SO MUCH more than Cookies.

Earlier this week while driving home from the grocery store, a local church sign caught my attention. It simply said this,
"Come to church. We have cookies."

Is this really what it takes to get people in the door?
Can you just imagine Jesus walking up to Peter and Andrew with a box of Krispie Kremes, and saying "follow me. I have donuts."
Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
Maybe that was the point. Maybe it's said tongue in cheek. Then again I'm not so sure as this same church also advertised "our worship band will rock your face off. We'll help you to your car."
You laugh. But I'm not kidding.

I admit I thought a lot about this over the next few days, because of all the things that God's family has to offer, why would cookies be enough to get someone through the doors?
So what DO we have?
If we're in Christ we have redemption.
If we're in Christ we have no condemnation.
If we're in Christ we're set free from sin.
We have Peace.
We have Joy.
We have Love.
We have Goodness and Mercy.

"do you not know, that all of us that were baptized INTO Christ, were baptized into his death? We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too may walk in newness of life." Romans 6

We have a new life.
We have Eternal Life!

So come to church. We have SO Much MORE than cookies.

Make it Monday

Just a quick post today to share the layout I did for Memorable Seasons, Last Scrapper Standing. Our challenge was to use a non scrappy item and to create an embellishment cluster.

My non scrappy item is the clear star on the right side of the pictures. I made this out of a plastic chinese takeout container lid.Hope your week is off to a great start!

@ Ten Months..

You are such a happy baby! Seriously, unless you are hungry or tired, you are always always full of grins. You laugh so easily and strangers love you because you are always smiling like crazy at them.

You are an army crawler right now. You move fast with those arms dragging the rest of your body behind you and pushing with you feet.

You go to bed at 8:00 and typically wake up between 5:30 and 6:00. Anytime you want to start sleeping about another hour I'm all for it! :)

At your 9 month check up you weighed exactly 20 lbs. My best guess is that you are still right at that, but maybe even 21 or 22. You've started wearing 12 month clothes, but I can already tell you're going to move on up to 18 month clothing before long!

I haven't given you any jar baby food in several weeks. Most of the time you eat yogurt and rice cereal, apple sauce and rice cereal, or whatever we are eating mashed up. I've started giving you mini Nilla Wafers to snack on and you much prefer those over cheerios.

Your first tooth showed up a few weeks ago. You now have another one coming in,both on the bottom.
Happy 10 Months Baby Boy!

And So You're Three

You were a Friday the 13th baby. But it was as far from unlucky as you can get. The timing was just right even though you weren't supposed to be born for another week. That head full of dark hair was a sharp contrast to your born bald older sister.

*Your Birth Day


*One Year Old

*Two Years Old

And now sweet girl, you are 3! You are my girlie girl. You love to sit with me while I put on my makeup and pretend you are putting on makeup too. Your favorite color is pink, with purple a close 2nd. You love to dress up as pretty much any Disney princess and then you must be called by that princesses name. (Obviously :0) Currently Rapunzel and Ariel are your favorites, but Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora are just as good, it just depends on the day. For the most part you won't wear any pajamas unless they have princesses on them.

You are so very close to being potty trained. I just have to remember to ask you to try to go all day long. If I forget to remind you, we almost always have an accident. I was hoping to have this nipped in the bud by your birthday, but it's ok, you're doing good.

You are a bit of a drama queen. :) If you can't find your waffle blanket or your sippy cup you tend to have a meltdown. Little fusses with your sister over toys cause these meltdowns too. Soooo emotional. Sorry babe, you get that from your momma. :)

You love to be silly. You love knock knock jokes, especially telling them with/to daddy.
You love to sing. You love to color.

You love your big sister. You copy a LOT of what she does. You say a LOT of what she says. When I ask simple questions about lunch or drinks, etc., a lot of times you wait to see what she's going to do before you answer. Or you change your request to match hers.

You are a joy to our lives and we love you SOOOO Much! Happy Birthday Abigail!!

Scrapbook Sussies June 2011

How in the world is it already Summer? It seems like just a few weeks ago we were playing in our record breaking 10" of snow! But boy has summer come charging in.. with been dealing with upper 90 degree temps the past few days and the heat index is in the 100's for the rest of this week!

So, on to my Sussie pages. Here's what I did this month! These feature pictures from Easter weekend and Mother's Day.




And as usual there's so much in these kits I have plenty left over for more pages. Check out the full kit HERE.>>>Scrapbook Sussies.
Have a great rest of the week!

