I bet there's an App for that . . .

My iPhone - $199.99
Monthly Data Fee - $30.00
Santa Tracker App - $0.99
A 6 year old texting Santa and Santa texting her back - Priceless


Have I mentioned lately how much I love my iPhone?

Merry Christmas (and an attempt at a little recap of our month!)

Wow! I can't believe that Christmas has already come and gone, time seems to go so fast, I had such a great start on the Christmas shopping yet I still went out on Christmas Eve for just "one more thing", why is that? December is always such a busy month, I thought I was more prepared this year, but I don't feel that I was, I was doing my baking and peanut butter ball dipping Christmas Eve morning . . . but at least the baked goods were fresh, right? I guess all in all you get done what you get done and it all works out in the end, but next year, I will have a little better plan!!!!

December started out with with cooking painting on Saturday with our friends the Howes, we have been doing this since Trevor was a baby, now the boys will paint a cookie or two to eat and that's about it, the girls on the other hand, love love love cookie painting!

Cookie in one hand, paint brush in the other!

This is what I usually get from Trev when I try and take his picture!

Sunday was my birthday, I was recovering from a cold the week before and had stayed up until after 2:00 am trying to get the house finally decorated the night before, so we skipped out on church and headed straight to bagels and coffee! Spent the afternoon finishing up decorating the tree with Meghan, she had been waiting so patiently all week to decorate the tree!

Mom fixed me an awesome Mexican dinner and fixed one of my favorite cakes, it was a great day!

The next weekend started out just as busy, Meghan, Mom and I went to the hospital for the "Gingerbread Run". Meghan had a great time doing crafts and seeing Santa!


My birthday is quickly followed by Hayden's and Meghan's birthdays, on the 16th and 17th. We celebrated Hayden on Saturday after we went to the Gingerbread Run. We met them in Sacramento and had dinner at this very yummy Italian place called Hot Italian, it was the best pizza I've had since I was in Italy. After that it was back to his house for cake and presents. I can't believe that Hayden is officially a teenager, that means Trevor is not far behind! yikes . . .

Meghan was cracking up her Uncle here, I believe this was the conversation about boyfriends and kissing boys!

The next week brought Meghan's 6th birthday!!! She was so excited to turn 6. We made cookies to take to school, she wanted the kind that you can make shapes out of and put frosting on. Is she my kid or what, cut out cookies are my most favorite cookie ever!


Mimi and Grampie came over to celebrate on her birthday and have cake with us, I think she had a great day!


Then on Saturday was Meghan's party with her friends, I'm always pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do for these winter babies birthday parties. She kept saying that she wanted a Littlest Pet Shops party. Not knowing exactly what she meant by that and also knowing that you can not readily get a lot of supplies for this kind of party, I thought we'd give it a try anyway. I think it turned out great and she had a great time with her friends. They did some crafts, some coloring, they played with all of Meghan's LPS stuff and then all the kids got to "adopt" a LPS of their own to take home.


Well, I think that wraps most of the major things we celebrated this month, still editing a few Christmas pictures to post in the next few days. Only 2 days of work next week and then 5 days off, I can't wait!!!

Pictures

Today we went out for our 2nd annual photo shoot with the Tidwells. I'm pretty happy with the results.









And yesterday we had our annual Thanksgiving Day family photo! This one was a little more difficult because there are so many if us, and we could not go outside because of the tornado like winds. But on the plus side this year I have a remote for the camera, which means that Anth didn't have to run up and down the ladder 25 times trying to get the perfect picture!


All in all a productive photo weekend!

- Posted using BlogPress
from my iPhone

Testing

So, I'm such a bad blogger! I'm hoping that having this little app on my iPhone will help me be a better blogger! No promises, but we'll see! Now if I can figure out how to get a picture in here too!



Ok, looks simple enough! This is from our baking day, I mixed up 20 batches of peanut butter balls!!!! Yummmmy!!!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fall Fun

I drug the kids, well, Trevor, Meghan still willingly goes, and Mimi to the Pumpkin Patch on Saturday. I have a feeling that this will be the last year I get Trevor to go with us, he was not to thrilled with me this year! But it's a tradition and I want my fall pumpkin patch pictures! I guess I'm going to have to find a different way to get my fall photos! Meghan as usual loved the animals and the barn show. She was so anxious to get her pumpkin that she was around the corner and on the trailer before we got there. We got there early which was great for getting some pictures because I didn't have people in the background or walking in front of me!

You'll never guess what I found in the right ear . . .

