Gabe

Monday was Gabe's birthday! He turned 8 this year. Like always, I have to say, I can't believe how fast time goes! Just 8 years ago I was living in the Azores and was on my way to the hospital to have my little man. After having him it felt like I would have him as a baby forever, but now here he is, 8 years old and growing too fast. For his first birthday he got one of those little toddler activity tables, something safe and colorful unlike his bow and arrow that he got this year. :) I'm so proud of the boy he has turned out to be. He is so friendly and kind and giving. He is always ready to dish out compliments that he sincerely means. He loves to help me out and to be a blessing to others. I will have to say, he is all boy. Thankfully! He has always loved bow and arrows. Of course we've always gotten him the toy ones but they always break. He has even attempted at making his own, which lasts a couple days then breaks. So Jeff and I decided to get him a nice one. He was elated to find his bow and arrow on Monday. Jeff hid it from him and made him look; it was just too big to wrap. Sadly we still have not had time to shoot it but he has had a great attitude about that. For his birthday this year he wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. We took a couple of his friends and had a great time. He asked for a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and chocolate chip mint icecream. Sadly I messed up the cake when icing it, but he had a great attitude and decorated it for me to hide the mistakes! It still tasted great and we are already down to the last slice! I'm looking forward to another year with my little man. I can't wait to see who he will be at age 9! Love you Gabe!

Catch Up

So like most people on my blog list, I have not been in the mood to blog. But, I'm making myself do it since I have a little bit of time this afternoon. We've been doing school for a couple of months now. The kids are doing great. I've recently started babysitting a little boy who is 16 months old and a little girl who is two. Its nice to have some extra cash. The boys have been playing football this fall. We are ready for it to end so we can begin tae kwon do. (I know I didn't spell that right but I don't care) :) Both of their teams are doing great. Josiah is the kicker for his team, Gabe has played in many positions on offense and defense. I don't think they will play next year though. They both want to go back to soccer. I've been so busy with school, football, church and babysitting that I have not been couponing which totally bums me out. I hope to get back to that. I am planning on trying out a couple of my pinterest recipes this week. I did one last month and it turned out yummy. It was the honey garlic chicken in the crockpot. This time I am trying the cupcake tacos, pizza bites and the bite size caramel apples. Other than that I want to do some more fall decorating. I saw someone in my neighbor hood cut off the top of a pumpkin and put some mums in it. It was so cute! Gotta do that for my front porch. Well, other than that, nothing big going on here. Next month we are going on vacation to Missouri, which I'm so excited about. Maybe I'll fit in a blog next month as well. :)

1st Day of School

Today Josiah, Gaber and even Tara started school. Josiah is in 5th, Gaber is in 2nd and will be in 3rd in a month or so and Tara is doing pre-k. It went very well for a first day. I gave in and let the boys sleep in. I told them that they would have to get up at 8:30, which they think is so early, but since we were out late last night with some friends I let them sleep in one more time. Even Tara slept in for me. I got up at 8 and had an hour to myself to do my devos, eat breakfast and watch a little tv. Today was Tara's first real time to sit down at the desk and do school. She did numbers, shapes and letters. We've been working on this in the past but I let her know that now she is actually doing school and she was SO EXCITED! She did a great job too, I hope she stays this motivated for the next 13 to 17 years! The boys weren't as excited. They did handwriting this morning then this afternoon they did their regular classes. Gaber got threw 2 paces and asked if he could do the 3rd tomorrow. Uh, NO! Reality shock kid, WE HAVE STARTED! :) Today I went to my first parents meeting in the homeschool group I joined. I'm very excited about all the programs they have going on this year that the boys can participate in. There will be fall, Christmas, and valentine parties. Skating and bowling parties. There is a boy's club, science fairs, spelling bees, geography bees, everything that public schools offer. And actually our spelling bee kids compete against the public school kids for a chance to go to state. Pretty awesome. I'm hoping to meet some great ladies and make some new friends threw this and I hope the boys will make some friends as well. Tomorrow the boys are joining football. Jeff is very excited about this, much more than when they played soccer. So, it looks like we will have a busy year with school, the homeschool group and football, plus church. :) Looking forward to a great year! Pray for me though, I have a lot on my plate! What have I gotten myself into!? (j/k)

