happy birthday to finn

.

Happy Birthday to our man!

At this age you:

are even sweeter than you look.
are really into your mommy and planning to stay this way.
are very verbal (momma, dadda, nonna, go, no, and most importantly "gush").
lay your head on our shoulder before bedtime and pat our back slowly.
don't even PLAY about your food intake, in addition to your distaste in people, or the dog, eating around you with no intention of sharing.
are a biter.
crawl back and forth in the tub the entire bath time.
love to look out the window.
scream in torture over diaper changes.
have close to no entries in your baby book.
also go by "tote totes man", "pork chop", "biscuit", "buddy", etc.
love to make us laugh.
have infamous hair.

throw yourself to the floor (usually backwards) if ticked off.
and

were, by miles and miles, the best thing that happened to us in 2008.
This family needed YOU.

lucy has had to warm up to you quite a bit this year. and i think you guys are almost there.




























olive has been overwhelmed with how she feels about you from day one

















you always seem nervous that you are going to be stepped on and don't like to be put down on the floor much. we couldn't imagine being you.












what a blessing you are every day. happy birthday, son!

i don't want to be anything other than what i been trying to be lately

sometimes i like to pretend that i'm a part time working mom. most of the time actually. before i had children,
i NEVER wanted to be working. not even a little bit.

i was convinced that it would be nothing but blissful to have nothing to do all day, but nurture my household. but as i get older i have learned to separate the me that i thought i was going to be from the me that God designed. truth is...i admire moms that find total satisfaction in that. that is the kind of mom that my mother is. and i think part of me thought that i would just automatically morph into her. not so though. here i am. still identifying with my 8 year old weird self at times. some things don't change. and thankfully some things do.

and technically i guess i am part-time. two days a week is hard to complain about. just enough to get focused on something entirely different from my norm, and of worth for a bit and yet still doing the at home gig for everybody most of the time. but...... my responsibilities there run thick. i am responsible for much and when push comes to shove, that place needs me as if it were a newborn child at times. and i have to stop everything in my life for it. hence, our summer and partial fall. as tends to be with anything significant, there are many details i could give. but i'm just not sure where to start.


in short, we were required to be nationally accredited, an extremely expensive and intensive process that required me and mi ladies to drop everything to make happen. i will not get into how hard we rocked the plizzy. just know that the hizzy was rizzied while one of us was incubating a life and while four other little ones learned to rely on their daddies in ways that bang bang shrimp from bonefish grille cannot thank one daddy enough for.








but oh, is this all worth it, dear fam? will you remember this year, beautiful children?



















but now we are home together. catching up. i'm learning that somewhere between june and september, these girls became gavin degraw groupies and there isn't any turning back.




i'm very close to "losing" this chick fil-a kids meal cd goodness, but not sure i can break their little hearts like that. could you?

finn's on the move

my baby lad is crawling now.
isn't he special?

he just puts up with so much! one sister is happy for him and celebrates by slapping and punching him and the other sister could not care enough to pull up her panties for the event. but like olive says every day to no one in particular, "we just love this boy." and well, we just do.

realizations 1-10

sometimes things weren't meant to be pretty. but they just are. and you can't help but notice.










some people are just cute when they are worried.





















some things are so sweet that you wish you could just keep it that way forever.














some moments make you glad that you live with a camera around your neck.





















some outfits are worth sweating for. but only when you look this good in them. (our friend, will)



















sometimes you realize your babies are growing up. that things are changing. and you feel both happy and sad about that.


















some conversations you feel privileged to overhear.

olive: lucy it is not very loving of you not to split that m&m with me.

lucy: oh. well, no.

olive: lucy, do you love me more than you love you? because i am your sister and that is what sisters do with all their hearts.

lucy: oh. (thinking) ollo, i split with you?

olive: yes

lucy: maybe next time i will. tomorrow i love you.











sometimes you realize how blessed you have been to never have had to miss your babies full time.