We Have This Saying...

We have this saying at our church congregation that the kids learn at a very young age. It begins with a question:

What is God's ideal for marriage?
And the kids answer with:
One man for one woman for life.

Which leads me to this morning's conversation with my 4yo.She was looking at a picture of her Nana (John's mom who passed away from cancer in 2005), and the questions began.
Where did this picture come from? Did Papa take this picture? Was Papa married to Nana?

And this is where it got interesting. I explained to her that yes, Papa and Nana were married. And they had 3 kids. Daddy, Uncle A, and Uncle S. After just a split seconds thought, she asks, "So boys can be married to 2 girls?.. cause Papa is married to MeMe now."

And this is where "that saying" she knows so well came in handy and made what could have been a difficult conversation with a 4yo, much easier.

Well Nat, what is God's ideal for marriage?

"One man, for one woman for life."

Right, and since Nana's life here on earth is over, that means what?
"ohhhh, so he could marry MeMe"

Yes, and aren't we glad he did! (Cause we sure love our MeMe) :)

I really didn't expect to have these kind of conversations already, but as I stumble through this most important job as a parent I'm reminded of a couple of things.

We must intentionally teach. A lot of times we don't deal with the difficult things until they arise. So we end up doing reactive parenting rather than proactive parenting. But if we teach them Biblical principles early on, it makes things much easier when harder questions or situations arise. It's true, kids learn some things by accident just based on the situation or happenstance. But it is my prayer that I take every opportunity to instill the things of God into my children.

And speaking of opportunity..
Teach your children of God diligently. When you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you go to bed, and when you rise up. (Duet.6:7)
which seems to translate into ALL THE TIME. It's a tall order. And I don't claim to get it right all the time (or even half the time for that matter!) but it is my duty as a mother. My number one priority to my children.

Their souls depend on it.

Scrapbook Sussies April 2011 Reveal

Happy Sunday everyone!
Today I have my April Pages for Scrapbook Sussies. As usual SO MUCH stuff in this kit. Check it out HERE.
And here's what I did.






The pages I did with this kit came together so easily! Love that the two sides of the kit allowed me to do both boy and girl pages. Lara is so good at putting supplies together.
Hope your week is off to a good start!

These Pics Leave Me Speechless (Almost)

So sweet.

So not a morning person.

Such an entertainer.


I. Love. My. Kids.
I just can't hardly even look at them without my heart melting.
Every single time.

They frustrate me.
They make me want to pull my hair out.
They humble me.
They teach me.
They help me grow.
They make me smile.
They make me laugh.
They remind me of the Greatest Love of All. (John 3:16)

I. love. My kids.
Happy Saturday!

The Oldest. (at only 4)

Lately Natalie asks a lot of questions. And by a lot I mean 5,345,679.
She's so very curious and wants to know, well: Everything.
So herein lies my struggle.
I try to answer everything she asks( within reason and to the best of my knowledge), but this means that lately she thinks she knows it all. Which also means we've had discussions about attitude, tone, talking kindly, etc. These may seem like mature words for a 4 yr old, but she's not shy about asking what a word means until she completely understands your explanation.
So how do I find balance between answering her questions and keeping her humble?

I've often ended her string of questions with "I don't know." "we can find out later" and even, "nobody but God knows Everything". (which is usually followed by why? lol)
I'm struggling with how much info is too much and trying to train/teach her not to be a little miss smarty pants.
It's hard.
The kid is so smart.
She listens so well.

Overheard in the van:
(on the way to Mothers morning out - ironic much?)
Nat- Mommy , there's a big truck beside us. Let's pass it.
*Brief pause as truck is passing us.*
Nat- (excitedly) pass it pass it
Mommy- we can't pass it sweetheart.
Nat - why not?
Mommy- because he's going faster than us.
Nat - well go faster and pass it.
Mommy- we can't pass him Natalie.
Nat- why not?
Mommy- because mommy has to follow the speed limit.
Nat- well why isn't he following the speed limit?
Mommy- I don't know baby, that's something we'd have to ask him.
*Pause*
Nat- how are we Gonna do that?
Mommy - How are we gonna do what? (thinking the convo was over)
Nat- how are we gonna ask him why he's not following the speed limit?
Mommy - (stifling a chuckle) We can't baby. We can't.
Nat- but mommy you just said we would have to ask him, so how we gonna do that while we're driving?
Mommy- We're not. Were not gonna be able to ask him. Sometimes we just don't know why people do stuff.

