Easter Egg Hunt

Saturday morning we had our church's breakfast and Easter Egg hunt. Of course, we all had a lot of fun.

The hunt was outside and they sectioned off parts of the lawn by age group. Each age group went one at a time, that way we could move from part to part and watch everyone instead of running back and forth between kids.


Gage totally lucked out. The age class that he is in has a lot of kids, but only a handful showed up on Saturday so there were TONS of eggs out in his section. He filled his basket twice!

Noah and Avery were in the same section, which was the youngest section and the best one to watch! Noah picked up his first egg and threw it. Then one of his teachers showed him it was candy and he got with the program. Avery picked up a few but mostly just wandered around in the grass.

They all had a great time and we can't wait for another egg hunt this Sunday at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Decorating Help!

One of the projects I'm going to work on during this spring break is painting some dressers for the kids room. I am moving the smaller dresser from the boys room into Avery's room, which involved painting it..since it is a dark blue color. Today we went and bought a plain glossy white color for it. I thoght that was a safe color, we are going to be putting another crib in the room soon and it is white. The closet doors and the door is white, but the walls in our entire house are a soft cream/yellow color...which I really like.

So, I was set on white because it would 1. match the other crib, and 2. be a good color no matter the sex of the new baby. But then I came home and started looking through a Better Homes and Garden 100 ideas for under $100 magazine and I saw this dresser. I really like/LOVE this green color. I think it would look good if the baby was a boy or a girl and it would look fine next to a white and an oak colored crib. (Also would you paint Avery's crib from oak to white? I think that seems like a lot of work?)

If the baby is another girl I plan on using the colors in this quilt to finish the room. It's a quilt Wade's mom made and it has a lot of colors, the green color I like is one of them. I plan on putting some cupcake art on the walls.



If the baby is a boy, I'm not sure what I will do...I planned on doing bugs before we knew what Noah would be, so maybe I will do that. Avery has some lady bug blankets and quilts that are cute that would fit nicely.

I also have to decide what color to paint the new (to us) dresser for the boys room. I'm thinking blue, the same color that their other one is, but maybe a new color would be fun. A sky(ish) but not too babyish color blue would still match the quilts on their beds. A red would match too...I am leaning towards red. I think it would be fun.

Any ideas -suggestions? I really need help when it comes to the decorating department.

Sugar Baby

Friday I was busy making dinner (homemade Panda Express Orange Chicken that was OH so tasty!) and Avery was as usual trying to "help" me in the kitchen. This usually involves emptying out all the bottom drawers and then putting things back in strange places so I will never find them again. I needed some sugar for the recipe so I pulled out the baking drawer, got some sugar, put the lid back on and put it back. Then I continued cooking. A few minutes later I heard a little bit of giggling and looked down to see this:

Avery Ann the Sugar Baby, sure in this picture she looks all clean and innocent, but really, she was a big sticky mess and loved it!

She had figured out how to open the lid even though I had snapped it shut. And she was eating handful after handful of sugar!

After a few minutes I called it good and decided she had had enough. She was SO mad when I took her away and cleaned her - and everything else she had touched. I noticed yesterday she went straight for that cupboard and tried to pull out the slider so she could get to it. Luckily for me she couldn't figure out the slider, but it's just a matter of time. I'm going to have to hide the sugar from this baby girl!

Dragon Slayer Attire

Dragon slayers wear fierce boots. Rain boots to be exact, black, white and hot pink ones. Forgot your Dad's version of boots, or even YOUR OWN boots. You must wear your mom's to be a fierce dragon slayer.

perhaps this will be good black mail for when he is older:)

Baby Poll

I am now 16 1/2 weeks along. YAY! Almost half way considering I've had them all at 38 weeks! As long as I eat often I feel pretty good. I feel like I already look like I'm 26 1/2 weeks along, but last week at my appointment they said I had only gained 2 pounds. Crazy how things re-arrange. I think with at least my first two I tried to start wearing maternity clothes are 12 weeks. I must have been nuts, I was so excited. I'm holding on to my regular pants way longer than I did with the other pregnancies, but even those are going to have to go soon. So sad.

