Where have I been? Well, I've been busy:) Week before last me and the kidlets were staying at my Dad and Michelle's house for a visit. We had a blast! They have 5 acres and the kids had such a great time having all that room to run around. I also returned home with 2/3 of my boys shaved near bald. Matthew wanted to be "bald" like grampa and asked him to cut his hair, Brandon followed suit. Jake refused. He loves his hair too much! He's the one that uses daddy's mousse and cologne. LOL We also had a campfire and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows for s'mores. Did I mention we had a great time?!
The night we got home Michael spoiled us all by fixing a delicious roast complete with potatoes and carrots and caramel apples for dessert. He even had the house clean and got some "honey-do's" done for me while I was gone. What a great guy!
Since we've been home we've been getting caught up with school and trying to get back into the swing of things.
I also added another quilt project to my table. No pattern, I'm trying to replicate a painting from Ebay as a wallhanging quilt and it has to be done by Christmas! That's occupying my evenings:) I'll post pics as soon as I find my camera. It's been missing since the move. I've been using Hannah's sometimes but mostly just forget to take pictures. Sorry for the photoless blog posts.
Blessings!

Legos and noses don't mix!

So, I forgot to include this story from last week. On Thursday night I noticed that Hailey had some stuff around the edge of her nose. I assumed that it was from her poking her finger up there. She's been doing that lately and thinks she's pretty funny because the kids laugh at her when she does it. (argh...) Anyways, I investigated further and she had a lego stuck up her nose. Thankfully me and Michael were able to get it out quickly and I didn't have to make a trip to the ER. All legos were confiscated and will be returned to their rightful owner in about a year or two....we've had a standing "no lego" rule in our household until Hailey is about 2 1/2 or 3. Somehow one of the boys convinced their uncle Jay to get them for him that weekend we arrived in Wa. and they stayed with him. I really shouldn't have let him keep them since he broke our "rule" but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and told him he could keep them as long as they were kept picked up. After many, many times of reminding him to pick them up and then the nose incident I had to make the decision to take them away....So Michelle and/or Grampa if you read this, please no legos for Christmas. Even if they bat their cute little eyelashes and try to convince you they can have them. Just say no!

The last few days.... Michael got his final grades back for his first set of classes. A 95% and a 97%. Woohoo! Good job Honey!
We had a pretty leisurely weekend. Yesterday we went to the mall so Michael could get a new Seahawks hat. He's back in the land of Hawks....someone help me!
After that we took the kids to the park. Our emergency room kid, Jake, decided to give us a scare. He was hanging on a bar and decided to let go and sortof jump down the the ground. The structure is made of logs by-the-way. Anyways, he sortof let go and scraped his back up pretty good going down. He had a place next to his spine that immediately bubbled up sortof like he had a pea under his skin. It flattened out after about 15 minutes but you could tell there was fluid under the skin. I spent about 2 hours worrying that he had leaked spinal fluid or something and that's what the bubble was, my imagination was getting the best of me. It finally dawned on me that if he had ruptured a disc, we'd KNOW it. We kept ice on for awhile and he's a little bruised but he's fine. Back to his antics:)
We didn't make it to a church today. I'm still aclimating. We've got 2 picked out to try and we're going to make a good effort to go to one next week. I've got phone numbers for Michael to call and "interview" the Pastors. Hopefully one will work out very quickly and we can start going regularly again. First step is to GO though. LOL
We got some housework done today. Played some games. I took Hannah out for a "girls" night. Walgreens (my pick)and Walmart (her pick). We got deals and got to look at "girly" things that we don't usually get to do with the others in tow. I did my final Walgreens run for the month. I almost stayed on budget, which is $35 bi-weekly for household/toiletries. We have quite the stockpile of shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash, bodywash, and Febreze. I've gotten a sneak peek at the next 2 week's ads and I'm going to stock up a little on cleaning supplies and we should be good for awhile and I can hopefully start saving up some of my budget money! I've been able to lower my grocery/household budget even further down to $350 month/$175 bi-weekly. That's pretty much the best I can do though. With one still in diapers and 7 mouths to feed, I think I'm doing good!
Our "first" week of school went good last week. We didn't do Science or History so that we could concentrate on the core subjects but we're starting our full load this week. Neat things ahead!
Blessings!

The last few days....

What we've been up to..This weekend Michael had his finals for his first set of classes. He has yet to get his grades back but he's done really good so far and I have no doubts about his final projects. He's pulled 90's in both classes. Pretty good for someone who hasn't been in school for 12 years huh! I'm so proud of him:)
Me and the kids pretty much hung out. I did our grocery shopping on Friday night and did a Walgreens run on Saturday. I've started losing my hair again. I think it's triggered by stress. Anyways, they were running a sale on their rogaine B1G1 free so I took advantage of it.
I got all my supplies unpacked and ready to go for that wedding gift that I'm working on. I'm actually using a different fabric than I had originally planned. Me and Hannah agreed that the other one was more "her". I'm trying to get started on it this week. Will take pics to let you keep up with my progress:)
This weekend I also started applying online at a store called Fred Meyer. Kindof an "upscale" Walmart. I have yet to finish my application though. Truth be told, I'm a little scared. I've not been to a job interview in 5 years and that was a piece of cake since I was actually referred by a manager to work there since it was a previous employer. I was basically hired before I walked in. Anyways, I'm a little scared but am going to suck it up and get it done this week.
We started back to school yesterday. Schools here start in September so we're not too far behind. We're doing good so far. Introducing Hannah to the new way of doing things. Remember I started school with the boys a couple of months ago when Hannah was at Gram's house? She's liking it so far. I'm encouraged and ready to cruise....
Well, that's about it!
Blessings!