And if I have this conversation wrong or left out any part of it; if I read it to her- she'll be sure to let me know.

Lord, give me patience. But I need it right now. :)

For the Grands

The Jump-meister:

At 7 Months

Seriously? 7 Months already? *sigh* My little man will be a teenager before I know it! :)

At 7 Months he is:

*Finally eating cereal and baby food like a champ. It took him a bit to warm up to cereal and baby food. He just wasn't all about it the first few weeks we started giving him some. But now he loves it, unless it's green. In which case, I mix it with some fruit and sneak it past him.
He eats Apple sauce mixed with rice cereal in the mornings, and either a fruit or veggie mixed with cereal in the evenings.

*Not sleeping through the night consistently yet. I *try* to get him in the bed by 8:30. Sometimes it's closer to 9:00. Typically he sleeps about 7 hours. Sometimes 9. Sometimes he's up every 2-3 hours until morning. Like I said, not consistent yet but we're getting there.

*Is so close to sitting up on his own. Just this week I put him in the boppy and he sat up by himself for a few minutes.
*Is in total awe of his sisters. He watches EVERYTHING they do. And if he's not where he can see them, but can hear them, he'll nearly breaks his neck trying to see/find them.

*Will not nap unless you hold him. Occasionally he'll nap in his car seat if we're out and about. And, just this week he's fallen asleep in his swing a couple of times. But as a general rule, he wants to be held for his naps and he wakes up pretty much instantly if you try to put him down.


*I always thought John was the only boy who would steal my heart. But I was wrong. :)
Love you sweet boy!

Scrapbook Sussies *March Reveal*

The March kit is available for purchase over on the Scrapbook Sussie site!
As usual, I really enjoyed working with what was in this one. The kits are also now a $40 value for $29.95.
Here's what I did!

Natalie had her first haircut this past fall. I put it off for so long because I was afraid we'd cut off her natural curl! She did so well and her hair looked so much better (= Less stringy!) afterward.
I cut the stars out of one of the My Little Shoebox papers using my SLICE die cut machine.


Abigail had her first hair cut the same day as Natalie. Talk about a little doll. I loved her bangs! And I was so proud of her because, of the two of them, she was the one I was afraid I might have to hold in my lap while she cried about getting the cut. But, she did great! It certainly helped that Natalie went first and she saw it was no big deal.

The pictures on this one make me laugh because they acted like he was SO heavy. I guess when you're 4 and 2, 8lbs is a lot. :) Used my SLICE again for the heart.

And this one was for the AD challenge over on the Sussie Blog. You can see how a Disney advertisement made it's way onto a scrapbook page HERE on this post.
More of the SLICE with the stars and #4. (Can you tell I like that machine a little?)
I also broke out my acrylic stamps on this one. I used an Autumn Leaves alphabet. My stamps are collecting dust, so it was good to put them to use!


There you have it! Make sure you check out the other designers work in our Gallery!

It's March!

I don't like going a whole month between posts. Will try to not let that happen this month.
Recent pics of the kids:

Helping me make a cake for Daddy and Uncle Alan's Birthday:

Enjoying a beautiful day outside!

Scrapbook Sussies *February Reveal*

It's been a while since I've had a scrappy post!
Here are my pages for the February Sussies Kit.






It is available HERE!

5 Months 2 Weeks Old

Just because I think he's too cute, and I know the grandparents would like to see these.
I took some of all 3 kids but the girls weren't as cooperative. :)
And just because I think their resemblance is uncanny.. here's Natalie @ 6 months:

Crazy huh?

A Little Bit About the Qponz.

I've only posted a couple of times about the couponing that I do. But I've got a couple of friends who are trying to get started, so I thought I'd share my trips this week.
I think I said this before, but it took me several months to get a feel for what I was doing, to become familiar with coupon wording and policies and feel like the time I was investing was going to be worth it.
One of the biggest things for me was that I stopped clipping all those inserts! When I first started I bought a binder, clipped everything and filed them all in baseball card sleeves. But when Jonathan was born, I fell weeks behind in clipping and then had a light-bulb moment so this is what I do.
A crate with hanging file folders.
I simply write the date on the insert and file them by month, newest in front, oldest in back. There are SO many blogs and websites that do all the matchups for you. So for example when I'm planning my trip and iheartpublix tells me the yogurt coupon is in Jan 2nds SmartSource, I pull that insert and clip that coupon. This has saved me tons of time. Do I occasionally miss a deal i hadn't planned for because I see something in the store and don't have all my coupons with me? Maybe. But if it's that good, I'll make a note of it and pull my coupons later to go back. And that very rarely happens anyway.

