Snow Day!

We had an answer to our prayer. The boys got some snow to play in. Austin also got the day off from school! Eric had a two hour delay for work....but he did end up having to go in by 10. We were a little disappointed about that. We really wanted him here to enjoy the snow day with us. We are thankful that he at least had a little time with us before he had to go in! I can't stop staring out the window today. The snow has been falling all morning. It's so pretty to watch. It isn't sticking, the temp is too warm for that. It's still nice to watch it falling from the sky. The snow flakes are big and chunky and each one has a different shape to it. It seems the last few times it snowed, it happened at night. Now that we have some daytime snow, we can actually look at the snowflakes! So we are enjoying our blessing, the pretty snow God sent our way!! :) Frequent trips outside to bask in it, followed by cups of hot cocoa to warm us up! That is how we shall be spending our day!

There goes my baby!!

One last picture, just to remember how little Austin once was!!

8 Years in the Blink of an Eye!!

I can't believe my oldest has turned eight today! I just don't comprehend how quickly the time passes us by! I struggle to grasp the moments....they are so fleeting!! We had a special day together as a family!! Austin actually spent the night at a friends house the night before, his very first sleepover in in fact! I was worried he would miss us, but I think it was us parents, that did the missing!! Eric made the comment last night that the house was too quiet without Austin here. I have to agree with him on that!! Even Wes was a bit sad at bedtime. I couldn't figure out why he was so very grumpy at bedtime. When I asked him if he was missing Austin, he began to cry. It made me grateful that he has that closeness to his brother. They may have their moments of getting on each other's last nerve. They have their disagreements, but they still share a special bond!! So we spent a busy day of firsts for Austin on the eve of his birthday. He had his first karate belt test, followed by his first sleepover. It was a hefty dose of reality that my baby is growing up. In spite of my asking him a few years back to be my little guy forever, it's a promise he can't keep!! I'm proud of the person he is growing to be! I'm thankful God has blessed us with such a wonderful son! He is a joy to those around him! I remember the first time I looked into those baby blues of his!! He is God's fine handy work! He is fearfully and wonderfully made!!
To celebrate, we started the day off by letting him open his presents. He got his very first what I would call a real Bible. His other ones are sort the little kid version with simple words and lots of bright pictures. Now he officially has a real bible. It is still a kid friendly bible, but it's the real deal! I hope he will grow to treasure reading it!! He got some other fun gifts on top of that! He seemed to enjoy his gifts and the day. We took him to a movie with his friend Joel, followed by a nice dinner out. We finished the night off with the dessert of his choice, blueberry cobbler!

A Day of Letterboxing

We had a great time on Saturday. We spent the afternoon on a letter boxing adventure. The weather was great!! We started the day with lunch in the park. Then we headed out on the trail to find the secret boxes. It took quite a while to find one of the boxes. It apparently had been buried sort of deep under a pile of leaves. Eric was determined, and after much searching and back tracking....he finally found it. His perseverance paid off! This is such a great family activity, and it's basically free to do with the exception of need a few basic supplies like an ink stamp pad, small pad of paper, rubber stamp that you can even make on your own very easily and cheaply. I sort of haven't gone that far yet. I have so many stamps that we just each pick our favorite to use. If we decide when and where to place a box, I may get that creative and make a stamp of our own. I imagine that Austin would probably be suggesting some sort of Starwars themed type stamp. This is a fun activity that I recommend to anyone who likes to get outdoors!! The only warning is that, depending on the location of some boxes, I have heard you have to be careful, you never know when a snake could be lurking around in a hiding spot. So just keep in mind to always look carefully before you reach in and grab boxes. In our experience, we have never seen a snake, but others have mentioned coming up on snakes in their adventures. We just have to keep in mind we are in a natural habitat, and this is where they live!

Playing around with my photos...

So I have been playing around with my photos. Trying to pick the best ones to frame...and so I wanted to see how they all looked as black and white photos. The best way to do that was to make a slide show. What do you think? Which are your favorites?

Drastic Times Call for Drastic Measures!

Well....these are some tough financial times. Eric will be having to take a mandatory five day furlough between now and May. This will basically equal out to five days of unpaid salary. The state agency he works for has determined this drastic measure will save about 75 jobs and save a lot of money. Then in May they will have to determine again where things stand financially. We are just thankful that he has a job, as there are so many who are out of work. The other wonderful thing about his furlough is they are spreading the deduction over each pay period beginning in January and going through to May. It probably would have been a much harder burden to lose a large chunk of income directly from one pay period. Needless to say, God is good, and all the time, God is good. He always provides for our needs.

This brings us to yet again, thinking of all the ways to cut spending and be frugal. We have eliminated local and long distance calling plan from our land line. This helped save about $30 a month. Then the other night we were watching that show on TLC about the Duggards. It really peaked our interest to learn some of their savvy financial tactics! I mean anyone who has that large a family and lives in a house mortgage free is is obviously someone to gain a lot of wisdom from. I'm not ready to go start buying used shoes at thrift shops......but....I am ready to start making my own laundry detergent!!! And that is just what we did today!! Supposedly the breakdown is about a cost of .77 cents per batch of detergent. It makes about a little over 2 gallons of laundry detergent. We have yet to see how far the batch goes. It seems if you have large loads or heavily soiled clothing you need to use about 1 cup of detergent. On regular loads it should only take about 1/2 cup. I did our first load in the stuff and I have to say it seems to work just fine!! So I am excited!! Just in case you want to check out how to make some of your own detergent....check out this link!!

http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/

I kind of did a variation of my own.....I used baking soda along with about 1/2 cup of borax....and then added some fragrance oil that I had left over from a previous project. So we have some great smelling sweet pea flower detergent!! So that got me to thinking about all the other cleaners I could make myself....the only thing I was actually out of was glass cleaner....and yes I found instructions for how to make some of that.....so that will be in my next post.

And here is a little more motivation to save money and buy fewer things!! http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Merry Christmas!

I'm posting our Christmas card here. I have had some challenges this week with both Wes and myself being sick. I started to run completely behind on getting all my cards out!! So.....I decided this will be the safe way to make sure everyone at least gets to see the card before Christmas. Sometimes life just throws curveballs at ya! We hope everyone has a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year from our home to yours!