Twister Championship

I'm not sure how we've made it through almost 16 years of parenting without purchasing a Twister game but I decided we needed one and gave it to the kids for Christmas. All 4 kids played the first game.

Zac challenged Alyssa to a face off (or twist off?).

He was determined to beat the flexible dancer and managed to turn himself into a pretzel.

Zac won the game!

The perfect gifts!

Uncle Weve (aka: Steve, Kevin's brother) came to see us yesterday and he brought some awesome gifts for everyone. The boys all got NFL jerseys...

and Alyssa decided to model Zac's Romo jersey....

which then provoked Nathan to strike a pose in his Favre jersey.

Alyssa got her real present---a gift to Forever 21--her favorite store!

Katie scored an Itunes card and a Target gift card, and I got a Roomba! I'm still waiting on the battery to fully charge before I can find out if our predictions are true. (And please, no comments on how messy my desk is in the background. I promise I just cleaned it off two days ago and it's already messy again. Every miscellaneous piece of paper sends to up there. It's an endless cycle of clean and clutter.)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's a quick recap of our celebrations:

We went to the Christmas Eve service, then came home and looked in our stockings. The kids opened their gifts to each other.

Then it was off to bed for everyone. Nathan waited till 7:30 to wake us up which was a Christmas miracle.

Since Zac opened his Guitar Hero, he has disappeared upstairs trying to become an expert.

And Katie was very surprised to find an ipod under the tree.

Uncle Weve showed up in time for our traditional Christmas lunch of Chinese takeout and the gifts started all over again which I'll share with you tomorrow!

Money Saver: Breakfast foods

It's very tempting to just stock eggos and cereal at my house for the kids to have for breakfast, but not very economical or healthy. One of the biggest ways I've cut down on my grocery budget has been to make as many items from scratch as possible. The challenge is time for most of us, but I've found a way to make baking and cooking part of my schedule without too much adjustment.

Basically, on the mornings when I have a little extra time, I cook breakfast and make double or triple the amount we really need. Then on our busy mornings, we just pull something from the freezer and pop it into the microwave. You'll eventually build a stash in your freezer and only need to make something a couple of times a week.

This works great with pancakes (with or without chocolate chips!), waffles, breakfast burritos, and any type of muffin. You can click on the foods to link to the recipes on my new favorite recipe site, Recipezaar. I especially like having muffins on hand. Kevin likes to take them to work and the kids will snack on them in the afternoons. Their favorite is these chocolate chip muffins. They never make it to the freezer!

Helpful Hint: to freeze pancakes, waffles, french toast, etc., place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer for approx. 1 hour. Then place in a ziploc freezer bag. This keeps them from sticking together and it's easy to pull out just what you need.

Ice, Ice Baby!

Yesterday afternoon, the neighborhood kids were wearing shorts and playing outside in the 75 degree weather. By last night at 8, the temp. had dropped to 20 and it was sleeting outside. Today, we're at a high of 17, there's an inch of ice on the streets, and all the schools are closed. Gotta love Oklahoma weather!

I must admit I love these days when God forces us to slow down. The past week has been filled with activities and I was starting to feel overwhelmed by not being able to stay home long enough to take care of things here or even relax a bit. Last Sunday, Alyssa danced at the fanciest assisted living place I've ever been to. (The 'apartments' are 2400SF.)Then I had 30 minutes to get across town to the church to see Nathan's children's choir program. That was followed by a week of rehearsals and performances for the church Christmas production. Alyssa was given the opportunity to choreograph and dance in the production. Of course, I think she did a beautiful job. I'm hoping we'll have a video to post soon.

So today, I'm taking advantage of my day in to do laundry, bake lots of goodies, blog and watch "Notting Hill"--the tv edited version.

Crazy Christmas Chaos

There are some days, like today, that convince me I will never be bored with my life. I know...one day all the kids will be gone and I'll wish for this craziness back. But I don't think that's ever going to happen. By the time Nathan graduates, Alyssa will probably be married and dropping her kids off here so she can maintain her sanity, all the while overlooking that I lost mine a long time ago which is okay.

I am desperately trying to finish all of the Christmas shopping. This includes the children also shopping since they still need me to drive them everywhere. So today, we hit Dollar Tree and Target. But since 3 kids needed to shop for each other and me, we had to keep changing the combinations of people who were shopping together while avoiding running into the other group. Dollar Tree was definitely more challenging than Target, but when you're 8 and 12, $1 is the right price tag for gifts so we made it work. We finally made it home and everyone took turns wrapping in my room which now looks like the gift wrap center at Macy's exploded in it. And I still have to take Zac shopping!

After a short break, I took Alyssa to dance, came back home for a quick meal of leftovers, then it was back to church for everyone but me. I was running all over town looking for green tulle for Alyssa's dance costume for the Christmas production which is this weekend--all weekend--4 performances. You would think green tulle was the 'Tickle me Elmo' of this Christmas because there is none to be had in this town. After several stops I did finally find some green ribbon that should do the job.

