It's hard to believe that in just a few days Christmas will be here! E, R, and I have the next couple of weeks off, so we're hoping to eat, relax, see friends and family, and of course, play. The girl and I have been making cookies, wrapping gifts, and decorating Christmas tree ornaments. We don't go overboard with the gift idea - we didn't get R anything this year (as we didn't get E anything her first year), and our budget for E was pretty small, as she likes pretty cheap-o stuff. We want the kids to understand Christmas is about our Savior's birth. We also want them to understand contentment and have a heart that understands that there are those who don't have the luxuries we have here.

I think E is mostly excited to see the grandparents anyway. She's been talking about seeing her grandmothers for days now. I pray she always treasures family and Jesus above presents under the tree.
I'm sure you've noticed these pictures are not very "Christmas-y", but we found them on our camera the other night - one of our last hikes before the snow. I love my kids. R is seven months and so close to crawling - he'll see E run by and push up on his arms, trying to propel himself in a foward fashion while grunting. He's waving and getting pat a cake, which is so cute. He's starting to do the army crawl a little bit, but he doesn't go very fast. He's got three teeth at the moment, and we see three more coming in. Yikes.

E is becoming more and more independent. She likes to pick out her own clothes, and dress herself. And you know what? She actually matches a little bit - sometimes she's purple from head to toe, but we're impressed.

Her speech is insane. L was reading her a book the other night, and she pointed to a picture (it was a squirrel), and said, "Daddy, that's terrifying!" and her prayer before bed the other night was "Thank you Jesus for a nice day. Thank you for Daddy, Rhys-y-pie, Grandma Mona, Grandma Linda, Mommy, my bed, Emma, Madeline (her friends), Megan (cousin), Ann, Steph, lights. Oh, and my toes. Amen." I'm thankful I have toes too.

As far as our family goes, our life is very full right now - we have been, and continue to be very blessed. As you've probably seen on this blog as of late, I haven't been posting much. That is probably not going to change much - in fact, I've debated bringing this blog to a close. I'd like this upcoming year to be focused on my personal journal that can voice what this blog cannot. My main goal for the new year is simple - I want to love Jesus more deeply, and my journal helps me do that.

So this is a close for now. May you all have a lovely Christmas filled with wonder, and a happy New Year that brings you even closer to our Savior.

Nice Day

We are at the end of Thanksgiving weekend, and it's been full of friend and family fun, Christmas shopping, Christmas decorating, a lovely church service and of course, good food. You can see that the little guy was pretty tired by the end of the Thanksgiving day that he just crashed. The girl sighed on the way home, "Nice day, Mom", as she says every time she sees friends or family. She went from one grandparents' house to another, not wanting to leave either one. We are truly blessed to have such wonderful family to love our kids. E and a couple of her cousins had a great time playing together, and R wasn't left out of the mix. Cousin M wanted to touch his head over and over - evidently my sister in law said that she talked about it all day. It was cute. E announced later as we drove home that she wants to see her cousins "lots more times".
Typically we spend the Friday after Thanksgiving with family, but the hubby had to work, so we headed home. Our little town had their annual tree lighting ceremony where kiddos can make and decorate an ornament and visit with Santa. We heard kids yell "Eden" over and over again - we both kept looking around to see who was calling her name (because seriously, this name isn't common in these parts). We discovered two of her daycare buddies there, so we visited with the parents and the kids ran around, loving life.
It was a lovely weekend filled with many of the blessings we are thankful for. L and I have two pretty amazing kids - a crazy chatty two year old, who has a new interest in board games, Bible Stories, Jingle Bells, and counting to 14 (who knew?), and a happy happy 6 month old who is so curious, yet pretty relaxed and smiley. My girl is so right - it has been a nice day.

Our Bedroom

"The After":

Per Kristin's request, I have uploaded some pics of our bedroom. This really isn't the project we're working on, but since that is still in process (trimming out windows/doors/hanging curtains), I thought I'd show you these.

There are still a few things we need to do in this room, like painting the window and our chest, getting our closet system set up, but it's "done" for a while. As you can see in the "before" pic of our room, they had painted the walls an insane purple, and then sponged one wall blue and purple. You know, they put effort into making it this busy - yikes. The carpet was nasty and ugly, so we pulled it up, kilzed it (it smelled like dog urine, so we primed the subfloor), laid new carpet, painted it like 30 times, and put our stuff in here. Sorry for the last dark pic - it didn't save the changes I made to the photo.

House projects with two kiddos underfoot is a slow process, but we have the rest of our lives, right? We remind each other of that quite often, because we get impatient. Still, with each little project done, the house feels more like "home".