sometimes you realize how much you love your quirky, little town.















and sometimes it's best not to ask someone to smile for a picture.

sisters gotta hug

4 and 2 year old sisterhood is all about....


being "in the know" if the other has found something noteworthy like a fascinating garbage truck to stalk until it is 100% out of site.

knowing how to get the biggest, longest, loudest laughs out of eachother.

finding any reason in the ding dang world to fight. topping the charts lately is who will sit on my lap and who gets to press buttons for ANYTHING. like the microwave, the tv, the elevator...

or conversations that start things like this one recently:

olive: look mommy that's a chicken
lucy: that's NOT a chicken. that's a pee-pee.
olive: no it is not a pee-pee. it's a CHIIIIIIIIIICKEN!!

make sense? exactly.


and finn has added a whole other set of things to dispute over . like who will shut his door after he's been put down for a nap, who will then open that door when he's back up again. and he takes like 3 naps a day so this gets real old, real quick.

and who gets to feed him?

lucy won this round.






















sometimes they take turns nicely. finn doesn't care a bit. as long as you keep the spoon to mouth pace up, he's happy.









scaring their mommy half to death.
since finn's arrival 8 months ago i have been scared at least once a week by baby dolls in odd places. here's the real finn. enjoying his porridge like a little bear.


and here is what i thought was finn in my peripheral vision for a split, horrifying second on the way to the bathroom the other day.

those girls! and other times fake finn is lying mangled in a corner or is strapped into the baby swing on the swingset in the pouring rain. everytime causing me mini milisecond meltdowns until i have come to my senses and remember that fake baby finn is indeed not finn, my sweet biscuit. finn is napping safely in his crib. no one forgot him in the backyard during a thunderstorm. lately fake finn is the baby above, but there has been a fake finn his whole life because my girls have dolls that come in all sizes that finn at one point or another has passed as. i'm getting used to it finally.


loving to do the same odd things. one of their very favorite things to do currently is to ask eachother to hit their baby doll and then they come to their babies rescue with lots of "oh, honeys", hugs and kisses.




lucy is most certainly wiping her baby bee here and olive definitely has two different socks on that aren't even close.










joining forces for a common goal.
dear, nonnie. we want to come to your house because we think you are pretty. - that's what i was told this letter said. right now we are going through a major 100yearoldhousedust filled, displacing kitchen renovation. we have been over to my parents house almost constantly. now that it is the weekend and the work has halted till monday we are home trying to manage in our house. every corner has a pile of dishes or pots and pans. it's hard for robbie and i. we find lots of reasons to argue when there is no sense of order. but it will be so very worth it in the end and really is a dream come true. but all that to say that the girls, today, are having major nonni withdrawal.













i think lucy thought we had moved in and is taking it the hardest.

all the kids love this swing on my parents deck.











truthfully there has been no greater joy for me as a mom than to watch my kids develop their relationships with eachother. the people watcher in me finds it fascinating. i love that lucy has adopted olive's passion for all things medical. and that lucy totally buys that anna, (i found out that her full name is annabell) exists. and i love that sometimes the only one that can translate for lucy is her "ollo". "she's crying because she wants you to blow her a kiss and a hug" oh ok as i'm trying to figure out how to blow lucy a hug.

and you know what else is just so much fun to watch? the differences in them. i feel like i can see who olive is going to be because lucy's personality makes olive's pop out and become obvious and vice a versa. this picture is a microcosm of their differences.

lucy makes a gigantic mess of either herself or of whatever space she is in EVERYDAY. and that's the biggest understatement of my blog, folks. this yogurt on her arm is small potatoes to the norm for her. she almost always has butter in her hair, something foreign in her nose, magic marker in her ears, a ring o' dirt in her neck crease and in her fingernails, ketchup smeared clothes halfway hanging off her body, and face down licking something purple and unidentifiable off the bathroom floor.