Camp

Jeff and I took the teens from our church to senior camp last week in southern Georgia. The camp name is Venture of Faith. We had a great week and great teens to work with. We are truly blessed to have the teens we have! They are so much fun and accepting of others who are new to our group. That has always been a thing Jeff stresses on them, to accept others no matter their differences. The preaching this week was awesome, the singing was awesome, the activities were awesome and the food was awesome. :) Awesome. We had two in our group get saved and two others surrender their lives to God. Very awesome! :) Here are some pics... After the pose where Jeff is being held by all the guys, Jeff got thrown in my one of the teens. All the other teens ran away! So, Jeff and Joe went in the lake...and they've found alligators in this lake in the past, maybe they'll find Jeff's sunglasses in there someday.

My Garden

Here are some pictures of my garden. I have zucchini, green peppers, tomatoes, grape tomatoes, corn, carrots, strawberries, cantaloupe, and watermelon growing. Some are doing better than others, but I'm just excited to see something happening being this is my first year. :) My two zucchini plants. One is doing great, the other...well look how tiny! Not sure what I did wrong. Tomatoes! A little green pepper! grape tomatoes! cantaloupe Oh and I have an apple tree, but not sure if they are crab apples.

Coupons!

Thanks to my sister-in-law, Nicole, I have been couponing for 2 or 3 months now and I will have to same I am addicted. It took me a while to get the hang of it and I did almost quit. Let me tell you, I am so glad I did not give up. I have a pantry full of food that I paid less than 1/2 price for and sometimes almost nothing! I'm not one of the extreme couponers that pay 2 bucks for 900$ worth of groceries, although that sounds awesome. I am just finding great deals on food and cleaning supplies and getting my moneys worth. Today I bought around 60$ worth of food and paid 24$. (That is including buying the kids candy at the checkout with no coupons or deal :P) In the past I've bought over 100$ worth of groceries for 40 bucks. Not bad! I hope to some day be much better at this and come home with more, but for now I am loving what we get and so thankful to Nicole! :) FYI, my now favorite grocery store is Publix! Love their BOGO deals! Yep. :) All of this food was bought with coupons! :) And here is just a cute pic of Tara and I.

Blessings

I haven't been on here for a while and so when I logged on I saw all the new changes and it took me a minute to find how to do a new post. I do need to blog more often because a lot happens here in our house! :) So my title is "Blessings" b/c I wanted to share two new ones the Lord gave us. The first one started months ago when Jeff and I were talking about him teaching CPR classes for some extra money. The thing holding us back was buying the dummies. Earlier this week we found out his work is buying new ones and so Jeff mentioned that he would like the old ones. The next day he brought home six of the dummies, for free! We are hoping he can start teaching two classes a month now. :) Our second blessing happened Wednesday morning. Tuesday night our family went door to door selling candy for the boys to raise money for church camp. Jeff ran into one of our neighbors who owns a pawn shop. He told Jeff to come buy Wednesday and he'd give a donation. So Wednesday morning I took the kids into his shop. He asked how much they had left, they both had about 1/2 a box left. Then he asked how much it cost for them to go to camp. I asked him if he really wanted to know, ya know I didn't want to give him a guilt trip. He said yes so I told him 140 and the box of candy makes them 20 bucks. (Each of my boys had already sold one box). So he said, ok, so you've made 40 dollars each and you still owe 200 for camp, I said yes. So he pulls out his wallet and gives me $200! I was shocked. He told Josiah he was proud of him for doing the talking the previous night and not having his dad do it for him. So, he took both boxes of our candy and we left $200! :) So I had enough to hand in our money for the boxes and an extra 152 dollars for camp for the boys. God is good. :)