A tree that actually smells!

We finally got a Christmas tree that smells like a Christmas tree!  We had an artificial tree for several years.  That was for me.  So much easier to just pull it out and have the lights already on there and we had one that looked pretty good.  Until last year when Hubby informed me that he really preferred real trees because he liked the smell.  I had not known this up to that point so we decided to get a real tree last year.  We went all out--drove an hour to a Christmas tree farm, played on the toys, cut the tree down ourselves, the whole shebang.  Only to get it home and realize that it had no smell to it whatsoever.  Nothing!  We spent $90 on that stupid thing, and that doesn't include the gas to and from. 

That is not the case this year!  I am sitting in front of our gorgeous tree and enjoying the smell of it permeating the entire house.  This thing is strong!  And I have to admit I'm loving it!  The best part?  We drove maybe 3 miles to pick it up and paid $40 for it.  And it is just as pretty, if not more, so than our tree last year! 

No decorations yet--we got home too late.  Tomorrow!

 I also have the rest of my Christmas decorations up.  Usually I don't have everything up this early.  In fact, I have a little light that you can count down how many days until Christmas and I didn't realize before today that it went above 25 days.  But since Baby Girls #1 and #2 are going to the grandparents next week I wanted to get everything up before they left so they could enjoy it for a little while.  And they enjoyed being able to help me set everything up.  And let's be honest, it is so much easier to get everything out without a 2 year old wanting to help. 

They're a little hard to see, but I love snowmen!  I have a lot of them, but I always want more!

I seriously love these Hallmark things that sing!  I only have two, mainly to help Hubby's sanity.

My attempt to keep the more breakable items out of reach of Baby Girl #4.  I'll let you know how that goes!

You can't see it, but these are right next to Hubby's homework table.  It's because he loves them sooooo much!

 That last picture is a singing village of Disney characters.  My grandparents put them up for so many years in their home at Christmas time.  My Grandpa took a lot of time to get them situated just right on their organ.  I remember as a kid just sitting and watching them for the longest time.  About 5 years ago when they were downsizing Grandma asked me if I wanted it.  I said yes, not really thinking at the time that I would use it that much.  But I've put it up every year and it makes me smile every time I see it because it makes me think of Grandpa and Grandma's house.  And I love to watch my girls sitting in front of it listening to the songs, just like I used to.  And I remember how big Grandma smiled when I told her how much my daughters loved it.  I like having a piece of her in my home like that.  

A family of 4

We are back from our trip for Thanksgiving.  We went up to one of my brothers' homes, which is about half way between us and my parent's place.  All my siblings except for one were there and only one sister-in-law wasn't able to come.  My parents were both there as well as my Grandpa.

I have actually been really looking forward to being together again.  I saw everyone at my Grandma's funeral, but I was ready for us to be together to have some fun.  But I was also dreading it a little bit, just because I thought it would be hard to see Grandpa there without Grandma.

But it was actually ok.  I thought about Grandma a lot, but didn't have a lot of time to spend missing her.  We ate a lot, played a lot of games, the girls got to ride the four wheelers, and just generally enjoyed being together.  We played 9 holes of Frisbee golf, and that was actually a lot of fun.  It was the first time I've ever played and I think we'll be doing it again! 

I, of course, forgot to take pictures.  I'm really bad about that.  So no pictures to show all the fun we had.  You'll have to take my word for it! 

My parents took Baby Girls #3 & 4 back home with them for two weeks.  #3 could have cared less.  She kept telling us, "See you in two weeks!"  I'm sure she'll be ready to come home, but she was so excited to be able to go to Grammy and Pappy's for a while without the older sisters.  #4 wasn't quite as sure about it, but I have no doubt that she'll love the time she spends there too.

It's only been about a day that we haven't had them, but I do miss them a little.  I'm not going to lie--the quiet and the fact that the older two are almost completely self-sufficient has been really nice.  Hubby and I are looking forward to getting to do some things with #1 and #2 that we normally couldn't with the younger girls.  But our family just isn't complete with only four of us.