olive is exactly opposite of everything above. she hates to be dirty or wet in the least bit. in the picture above she is fussing over something imaginary on her arm. she carries wipes in her purse just in case. she has a panic attack if she cannot brush her teeth before bed. she changes her hair style 3 times a day.

oh these girls are crazy, but they are mine.

and i love me some them.

thank you for humoring me, part two

ok, so i've had a lot of questions in my comments, on facebook, via telephone and email about my last post. maybe you all were just being kind. but just in case you weren't i don't want to leave you hanging in your VERY uncool quest you are joining me in. i honestly hope you find some success in this and that it helps you fund your families' real heart's desire. so i'm going to answer some questions on the methods that i use to get this beast under control.

can i just also say how relieved i am to know that i am not the only one this ridunkulous!

life is full in a wonderful way
apart from my not so part-time job, our church, our friendships, our kitchen renovation and just all those other little commitments you find yourself in there are...

easter eggs to be dyed













vegetable, herb, and flower seeds to start

ropes to be jumped

and beautiful baby boys to obsessively photograph









so i'm not going to lie and say that this does not take work or time. it truly is a part time job in itself. developing a method for the work has made it manageable to me. i like order, structure, lists, and plans by the way. it's part of the fabric of me. if you happen to be cut from the same cloth...this is how i handle some of the facets of it all.

planning the attack

i am not sure how anyone reaps the full benefits of couponing without the grocery game. this is a site that you can pay a minimal amount to save you a ton of time and track the stores you want to shop at. each week they give you a color coded list of the week's sales. somehow they even know the sales that are not even advertised in the flyer or on the shelf. i'm not sure why the store does not show all the sales they are doing, but it is true - they do not. on their list, the black items are OK prices (if you must buy them, then do), the blue items are the things that if your household uses them then you should stock up on - meaning buy as many as you have coupons of and room in your house for. blue is what they call a rock bottom price and their research on the item has shown that combined with the coupon, you will most likely not find a better price for the item for at least another 3 months. the green items are those you can get for free. these are rare for grocery stores but often for drug stores you will find green on the list. the list will also tell you what coupon to use and will have the date beside it to show you what week it came in the sunday paper. (some people actually don't cut their coupons and just file them uncut in file folders that are dated with sundays and pull out and cut as needed - which i think is not a bad idea).

* you really can generally trust this list. i have had a rare occasion where they were off completely. but they are so in the know that even when the store shelf price isn't claiming it's on sale, the receipt confirms that it was.

* an example of how a green item works... last week at ingles french's worcestire sauce was on sale for .98. i had 3 coupons for 1.00 off. so i got 3 bottles for free.



where to get coupons?

while there are a lot of ways people go about this, i will just tell you where i get them.
1) the sunday paper is a must. this site can tell you each week what to expect. if you know people that get the sunday paper that don't save their coupons, ask them if they'd mind giving them to you. this will help you start a good stockpile.
2) samples usually come with coupons. check this website often for a list of samples and other freebies. the small sizes are very convenient for traveling.
3) stores have little coupon dispensers that attach to shelves.
4) the internet is such a wonderful resource b/c you can just print what you want. sites like coupons.com lets you print things numerous times. i also try to visit my favorite frugal living blogs once a week where they post links to tons of coupons.

drug stores are the bomb diggity
i can't speak for them all. but i love to shop at rite aid and cvs and here is why. you can get the things that they carry for dirt cheap and many things free if you play there games right. these are the places that have built up my stockpile the most. i had no idea how much we go through these things. i'm not going to re-invent the wheel here so i'll post the links on how these drug store games work.
cvs -
this is a great explanation. my only notes on this link is that i use the grocery game to track this store. another great thing about cvs is that they sell sunday papers all week long until they run out. so if you forget on sunday to get your coupons you can usually find them anyday there.

rite aid -
couldn't find a great explanation on how this works, but this is pretty helpful. i also have the grocery game track this for me to let me know what is a great or free deal here. best thing about rite aid is that you can often times get make up for free.