Fun news though - at night, once everyone has gone to bed and I can sit quietly, I can now feel the baby move. I don't think I notice it during the day because I'm too busy. The little one kicked the doppler machine at the appointment last week. Way to go!

I've now added a poll on the sidebar. We take another look at the baby next time I visit, which will be April 17th.

I don't have any hints for you, I've never felt much different with any of them. Gage wants a sister, Noah wants a brother. Wade and I think it would be convenient to have another girl, but don't really care either way.

Thoughts? Take your guess, we are all excited to find out!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

We had a great time celebrating Saint Patrick's Day this year. Gage came down stairs already dressed - and had on a blue shirt, and when I told him that he better go back upstairs and put on a green shirt or a leprechaun might get him he started to cry and ran upstairs. He quickly recovered and joined us downstairs in a green shirt. He kept asking me if leprechauns were real all day....I wonder if he has a new fear!?

Since we couldn't go to play group this week and share our lovely pink eye, (come on, I know EVERYONE loves pink eye and we want to share!) we spent the morning we coloring, cutting out and gluing leprechaun paper bag puppets. Gage was apparently the only one excited about modeling them for my camera.

We then had a surprise lunch..well as much as I can surprise them since all the boys were watching The Princess and the Frog in the living room which is basically in the same room as the kitchen.

It was a stack of rainbow pancakes and a pile of gold (scrambled eggs). Everybody gobbled up their hot cakes and loved the idea! (I would have done it for breakfast but then Eric, the little boy I watch, couldn't be part of the fun.)

I can't wait for the April Fool's dinner, I've got to start planning now!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

30th

I have to admit I am a little sad I can't say I'm in my 20s any longer. I know, 30's are fine and maybe a little dandy, but I am not sure I prepared myself enough for this. There are moments I still don't feel like I'm even an adult. Then I look around and remind my self I am a mother of 3, soon to be 4. And I know I have to be the adult. In fact, one of the things that makes me feel a lot better about turning 30 is that I will have baby #4 before turning 31. This year we also will celebrate our 10 year anniversary. I look back at our wedding pictures and think about how young we look! Crazy!

There are times in my life that I still feel like I am still trying to figure out just who I am. It's been on my mind here and there during the past year. I know I am a daughter of God. I know that I am a wife and a mother. I absolutely love these roles and wouldn't change them. Do I need to be anything else? There are so many talented women out there who have accomplished so much by 30. Who else am I? Am I a writer? a reader? Do I need a paycheck to show my worth? I know a lot of things I am not.

The night of my birthday I was talking to Wade about this and he said, "What do you mean you haven't accomplished anything? You worked hard through school, you are a college graduate, you work more than full time in our home taking care of the kids, look around you and see what you have done!"

Wow. Talk about earning some bonus points. No wonder I married him!!

