Category Archives: Christmas

Random Disney Facts

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  • At 7:30 pm, Disney becomes the most tired place on earth! Don’t believe me look around on a bus!
  • On Sunday, we manage to ride every form of transportation offered in the park; ferry, monorail, bus, tram and train.
  • In order for any of my kids to eat an entire kids meal they must have been swimming for the past 2 hours.
  • Art of Animation has the best tasting food and is so easy to maneuver around the cafeteria .
  • The above picture is of Zach meeting Minnie Mouse, he was tired of doing girl things and this is what happens.  On the second attempt, he was embarrassed and still refused to talk to her.
  • Each resort has a different themed tree, ours is white and I think the ugliest.
  • I definitely recommended a “down” day during the trip.  You never realize how tired and busy you will be. Plus when else are you going to blog?
  • I also recommend using a travel agent especially for booking fast pass. Ours have been great and well timed.  We have been able to get all the important to us things done around the fast passes.  I really hope to get to the “Be our Guest” resturant but if not that will be the one thing we miss. I have called reservations 3 times but have to try one last time on Thursday for our best shot.
  • I know the meal plan is expensive but I am really enjoying using it and it also reduces the stress of finding food and drinks, while we are in the parks. It has also reduced the amount of stuff we are carrying around the parks.
  • The mass transportation system is really new and strange to me being from a small town and really this is the only place I have ever used one but it makes things easier and honestly probably saves time as well.
  • The best part of being at Disney this time of year is finding all the cool Christmas ornaments especially what we call “jingle buddies” with small bells attached on the bottom of figures.

Friday 11/20/2015

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  1. In order to have enough time to enjoy our Christmas decoration and not feel so pressure to get things moving when we return from Disney. The plan is to get our tree up and decorated tomorrow. I am scaling way back on decorations  this year with less than 50% coming out of the attic. Christmas is still my favorite time of the year!
  2. Kendall had to sit in time out for the first time EVER because of her behavior at school. I do feel a little bit guilty because we have been crazy busy this week and the added excitement of our Disney trip probably contributed to the problem.
  3. Zach will play his first soccer game EVER on Sunday. I am excited but nervous especially since this league does not have any practices. We just show up and play.
  4. We are planning to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family this year. I do have to bring a couple of dishes and my have to work after our celebration but we still have so much to be thankful for.
  5. Our change in Menu planning appears to be working. I am hoping to not throw away any leftover prior to our trip!

Clothes Shopping

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Last week, when the weather turned cooler very quickly, I realized that I did not have all the clothing that we needed for this fall/ winter.  I did some online shopping over the weekend but still had an index card full of items. I have been very blessed over the past two days to be able to not only purchase all the items on my list but several “wants” as well.  The best news of all, I have spent less than $100 for all!

I contacted a friend at church whose son is the same age as Zach but a size larger in clothes. Last night, I head over to check out both clothes and shoes.  I ended up with enough jeans, shoes and a couple of long sleeve and short sleeve shirts. Except for a rain coat, Zach’s list of clothing was complete!

Today, Matt and I decided to try find not only the girls some dress but also Matt some additional shorts for our Disney Trip. Our first stop was the local Goodwill, we were not so lucky and found only one dress and a bag. We decided to head to Winston, after going to 2 more Goodwill stores, Mega Thrift and the Salvation Army our morning was complete. We purchased 8 dresses for the girls including 2 red velvet dresses for Christmas, 1 shirt for Kendall, 7 pairs of shorts for Matt, 1 swimsuit for Matt and a Buzz Lightyear Rain coat for Zach. Total spent $75.68 or $4.20 each.

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Here are a couple of my favorite dress!

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September Goals

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This summer has been full of fun! I really enjoyed some nice long days at the pool in addition to our week of vacation at the beach. However, I have not been as on top of budgeting as I like to be. Our Disney trip is less than 3 months away, so my goal is to tight up the budget and get up ready to enjoy Disney. Keeping that in mind, I have decided to make September  a “low spend/ no spend.” month. I really want to make September, October and November all low spend/no spend months but I am going to focus on one month at a time! I know that I can make a goal but if I don’t include some action steps in addition to adding accountability then I am going to fails. I am going to list my plans/goals for September, with weekly or biweekly updates as I can.

1. Reduce Grocery spending to $300 for the month. I am going to purchase 80 pounds of chicken from Zaycon and pull out $150 in cash to put in the grocery envelope. Cash for me is harder to over spend so this should keep me on track.

2. When I looked at my September budget, I have 4 categories that are not completely funded for the month so the remaining $400 of the normal grocery budget will be used to completely fund the budget.

3  Plan to purchase both Lily and Amanda birthday cards. This will allow me to direct our gift money for October, November and December to Christmas. I have already decided that Christmas will be smaller than normal after our trip so I am estimating I need $400 to cover gifts for the kids.

4. Pay at least $375 toward our Disney trip to maximize Disney points prior to November. My goal is to pay for the Bibbidi, Bobbidi Boutique with Disney points only. I have already earned enough to cover one of the girls so well on the way. We are expecting Matt to bring in around $350 in new income from his web business, so I only need to find $25 more.

5. Maintain Gas budget at or below $400. Matt has identified several “maintenance/ repairs” that need to be completed on his van. My goal is to wait till the end of the month to complete to make sure we stay I budget.

6. Reduce/Eliminate Eating out for the month of September. Zach’s birthday is Tuesday September 1st so he has already chosen to eat at a local pizza buffet. Other than this meal, no eating out! I will have to be very deliberate with especially Sunday lunches but we have been spending over $300 a month on eating out and that is a huge amount.

I am hoping to have a yard sale of some form or fashion at the end of the month as well. This may help boost our Disney Payments.

Christmas Parties

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This year, I have decided that I am going to make sure I get to the kid’s school events!  So I decided to request the day off work on Friday to attend Kendall’s Party and of course I have no regrets.

On Thursday, I went to Lily’s Christmas party which was building a gingerbread house… my niece is in the same classroom and for this was actually seated at the same table as Lily so it was lots of fun!

The front of the finished gingerbread house
Lily really enjoyed opening gifts from her class!
The side of Lily’s finished gingerbread house!

Kendall’s party was on Friday afternoon and she was sent to 4 different stations. The teacher decided this year that parent would “travel” between stations with their children instead of being assigned on station to organize. I am sure this was one of the highlights of Kendall’s day, one on one attention!

Working hard on the Santa craft
Making sure she didn;t miss any of the BINGO game.
Christmas tree project
Hot chocolate Reindeer
Kendall with both of her teachers!
Finished Christmas tree projet
Snack ended the day with a cute reindeer theme.
B I N G O
This was our first project and needed some instructions , we lost the mouth so I cut on out and after removing the eyes twice, I used a sharpie at home to draw them!
I love this juice box idea!
Each child in the class got a present to open and really love this especially my Kendall!
Playing hot “gingerbread man” in order to pick a present.

Singing

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It is apparent that we all LOVE music!  What is exciting to me is that it would appear that the little guys all three have both an interest in music and some natural talent. I guess I would consider not being tone deaf, a natural talent!  This weekend all three kids participated in a Christmas musical on both Saturday and Sunday night. I plan to post pictures of this tomorrow night. In addition, they also sang as part of our Sunday morning worship service. This is a song that they learn both the words and motions in the last two weeks so as you can tell someone is wrong on a couple of them. I am just glad to see them enjoy singing in public!

The first group is some close up on individual kids.

The next group will give you a better view of the entire group!  I was learning to use our new camera so there are some problems with the flash as you can see but at least I am posting the same week not a month later!