We'll go back to my brother's house in two weeks and switch out the girls.  Then the older two get to go to the grandparents and we'll have the younger two here.  I'm not so sure I'm looking forward to going back to having just two little ones, but oh well.  It won't be forever!

In the meantime, the older girls are going to help me decorate for Christmas, we're going to go get a tree this weekend, going to a movie and Hubby and I are going on a date.  And that is just this week--we'll have to see what next week holds!

Through the Eyes of a Child

Today as we were driving to church we saw one of our neighbors walking.  Baby Girl #2 said, "Look, there's the nice lady walking!"  When she said that all the other girls knew who she was talking about.  The "nice lady" is a Muslim.  Full head covering and long sleeved, floor length dress.  I told Bryan I was glad that when they looked at her all they saw was someone who stopped to talk to them if they were outside and who asked them about themselves, not what she was wearing or what she might believe.  I love that at 10, 8 and 5 they are still innocent enough to take a person at face value, without having any prejudices, good or bad. 

Of course, that can also backfire.  Like the time we were in a store after living here less than three weeks and Baby Girl #2 loudly exclaims, "Mommy, we're the only white people in here."  Still spoken in complete innocence, but for some reason it didn't warm my heart quite as much as the nice lady comment!  :-S

Family Fun

Fridays and Saturdays are Hubby's days off.  After taking time off for the memorial service and camping and grandparents visit my plan was to go ahead and do school on Fridays.  My original plan was to take Fridays off for the entire year.  But because of the extra time off I decided we would bite the bullet and just have school on Fridays until January.  That lasted all of one week.  What kid wants to be doing school when their Daddy is sitting in the living room just waiting for them to come and play with him?  For that matter, what Mom wants to be doing school while Hubby is sitting in the living room doing nothing!  Not us! 

To be fair, if I really thought we had fallen that far behind we would be doing school on Friday.  But after reviewing Baby Girl #1's math and #2's math and english I decided we weren't as far behind as I thought.  In fact, we were a little bit ahead of schedule.

All this to explain that we had a family day on Friday.  Hubby assisted Baby Girl #2 in making blueberry muffins and bacon for breakfast.  She has been begging for about 2 months to be able to make breakfast so she was very happy to be able to get to do it.  I was very happy to be able to sleep in a little and wake up to my favorite breakfast!

After that we loaded everyone up and went to do a little shopping for Hubby.  He has gone for far too long with his slacks falling apart and being sewn quickly back together.  And his shoes that he wears with pretty much every suit were getting holes in the soles.  So I found a store that we having a sale, found a coupon and off we went.  It just so happens that I also found a $75 purse for $5.  Just sayin'!

After a little bit of shopping we surprised the girls with going to see Wreck-it Ralph.  Hubby and I both enjoy going to the movies and the girls love to go as well.  My sister had seen this movie and said it was really good so we decided to treat the girls.  We went to a matinee--lets be honest, our family of six can really only afford to go to matinees!  We found a theater that is a little older and more run down, but their ticket prices are cheaper as are their popcorn prices!  And the staff was pretty nice.  And we loved the movie!  We might actually buy it, and that is really saying something!

After that we came back home, had some dinner, watched another movie for family movie night and then packed the kiddos off to bed.

So what was so exciting about the day that is warranted a blog post?  Not much I guess, other than a note mentioning that we had a nice relaxing day as a family.  No schedules to keep, no running around madly trying to get every last thing done, no bad attitudes or hurt feelings. Just us together, enjoying being together.  I'm learning to count days like that as a reminder that God has given us all kinds of blessings that we normally take for granted.  Good health for all of us, the financial means to treat ourselves to a movie, a spouse that I still like to sit next to in a movie theater, even if we both have kids on our laps.  I hope I never take those kinds of days for granted!

Homemade Crackers--Are They Worth It?