I think I'll spend my 30's enjoying those top three things I know that I am, A Daughter of God, A Wife and A Mother. If there is a time and a season to enjoy it, it's right now. No one else can fill this role. There is always time to enjoy hobbies and explore talents, but these, these are my priorities. If I've learned nothing else in 30 years, it's that.

~~~

Now, on to the other reason Wade earned bonus points this weekend. Our tax refund came on Friday and Saturday he surprised me with this:

A new KitchenAid mixer! I am so excited! I baked cinnamon rolls, made homemade frosting and 2 loafs of bread in the first 3 days of having it! He found it at Costco, it's a 5 qt mixer, and has a 475 watts, so bread baking I can do! I love the red color! I can't tell who is more excited, me or the kids!

My birthday day was mostly spent cuddling, little Avery Ann was sick and had a few febrile seizures. The nurse practitioner that we see says that if you have a sibling that has these (Noah) then there is a higher percentage that you will have them. Poor girl. She has a double ear infection but has made improvements and is more her self today. My parents made dinner and cake for us on Sunday and then Monday since Avery was too sick to go out Wade got me Chinese take out since that is what I've been craving. Does anyone have any good homemade spring roll recipes?

That's it. We kept it simple. I'm now 30.

more food and budget link ideas...

I like to follow Money Saving Mom. Besides coupons, which I print out occasionally, it has some really good articles and ideas. I just subscribed to their feed in my google reader and only click on their site to read the stories I am really interested in. Sometimes the coupons are for stores I don't have in my area, but I think it's a fantastic resource. I have really enjoyed the 31 Days to a Better Budget Series (click for the link). My favorite has been all the free menu planning downloads.

Today I saw this article, Healthy Eating on a Budget, and I really loved it. I thought I would share the link. (click on the title).

I also am in LOVE with The Food Nanny idea. You can read more about her ideas, books and shows on her website, but basically it's a show on KBYU that features a family that needs help with dinner time. The Food Nanny comes in to save the day with menu planning. It's great! I have my own template that I use for our 2 week menu planning. I've laminated it and have it hanging on my fridge so every 2 weeks I can wipe it off and start over. I do like the idea of The Food Nanny's theme dinners though, it would add a lot of variety to our menu. She has some templates you can download on her site.

It's so much fun finding all these great resources!

Birthday Extravaganza

Gage had one long birthday week celebration!

The Sunday before Gage's big day is his Grandma Christiansen's birthday. It's been five years since we've been able to celebrate this day with her, so we were super excited that they stayed in town (after watching the kids while we were in Vegas) and we could have a double birthday lunch with them.

Monday we celebrated the BIG day. Gage got to take cupcakes to school and take the first bite, something he had been looking forward too all year. He brought home a super cute book where each kid in his class colored him a picture and signed their name. Super cute, he reads it to us every night!

Fast forward to Friday, Grandma and Grandpa Bullard came up to visit and share the day with him. They took him by himself to the MegaBlocks store by our house and let him pick out whatever he wanted! He came home with some super cook new lego sets and magnet toys. Then we headed to McDonalds and the playplace for lunch before school. It was my week(I go every other week) to volunteer in his class so while it had nothing to do with his birthday, he sure felt it was, he loves it when it's my turn to come.

Saturday was even a bigger day than his actual birthday - because that was the day of his party. He had a small group of friends over to celebrate and play with him in the morning. We then shared lunch and cake with them. Our family will starve if we have to live off my ability to make and decorate cakes. I attempted to make a dirt bike cake I saw in FamilyFun magazine, and it while I wasn't too happy with the results, the kids thought it was awesome and ended up fighting over what parts of the cake they got to eat!




He had a great time and loves saying that he is now 6 years old! I can't imagine where the past couple years have gone, but we love our Little Man Gage and what he brings to our family!

What Happens in Vegas...

isn't all that exciting when you are there for work, don't drink, don't gamble and have morning sickness that lasts all day.

But don't me wrong - the chance to hang out all day long in our suite, read a book ,watch mindless television, take naps, take bubble baths (with the door shut and no one knocking on it!), or walk around window shopping and people watching whenever I wanted and never be interrupted by people under 6 was pure bliss!

