Successful Day!

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Sheila

Today is a rare day around my house! I accomplished everything on my “have to finish list” and still have a little bit of time left to actually add to the list or just sit. My list for today included:

1. Washing all kids clothes prior to end of school day- this was accomplished and all three kids got all their clothes put away!
2. Proof reading and sending a set of Bible quiz questions out to Raleigh. This technical is not finished yet because I have to wait for Matt’s help to reduce the number of repeat questions but it will be done before bedtime.
3. Assembling and ordering a calendar for my Dad’s birthday. His birthday is January 1st. My mother’s birthday is December 29th and growing up I learned very quickly that you CAN”T combine those two gifts. I was able to use a coupon so spent a total of $7 on this calendar and it is the end of my Christmas shopping!
4. Cooked an awesome dinner including trying out two new recipes both of which turned out great. I cooked a turkey breast in one of my crock pots, these sweet potatoes and apples in a second and made cranberry sauce in a third. I am not a cranberry sauce person, I even bought the cranberries by mistake but this was AWESOME! It is a definite addition to our Christmas dinner party.
5. Christmas cards-addressed and ready to mail!
6. Went over to my parents and picked up a few more Christmas decorations. I was actually able to place most of these where I had anticipated. I am 99% finished with my Christmas decorating. This is the first year in a long time that I have enjoyed decorating. I also have used all the decorations that I could find in the attic as well as gather some from other places as well.
7. Wrote and published a blog piece! Seven is the perfect number so I will stop here!

Join me in being thankful to finish a list!

Lily’s Birthday!

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Sheila

Just a fair warning up front, I decided not to split this up into 2 or more different post. Therefore you will find lots of pictures with this post!!

Lily actually started celebrating her birthday on Tuesday November 25th, with the first singing of “Happy Birthday” and her gift from us and her Grandfather Abbott. Lily received a IPAD mini. The reason we decided to give this gift so early is that she enjoyed using it not only on our trip to Michigan but also she was able to face time both of her sister during our stay.

Next Lily celebrated on Friday December 5th, when Amanda ate lunch with her and picked her up from school to go to the mall.

They also stopped for “fo-yo” on the way home.

Lily actual birthday December 6th involved lots more celebrating. We had her best friend “Izzy” and her grandparents over for dinner.

Of course there were more presents..

And cake…

After cake, we had wooden Christmas ornaments to paint…A

A fun time was had by all! Especially Lily!

Weeks of Busyness- Weekend catch

Posted on December 6, 2014 by Sheila

December is always a busy month but this year, I think it has decided to speed up! Each of the three weeks prior to Christmas seems to be stuffed full of activities, practices and parties. The very sad part about this is that I know that next week including the weekend is going to be some of the busiest time of the year.

Just for the sake of truth here is our schedule for the first two weeks of December :
Monday- Chorus til 4pm, Cheerleading from 5:45 til 7 for Kendall and til 8 for Lily. Because of the huge time difference, I am actually picking up Kendall and bringing her home both weeks.
Tuesday- Chorus til 4pm and piano for both girls- We consider this our easiest night!
Wednesday- Church activities
Thursday- Cheerleading from 5:45 to 7:30 for both.

Looks like fun doesn’t it? Add to this craziness that we arrived home last Sunday night around 8pm from our trip. Matt has spent most of his time unpacking that is between picking up and taking children to these activities. On Thursday of this week, we had to restock our food supply and we ended up picking up a third refrigerator, which add another whole day of non-stop activity.

So today (Saturday aka Lily’s birthday), I decided that I would need to get up the rest of our Christmas decoration in order to be able to even enjoy them. One small problem, I have spent several hours looking both online and in person for an artificial Christmas tree with no real luck in finding exactly what I wanted. Until I was talking with my mother and discovered she has a very large artificial tree in her attic. Last night after work, we went and claimed this tree. Matt used an air compressor to clean out most of the dust and we set up our rainbow to clean the air around it over night. I will admit that I can understand why it is too much tree for her. She said she spent over 3 hours putting it together the year she used it. Between Matt and myself, I would estimate we have spent around an hour working on it. But it is perfect, I will hopefully get some pictures to post in the next day or so.

