Part 2 - I'm so far behind

The rest of November was spent praying and meeting with people regarding what our next steps were going to be. We got names of contacts and made phone calls. It was nice to have the support of so many people.

We also had Thanksgiving in the midst of all this. This year, we woke up to a White Thanksgiving.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family at my Grandma's house. It was a relaxing day and fun to be with family. Jason and Duane got the honors of carving the turkey this year. Grandma had some of her aprons laid out and ready to go. The guys couldn't wait to get the turkey carved and to get these beauties off...HA!

November was also the month that I started my major couponing venture. It has been quite the learning process but I was determined to start saving us money in any way possible. I started out with doing research online and finding different blogs and coupon site to follow. Here is my Thanksgiving day purchase. Unfortunately, because I am so far behind on blogging. I don't remember how much I paid for this stash but let's just say it wasn't much...I think around $10.

Couponing has really changed the way I think when I sit down to put together any sort of shopping lists now.

Part 1 - I am so far behind!

Well, I realize it has been a couple of months since I actually sat down to put up a real post.

I wasn't sure I wanted to keep posting. I got to a point of just not feeling like posting or doing much of anything really. Today, I've decided that I need to get caught up with things and really start posting about life. Even if it's for nobody but myself to go back and read some day.

I will start with the end of October. We finished off Brenna's season of volleyball. We enjoyed watching her team play and had fun watching her improve more and more each week. Her team ended the season in 2nd place. We were actually tied for 1st place but because the team we were tied with actually beat us earlier in the season they got the 1st place trophies.

This brings us to Halloween. This year, it was just Alyssa and Ethan doing the real dressing up. Brenna has decided that she is too old to dress-up but didn't really want to give up on the trick-or-treating. We told her if she was going to go trick-or-treating than she needed to come up with something. So pajama girl she was.

We went trick-or-treating on Saturday night this year because with Halloween on a Sunday, that's when Lynden was doing it. We headed over to Todd and Trisha's so that the kids could spend the evening having fun with two of their cousins. It was fun to see them all enjoying themselves...especially fun watching Paige trying to keep up with all the big kids. She caught on very fast to what was going on.

Sunday night, the 31st, we spent the evening at the church for Noah Nite. This year, our family actually helped with one of the booths but Brenna and our friend, Emily, ran it most of the night.

By the end of the night, all of the cute little scarecrow heads that we had cut out, colored, and laminated had all fallen off. At least these bowing pins started out the evening by looking cute!

That brings us to November. I think this was probably the toughest month for us yet. We had been talking about what to do financially and whether or not we were going to keep the house and if we didn't what our options would be.

Jason and I headed off for the weekend of Nov. 12-14 and attended the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember. Thanks to Mom and Duane for allowing us to stay at their place in Birch Bay and a free registration that we had earned by putting together a group, the only thing we needed to worry about for the weekend was food and gas. The two of us can get away with not eating a lot and we had a gift certificate to use for the "date night" portion of the conference so we were set!

Friday night was a huge night for us. This was the first night of the conference. We thoroughly enjoyed the speakers and when we got back to the trailer we started talking about our marriage and how that was holding up through all of this financial stuff. Thankfully, things were and are great with us so it was mainly chatting about how we weren't going to let this financial stuff take over and ruin a good thing. We started talking and realized that God really had been carrying us through this past year financially and that realistically we should have never been able to make one mortgage payment all year but God had carried us through. However, the money for the mortgage just wasn't there for the month of November and we both felt like God was telling us it was time to take the next step and figure how to best get out of the house and be mortgage free. Paying rent sounded much more appealing than continuing with the dreaded mortgage payment.

We went through the rest of the weekend feeling at peace about our decision and would figure out the details once we got home. The rest of the weekend was spent at the conference and just enjoying the time alone for the two of us. We went to Bellingham on date night and went to dinner, walked around the mall for a bit people watching and then picked up ice cream and headed back out to Birch Bay for a movie and ice cream. As much as we love our kids and missed them, it was great to just have a weekend away to focus on us and not worry about being parents for a few days...thank you to those who had our kids!!

Contest details

Louie Giglio - Laminin

If you have never seen this, we would encourage you to watch it! We showed it to the kids tonight. They are learning about Creation on Sunday mornings during JAM (our Sunday School hour) and we thought this would be great for them to see. The girls are in complete AWE right now.

HUGE Savings...

at Rite Aid this morning! I had my list and refused to purchase anything not on the list. I had gone through the sale flyer and had my coupons ready. At the register the cashier was shocked!