We got to our hotel on Wednesday at 8:30 in the monring. Yes, you read that right. Wade's parents who watched our kids weren't able to be at our house until Tuesday night, and there were classes Wade wanted to take Wednesday morning so we took a 6am flight from Seattle. Talk about being tired, I had brought a book and hoped to find a good spot to people watch and hang out all day, but luckily they never keep track of time in those crazy casino hotels and they didn't even care that it wasn't check in time. I got to go right up to our room!

We stayed at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay and Wade was able to score us a suite room for the price of a regular room...it had a living room, a bedroom, 2 bathrooms (one the size of the kids room in our house right now!) and 3 television. I never knew which one I should watch! The sq. ft of our room was bigger than our first two apartments!

The first day Wade ran off to his classes and I took a nap and explored the hotel and shops. I read a little. I was going to blog but it cost $14.95 to get internet for 24 hours in the room and $25 to connect to the internet downstairs. I am so cheap. No internet is worth this amount of money. I did have my laptop and was able to work on editing my 2009 Blurb Blog book.

Wenesday night we attended a DMU alumni banquet at The House of Blues. There weren't that many wives there, but it was really fun seeing classmates and friends from Iowa again...and finding out that I don't think anyone really LOVES every aspect of residency.

Each day Wade was gone from about 8-6, but he had 2 hour lunches. It was fun to find places to eat in Vegas. We tried some really yummy places.

This is the view from our room:

The hotel at Mandalay bay:

The second day there I got sick. I was 12 weeks at the time and I knew it would be "iffy" when I decided to go being pregnant. 12 weeks is a toss up week between the "I feel like crap all the time" to "I feel like crap only if I don't eat"time. Now that I'm 14 weeks I feel pretty good most of the time as long as I eat BEFORE I get hungry. This is hard to always do since you don't think of food until you are hungry and even harder to do when you are away from home. I had snacks that I packed but I ate a lot of those our first day. Ordering room service takes time too - and so by the time I got ready in the morning, found a place to eat breakfast and ate it was too late. I spent the second day taking naps. It really wasn't that bad.

The second night we were able to meet up with some friends that live in Vegas that we haven't seen in 5 years! It was fun to see them and then we found out that she had been sick all day too, and that they are expecting #2! We had a great time with them at dinner and playing with their cute little baby girl!

After hanging out with our friends we decided we better take a walk down the strip to see the water show at the Bellagio. I don't really like the strip. But the water show was worth seeing.

We found this cool stair case at one of the hotels we walked through - it's made of geode rocks. Pretty cool!

Wade thought this was great. Pods. (for podiatrist)

The third day I spent some time reading and did a little shopping at some of the shops around our hotel.

The beach at Mandalay Bay. I was so ready to read on the beach my whole trip....but two of the three days we were there were actually cold and rainy! I felt like I was in Washington. The pool was closed, but oh well!

So really - our Vegas trip wasn't really all that exciting to blog about, but it was very relaxing for me. Wade enjoyed the lectures he attended and learned a lot. Hopefully we will get to go again, he heard this conference likes to alternate Vegas as the location every other year and that would work perfect since Wade will attend again as a 3rd year.

grocery follow up

The long awaited grocery budget follow up post. Sorry it took me so long to get this together!

First, I hope no one was offended by my post or took it defensively. That was not my purpose. If you felt like you had to be defensive on what you spend I am sorry I did not mean in anyway for anyone to take it that way. I really just wanted us all to share!

Second, I loved all the good ideas. I hope you all checked the little box when you left a comment so you could get the other comments or have read back through them. I will try to leave some highlights below.

To answer one question regarding what I spend, no groceries are not cheaper in Washington than anywhere else. I think out of all the places I've lived, and I've move a lot, I would have to say Utah had good places to get sales deals, but I think Iowa had good bottom prices (no sales). I spend what I spend because it is what it is, I've $300 a month, I either spend in my budget or it has to go on a credit card and that isn't something I'm willing to do. We have enough debt from school loans.

I also think it can go either way, you can spend a lot and waste a lot eating healthy or unhealthy if you don't pay attention to what you are doing. I recently stocked my kitchen full of easy, convenient and frozen foods for my in-laws who were coming to stay with the kids for 3 days. I spent more on those 3 days than I do for our normal 2 weeks. But I know you can go the other way and spend more than my 2 week budget on organic and healthy food too. It's about balance and finding what works.