Sunday night as I'm cleaning Meghan's ear I flip her right ear lobe up to see how the back is looking, and I see something shiny . . . I should not see anything shiny, blood and scabs are NOT shiny. According to the x-ray there was not a back in the right ear. Well, the x-ray was incorrect, there was indeed a back in the right ear. I was so not happy about this, I didn't want to take another trip to see Dr. Jennifer and I wasn't sure Dr. Khonsari and his big hands would be the best option either, so, that left Daryl and I. I was dreading it all day Monday, so I got home from work and had her soak in the bath tub to get it all cleaned warm and opened up, all to add ice to it to numb it. The easy part was she let me put the earring in the left ear, which went in nice and easy. So I started in on the right, couldn't really get a good hold of it from the back, then I tried to push it through using the earring, that didn't work either, the earring went all the way through. Daryl came to help, he got the ear turned enough that a little more of the back was showing, enough that I could use the earring and pull it out. whew, thank goodness . . . by Wednesday evening I got the right earring back in!!!! Finally I think this whole mess is DONE!!! She is now back to 2 earrings in her ears and we are cleaning and twisting twice daily.


On Wednesday we went to the dentist, it was long overdue for both of them, Meghan has no cavities and Trev has 2 surface ones, looks like he was lucky enough to get my "deep grooved" teeth, darn. He will have them filled next week and some sealants put on to help prevent future ones.


Today we did a little bit of this ~


Isn't quite riding on her own yet, but a little more practice and she will be gone!

Welcome Fall

I love the fall . . . I love the colors, I love the coolness, and I can't believe that it's already officially Fall! Something happened to September, not sure what, but it somehow got away much to fast. I'm sure most of it is figuring out our new schedule, which for the most part seems to be working ok.

The kidos are on Fall Break last week and next week, I'm taking a few days off so Meghan doesn't have to go to her old pre-school everyday! Trev ended up going up to Oregon with Mimi & Grampie at the very last minute last week Monday, so it's been a very quiet week around here, we all really miss him. They are on their way home now, should be hitting Redding anytime now, can't wait to give him hugs (which he will just love I'm sure), since they took him at the last minute I was already at work on Monday so I didn't get to hug him goodbye!

We also got the earring problem solved, thank goodness for great friends who are physicians! I really did not want to have Meghan have to have surgery to remove the earrings, but I was not having any luck getting them to budge, so I called Jenn to get her opinion and she agreed it was crazy to be put under for that. So on Friday Meg and I headed up to Rocklin and Jennifer got them out. Not without a little bit of a struggle, even though we gave Meg a little medication to "relax" her. Seems that most medications do not react as they should with her, and while she didn't go to sleep or even relax as we had hoped, it was almost as if she was agitated, and suddenly didn't want anything to do with getting those darn things out. Surprisingly the one with the back stuck inside came out much easier than the one that was just the post. Hard to tell from the picture but the one on the right, which was in the right ear, is very bent, not sure how that happened, but figure it might be why it was so hard to get out.

Once they were out Meghan was fine, we went and picked up Jennifer's daughter Tyler, her and Meg are only 4 months apart, but have never really gotten to play together. It was so fun watching them, they are 2 peas in a pod, 2 little giggle boxes, I'm now realizing what I must have put my parents through! They had a ball playing with the Littlest Pets Shops and with Tylers baby dolls, they even packed them up along with a diaper bag and brought them to dinner. It was so cute, I even got a picture of it, but someone must have deleted it while taking her self portraits with my iPhone. Should have taken more than one shot.

I also did a terrible job at my daily photos in September, so with a new month I'm motivated to get back on track. I have about 12 weeks of layouts to do, starting on those today and hope to finish them up this week. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off this week, so hopefully I can get some things checked off of the "to-do" list. I can't believe that the holidays are right around the corner, I really want to stay ahead of the game so that I can enjoy the crazy month of December and not be to crazy. All right, off to get a layout done before dinner!

Earrings and e-coupons

Last night I am at my Singing Hands class and Daryl calls, the first thing that goes through my head when I saw the call was from home was oh great, who's throwing up! Thank goodness that wasn't the issue. Meghan had come down and asked Daryl to take her earrings out because they were bothering her, but he couldn't find the backs, he calls to tell me that the skin has grown over the back of the earring! Yikes, but I'm figuring that maybe there are some crusties back there from soap and shampoo not getting rinsed out properly, not really skin. I told him to get some alcohol and a cotton ball and try and clean it up a little, we determine she is fine until morning, but I had to go and take a peek last night when I got home. Sure enough, the skin had grown over the earring back on her left ear, you could see about 1/2 of the back and that's it and you could not see a back at all on the right ear. I looked at it better this morning and I could probably work out the left ear, but I couldn't see anything in the right ear, I was hoping that maybe the right backing had just come off, but then I thought I could feel something in there.