Blah, blah, blog....

This weekend Michael got my new bookcase put together. Now, I need to unpack all our school stuff so we can get started. That is my big project for tomorrow. I was supposed to do it today but got sidetracked unpacking other things and a sick kid. Matthew was running a fever. Hannah's not feeling well tonight. I hope it isn't ::too:: yucky and passes quickly!
The appliance man came today and fixed our dryer. When we moved in the dryer was taking 4 hours to dry a load of clothes. I do about 2-3 loads a day and I couldn't handle that! Turns out there was a bird that had nested in the pipe from the dryer to the outside. It was completely cloggged with lint and the bird's nest. It's fixed now and working great:)
I'm back into my groove of cooking regularly again. Made a spin off of a recipe that I got from one of Crystal's ebooks. The original recipe is called "Ritzy Chicken" since it uses Ritz type crackers in it. Mine is now called "Chicken Crock-pot Pie". It's sortof like a chicken pot pie but much tastier and not a pie. LOL. And of course it's made in the crockpot. I served it with mashed potatoes. Most everyone liked it. Tomorrow is homemade chicken noodle soup w/homemade bread.
I've got a wallhanging quilt that I need to get started on here soon. It's for a girl in our church in Phx. She's getting married in January. Shhh. Almerry don't tell! Almerry's designing and sewing her dress. Gotta' brag on ya' girl! I'm going to post pics on here after I get started. She doesn't read the blog. It's my favorite thing to give for a wedding gift though. Personalized with names and wedding date. So pretty:)One of these days I'll get around to doing one for ME.
I've been looking online and in the newspaper for a job. It's so hard when you can only work nights. We'll see what God provides:)
Well, that's the extent of my exciting life!
Blessings!

I don't have anything great to post. The buyout fell through so we're headed to Spokane. I'm gonna leave it at that. There's a whole lot I wanna say. But, I'll spare you all the details of my inner rantings and ravings and questions and doubts and fears. And I'll keep trying to convince myself that this is "all for the best" and that "we'll be ok".....simple arithmetic says that we won't but we serve a God that "is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think..." Eph 3:20
So I'm off to clean the bathroom instead of curling up in a corner and sucking my thumb like I feel like doing:)
That was a joke. I don't really suck my thumb. Well, not very often. Again, that was joke. REALLY!

Quick weekend recap

We've been very busy this weekend so I'm going to do a quick update. I'll post more tomorrow or Tuesday.

Friday we drove down and dropped Jake off with my Gram. He's staying a week with Hannah there and then next week we're swapping them out with the other boys so they can stay a week. It's so quiet around here with only 3 kids. I asked Michael, "Remember when we were overwhelmed with 3 kids. Now 3 seems like a vacation!" LOL

Yesterday was spent running around doing our shopping.

I spent a total of about $170 on our grocery/household items. Did the Walgreens "diaper deal" 5 times so I have diapers for Hailey for the next 7 months or so:) The register rewards from those were $25 which I spent on some snacks, cleaning supplies, diaper wipes, toothbrushes, etc. Totally scored on that deal and the cashiers were funny to watch when they saw the total of $5.28 for 3 jumbo packs of diapers. Then they were shocked to see that $5 register reward print out with the receipt. It was totally cool!

I even kindof got Michael into it. I teased him that I was turning him into a "coupon queen" LOL.

Today was spent packing things and cleaning out the garage so that we have a place to put things. We're downsizing considerably so we've got the "garage sale" pile, "Goodwill" pile, "garbage" pile, and the "keep" pile. Boy, we've got our work cut out for us! I'm tired thinking about it all....

We also found 2 apartments that we think will work out for us. This is a HUGE monkey off our back! Spokane has quite the "sex offender" population and we were having a hard time finding any apartments that didn't have at least a couple within 1/2 mile radius. I know we can't get away from those things, but I also don't want to knowingly move in where we know someone like that lives. I think that would be irresponsible of us as parents. So, God answered our prayer and we found 2 great ones today and I have peace choosing either one.

We also hit K-Mart tonight because they had some GREAT deals on clothes for the kids and we got the 3 olders MP3 players for Christmas that were on sale for $23. That will be their "big" gift this year and they won't take up much room and they were CHEAP. Then we took the boys and Hailey to the park on the way home. It was fun to just take time to PLAY with the kids and forget all the adult stuff that is occupying our minds.



K, better go!




P.S. Michael got a 100% on his first college assignment! I'm so proud of him for starting school.