I think a lot of people who left comments or emailed me have a system that works for them. I am not going to say coupons are good or bad, but I know what works for me. If they work for you GREAT, if menu planning works for you GREAT, if you work all day and run to the store every night and it works for you GREAT! Isn't it all about what finding out what works for you and your family and trying to improve?

I got a list of some fun websites, most of these are good resources if you like to coupon. I do think couponing can save money if you do it right - only use them when the item is already on sale. And if finding the coupons and doing a little work doesn't stress you out.

Some other great ideas is to of course always keep the basics on hand. That means you might spend a little bit more each week or be-weekly on your food storage but that's okay. Things like rice, beans, flour, sugar. I buy a lot of these items in bulk at Costco. I have also switched to only buying dried beans. I am so excited because in April we are going to have a dried bean class at church - how to use them and good recipes - one girl has a chocolate fudge recipe she makes with beans! I can't wait to try that!

Another suggestion is to make a lot of things homemade. If you have read my blog then you know I haven't bought bread in quite a while. I know this saves my family a lot of money because we go through a lot of sandwiches at lunch time. Plus the boys LOVE making the bread with me. I can sneak in whole wheat when I want. I make my own rolls, pizza dough, bread sticks. It's nice. I got an email from a good friend who does this too and she uses the bread for snack time. She also has a wheat grinder so I know that helps a lot with the price. That's on my "someday" list. I would love it! Granola is fun to make and a good snack option too.

I want to insert my gripe about snacks here. In the past couple months I've almost had enough with the grazers in our house. I now offer snacks at 10 and at 3. I am almost to the point (and yes, actually sometimes I do with certain kids) when I turn on the timer and tell them when the timer goes off the food is gone. I do this with meals too. It's not like I turn the timer on 30 seconds or anything, but it shouldn't take 45 minutes to finish eating one PB&J sandwich for lunch...or your 10 am snack shouldn't last until lunch or else you won't eat your lunch! Sippy cups and Algene bottles full of milk or juice were becoming a problem too until I put a stop to it. Noah is 3 year and can drink from a cup, so why was I giving him a huge Algene bottle full of 3 servings of milk? We all now get normal cups of milk or juice or water at meals and NO sippy cups or Algene bottles unless they have water. Of course, Avery Ann is the exception here.

In almost every book I read it was brought up that it is almost always cheaper to make it yourself - sauces, mixes anything. The girl who can feed her family of 9 on $200 a month does this, things like Rice-a Roni she makes herself - she really does eat healthy stuff for that amount of money, it's amazing! I had some friends at the U of U when we lived in a VERY VERY tight budget and I made every single thing homemade that called me the homemade ketchup queen. Okay, I never have made my own ketchup but it is an idea, and it is very cheap to make things from scratch. The commercial that KFC always runs about how much you spend on making friend chicken at home versus buying at their store always cracks me up. It's not like you buy that big bag of flour and all those spices only to throw them away when you are done with one meal!

I really liked the idea one of my sisters suggested - they try to plan, 2 chicken dinners, 2 beef/pork, 2 vegetarian/fish, and one wild card. She has a family of 6 and one very picky eater. She gets them all involved when they all have to go shopping with her.

Another good idea is to know what is on sale and what isn't on "sale". To shop when things are in season and to can or preserve food when it is in season. If you have case lot sales in your area then take advantage. I don't, and I really miss them! One idea to keep track of sale prices was to:

Get a small set of notecards that are on a ring. Each notecard is used for one item that you frequently get/the brand you like to purchase. You keep the cards in alphabetical order. It is a small set of cards on a ring so you can carry it with you when you go shopping. Then when you see a sale advertised in the paper or while you are in the store you can look at your card and see if it is really a great deal or if the product you usually purchase is a better deal.

Knowing your prices can really help. I try to buy all our milk at Costco. It kills me when I don't have the time to make a trip there and I have to buy it at a closer store because at Costco I can get 2 for the price of one from other stores. I try to only buy certain things at Costco though or else I get out of hand and we end up with lots of things that we don't really need bulk in. For example: flour, sugar, rice, beans, milk, cheese, diapers, wipes, paper towels, toilet paper, dish soap and laundry soap I get there. Sometimes meat. Things I know we will eat or use and will store well.

