A Very Long Receipt

It was a very full cart. But everything in it (minus some flour and a few produce items) was on sale and matched up with coupons I had.

It yielded a very long receipt.

Very long.

And I must admit I was quite a bit nervous when my total exceeded $125 before I handed the cashier my coupons. Maybe my "deals" hadn't been quite so great after all. Gulp.

However, I handed her my carefully selected pile and watched in relief as the "Amount Owed" number steadly decreased and the "Amount Saved" number steadily increased, until, for the first time ever, my Amount Saved was more than double my Amount Owed for 69.2% savings. Incredible. Thank You, Lord!
My favorite deals of the day included multiple bags of frozen veggies for something around 20 cents each, getting paid to buy foundation, eye shadow, bobby pins, and Scotch Tape, 19 oz bags of M&Ms for about $1.60 each, and similar deals. I won't bore you with the details, but it was quite fun I must say. :o) (A special thanks must go to two wonderful friends who have been giving me their coupon inserts each week--now I get coupons in triple! Thanks, ladies!) :o)

Reading Together

When the kids' happy but very energetic playing got to be much too loud for Mommy's aching head, she determined that some quiet read time on the couch was in order. They both cheerfully got some books and climbed onto the couches, although Peter switched from the big one to the small one when he saw Hannah had situated herself on the small one. Why? Because what followed was a blissful 20+ minutes of little but "Where's the flag? Good. Where's the soccer net? No, that's the basketball hoop. There's the soccer net. Where's the seesaw? . . . " as Hannah kindly obliged Peter's desire to read Little People's Around Town picture book.

The older "reading" to the younger. Ahhh, what sweet joy.

For the Grandpas

Just thought the Grandpas would be interested to see Chris' engineering at work once again. He made a metal "boot" for the stove pipe attached to a flexible duct going up to an old opening in the hallway (from the former HVAC system.) He put a fan of some sort in the flexible part to push the heat through, so now we get a significantly greater portion of the stove's heat upstairs. It also tends to set off our "early warning system" when the stove starts to get too hot (i.e. the smoke alarm goes off.) I'm still not completely sure how/why that's happening, because it's not making smoke, but anyway. At least we know when we need to check the stove. :o}

And in the hallway, he made this creative contraption to funnel the warm air into the living area and bedrooms rather than heating only the bathroom.

At least we don't have to worry about being cold in the middle of an ice storm! :o)

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

We love you and hope you have a wonderful day! :o)

All Decked Out

I *think* Christmas decorations are officially complete (at least inside) as of this evening. I was so inspired by the beautiful Poinsettias I was able to get for just $5 each today, that I finally got around to pulling out my last boxes of decorations, including my tree skirt from Great Grandma L. and the garland I picked up on clearance last year.

Hannah and I worked on the garland--she helped me unflatten it all and then we twisted on the red metal "berries" for a bit of color and decoration. Daddy helped us hang it after dinner.

We're also filling our post with Christmas cards. I love getting Christmas cards!! (And yes, we have ours and as soon as I can write our newsletter, they'll be in the mail. I've caught up on a myriad of other things in the last few days, including final Christmas shopping, so the newletter is just about next on the list.) :o)

And here's just a few of our favorite ornaments. We have a much larger tree this year, so it was nice to fill it with special memories from years past. This is one of the beautiful angel ornaments Chris' Grandma H. made for us before she went to Heaven two years ago. We love you, Grandma, and we miss you!

And one of my all-time favorite ornaments my mom bought for me in high school . . .

It was so special decorating with the kids this year! They loved putting all of my childhood ornaments on the tree. It's funny how an ornament for a four year old is just as appropriate in 2009 as it was in 1984. :o) In fact, my plan as of right now, is to give each of the kids a special ornament from "when Mommy was little" as a Christmas gift.

:::

So anyway, that's a little piece of our home . . . Merry Christmas!

:::

(P.S. - For those wondering about our village, we do have outlets above the cabinets as we did at our other house, but the boards aren't up yet, and due to yet impending projects, we're probably going to wait till next year to display it again. It's just not worth the risk of getting it damaged or the hassle of displaying it for just a few weeks before taking it down to do painting and such.)

