Mother's Day.

I had a nice Mother's day. We went to church that morning and I had my girls by me through the service and heard a wonderful message from Monica our children's pastor at church. After that we went out to lunch with Jeff's parents. Then I took a glorious 2 hour nap with children being super quiet!! Then Jeff took our family out to dinner at Bird Dog BBQ- I LOVE that place, so yummy!! I got some sweet gifts- a new Lady Antebellum CD, some new flip flops, flowers and some K-cups!!! As well as wonderful cards, even one from the baby!! Earlier in the week my mom had given me a gift card for a date night and a new bread pan. I am so blessed. I not only have wonderful children and a husband who celebrate me but also a wonderful mom who has always been a Godly example in my life! Love you Mom!!! Enjoy a few pics from before church that we took.

The girls in their adorable outfits! Jeff's mom made the girls the skirts after I showed her some similar ones and asked if she could, they turned out adorable.

They are getting so big!!

Our little graduate!!

This past Saturday, Sadie had her graduation ceremony from Pre-K, she was so cute through the whole thing!! She was soooo into dancing along with the songs and was super animated..I loved every minute!! We gave her flowers afterwards and she was so proud of having them. I took lots of pictures, so enjoy!!!

All fancy Nancied out for her graduation!

Walking out to start the program.

Singing a song.

Singing, "I wanna be a dog"

Counting by 10's to 100.

Another song, about them growing up.

Getting her diploma from Grammy; my mom.

Singing, "I will follow Him"

She was so into this song, her dress was swishing like crazy!

Opening their graduation gifts.

Sadie with her flowers.

Eating cake.

Her whole Pre-K class.

I didn't notice till I put the pictures on the computer, but she had grabbed his hand.

These girls!!! And notice how much taller Alexis is than my short girl!!

Sadie and Grammy.

These two graduated from Pre-K together a couple years ago- they will be in the 2nd grade this Fall!!

An afternoon at the park...

This past weekend Sadie enjoyed spending Saturday afternoon with daddy at her Pre-K dad's day event. They had a blast playing at the park, playing games, eating ice cream sundae's and spending time together! Enjoy the pictures of their fun afternoon!!

Enjoying the park!!

These two again!!!

Having lots of fun!!

Giving daddy a shave!!

Ice cream time!!

WOW, he is dreamy ;) She is cute too- but has a mouth full of ice cream!!!

Admiring his new handkerchief!

A tea party...

Every year at preschool they have a Mother's Day tea party for the children to attend with their mom in honor of Mother's Day. This year is my last time going after 6 straight years. I went twice with Colby, three times with Hallie and this was my third time with Sadie- a couple of those overlapped with each other- so 2 years I went to two tea parties in the same year. Whew, I'm confused. Anyways, this was my last one since Sadie will be starting Kindergarten come August. (Yes, we are having more kids- but they will not be going to preschool when the time comes as we will homeschool) We always have so much fun at the tea party; we get dressed up, eat lots or treats and drink yummy tea, the kids sing us songs and give us gifts. So.Much.Fun. Here are a few pictures from our fun afternoon. Enjoy!

She made her picture frame. (WOW that bow looks huge!)

Now she is working on making me a bracelet.

Working very hard!

Time for songs.

Such good singers!!

Guess she can't keep her eyes off of him!

What a cutie!!

The happy couple ;-)

They were so funny trying to get sugar cubes for their tea!

All her yummy food!!

My big girl and I!! Three weeks till she's officially a Kindergartener!

Sadie and her BFF Alexis!! 3 years of preschool together!!

When you HAVE to be frugal and a recipe for homemade dishwasher tabs

After finding out that along with my babysitting job ending in 4 weeks- (this is not a bad thing, my commitment time has ended and we are excited not to be tied down by it anymore) my husbands paycheck has gone down because of retirement contributions going up. This is good in the long run, but when living on only a public school teachers income, this sucks. So I am scrambling with what to cut- we have no extras people- no internet, no phone, no cable..we don't go out to eat unless we have a gift card, we shop used and I am super frugal (ok, cheap..im cheap!)

With nothing else in our budget to cut, then its our food budget that will suffer. Our food budget went up a little when we had extra income from babysitting- but it has been slashed again!!! Right now I am at $300 a month for food, household/personal products and medicines. I am hoping I can get it a little lower soon as I stock my pantry. I have been LOVING a few blogs written by wonderful Mormon women about stocking up and saving money. My goal right now is to shop sales on pantry items, to preserve what I can through canning and we are hoping to have a small garden this summer (if we can figure out how to keep the mass amounts of wild bunnies out of our garden), as well as making all my own bread products. We try not to eat too much processed food and I wish we could eat more natural, but with a tight food budget we will do what we can.

So- because of slashing the budget again, I started looking for a recipe to make my own dishwasher tabs. And I found a good one. I already make my own laundry soap- Great recipe here. So I figured why not try one out. I found it on another homemaker type blog called Louise's Country Closet.It took me less than 10 minutes to make them and I was able to make enough to last a month. Two of the ingredients, the Borax and the Washing Soda are main ingredients in my laundry soap recipe so I already had those on hand. If you were to buy those, the epsom salts and the lemon juice (buy this at the $tree) all at once it would cost you $10 and they would give you about 6 months worth of dishwasher tabs if you used one a day. I decided I wanted to store mine in an old coffee can and it works great, I just keep it under the sink near the dishwasher. When putting them in the dishwasher they do not fit in the little container where you would normally put your soap but I used her suggestion and put it on the bottom of my dishwasher and it worked wonderfully!

Bowling Birthday Fun!!!

Colby turned 9 a little over a week ago. It sure doesn't seem like 9 years ago that I became a mommy and my life changed so much! What a blessing he has been to our lives, and continues to be. Since having a party for older boys seemed a little overwhelming, especially after being so sick with this pregnancy...I looked for an indoor option where I wouldn't have to do much. Thankfully we found a neighborhood bowling alley with a birthday package we couldn't pass up. All I had to do was show up with a cake. Done. We invited some good friends and their families to join us and we all had a great time. The kids were able to bowl as much as they wanted for 2 hours, eat lots of pizza and drink lots of pop! Everyone had a great time! Hope you enjoy the pictures!!

Eating his birthday crepes.

The girls.

He really wanted to open some gifts before his party, so he got a Harry Potter book from us and his card from Auntie Berta.

The card was very entertaining!!

His homemade cake- since we had a party not at home, he was ok with a homemade one. Next time we wont get frosting with dye in it though...it turned everyone's mouths blue!

Getting started.

Everyone had so much fun, and were quick to tell each other when it was their turn.

Very dramatic bowler.

She was funny to watch..she bowled right handed and is a lefty...

This girl got a couple strikes!

Miss Hannah even got to bowl!

Nice one Will!!

Everyone waiting for the balls..lol.

Timothy did great too!

Pizza time.

They bowled up an appetite!

Colby and his clown balloon.

Present time!

What is this??

Is this for real??

Oh ya, my own DS.

Thanks for the fun card Will and David..oh and the money for a DS game!!!

Really Grammy??? Socks??

Super fun Lego set!! Thank you Christopher, Timothy, Aaron and Hannah!!

That's a better gift Grammy!!

Harry Potter Lego sets- you ROCK Grammy!!

14 and over- Pulease....he had this together all by himself in two days...

His money loot!!

Cake time!