Sunday, April 25, 2010

Loving CVS

I haven't done a coupon post in a while and today I had my best CVS run ever, so humor me! :)
 My total was $68. After coupons were scanned, it was brought down to $12. I used $12 in ECBs, and got $14 in ECBs back! Basically, I got $68 worth of stuff for a $2 profit! Plus, a bonus was I got a super nice cashier who was just as excited as me that I saved so much. I love CVS! :)

Here's the stash!














My two favorite sites for CVS coupon matchups are Money Saving Mom and Southern Savers. They do a great job every week of mapping out the best CVS deals. Also, they normally have the list ready a day or two before the sale starts, so you can get prepared and go as early as you need to on Sundays if you are afraid of CVS running out of something.

Strawberry Heaven

This recipe is definitely a keeper!! It was inspired by this cake at my favorite baking blog (although mine's not nearly as impressive!!). Use a white cake mix, add in pureed fresh strawberries, and bake. Layer cake and strawberries, brushing each layer with a simple syrup (1 cup sugar & 1 cup water boiled and cooled). Use cool whip for icing, and top with more fresh strawberries. Serve with some vanilla bean ice cream for a little slice of strawberry heaven! Yum, yum!












Saturday, April 24, 2010

Not Exactly What I Had in Mind

Apparently, "Go upstairs and clean your room." really means "Go upstairs and make an even bigger mess." Gotta work on that!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

A Round of Thank Yous!

I know it's a little bit after the fact, but I was trying to wait until I had a total to give you. Thank you to all who supported our last adoption fundraiser by placing an order. We raised close to $450 for our and the Hambrick's adoption! An extra special thank you goes to Shawna Johnson, Lindsey Bullard, Rachel Robbins, and Ada Farmer for putting on the party for us and contributing some of their sale's profit! Finally, a big thank you to Patricia Shipe for hosting the party in her lovely home.

*Also thanks to Jenn for remembering her camera. I hate it when I forget mine! 



Monday, April 19, 2010

Slowly but Surely

We got our biometrics appointment today - May 3 at 8:00 am. I'm so excited to finally have an appointment, I don't even care that I have to get up early enough to be somewhere at 8:00 am! We are slowly but surely getting everything needed for our dossier to be completed and compiled. I'm so ready for this part to be over because the next part will be being matched with a child! I think that will make it seem "officially real."

Sunday, April 18, 2010

40

No, I'm not talking about how many days Noah was in the ark.
No, I'm not talking about how many days it takes to find your purpose.
No, I'm not talking about doing the love dare.
No, I'm not talking about how old I'll be in ten years. (?!)

Give up?

That's exactly how many days it took for Emma Lee to fill up her reading chart! All 168 squares! She has improved so much. She flies through the first and second grade readers as fast as I can get them from the library, and she can give detailed answers to comprehension questions from each book. She is definitely hooked on reading. In fact, she takes a book with her just about everywhere she goes. Good work, Emma Lee!


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Kerri's Fascination

Kerri has finally found her "thing"! While Emma Lee could literally spend hours upon hours happily coloring or reading (today she even took her book outside with her to the swing - be still my heart!!), Kerri enjoys both of these activities but on a limited basis. Up until recently there wasn't much that could hold her attention for a long span of time.

On a side note here - I love playing with the girls, and I love that they play so well together (most of the time), but I also think that an important part of their development is to be able to intently focus on and enjoy a "task" all on their own. Barbara Curtis addresses this issue in her book The Mommy Manual. She talks about when a child finds something that they focus intently on for long periods of time it means "they're building up their ability to concentrate, and that means they'll be better focused, more enthusiastic learners." She also remarks, "If a child is concentrating, [you] can be sure something is being built into him that will help him in the future, though it may be simply the ability to focus and concentrate." Although the child's object of concentration is "...spontaneous and surprising [and] it is not something you can make happen but is something you stumble upon," our job as parents is to "help our children develop concentration by removing distractions and encouraging its growth into a strong and vital current." Anyway, moving on! :)

Kerri's focused fascination is puzzles (coincidentally, this is another one of my loves, and maybe not so coincidentally, it is something that Emma Lee does not really enjoy that much). Kerri puts together puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. She sometimes even chooses to do the same puzzle over and over again. She loves it, and I love that she loves it (even if she won't let me help!). Our largest puzzle we have is 63 pieces, and it doesn't even faze her. I see some shopping for more advanced puzzles in our near future! Here's a little sample of her in action. (Notice another one of her loves - making up random songs and weird noises - she gets that from her daddy!)























Monday, April 12, 2010

Time Flies

I guess it's true - time flies when you're having fun! Sometimes I look at these two and can't believe how big and grown up they are already! Where did my two babies go???

Today




Yesterday

Friday, April 9, 2010

Our New Look

Pretty much all of my haircuts happen as a spur of the moment decision. My typical pattern is get a short haircut, let it grow out because I don't take the time to schedule or go get another cut, suddenly get frustrated and run out for a last minute cut. Well, lately I've decided I was starting to feel like someone from the Addams family---which one was dependent on whether I was having a good hair day or not :)---, and yesterday I couldn't take it anymore, so off I went.

Well, after over a year of me asking Emma Lee to get her hair cut short again, she has just recently decided that she would like that (she refused before because she said she wanted it long like Rapunzel). For whatever reason, her hair stays so much neater and nicer looking when it is short.