In addition to decorating, we have planned a small for us, birthday dinner for Lily for today. Tomorrow I am teaching the 2-3 years old during service, the kids will be performing one song during the regular service and they have play practice from 3:30 til 5:30. Next week is the same schedule as last with the addition of a practice Saturday morning of the children’s musical at church. The kids will be performing the musical on Saturday and Sunday night. Finally on Monday night, Lily has her chorus performance.

I am going to take an extra day off work prior to Christmas but the state of running between activities should remain at least for a couple of weeks. If I go MIA for the next couple of weeks, you now know where I will be heading!

Wordless Wednesday-Matt’s Family

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Sheila

Opening gifts is always fun!

From Left to Right Matt (youngest), Shirley, Matt’s Dad, Keith (oldest brother) Dave (orange shirt) Deanna (the oldest)

Five Things Friday- Shopping

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Sheila

One of the things that I consider a real special treat/requirement when visiting Michigan is a trip to “Bronner’s”. This year, I was able to add several new pieces including a house to my snow village. I can’t wait to get home to add these pieces to the ones that I already have in place.

Matt choice one store to visit on Black Friday- it was a local sporting store called “Dunhams”. He purchased 3 Michigan State t-shirts and a pair of work boots for $48!

I am planning on adding a second tree to the house this year and decided it will be a “Disney” themed tree. I have slowly been collecting Disney ornaments over the years and purchased several new items including a tree topper today at the Disney Store outlet. If time permits, I am also going to check on line for any other awesome deals.

Zach is growing again, this time all his shirts are too short. I have purchased a couple of new shirts for him and a sweater to wear at Christmas, but am planning to switch out all his 4T shirt for the new 5T ones that I have been collecting over the past couple of months.

I have spent the most time ever shopping for clothes for myself this trip. I am excited to be able to purchase things several sizes smaller but also a little afraid that if I am not careful I will quickly outgrow these items. I guess this is motivation for me to keep working out on a regular basis.

Thanksgiving Trip Part #1

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Sheila

After our last trip to Michigan, that you read about here, I will be the first to admit that I was not at all excited to plan or start out on a second this year. But I am very pleased to say that we have enjoyed this trip. We did have several bit of excitement on the trip up. The first of which was totally my fault, or I should say my lack of ability to back a vehicle. After checking gas prices, we stopped in Virginia to fill up. I did not check behind me as I had to quickly move the van to a different gas pump and managed to back into a very large green pole with two warning signs on it. The good news is that the only damage was to the brake light that never worked right any way but now will need to be replaced for a third time this year. The only excited on the OHIO turnpike came at the end when I tried to hand over a Canadian quarter, I am still trying to figure out where I got one to start with? The trip itself lasted about 15 hours which was not bad considering we stopped every two hours or so.

We spent Wednesday shopping, at Bronner’s and Birch Run so at least I enjoyed the day. I have been able to find some awesome deals that I may share in a separate post later. Thursday was spent playing in the hotel pool and with family, just the way it should be!

Menu Planning and Other Random Thoughts?

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Sheila

It has been a very long time since I talked/shared an actually menu plan. I can definitely say that we try to complete menu planning at least once a week. This school year planning has fallen on Sundays or at least on the weekend. After some trial and error, what works best for our family is to plan not only dinners for the week but to also go ahead and stock up snacks in book bags in addition to getting at least a working list of the girls lunches ready, depending on what is actually on the list, we also try to get several of these lunches made ahead of time.

In addition to the “regular” menu planning that I am talking about above, we also try to have at least an idea for what we are going to do on the weekends as well. I have found that if I don’t think ahead and plan for at least one meal on the weekends, we end up going out to eat. We realize that beginning next Saturday, we will be eating out ALOT! At least one meal on Saturday and Sunday, with at least 2 meals eaten out starting on Tuesday due to travelling. Combine this reality with the idea that I don’t want to leave food in our refrigerator while we are travelling and menu planning was a must this week.