stockpiling

i did not intend to stockpile at first. it didn't make sense to me to spend money when you didn't need something in the very immediate future. wasn't the point to save money? but i'm a little stubborn and have to learn the hard way. stockpiling allows you to never pay near full price for the things that you use and is THE reason that our expenses have cut in half. another benefit of it is that you are not running to the store because you are out of something which has cut the chaos level in my house tremendously. and it's easy to make impulse buys while you are there to pick up that one thing.

but once i decided that stockpiling was the bees knees i went a little crazy on the deals. so because i personally have trouble knowing when to stop i bought bins for things and stop stocking up on something when it's full. with food items i have no bins, i just stop stocking up after i have 5 (seemed like a good number) of the same thing so that i can make sure things won't go to waste before we can use them. but with other things like toilet paper, shampoo, soap, toothpaste, medicine, and other toiletries i have a bin for each. this works for me.

most of the time that i shop i sweat before i make it to the cashier and sheepishly hand over my wad o' coupons. i feel like i've got "cheap" tattoed to my forehead or something. and then i usually get some worn out, over it, cashier who can't be bothered with my nonsense. if they have trouble with one coupon they'll just toss those babies without even asking me. they huff and puff at me like they've got better things to do. but every now and again i will have a cashier that seems genuiniely though mildly enthusiastic about the savings that i've just gotten. but i have and may never again have an experience like i had the other day at ingles. the lady cashier and the teenage bagboy were MORE excited than i was. i kid you not.

first she asks me for my card and i hand it over.
teenage bag boy asks if i mind if we wait to scan it till the very end, explaining that he loves to see all the money deducted. it's the little things i guess.
um, sure we can and i have like 30 coupons too.
precious teenage bag boy says "sweet"- can we scan those before we do the card?
um, yes and can i adopt you?
wise, precious teenage bag boy then notes that almost everything i've bought is on sale. then after noticing that i'm stocking up on olive oil, yogurt, and some other things, that i'm also saving trips to the store.
is he after my own heart?
wise, precious, unadoptable teenage bag boy then drumrolls before my card is scanned and as the numbers start falling he literally is jumping up and down, hand over his mouth, telling the people in line to come look.
at this point i'm a little embarrassed. but i just saved $75, so only kinda.





and then when i got home to tell robbie and thus prove how much of a score he got by even marrying me, he implies that maybe these folks were making fun of me with this charade and that i may have been the laughing stock of their day. i'm pretty sure he's just jealous though of the soul connection that took place between me and the bagboy that fateful afternoon.










so this all sounds pretty daunting and involved and maybe i'm a cornball, but i find this really fun and a game for sure. i have such a hard time buying anything now if it's not on sale and i don't have a coupon for it (ie: stacking). i know i'm posting this to the uniworld here, but i still feel really secretive about it. like that it ruins my reputation (you know...the really fly one i had going). well i hope i've helped. this has been a very humbling experience revealing all of this.

what i didn't want to tell you, but must

it is with much anxiety that i write this next post. because let's just say you thought i was just a little bit tolerable. get ready to let go of that. i have a major coupon book now and in a major way. think this (scroll down to the video on her coupone binder), but alphabetized, unlabeled, and possibly bigger if you can fathom it.

let me walk you down the path that leads me to here...exposing the thing you wish you didn't know about me. there was an unfortunate event where i was caught on top of the washing machine assessing my stockpile shelf by someone that has known me for quite sometime.



my sister em with ava. ; )




one defensive explanation on top of that washing machine led to another and before i knew it i was baring my soul and presenting my coupon book and all its glory. i will not/can not do that here today. we're just gonna talk about it is'all. i'm just not ready yet. in fact i usually take it to the store with me and look both ways before i expose it in all its trapper keeper loveliness. though if you pretend that you are interested, i'm very easily persuaded to show you.