I was a very bad mommy and we hurried off without telling Kerri what we were doing. (She wants whatever Emma Lee does, and for some reason I just can't bring myself to cut her hair yet. It most likely has something to do with her spending the first two years of her life completely bald!) We did pick out Kerri a treat and bring it home to lessen her disappointment, so I got off with a little pouting but no tears.

Here is the result












And here is why I can't cut Kerri's yet but love Emma Lee's short - soo cute!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Five!

Andy has been slowly rubbing off on me in various ways ever since I met him. The first was with country music. The most recent . . . running. Running has always been something that I have declared to be on my list of hated things. In times past, I have had to run, but I have never enjoyed it. I'm slow, I don't like to be sweaty, I get bored, and the list goes on. I use running as an exercise tool, but really don't get too much out of it. I do it because I have too. My max has been a couple of miles, although this past week I surprised myself with how far I could run - 4.25 miles! I admit, I had no plans to run that far but was just trying to keep up with a friend and somehow it just happened. It actually got me a little excited thinking that with just a little more effort I could run 5 miles - that just sounds like such an accomplishment. So, yesterday I tried . . . and failed. (To my credit, there were some physical issues that were holding me back.) Today, I was feeling much better and decided to try again. (I'm still not exactly clear on why I've decided to torture myself like this.) Well, I did it! 5 miles - on the treadmill, no less! Talk about boring! (Although I did have Rachael Ray and TLC to keep me company.) I'm still slow (it took me just under an hour), but I did it! I don't know if this little obsession for distance will last, or if I will be content to settle for an occasional five mile run. I do know that I did enjoy pushing myself and the feeling of accomplishment that I got when I was finished. Although I'm pretty sure that I'll never get to the point where I love it as much as Andy, at least now I can relate a little because I'm pretty sure that completing 5 miles classifies me as a runner!

(Photography credit goes to Emma Lee!) :)

Monday, April 5, 2010

Happy Easter

Andy came up with this cute way to teach the girls the five miracles that happened at the cross. It must work, because days later without any review they remembered them all. Hope you all had a happy Easter!


A Week in Review

Whew! What a great week we had! It was a perfect vacation (by my standards - Andy has a completely different idea of what a perfect vacation is but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed himself this week too!) We ended up not having wifi and hardly turned on the tv, instead we did my favorite things - family outings, hanging out and talking with my best friends, staying up late every night to play an assortment of games, and of course the "beachy" things involving sand and water and the Ocean City boardwalk, and then the "Eastery" things like coloring Easter eggs and an Easter egg hunt on the beach. Like I said, "Whew!" :)

Day One
The morning started out with Andy accidentally hitting Emma Lee's loose tooth, causing it to only hang out by a thread. There was a lot of blood and a lot of tears and one scared little girl. She seriously cried almost straight through 3 hours. She wouldn't talk; she wouldn't eat; she was miserable, and so was Mommy! Andy doesn't do teeth things - for some reason he's really freaked out by it, so if anything was going to happen it was up to me. As a kid, I always let my teeth dangle and hold on until they eventually just fell out without any effort at all. I also experienced some of my not-so-patient-siblings having my dad pull out their teeth and vowed that I would never do that to my kids! Because I know how Emma Lee is, I knew that she wasn't going to just forget about it or be happy until it was over. So, I did it. I pulled her tooth. I called her into the bathroom, and sat her down for a talk. I explained that I was going to pull her tooth out and that it wasn't going to hurt too much and that it probable wasn't even going to bleed anymore. She was a little upset, but I think I sealed the deal when I said that it was good practice for getting her ears pierced (which she really wants to do) - it will hurt a little at first but she will look like such a big girl after it's finished. I gave her the option of me pulling it out with my fingers or tying some dental floss around it and pulling it out that way. Through her tears she got out a pitiful little "Let me think about it for a minute." and then choose for me to use my fingers. (I'm pretty sure at this point I was more scared than she was.) I asked her if she wanted to hold one of my hands while I pulled it out with the other one, but she asked for Kerri. Kerri was called back to hold Emma Lee's hands and to offer comfort. Kerri was trying hard to fight back her own tears because she was scared for Emma Lee but she grabbed Emma Lee's hands and squeezed them in her own. My first pull didn't get it out. Teeth are slippery little things, but it easily came out with my second attempt. Emma Lee almost immediately started laughing, and all was right in our world again. :) The tooth fairy even managed to find her that night!

 












Day Two
Being the second day of non-stop rain, we decided to head off to an indoor bounce place to let the kiddos run around and wear themselves out. It worked, and they had a lot of fun in the process!





















Day Three
The sun was out and everyone was restless to get to the beach! Even though it was chilly, the girls insisted that they had to wear their swimsuits. While the rest of us were comfy in our jeans and sweatshirts, my two crazy little ones didn't complain once about being cold. We also toured the boardwalk and went swimming in an indoor pool and relaxed in a big hot tub. We ended the night with coloring and painting Easter eggs.






































Day Four
An even prettier day! We planned an Easter egg hunt on the beach for the kids and had fun snapping a billion pictures (or so) while they found them all. We then spent some more time soaking up some sun on the beach.
































Day Five
Headed back to the boardwalk and had a fun time pedaling a surry around. Of course, we had to head back down to the beach later on. The girls even splashed around some in the freezing water.

















Day Six
Sad goodbyes. Lots of memories made. Looking forward to our next adventure together - whenever that might be.