A limitation that has played a huge part in the plan for this week is that I have really been trying to eat from our pantry over the last several months (since September). I can honestly say that we have the least amount of food in our house today then we have had in several years. I have purchased only things we are out of and mainly fresh veggies and fruit, for the past several months. This has helped to reduce the grocery budget to under $600 a month however it is also starting to be a little bit challenging for menu planning. I decided last week not to purchase fresh items this week in addition to the other limitations.

Sunday- Breakfast choice of leftovers (sausage stuffed crescent rolls, French toast or baked oatmeal.
Lunch- cowboy beans and cucumber relish. Beans were a left over from the fridge.
Dinner- Spam (fried) and Mac and cheese deluxe.

Monday-                    Breakfast- egg casserole (Made of Saturday to use up spinach and eggs)
Dinner- Tomato soup for kids, Broccoli and cheese soup for adults.
Tuesday                    Breakfast- choice of cereal, toast or grits
Dinner- Breakfast casserole
Wednesday                Breakfast- leftovers casseroles or choice of cereal, toast or grits.
Dinner- Kids will be eating at church, Matt and I will find either leftovers or I am thinking of making oyster stew for myself.   (Will plan to use leftovers for lunch).
Thursday-                   Breakfast- Eggs and sausage
Dinner- Squash Lasagna
Friday-                        Breakfast -choice of cereal, toast or grits
Dinner- Kielbasa with rice (Matt’s dish).
Saturday-                    Breakfast- French toast- (if enough bread left) or finishing up any other leftovers of breakfast food.
Lunch- Zach is at a birthday party and Girls are going to use Book-it coupons.
Dinner- Mexican rice and fried apples- if any are left to be used. May also look at leftovers and eat up anything that needs to be finished.

The girls lunches have already been planned out and I have 2 days of Lily’s prepared and 3 days of Kendall’s.

Because of our date night next week, I have already planned for both snacks and lunches on Monday. Next Monday night dinner will be Hamburger Helper because we don’t have any left-overs from it.

Sunday, I am planning a baked oatmeal for breakfast. Lunch most likely at my parents and dinner is our night out with McDonald’s for the kids.

As you can tell, nothing fancy is happening but we are continuing to eat very well!

Random Tuesday Thoughts

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Sheila

We survived family photos with 13 people including 7 “kids”. I will post some of the sneak peak that the photographer has posted for Wordless Wednesday tomorrow. So far I have been very pleased with the ones I have seen so I am hoping that we will have lots of awesome pictures to use for Christmas presents and such.
My work schedule has gotten very very lean in November, so far I am enjoying the extra time off because it is allowing me to catch up on things and also prepare for our trip. This week I have 2 half days off in addition to my normal Thursday.
We are planning to leave for Michigan in 13 days, before leaving I have to get a new schedule up for Children’s church and I would like to get my snow village up as well
Matt and I have a huge date night planned to go to “Garth Brooks” concert in Greensboro. This will be our first true date night in over a year, only down side is this is exactly 2 days before we are leaving.
Kendall is one determined child, she has managed to pull her 2 front teeth in the last 6 hours. I guess I should be glad that she waited to after family pictures to accomplish this.
I have finished all my Christmas shopping except for the couple that involve family pictures that are mentioned above. And I already have Christmas cards purchased!
I like to have seven random thoughts in a random thoughts post just because it makes it seem right. Therefore I will plan a huge budget update for Thursday or Friday of this week.

If You Give…

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Sheila

If you give a kid a new playhouse, the playhouse will need a new roof and a coat of paint. And if you put a new roof on the playhouse you need to also put a new roof on the out building that sits beside it.

And while you are looking at paint and roofing supplies, you decided that a quick remodel of the bathroom is needed so you decide to tackle that next, see the pictures. So once you get the bathroom finish and move the toys from the playroom into the playhouse then you must rearrange the playroom.

And since when you are rearranging the playroom, you realize that the love seat now fits and it needs a rug under it, you decide now is the time to replace the living room floor since both these items are from the living ……….and then you realize this all must be finished before family pictures on Sunday. This is the story of my life!

As you can probably imagine we have been working like crazy the last two weeks on these projects. The playhouse needs to be rotated and leveled, which my brother is going to help with. And we are so very close to finishing the living room floor that I will post pictures of both as soon as they are finished!