**Before sales, Rite Aid +Up Rewards card, and coupons = $63.16 (before tax)
**After all of the above were taken into account = $26.22 (before tax)...that a $36.94 savings!!!

$14.84 of that was just for having a Rite Aid Wellness +Up Rewards Card... and the other $22.10 was from coupons. I spent about 45 minutes on Saturday watching little 30 second video clips on the Rite Aid website for products I knew we would use as a family.


I also left with 3, $1.00 off coupons because of specific purchases that I made.

I'm still in the learning phase of this and hoping to figure out ways to save even more! While at Rite Aid, I was purchasing Cheerios. I had 2 different coupons that I could use. (1 for just the box of Cheerios and another for purchasing a ...box of Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.) I pulled the box of Cheerios off the shelf and just happened to glance back up at it's spot on the shelf and noticed a box behind the box I had taken with an instant $1.00 off. Guess which box went with me to the register?! You got it...the one with that coupon and a bonus savings for me!

Just had to share! Now it's time to get things put away.

Have a great day!

"Chalk Walk"

So this afternoon, once we took Ethan to school, the boys (my very special nephews) and I had lunch and then made a quick trip downtown Lynden for about 10 minutes to see Alyssa and her class as they created their Harvest Art on the sidewalks of Front Street. This is an annual event that the Lynden Chamber of Commerce puts on each year for all of the 3rd grade classes in Lynden. (These classes come from Lynden Christian and Lynden Public schools.)

Alyssa's class had walked from Isom Elementary to Front Street. They got their store front assignments and off they went! Some of the students had thought out what they wanted to put on the sidewalk and had their plans drawn out on paper.

Some of the drawings looked very similar but they were each unique. I was shocked to see that Alyssa and her BFF, Kylie, had almost the same "plans" and they don't even sit near each other in class. I guess it's a GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE kind of thing. They ended up right next to each other on the sidewalk though.

Our little artists got busy fast...

I wasn't able to stay long so tonight, Jason and I took her back to where her drawing was so that she could show us the finished project.

If you would like to go and see her art in person...it is directly in front of Chad's Jewelry on Front Street. It's fun to go and see all of the creativity brought to the City of Lynden. Many of these kids are true artists!

"Aunt of the Year" Award!

I WON!! At least according to Wayne I did. He told me that I was the best auntie ever! I love that boy!!

Now, you might be wondering why I "won" this award...

I couldn't handle hearing that Wayne was going to miss his field trip because it was happening on a non-school day and on a day that both his daddy and mommy had to work. So, since I was having the boys any ways, I volunteered to take all 4 boys to the Everson Fire Hall today so Wayne could join his class on this special day.

Our plan was to be in Everson by 9:45 so that we could take a leisure walk from Tyler and Tanya's house (we needed to get the double stroller on our way for the little guys) to the fire hall. It was a nice plan but didn't totally work out. We ended up taking a very fast walk to the fire hall and were a couple of minutes late but didn't miss much. (We were only 3 minutes late, but Fire Fighter Ken had started promptly at 10:15.)

The boys had a great time watching one of the moms be dressed up like a firefighter. Fire Fighter Ken explained what each piece of the fire suit was for and why each piece is so important.

The next thing the class got to see was the BIG pumper truck. They were in complete AWE of this truck! There were so many neat things to look at. The best part was watching how the fire fighters get the ladders off of the truck. There is a lift that lowers the ladders. (I didn't even know how this happened. Did you?)

Fire Fighter Ken took the kids over to the Ambulance next. They all got to take turns sitting in the back of the ambulance. I'm so glad that I got a picture of Wayne because I totally missed Ethan in the back of the rig.

We eventually made it outside to see the big tanker truck...this is the truck that carries water to fires that don't have a fire hydrant nearby. (Okay, this part I already knew but the kids didn't...HA!) This is also the truck that leads the way to fires and aid calls when there is snow on the ground because the firefighters keep "JAWS", the snow plow, hooked up to the front of the tanker truck to clear the roads so they can get to where they need to go.

 

Towards the end of our time at the Fire Hall, Fire Fighter Ken asked for a couple of volunteers to demonstrate Stop, Drop and Roll. I was so proud of Wayne for being the first one to raise his hand and volunteer. Here he is, with 2 other boys, showing his class how to do it...

 

 

The boys all had a great time with Wayne's class. These two little guys did amazing...they were in such amazement of the big trucks they just sat staring at everything and everyone.

I am so glad that it worked out to participate in this fun activity. Thank you Tyler and Tanya for allowing me to spend time with your boys each week and for allowing me to take Wayne to his special field trip. I love your boys like they were my own!