Popping In to Say Hi

Life is good and full right now. We're settling into our new normal, as R is settling into his regular sleep routine. It's amazing how much more productive I am now that the babe is sleeping better! We've been working on house projects like crazy people, but are still making sure to get lots of kiddo time in. E requested the playground yesterday, and we were able to get some shots of the kids. Boy, they are cute, aren't they?

Hope you got lots of sunny time in too!

Planning It Out

Well now that we're into October, we're starting to think about preparing for the holiday budget, and thinking about the increase of our heat bill, since we live in the lovely north. Now we don't spend a lot on each other or the kids, but it's nice to have a plan of action so we know how much we have to spend.

We don't really know what to expect for our heat bill, since it's our first winter here, and for two winters we were in a free utilities rental (which was nice). Some things we have saved on, some things we haven't, and some things we're looking into:

1. Our mortgage payment is pretty low for our neighborhood (rumor has it that the neighbors were trying to organize themselves to put an offer on it for rental use since it was such a steal). We tried to put as much of a downpayment as our budget would allow, since we paid $10000 a few months earlier for another car, and to fix our current one.

2. We shopped around for cheap(er) car, life, and home insurance. Wow. We should have done this much much sooner.

3. We tried to save by going to cell phones, since I "need" one for my job (and so our daycare worker can contact me at all times). Unfortunately, our service is less than stellar (actually it's terrible), so we ended up getting a landline anyway.

4. We're hoping to have an energy audit done.

5. Continuing to get our food bill in order. I feel like we have the most control over this area, but also the area we struggle with too.

6. We're taking advantage of craigslist as much as we can for appliances and furniture. I'm not sure we've ever bought a new appliance in our lives.

7. Staying away from debt. No money = no spending. Thankfully when one of us is ready to give in, the other is encouraging us to stay the course.

8. We do pay PMI, so after we do a bit more work to the house, we'd like to have another appraisal to get rid of it. I look forward to that day a lot.

9. Cutting down on our eating out. Seriously, why do we stink at this?!

10. One that I'm aiming for, but don't like: turning the thermostat down. Being cold is yucky.

What are some ways you guys have saved? Or need to work on saving?

Another Frugal Post

All right, it's time for another frugal food post. Mostly to remind myself to be more efficient with the money God has blessed us with. L and I do believe that food helps heal and keep our bodies healthy, so it's important to eat the proper food. Hence, we are willing to pay more for fruits and veggies, and some organic items.

This is the first time in five or six years that I have cooked a whole chicken. I am certainly going to do this more often - it is so cheap, and talk about efficient with time. My first attempt at doing this was when we first got married, and well, I grossed out. So grossed out that L had to eat the whole chicken himself.

Well, I found this recipe (thanks, Elizabeth!), and decided to give it another go, since we had two whole chickens sitting in our freezer, waiting to be eaten. It was good. L had to do much of the work, but it was worth it. We have enough chicken for the week! We can have chicken sandwiches, enchiladas, salads (my lunch today), chicken/rice/potatoes/veggies, stir fry... the possibilities are endless.

In addition, we even used the bones of the chicken to make a stock for soups and to flavor other dishes. Not bad for $5, right?

My List of 15

It's been a busy few weeks for us here, but I felt like we needed to update, so here's our life via list:

1. We all missed L greatly while he was gone. We survived despite two viruses hitting our house, and a baby getting his first tooth. He is now home safely, and had a great time visiting with family and friends.

2. E requested a giant red giraffe as her gift. Red giraffes do not exist, not even in South Africa, but seemed quite content with a regular ol' stuffed giraffe. She has slept with it and her lion from the family since L's been home.

3. R is sporting a rugby shirt as his gift... and staring at the monkey that he received.

4. R has been a rolling fanatic for about a month now. Seriously, R is the happiest baby I've ever seen. He and his big sister certainly get a kick out of each other. Hopefully that lasts.

5. E is potty trained, and has been for about a month. Totally worth the time and effort.

6. I've been approached by a local agency to be a "money mentor". It sounds super cool, but not sure about another commitment.

7. Is in love with our food coop.

8. We are splitting a meat order with some of the sibs. We're grateful for local, cleaner meat.

9. I've been reminded of some of the great things our God has done this week.

10. Our freezer is full of frozen fruits and veggies from our farmer's market, waiting for the winter and for R to get old enough to eat some homemade baby food.

11. Looking forward to apple picking... yay!!!

12. E and I have so much fun making silly faces at each other. We laugh so hard our neighbors probably think we're crazy.

13. Am wearing regular jean #3. You may now cheer.

14. Is amazed at how many people are pregnant - I swear our population is going to double by the end of the year.

15. It's nice to have my husband home.