working diligently every night for 3 or 4 nights (lost track of time) from 10PM to 1AM to try and make it for her. It is far far from being perfect and I still need to paint it. But here it is. It would have been so much easier if I had the right tools. But all I had was a little hacksaw and a jagged knife. Oh and I still need to find some little silver knobs to hang the pot holders I plan to make.

I'm sure you can probably tell, but this was the first time I've ever done anything like this.
I also plan to make her and her doll a little apron.

Harvest Sunday 2010

Poor Poor Sarah!

With this lovely hairdo she is sporting, she looks like the bride of Frankenstein. The hair is actually standing straight up it is not resting on the couch in the background.

I couldn't help but think of Toy Story as I was attempting to fix her hair.

. .
She did great. She didn't cry. She closed her eyes and tried very hard to have that same expression on her face. But as I was tugging and pulling her hair I think I could see that she was hurting. Her smile just wasn't as happy. .
Tonight we took the kids to Lipscomb to see the play, Ragtime. I was enjoying it, but the kids were squirming around in their seats. So at intermission, I took the kids to McDonald's so Greg could watch the rest of the play. After Greg got back in the car and explained the rest to us, I was kind of glad I didn't see the rest. It sounds as though the rest of the play was depressing.

Today was mostly wasted laying on the couch. I had a terrible headache. I don't know if it was a migraine, but I did have sensitivity to light and I felt like I was going to throw up. Anyway, here is it 1:30 and I'm not tired.
.
.

I'm looking forward to church tomorrow. It is Harvest Sunday. One of my favorite days of church. It is where each family brings some groceries specially packed with Thanksgiving items to go to families in need. Each bag is packed with:
.
.

Bread serving mix
1 large can green beans
2 cans corn any style
1 can or jar of fruit juice, drink mix or tea mix
1 box potato mix
2 packages macaroni & cheese
1 box Jell-O and 1 large can fruit
1 box of brownie or cake mix
Icing
1 can cranberry sauce
1 box of stuffing mix
1 can of chicken broth.
.
.

Then they take up a collection for meat products that are added to the bags. The goal is for them to provide 650 bags of groceries.
.
.

This year since I have been doing really well with shopping the sales and using coupons, I decided that each person in our family would take a bag. For a bag of groceries that would typically cost around $25, I paid $6.96 for 3 bags and $7.68 for 2 bags.
Plus I am donating 69 boxes of pasta which I got for free and
5 bags of rice that I got for pennies (I don't remember how much.) and 5 tubes of toothpaste I got for free and a few miscellaneous items.

Turning 40

Well it's hard to believe I turned 40 on Thursday. Last Tuesday I was getting together with a few friends, so I decided to take a cake with me. It was a little embarrassing when the check out clerk asked me if I was going to someone's fortieth birthday and I had to admit I was buying it for myself.

It was still nice celebrating with friends even if I did do it for myself.


Chelle

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!

Almost 40 and saving saving saving lots of money

So what would you do if a store would pay you $.20 per box of pasta that you bought? Well that is just what happened today. Kroger has these Ronzoni pasta boxes on sale for $.79. And ON THE BOX was a peelie coupon for $.50. Kroger doubles coupons. So I got 48 boxes of pasta for free plus $10.08 to purchase other groceries. So what am I going to do with 48 boxes of pasta? Well I am going to donate them of course to our church pantry. I told the kids to think how happy these poor people will be to get food, that made shopping for them much easier. The kids helped peel off the coupons and they were happy to know that they were going to bless other families. Aussie did ask if we could keep one box. I told him I already had 3 at home for us.
So this is what I got
48 boxes of Ronzoni Pasta (charity)
10 boxes of hot chocolate
6 cans of green beans (charity)
2 cans of corn (charity)
2 Smokies (sausages)
3 gallons of white milk
2 packages of cornbread (charity)
2 packs of Land of Lakes butter (my favorite)
1 Pillsbury frosting (charity)

All for $22.32

I'm terribly exhausted tonight, probably because someone woke me up too early this morning. So when someone slightly younger than you says, "I can't believe you're about to be 40!", is that a compliment or an insult? I don't know but I took it as an annoyance at 7:30AM. I just grunted and tried to go back to sleep.

Oh wow! I'm tired and my eye is beginning to twitch, so I better go to bed.
Good night!

Saving Money with coupons and sales

So I have been doing a lot of shopping and a lot of saving! I would put my deals here, but I don't think my regular readers would be all that interested in the how I did it.

Anyway, yesterday I had a fabulous run to Kroger. I spent $96.51 for 120 items, saving $192.40. My favorite deal was the Ronzoni pasta. It was on sale for $1.00 and 3 boxes had $.50 coupons on them. When you double that (Kroger doubles coupons up to $.50) that makes them FREE!!!