Christmas Candies

Each year we make homemade treats as gifts for neighbors and teachers. Last year we made sugar cookies. As I spent multiple nights icing into the wee hours of the morning, I determined that this year's efforts must be simpler (at least icing-free)! So, when I stumbled across a recipe for "Holly Jollies," I knew I had found my answer! (Who can argue when they tell you they can fill twelve gift bags in half an hour! Even if I triple that, I'm still doing GREAT!) :o)

So here we go . . .

Here's the chocolate and peanut batch. (We also did chocolate with rice crispies, white chocolate with craisins, and white chocolate with crushed oreos. They were all very yummy!)

Notice the smile in the muffin tin as well as on her face! :o)

One batch down, three to go! They really were incredible easy--even with a multitude of other tasks (distractions!?!?) including lunch, nap times, crafting, "Mommying," etc., it probably took me less than two hours from start to finish to turn out 12 dozen candies with "help."

It actually took me almost as long to get everything bagged and tagged!

In addition to helping me, the kids also decorated lunch sacks which we used to combine groups of bags (all the teachers in Children's Church for example.) My only disappointment was not being able to find white lunch sacks this year. Oh well. Life goes on. :o) But for the record, yellow paint does not show up well on brown sacks. :o)

I cut cheap sponges into Christmas shapes using my cookie cutters as patterns. (If I'd been thinking ahead, they would have been color coded to the appropriate color paint. But I wasn't.) :o)

Yeah for Daddy's assistance in the stamping process!!

Both munchkins were obviously pleased with their contributions. :o)

It was definitely one of the simplest and stress-free gifting enterprises we've undertaken! What a blessing as this month seems to have not slowed down one iota! :o)

In the Midst of Christmas Preparations

As I'm sure is true in many households right now, our days have been filled with a variety of Christmas preparations, including much time in the kitchen preparing special treats and goodies. Here's just a few snapshots from the last week or so . . .

Praise the Lord for warm winter coats--both given to us by friends from church!!
Mommy is happy to encourage washable finger painting . . .

Although I must admit I've never been tempted to get quite so "in touch" with my paint . . .

The kids each enjoyed a sheet of Nativity stickers in their Christmas cards from G&G . . . their applications of those stickers were quite different though. :o)

Peter was quite pleased with his personal decorating efforts . . .

And Hannah made a picture which has since found a place of honor among our Christmas cards . . .

Speaking of pictures, Hannah's art contest entry has been chosen as one of the finalists! Great job, Doodle-Bug!

One evening as I was preparing dinner I overheard Hannah telling Peter that they were "going to church." She peaked my interest since it was Monday . . .

No preaching (that I heard), but they had an excellent song service. :o)

Peter had fun with his airplane one afternoon . . .

And he was very excited when Mommy brought out the breadmaker again . . .

Yeah for yummy homemade bread!

And this particular day's cookie making efforts must go on record as the first time it was honestly faster to have Hannah helping me! She did a super job rolling the cookie balls--all I did was plop the dough in front of her. It really was like having four hands! :o)

Peter on the other hand had fun making cookie "snakes." :o)And here's my right-hand lady assisting with the garland lights. (She helped me unflatten all of the garland and then put the "berries" on it.)

So, that's life around here for us . . . somehow I suspect it looks a lot like life at your house--just different smiles! :o)

A Favorite Christmas Tradition

We continued one of our favorite Christmas traditions this year--attending the lighting ceremony at Bob Jones University. It's so much fun! The kids loved the lights and the singing. :o)


In family devotions, we've been working on learning all four verses of "Joy to the World," so Hannah was very excited to join in when it was sung as one of the last carols of the evening!


We even got a family picture this year, compliments of one the students who worked in Hannah's classroom last year. :o)

I love how the lights reflect on the water!

Joy to the world! the Lord is come:

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing.

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love.

Merry Christmas!

Lots and lots of rain = flash flood

We've had a LOT of rain today, and I noted that our creek had risen significantly in the early afternoon. (A little higher than previous pictures I've posted.) However, I'm sure you can imagine my shock when I looked out the window around 4:00 and discovered that the creek had completely flooded its banks.

I am very thankful that as of right now, the constant rain we've had since around midnight last night has paused and given the creek some time to recover. As I type this just after 5:00, the water is no longer covering our driveway and the only water on the road is that which spills over from the poor drainage across the road. However, as of an hour ago, this was the scene at our home.

Incredible!