So, on to the savings.My first stop was at Publix:
Gorton's Butterfly Shimp
Gorton's Fish Fillets
(2) Marie Callender Meals
(2 boxes) Jimmy Dean Delight Specialty Breakfast Biscuits
(4 cans) Chunky Campbells Soup
A1 Sauce
Kraft BBQ Sauce
(2) Nabisco Fig Newtons
(2 bags) Totinos Pizza Rolls
1 Bag of Baby Potatoes
5lb Sugar
1 Dozen Eggs

If I had of walked into Publix on any random day and bought these items it would have cost me $68 plus tax. I have to say that seems a bit ridiculous looking at what I bought, but that's Publix regular retail price. But because I paired their weekly sale with coupons I paid $19.12 plus tax for everything in this picture. And I discovered the cashier missed a .50 coupon after the fact, so my total should have been $18.62
Now, the majority of this stuff is not stuff we would typically buy. For example: Those Jimmy Dean specialty biscuits are $5.87 for a box of four.
Way too rich for my blood.
But sale plus coupon, I paid 44 cents. That's 11 cents a biscuit! And the Marie Calender meals are $2.69, but sale plus coupon and I paid 35 cents each.
So for me, that's one of the really fun things about couponing. You get to try and become familiar with all sorts of different products for literally pennies!
And one other thing to note: for this particular trip I used all printable coupons. So sometimes you don't even need that Sunday paper.

Now on to Kroger. I looked ahead at their ad, and saw that I was going to want to stock up on an item or two. So I ordered extra coupons. I don't do this a lot, but in this case it makes more sense to pay a clipping service 80 cents for 10 of the same coupon than to buy 10 papers which would cost $15! I was planning to stock up on Hunts tomato sauce which is 16cents a can with coupon this week. As luck would have it my Kroger was already out, so I'll have to make a trip back there when their truck comes in. So pretend there are 24 cans of Hunts tomato sauce in this picture which will add $3.84 to my total.
So here's what I got:

(2) 24 pack Deer Park Water
(2) Sister Schubert Yeast Rolls
(6) Hunts Stewed Tomatoes
(2) Del Monte Veggies
(4) Hormel Chili
(4) Rotel
(4) Philadelphia Cream Cheese
(2) Kraft Cheese Singles
1 Box Kellogg's Cinnabon Cereal
(4) Balance Energy Bars

My total was $64 before sale and coupons. Again this seems crazy to me but I'm going by Kroger's regular retail prices. They have a Mega sale going on right now, so if you mix and match qualifying items in increments of 10, you automatically get $5 off. I had 30 items, so $15 came right off the top before I even gave my coupons. My total expense was $16.17
So..both trips were $132 worth and I paid $35.29. And you thought store brands were cheaper.. :)

I planned both of these trips by using the match ups on:
Iheartpublix.com
Iheartkroger.com
The links to the printable coupons and info on what coupons to clip that I used are right there on their websites. I also use southernsavers.com quite frequently too. I will usually check out her Publix and Kroger posts just to make sure I know of all the available coupons. Occasionally one might be listed at one site and not the other.

It does take a bit of time to plan your trip but these days I spend a lot of time on the couch sustaining the life of my youngest (also known as nursing).
So while I'm doing that I read those blogs along with a lot of others.
I've even typed up this post while feeding him! Maybe more than you wanted to know, but my point being I have to utilize my time as best I can!

I haven't even hit the drug stores this week, which is where I get personal care and health and beauty items for pretty much just tax. If you're interested in seeing that, leave me a comment and I'll do a similar post at the end of the week.
You'll also notice there wasn't anything like milk, bread, or meat. For this week I didn't need those things. I have them on hand. Typically for those type of staple items I end up paying regular price. So some weeks are better than others.
I do have a couple of other posts here on the blog about couponing. If you want to read those you can click on the label at the very bottom of this post that says "Couponing" and it will bring up those posts.
Questions? Just ask. I'm all about helping anybody save money.

January Blizzard

8"-10" of snow?? Almost unheard of for us. This kind of fun? I'll take any day of the week!