I would like to think the crazy, running around, wild adventures of today are unusual and rare at our house, but they're not. The circumstances change but the chaos does not. And by the way, when Alyssa put her gifts under the tree today, she numbered them--just to spite me.

Guess the gifts

When I was a kid, my brother and I were terrible about finding out what our gifts were before Christmas. My mother had a habit of taking a Sunday afternoon nap, so while she was sleeping, we would open the presents under the tree to see what we were getting. She did figure it out one time and threatened to take the present she knew I had opened back to the store, but she didn't. And I'm not sure if before this exact moment while she is reading this post, if she knows that we were repeat offenders....several years in a row.

A few years ago, I instituted the code system of labeling gifts at our house, just to help keep the kids from temptation. You know..not passing the sins of the parents on to the next generation and all. Every year I come up with a new code just to make it a little more difficult. This year it's numbers...5, 20, 22, and 30. These are not random numbers; there is a method to the madness but I can't explain it to you now. My children read this blog, mainly to make sure I'm not telling anything embarrassing about them. Believe me, this blog would be hilarious if I didn't have any kid-imposed restrictions.

I put the first presents under the tree a few nights ago and guess who's giving me the most trouble? Alyssa--the oldest! She tried to convince me that she's responsible and can handle the knowledge of the 'code', but I refused to give in. Then she started trying to guess the different ways I could have assigned those numbers. I accused her of acting like she was 2 while I laughed at her and her curiosity. This may be more fun than the actual giving of the presents!

What about you? Did you peek at your presents when you were a kid?

Money Saver: Grocery Budget

Sometime last June, I realized that we were spending the equivalent of about $300 a week on our grocery budget. At our house, this includes everything to keep our tummies full, our clothes clean, our bodies smelling good, and our house sanitary. The cost of food was escalating, combined with all the special diets around our house (2 with allergies, me-a diabetic), had made our food expenses astronomical. I was determined to bring it down as much as possible even if it meant spending a couple of hours clipping coupons every week.

I began by reading lots of articles at Money Saving Mom on combining coupons with sales, how to get stuff for free at stores like Walgreens and CVS, and how to find coupons on the internet which are usually worth more than the typical Sunday paper coupons.

Gradually, I was able to drop to down to $150 to $200 per week. I've also stockpiled enough soap, shampoo, toothpaste and cleaning products that I only buy these when they are on sale and I have a coupon, usually getting them for free. With 6 people that need to wash and deodorize on a daily basis, this was a huge expense for us. Sometimes I would spend $50-$60 at one time at Walmart just buying health and beauty products, but not anymore!

My current goal is to get down to $100-150. Gayle at The Grocery Cart Challenge feeds her family of 6 for $60 a week and she posts her menus with links to the recipes each week. I don't think we'll ever get quite that low thanks to our special diets, but I'm going to keep trying! I'll keep you posted on our progress. Now go save some money!

I survived the Trojan virus, almost

Thursday night after work, I was innocently checking on my facebook. A friend had sent me a video in messages and I clicked the arrow to play. Then my laptop world came crashing down around me. Even though my Norton antivirus identified the virus immediately, it had already wreaked it's havoc on my new laptop. Kevin worked on it. I worked on it till midnight. Kevin worked on it again this morning and it still would not work. So....we wiped out the hard drive and reinstalled all operating systems. I use 'we' lightly here because it was really Kevin who babysat the process for 3 hours. I still don't have photoshop or any pictures loaded nor do I have any clue what was saved in my 'favorites'. I guess if they are truly 'favorites' I'll find them again.

On a totally different topic....my boys are watching a cartoon based on the song, 'Grandma got run over by a reindeer'. Whatever happened to the classics, like Charlie brown Christmas?

Down in Dallas

Tomorrow is my last day in Dallas and while I'm a little sad to be giving up my carefree days of only having to feed one person, not do laundry, and shop till I drop; I am excited to get home and see my boys. I managed to almost finish all of my Christmas shopping, buy enough shoes to keep from justifying another purchase for at least 5 years, and bought fabric to make window treatments for 3 rooms.

This has been a interesting trip in that there have been some unusual happenings...

I got pulled over by a Euless cop for having expired Texas tags. I was just thinking the current Oklahoma license plate on the back of my van would have been enough to keep me legal. Poor guy was quite embarrassed when he realized what he had done and I couldn't help but laugh at him. Thankfully there's not a ticket for that.

I stepped in dog poopy outside Liz's apt. building and got it in the car. I pulled over at a gas station to try to get rid of it and ended up using the window squeegee on the bottom of my shoe. I hope the squeegee had time to soak before anyone else decided to clean their window.

Next post from home base in OK...and now that I'm done spending money I'll get back to posting how you can save some!