I got her into the doctors this afternoon and he refers her to a Pediatric Ear Nose & Throat doctor and then over to get x-rays to determine exactly what was going on.

(I love having my iphone camera with me at all times and ready for any adventure we may encounter!)

The x-ray techs asked many questions about exactly what they were supposed to be x-raying because they had never seen anything like this before ~ and thank goodness the x-ray did not show a back on the right ear!!! I guess that must have fallen out at some point. So we now just have to deal with the left ear. I'll let you know how that goes, we have an appointment tomorrow afternoon.

E -Coupons

I have completely ignored e-coupons until recently, I won't be ignoring them anymore. I haven't saved tons of $$$ using them yet, but when you look at individual items, I'm getting great deals, making some items free and even making a little bit on the item.

You see the great thing about these e-coupons, which currently tie to your Safeway Club Card only, is that you can stack a Safeway coupon, a manufacturer coupon and then the e-coupons will come off, and depending on how many you have loaded on your account, multiples may come off, even if you only bought 1 item. Here is an example ~ at Safeway today Meghan wanted a Kids Cuisine TV Dinner, they were on sale for $1.99 each if you bought 3 of them and I only had 1 manufacturer coupon for $1.00 off of 2 dinners. So I'm figuring $5 buck for 3 is an ok price at $1.66 each, not great but ok. At this point I have forgotten that I have several of these coupons loaded from Shortcuts.com, when I look at my receipt I realize that I had 4 of them loaded! So, my TV dinners went from $1.66 each to .33 each, now that's a good deal!

I also did this with some of my new favorite snacks last week ~ here is what that looked like

On sale at Safeway for $2.50 each. If you buy 4 or more then you get $4.00 off.

2.50 x 4 = $10.00
- $ 4.00 Mix & Match Savings
- $ 1.60 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ 1.00 e-coupon
_________
Total + .40 I love when I make money buying stuff.

At this point Safeway is the only store this will work at, but check out Shortcuts.com and also cellfire.com, when you register for this one you use your cell phone number and also your Safeway Card number. Between the 2 I've probably saved at least $15.00 in only 3 shopping trips. The cool thing with shortcuts is that by the time you get home from shopping you have an e-mail showing which coupons were applied to you shopping trip.

And since I'm talking coupons, I'm happy to report that I made my goal to save at least 70% in August coming in at 70.1%. Working towards 72% or 73% for September.

Where did I leave off?

It's been awhile! Things have been a bit crazy around here the last few weeks, in a good way. Daryl didn't go to work on that Wednesday two weeks ago, which was good because the painting was not finished! But just as he was wrapping up the last bit of touch up Thursday evening he got the call that all of the paperwork was complete and he could start on Friday! Good timing if you ask me!!! The bathroom/retreat area turned out awesome, I love it. Still need to do a bit of "accessorizing" but I'm looking for some specific things that I will probably be looking for for awhile, but meanwhile it's looking good!

Here is a before as you walk into the bathroom ~


This now contains most of the stuff that was on the floor, you can barely see the pile of stuff on the floor in the top photo.and the little desk we found - now if we can find a smaller couch or chair and get the treadmill fixed, it will be just about done!

We also celebrated our 18th Wedding Anniversary, seriously, I can't be old enough to be married for 18 years? Can I???? Well, looking at the then and now, I guess I have aged just a little bit!!!

Trev took this one, should have switched it over to auto mode for him to avoid the blurriness, but hey, this is my life, we stopped painting long enough to go have dinner and snap a quick picture!

With Daryl working I had to make a few changes to my work schedule and Mimi & Grampie are helping out a lot, it's a crazy schedule and I had to put it all on the calendar in order to keep straight where I need to be and who is doing what each day! Luckily I got this new toy for an anniversay gift! It's been very very fun!!!! And yes, I've been playing on this instead blogging!!! Addicting is all I can say. I'm amazed at what this phone can do, it's like having a computer and the internet at your fingertips, 24/7!


I'm sure there is lots I'm forgetting, but it's now 9:00 on Sunday evening and time for me to head to bed, with my new schedule I have to be at work by 7:00 tomorrow morning, so early to bed for me!

Holiday Weekend

I love 3 day weekends, and I especially love when we can get projects done, like finishing painting the bathroom and retreat area of our bedroom! It's been on the "to-do" list since we moved in, just about the last of things to be painted, just the laundry room and kids bathroom left and we will be 100% painted over here, time to start over now, right? Just kidding, my husband will not go for that.