I spent all of yesterday afternoon baking.  And by all afternoon I mean that I started when lunch was over and cleaned up, around one, and had to leave the last pan in the oven as we were walking out the door for church last night at 5:45. 

I wasn't planning on baking.  In fact, I was looking forward to an afternoon with not much to do.  But when we started getting lunch stuff out the girls informed me that there was no more bread in the house.  Which reminded me that I didn't buy much bread last time we were at the store because I had planned on making my own.  So I figured since we had no plans to go anywhere and I had nothing pressing to do, I would bake a couple loaves of bread.

However, once I started thinking about baking I remembered that I had two recipes that I wanted to try for home-made cheez-its and homemade goldfish.  The cheez-its I had already made and we all liked, even Hubby.  Again, I figured I had the time and the ingredients, let's get it all done at once.

I started with the bread.  I've made my own bread before, but I tried a new recipe that didn't involve having to let the dough rise twice before baking.  You make it and let it rise in the loaf pans for about 30 minutes and pop them in the oven.  I like this much better than the two-three hours it was taking with my other recipe.  After I get the dough in the loaf pan I realize that I also need dough for the pizza rolls I am making for dinner on Friday night.  I read somewhere that you can freeze this dough and use it the day of and it still works great.  I figured, why not?  Get it all done now and not have to worry about it on Friday.

Looks good right? And made with whole wheat flour!  Who gets Mother of the Year now?

 Then I get to work on the crackers.  Now, these don't necessarily take that much effort.  They are just time consuming because I have a tiny oven that only holds one baking pan at a time.  Seriously--why are there no homes with full sized ovens anymore?  I could have done 4 pans at once in a full size!  So all told with the crackers I have 10 pans that need to be baked. 

In the middle of this project I start to really question if this is worth my time or not.  I have one friend who I know would tell me that they make cheez-its in a box for a reason.  I have another who would applaud every effort I make to make everything we eat homemade.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  I'm a math person so I decided to figure out actual costs for these crackers.  Just for the cheez-its it ended up that if I were to make these twice a month I would save about $8. 

Part of the cheez-its.  They don't look all that appealing, but they're actually really good.

 My immediate reaction was that there was no way this was worth $8!  But then I remembered that $8 would buy a bag of chicken that would probably get us through two meals.  Or if we were having tacos, which we do about once a week, that $8 would cover the entire meal for us.  Once I realized that I felt pretty proud of myself and decided that the time spent was worth it. 

Until 4 little minions came through and devoured about half of the cheez-its in one snack time.  I'm not kidding--they ate almost half in one fail swoop.  The pride I had in myself quickly diminished into faint annoyance.

Now, I do have to admit, the goldfish (which taste nothing like goldfish, by the way) made a lot more and will last longer.  They also took FOREVER to get them all in and out of the oven.  The blog I read for this recipe actually had the Mom making her own little fish cookie cutter out of a soda can and punching out a million tiny fish.  There is no way!

Triangles are as fancy as I was willing to get!

So my final decision?  Bread is worth making.  The total cost per loaf is way less than a $1 and I know exactly what is in it.  And not really that time consuming.  Homemade crackers on the other hand?  I'm going with friend A and saying, "Those things come in a box for a reason!"

Princess Tea Party

We love princesses around here.  We have jammies, clothing, coloring books, toys, books, utensils and probably more covered with princesses.  The girls love playing princess, although for some reason lately they seem to be wanting to be the servant instead of the princess.  I haven't listened closely enough to understand why.

So this last Saturday we had a princess tea party at our house.  I won't take credit for the idea.  A friend from church who has three daughters herself came up with the idea.  We just happened to have it at our house. 

And because of that, the girls all learned an important lesson.  You may be a princess, but even princesses have to clean house before having guests over!  I told them all that they were just acting like Cinderella before her ball.  They did not appreciate my humor!  Although I do have to say that they all handled the work load pretty well and without complaining.

We started off reading a book about all girls being a Princess because their Father is the King.  Think Fancy Nancy with a God slant.  I thought it was a really cute book, and perfect for the evening.