robbie pretends he's disgusted with all of this, but when he's not running to the store in a poop emergency with only diapers on the list (because we're stockpiled on diapers for at least a month!)....he LOVES it. just the very very quiet kind of way you can love something. you know the kind.



yes, things have changed quite a bit from my last post about toying with this coupon/stockpiling lifestyle. i'm in like flynn with it and there is no turning back. i've been doing this since then and it has proven to be worth my time. for the first 6 months or so i tracked my spending here. the first few months i did not really spend less, which i had heard that may happen when you start stocking up. but after a few months our grocery expenses have literally cut in half. the savings are definitely worth the little time that i have and if savings can be computed to getting paid - then it definitely pays more per hour than my job.

the other day olive asked me if next time we go to the store i could get her some blueberry yogurt. i told her that yes, i could. but then she hesitated....


"...but do you have a coupon for it and will it be on sale?"

it was then that i realized that this was going to be a little part of my legacy with them. you know how there are these things in life that make your mom, your mom?

like with my mom...it's the black licorice, the feasting when you are in her presence, the asian way she answers the phone, the mixing up of (very, VERY) common phrases, the Bible reading on the porch, the "global thinking", and the "this is the truth" talk. love you, mom.

and i have mixed emotions about how this will read to my own children one day. i want to keep my motives in check for why i do what i do. so, kids (if you do read this when you are "of age"), money is NOT everything or anything really unless you are CHANGING peoples lives with it and actually that truth is something that comes to mind when i think about my mom too. the older she gets, the more that she says that. and i am learning that the more you let it go, the more you attach to things that can really fill you up.


so i say, keep an eye on what God has blessed you with and keep checking yourself that your heart is not wrapped around it.






the girls now collect their own coupons. i passed down my original coupon book to them and they beg me for coupons that i won't use. you know you've got a problem when you can't even spare one. i save my expired ones for them. they also cut up random papers and declare them coupons. it's funny to see these glimpses of how they must view me. geesh, i'm awesome.





things i have let go of:

brand specific"ness" or pickiness, if you will. truth is. it don't matter usually. USUALLY. i still need my mitchum deoderant. i apparently sweat mud brown without it. though lately i am branching out to other deoderants that claim "clinical strength". cause that's what it's gonna take. but this can work in reverse too. i used to only buy off brand diapers. but recently had like 5 coupons for $5 off a package of huggies (i got 2 babes in diapers). waited for the sale and got 5 jumbo packs of diapers for $4 a piece. i am cringing at myself and begging me to shut up by the way right now. but this all must come out.

paying anything for toothpaste and paying more than a dollar for shampoo or conditioner: this is only if you do the CVS extra care buck thing. there is always a free deal for toothpaste every couple months. and always coupons for shampoo/conditioner making the dollar rule of thumb possible.

thinking about what i'm going to feed these kids: i don't have to think about what to feed the kids for breakfast and lunch. i buy what i find first at amazing savings (because i really do like feeding my family organic- and that is how we can afford to) and then what i find on sale and matched w/ a coupon. it is virtually decision free. tuna is what we have this week, kids. eat it or survive on your dora the explorer vitamin.



anyway, i'm nothing if not a promoter of things that are working for me. and i'm just popping in to tell you that i have very little spare time (this place helps in the time department and finds the sales that aren't even in the ads)and yet this is something that is worth that time. may i suggest before making some drastic financial decision in this tight economy to try this first? if you happen to be interested ask me and i'll talk your ear off about it sometime.


poor, poor, poor sweet tessa and her unborn daughter. she is my oldest friend that i still have (i think we're going on 17 years?) anyway she has seen me through "my new things" and then some. she made the mistake of asking me about this recently and i emailed her my thesis on it.





thank you, God, that people love me DESPITE

so here it is. that's enough about all that! so please, please come out of the woodworks here and tell me that you secretly do this stuff too. or tell me other nerdy things about you. i can't be alone in my nerdiness.