Our days.....

The little one and I went to get the mail and when we came back we found #2 & #3 gathering some flowers. They were having such fun picking which ones they liked. They'd drive their cars along the sidewalk and stop at different places to pick a few.


We went to the beach today! It's been awhile since we have gone, it was good to be there again! #1 and #2 spent most of their water time getting water in their noodles and blowing it on each other. #3 swam around in his tube and collected shells. #4 spent alot of time playing in the sand, then finally wanted to play in the water. It was chilly! He is loving the water, we've been using the water wings in the pool and he will float around and have a grand ole time. Then he's tired and will lay his head on your shoulder until everyone is ready to go.

kitchen helpers

Today was #2's day to help me cook. To try to help with the fighting over who helps in the kitchen we have a 3 day rotation marked on the calendar. If that person is not interested in helping then I will let someone else help. We recently came up with the system because I needed help with the chaos that happened if everyone was in the kitchen at once. It seems to work pretty well, although #3 is really bummed if it's his day to help and we aren't doing a lot of cooking.
We had Chicken and Dumplings for dinner. #2 is quite handy with the carrot peeler and I found out tonight that she is great at picking the meat off the chicken. She was working on that while I was getting the dumplings ready, when I went to double check that she had gotten all the chicken off the bones I was very happy to see she did! Great job sis! C&D were yummy and some were sent to the freezer for a fast meal when needed. Not sure how well dumplings freeze but nothing like trail and error to learn.

Savings

We did our grocery shopping today and I had a coupon savings of 12%. Better than it has been in the past so I'm fairly happy with it. My 'coolest' savings was in milk-which I wasn't planning on buying at the store but it happened to be on sale for 2.64. Which for organic milk is HUGE, it's usually double that cost for a half gallon. AND they had coupons for buy 2 half gallons and get $1 off so I'm stocked up on milk for the next 5-6 weeks. I think I might be able to increase my saving even more because this milk was the whole milk and I usually buy the 2% so I might try to dilute it with some water and see how we like it. My second favorite savings of the day was an item that was marked at 1.79 and I had a coupon for $2 off-pretty good deal!

James came home for a few hours this afternoon so we hit the pool, had a late lunch, naps and are getting ready to go to the library.

Hope you have a great Tuesday!!

Clay, nature, and Awana's

The kids played with clay. There are snowmen and creatures on ski's.....notice the snow in the trees.


We had a nice day yesterday so decided to skip the normal Friday stuff and go play for awhile. Kids took their nature notebooks and traced some leaves and other sites they saw. #4 still not up to par but thought the fresh air would be good for him.

Last night was the Awana's celebration. Last day until next September. Both kids groups got up and sang some songs and got little things for recognition. All the pictures came out blurring but if you tilt your head sideways and squint you can tell who's you;)

Park day

Here are some pictures from Tuesday. I had taken the kids to the park and #3 had asked me to take his picture. I told him I didn't have my camera but I found it as we were getting ready to go. As you can tell he put on his grump face just for the camera.





#4 is now running a fever. I usually try to give everyone extra vitamins to boost their immune systems when one of us is sick but I guess since it was me that was sick it just didn't get done. Hopefully the bug moves faster through him.


Here is a picture of my work so far. Our homework is to hand quilt around our design and then get our compass out and start using that. My personal goal is just to hand quilt around the design. I'm enjoying learning this but it is a lot of work!

Weekend

I developed a sore throat Friday night, could feel it coming on at dinner. Ran a fever during the night, took some headache medicine on Saturday morning and felt ok. We had a busy Saturday, got our 'new' car registered-it cost us a whole $10 to do so! James had a softball game, once again the tradewinds have left, air is filled with vog and it is HOT! Poor #4 as soon as we got to the game he had sweat droplets on his head. Kids played around while the guys played ball. Other team didn't have enough players so it was just a scrimmage. Then we took our picnic lunch to a shady spot where it was a tad cooler and decided we'd go to the $1 theater to cool off. So we took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who. We had a good time, movie was silly. Got home rested and had supper(thanks to the crockpot)
Sunday, however, the fever wouldn't let me go. James got a lot of home projects done and kids got to practice their skills on being quiet.
I'm still not 100% but feeling better each day. #2 made me a cute get well card, my intent is to take a picture of it to share with all.

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If you hear #4 calling for hat that means he is looking for the cat.
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James officially started some college classes last night!!

I started playing the grocery game. I have a friend(or 2) that have had huge savings with this. I'm not sure how well it will be for me because of my location and being able to use the commissary but I'm going to try the trial run and see. I've also been reading about square foot gardening and may give that a try this summer as well. I haven't had much success in my gardening ventures out here due to space and kids/balls trampling stuff. But figure instead of waiting for the space I might try this new (to me) idea-it's not like food prices are getting any better.

This is the day, this is the day that the Lord hath made.....

sorry. Got the song stuck in my head.

Good things about today:
*homemade bread
*washed the van-love the clean van!
*cleaned the floors upstairs-ahh, clean floors
*played in the pool with the kids
*cuddled and read stories with each child
*grilled chicken and zucchini for supper

Not so fun/good things of the day:
*cleaning up the many spills
*walking with bare feet on sidewalk-causing feet to blister(yes it's that hot again)
*VOG
*listening to whine/tantrums

Woohoo, the good things win!! Although I'm not sure what it means when two of my things are food related! Now off to try to figure out this hand applique stuff and get ready for LOST.