We had a busy weekend so the painting didn't start until today . . . so Daryl has 1 day to finish up because on Wednesday, he goes to work!!!! Yep, you read it right, he got a job last week and starts on Wednesday. Actually he got 2 job offers last week, when it rains it pours! Both of the jobs had pros and cons and in the end it was a pretty easy decision since one of the jobs hours were 3:00 pm - midnight. Neither of us really want to go back to the crazy off hours, and I think that those would be worse than graveyards, so we opted for the one that pays less and is further from home, but we both feel good about that decision and trying to keep us all on the same schedule, he would just miss to much with the kids working those hours. Needless to say, we are feeling very blessed over here this week, and Daryl is very excited to get to work. Me, while I'm obviously very happy he will be working and gearing up for the crazy schedule of how I will be getting everyone where they need to be everyday. I have been totally spoiled the last few months because Daryl has been getting the kids up and out, lunches made, dropped off, picked up, cooking dinner, cleaning up . . . I've been living the easy life, well, it will be ending on Wednesday!

We made a trip to IKEA on Saturday, needed to get another set of the expedit shelving that I love so much for our bedroom and we also found a little table/desk for up there too. Can't wait for it to all come together. I also bought some new accessories and towels in my favorite colors!

Yesterday we did a little bit of phone upgrading. Daryl has been promising me an iPhone once he got a job, well in celebration of a new job and our 18th anniversary tomorrow I got my iPhone and I LOVE it!!! So cool, so much you can do, LOVE having the internet with me at all times. How did I live without it? Trev also had a little accident with his phone on Friday and the face cracked, of course he isn't ready for an upgrade but another line on our plan was, so he lucked out, he was going to just get mine and he was less than thrilled with that idea! So he got a new cool phone and a hard carrying case so that there are no more little accidents while the phone in is the backpack, otherwise, he WILL be using my old phone. But he is most excited about the unlimited texting we also added to the plan. He has probably already texted me 50 times and we've been in the same house! Meghan is feeling left out and thinks she should also have a phone. uuummmm, no, sorry!!! So she is carrying around my old one and listening to the music on it. Daryl is just shaking his head at all the ring tones that have been going off all day, he doesn't get why we are so happy!!

Looking forward to a new week and finding our new normal and new routines. I'm sure it will take a bit of getting used to but I think we are all ready for this new chapter. Even though he was only out of work for 3 months, we knew it was coming 10 months prior, while that is great to know so far in advance, it also is hard to make decisions to do things knowing that you will be unemployed in a few months, so many little things were put on hold, feels good to get some stuff done!

Happy Labor Day, I'm going to go and try to find my bed, which is a bit buried at the moment!

Another tooth . . . G.O.N.E.

This one was fast, which is good, there is nothing worse than loose teeth, well there's throwing up, but then there is loose, hanging teeth, that they want you to look at every other second, that comes right after throwing up in my book. I have nightmares that all my teeth are loose in my mouth and falling out. Anyway, she mentioned that her tooth was loose, but she's says that all of her teeth are loose, so I didn't give it much thought, until Sunday, she was swimming at the Tidwells's and she gets out of the pool to show me her tooth, which was very bloody. "Uuummmmm, what happened???" I ask, trying to be cool about the fact that there is a lot of blood in her mouth, and she responds "my thoof is loose". I thought that maybe she hit it or something, not sure why it started bleeding so much, but within the hour it was out!

and she was still not to amused with the $2.00 that the thoof fairy left for her.

And this is a picture of her dressed up to go to Kaitlyns Birthday dinner last night. We did showers before we went so she would be ready for bed when we got home. She came out with this little outfit.



When I told her that she looked beautiful she looked at me and said "you can't go like that." I had on shorts and a shirt. She said "we are going to a party and you need to dress up." So I have this little fashion statement telling ME how I should dress, nice!

Gotta love the tiara and the missing tooth, I mean thoof!

She can swim . . .

well, sort of! She's been doing great kicking around the pool with her life jacket on all summer, she is quite the little fish! I kept thinking I would get her into swimming lessons this summer and never did, next year for sure. We were at a birthday party last weekend at a waterpark for one of my oldest (not in age, in number of years, ok! and I prefer not to talk about how many cause then I feel really old) friends daughters. Growing up she taught swim lessons every summer and made a ton of money doing it. I joked that I should have just brought her up to spend a few days with her and she could have given Meg the lessons. She said that as soon as she could put her head under the water she would be ready to swim, well, she's been doing that since she was a baby! So she walked over to the side of the pool and gave her some pointers, and whalaa, under she went and started swimming under water across the pool! I guess it shouldn't really shock me, but I was pretty amazed that just like that, swimming!



Looking forward to a nice quiet weekend. Hoping to get some scrapping done, I'm very behind on my 365 layouts and I have a class sitting in "my classes" over a www.jessicasprague.com I would like to get working on. Happy weekend!