Websites:

pinchingpennies.com

savvysavingstucson.blogspot.com,

grocerysmarts.com

moneysavingmom.com

centsiblesavings.com/

stretchingabuckblog.com/

My favorite out of these is the moneysavingmom.com site. Right now she is doing a 31 days to a better budget feature. Todays feature in this series is about menu planning and there are some free download worksheets that I love. Click HERE for the link.

Books:

Centsible Meals, by Lorae Bowden - this is the girl who can do it! She feeds her family of 9 for under $200 a month, and trust me, it's not junk - the trick is that she makes everything homemade! This BYU graduate is amazing, she does doesn't use coupons, but instead her meal plan by fillers - potato, pasta, bread, beans, etc. She does use meat, but might cut the meat in half, for example I noticed in her book that on her lasagna night she still put hamburger meat in the meal, but only half and used the pasta to fill everyone up. They eat fresh fruit for every meal, sliced on a plate. They make their own breakfast instead of using box cereal. They don't eat snacks (I don't think I could get away with this, but I do think I can make wiser choices (I have tried to cut out fruit snacks in the past 3 moths and it really makes a difference, they are so expensive and never fill the kids up!) The only negative thing about this book is that I would have loved to have more recipes!

The Everything Meals on a Budget Cookbook, by Linda Larson - this book I got from the library and I loved it, I might have to add it to my library, it is a wonderful resource. The author gives you a book full of recipes that are broken down by how much they cost per serving. They are also at least 300-600 calories per serving, so you know you won't be left hungry just a few hours after your meal. Some of her main points, like a lot of other books I've read are to have a plan, use coupons, use co-ops or other food sources (grow it yourself!), and to plan around the seasons, pay attention to the price per pound or ounce instead of overall price, and to store food, such as canning and or dehydrating. What I really loved about this book is the first 18 pages are text and the remaining 250 are recipes! There is a also a handy price chart in the back that gives you a breakdown of canned or boxed versus homemade! LOVE this!

I love to get Everyday Food from Martha Stewart at the library. I can usually find at least one weeks wroth of menus in this with a grocery list. It's a good resource if I want to try new things or be creative. The April 2009 issue (you can find it in your library archives and check it out) is all about shopping smart,eating well and saving money. It is WONDERFUL! I love that the editor points out that budget is not a dirty word, but something we can all try. It doesn't mean buying cheap ingredients either, sometimes making the whole block of cheese may cause your grocery bill to go up a few dollars but if you use it right it can go a long way. One thing I want to try more that is pointed out in this magazine is going vegetarian at least once a week. It can really help your budge and beans are a great source of protein and so good for you!

Another budget/money saving book I read in January was, Live your Life for Half the Price. It has some really great ideas, not all for groceries, but just for the normal everyday stuff. Very educational, I was highlighting and underlining all over the place!

Some other books I am still looking to get my hands on: The Tight Budget Cookbook and The $5 Dinner Mom

Conclusion:

I will say that I know that 2 week menu planning works for me and our family. I wasn't able to share this before, but now that I've posted the #4 news below, our grocery budget went out the door in January. Late December I knew I was pregnant and that I would be getting sick so I planned 2 weeks and but then I hit me, and I didn't get my big shopping done. Absolutely nothing sounded good and cooking things that didn't sound appealing was not an option. I spent two weeks off track - meaning I would just decide what we were going to eat that day and run to the store if we needed too. I saved all the receipts and looking back and we spent at least double our normal amount.

I think if you are aware of what you are spending and aware of what you are eating then that's great. If you want numbers, think most of us spend about $100- or so a week on groceries. If you have any more ideas - please share! I am always up for improving and learning new techniques.

baby creations...

Yesterday we played around with shrinky dink art. Every one made pretty amazing creations, and had a blast watching them in the oven. Make sure you don't miss the last one!

A Baby Dinosaur

A Baby Seahorse

A Baby Fish and A Baby Car

And A Baby #4. Due to arrive on September 4

two little hands

It now takes Gage two hands to show how old he is.

Happy 6th Birthday Gage!