Then today I went to Rite Aid. I have learned three things about Rite Aid today. One even though it is not stated anywhere there is usually a limit to how many UP rewards you can get on any given item. An UP reward is money back in the form of a coupon to come back to their store to use. Secondly, if you have a really nice sales associate she can and will make it happen where you would get the money back even if you buy over the limit. And thirdly, it is not a good idea to take children. They are a distraction and they caused me to purchase $10.59 more than I would have if they were not with me. Actually, I probably wouldn't have bought the cereal either, which is another $5.23. And I probably would have realized that one of my $1 coupons didn't get scanned.

Anyway if I would have bought the items at full price at Rite Aid everything would have cost $149.02. (But I wouldn't typically pay full price at Rite Aid because everything is overpriced for convenience shopping.) But by shopping the sales and using coupons I spent $38.88 and have $10.98 in UP rewards to use on my next shopping trip. (Which might be tomorrow since I have just a few more things to buy, that I didn't have coupons with me today.)

Do you have any tips on how to save money? I like to use Ebates and of course LOVE my Swagbucks!

A lot of running around!

Ouch! The cat kept jumping up on Greg's computer and when I knocked her off she scratched my neck.



Anyway, I haven't been blogging because my computer died again! I had to send it back to the company to get it fixed AGAIN! This is the second time in a year. I should be getting it back on Monday! Oh please oh please let it really be fixed this time.



I've posted some pictures on Facebook of our many adventures this month.



We went to the pumpkin patch with co/op and Girl Scouts on Monday. Tuesday there were terrible storms here. I am SO glad it was not Wednesday or Thursday, as I had lots planned those days. Wednesday, the kids and I travelled to Alabama to pick up 66 (dead) chickens. It wasn't very adventurous. The process was interesting to see. When we pulled in the driveway, chickens just leisurely crossed the road. I didn't think it looked gross or anything, but Aussie prefered not to look at the chickens hanging to be packaged. They just looked like the whole chickens you would get in the grocery store.



Thursday was a wonderfully busy day! We travelled to Chattanooga. We first went to an I-MAX movie on surfing. Then we went to see a replica of the Nina and the Pinta. We ate at the Mellow Mushroom. We did those three things with our co-op. Then everyone split and most went home. My kids played a bit in the fountains outside the Aquarium. Then we got on the bus and went up the street to see the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Then we left and made it in time to see the sunset at Sewanee. I let the kids play on the playground a bit and then we started home. Out of all those very fun things that we did, Aussie said his favorite part was riding the bus.

The kids are off to the library with Daddy. And I have a few moments by myself. I wish I had the energy to run around and get some things done today. But I'm tired. I went to bed at 3:30AM. Why in the world did I do that? Well I did something really dumb last night. Somehow I loaded some unwanted program onto Greg's work computer. So without waking him up I had to try and figure out how to get it off. After I finally "thought" I got it off, I just fooled around on the computer for another hour and a half to make sure nothing popped up. When I was convinced I had it off, I wrote Greg a letter and told him what I did. He told me HE deleted it this morning. So I guess I didn't get it off in the first place. Then I woke up too early freezing. That's when I took off my CPAP mask and well I don't get any sleep when my mask is off.

Sorry I'm rambling. I'll sign off for now and hopefully will be back to blogging next week. If your friends with me check out my pictures on Facebook!

American Girl Doll

I'm really sleepy tonight, but I can't go to bed without sharing my exciting news.

Today, at church I was carrying Sarah (Ashley's doll). My friend Megan asked me if it was an American Girl doll. I told her it was a knock-off and that Ashley has started being conscience of that fact and really wanted a real one. What came out of her mouth next surprised me. She said, "I'm not going to have any girls and I have a Samantha doll and a bunch of her clothes just sitting in my garage and you can have it." I asked her how much she wanted for it. And she said, "How about I just give it to you."

Samantha happens to be THE doll Ashley wanted.

Samantha is no longer being made.Megan was just as excited to gift it to us as I was receiving it. She mentioned it was like the kid in Toy Story that passed on his favorite toys to the little girl down the street. I asked her if she wanted to give it to Ashley, but she just said she would be happy seeing pictures of Ashley opening it on Christmas morning.

This doll is in EXCELLENT condition. I asked her if she ever played with it. She even had the box the doll came in.

Here are some pictures of the clothes:

All the clothes came in a little blue suitcase. And had this little doll tea set in it.She also gave me this American Girl Brass bed.There were some of the original tags with the doll. Instructions on how to care for her hair with the hairbrush. I am in awe of her generosity!!!

Am I blessed or what?

So don't mention this to Ashley. She will be getting it for Christmas.