Then we all had some snacks.  Yummy snacks too, I might add.  We did actually have tea in tea cups for all the girls.  There were enough Moms and Grandmas around to insure that no cups were dropped.  That was pretty much my biggest fear of the evening!

Then we moved on to a craft.  One of the dads had painstakingly cut out cardboard into the shape of an old-school phone receiver.  The girls got to be-dazzle these phones and take them home so they have a phone to talk to God on.  Once again, I thought it was an awesome idea.  And the girls all seemed to really enjoy it.  Some of the older girls thought they were really cool and decorated both sides of their phone.  The end result was really nice. 

That's Baby Girl #4 in the front and Baby Girl #3 just to the left of her

The older girls got a separate table.  I think it was better for their sanity that way!

 Of course, no princess party would be complete without a couple of princes in the house.  Hubby and another dad hung out with each other for the evening, trying to stay as far away from the glitter as possible!

It takes a special kind of Dad to show up to a Princess Tea Party!

 All in all, I think everyone who came had a great time.  My girls sure did.  And it gave my girls a chance to become closer to some friends from church which I was glad for!  We're already talking about the next time we can all get together.  I think it is such a blessing to be able to enjoy being with your church family.  I'm glad we have that here!

All God's beautiful princesses

I have a confession...

I had a little bit of a snit yesterday afternoon.  And evening.  Yep, I'm 30 and still getting into snits.  *Sigh* One day maybe I won't anymore.

See it all started when I sat down at the beginning of the week and realized that we were getting paid on Wednesday and I would be able to go grocery shopping on Thursday.  So I spent several hours going through all the new recipes I had found on Pinterest and got very excited about being able to make all these new dishes and try out the new crock pot that I've only been able to use once.  It was all very exciting!  What can I say, new recipes are fun!  And I was excited to try making my own cheez-it like crackers and home made pretzels...I had a very long list y'all!

So I spent a couple hours printing off all the new recipes and putting them in page protectors and getting them in my nifty new recipe binder.  I worked through a menu plan for the next two weeks, figuring out what meal would work best on which day and how to spread it out so we didn't have chicken for four days in a row.  I also had to figure out what to make for our family night tomorrow night and a princess tea party we're having at our house on Saturday with a bunch of other little girls. 

Then yesterday I actually wrote out the grocery list.  It took a while.  I had all new recipes to get ingredients off of and I was make the list for two weeks worth.  I didn't want to have to go back to the store except for fresh stuff.  I noticed the list was pretty long.  So I decided to go through and estimate what everything was going to cost.  I was over budget.  Way over budget.  Like $150 over budget.  Ridiculous!  So I'm looking at this list that I just spent hours making, a menu that wasn't going to work and all the work I had done printing out recipes that I now couldn't use.  And I got upset. 

A little bit of it was disappointment that  I wouldn't be able to try out all these new recipes.  Some of it was irritation that we're not wealthy enough for me to not have to worry about a grocery budget.  Most of it was pure frustration that I had just wasted several hours of my life for absolutely nothing.  Hubby tried to help by suggesting that I just take out a few meals and replace them with things that wouldn't cost as much.  I tried that on a couple of meals, but that didn't help the overall cost all that much.  Then hubby tried talking a little more firmly with me suggesting that my attitude probably wasn't what it was supposed to be.  Yeah, I took that real well!

So like I said, I had a real nice snit going on. 

This morning hubby woke me up with the information that he had some extra grocery money for me.  Enough to cover everything I really wanted to do with the extra stuff cut out.  I don't know where in our budget he got the extra from.  I don't want to know. I do owe him an apology.  Although, in my defense I had already decided to apologize before I got the extra grocery money.  And maybe next time I'll learn to just add in a few new recipes instead of 13 new ones.  And even better yet, maybe next time I'll remember that I should be thankful for the grocery money we do have instead of pouting like a child. 

So I'm not perfect--God is still working on me daily.  Thank goodness He won't ever give up on me!