HAHA!!!!

Our family dinners have turned into a preschool comedy club.

This & That Thursday

* One morning this week, Matt and I were getting dressed while the girls played/jumped around on our bed. Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven" came on the IPOD and all of a sudden, the girls really wanted to slow dance. Julia stood on the bed and danced with Matt; Audrey danced with me. They switched partners partways through the song. Julia wanted me to dip her, and Audrey kept pulling Matt's head toward her so she could kiss him. It was one of those life moments where you just want to press PAUSE.

* Matt made dinner tonight. Usually when Matt cooks he sticks to spaghetti, chili, ravioli, or quesadillas. Tonight he ventured a little out of his comfort zone and Chicken Parmesan was on the menu. I don't think I've ever actually eaten this before - tonight was my first taste. It was good; Matt made it pretty spicy. He's aiming to be the next Bobby Flay.

* I only saved 74.4% at Publix today. Julia's excitement when I walked in with boxes of strawberries (3/$5) made the 'indulgence' worth it! A strawberry, jello, and cool whip parfait was made for dessert tonight. Pretty tasty if I do say so myself.

* Julia has gotten a real sassy mouth on her lately. Ex. Matt asked her to clean up a game she left out - she came in the room YELLING at him "I CAN'T PICK THAT UP! I'M TEXTING!!!" oooh- Rarely does her behavior elicit laughter and anger at the same time.

* Audrey's latest (and cutest) word is "Elmocize."

* We have a little movement going on in the job front. Nothing anywhere near certain, but movement makes me smile! Please keep praying.

* I received a phone call one morning this week from my Dad. Apparently, he had a very realistic dream the night before. In the dream I had an incurable/fatal disease that I was not telling him about. He was calling to make sure that dream wasn't true. I assured him that if I do have an incurable disease I certainly don't know about it.

* My typing of this post just got interrupted. Julia accidentally(?) stepped on Audrey's toe; Audrey cried heartily. She also kept saying "toe" and "Ju-Ju." I had to hold on to her for a few minutes, b/c I know my 2nd born. If I had put her down immediately, she would have gone over and hit her big sister. Audrey needed a few minutes to cool off.

IHOP

Free short stack of pancakes today at IHOP - mmmm good!

As soon as I pulled out the camera, Audrey turned away. She wasn't finished eating, though, so Matt fed her the last few bites.


Julia was very willing to pose with the strawberry syrup she loved.


4 free short stacks + 3 waters = no check necessary! Just a tip for the nice waitress and a donation to the Children's Miracle Network. What a great breakfast!

Flashforward

Julia got 'hurt' yesterday playing outside. Although her injury barely qualifies as a scrape, she still showed it to her church friends this morning. When we picked her up, Jules was walking around with her right legging up over her knee. Driving home, we asked her about it, and she said she was trying to get her friends to kiss her 'boo-boo.' She said none of them kissed it, but that Ben did bite her 'boo-boo.' Ben?? Who is Ben?? And why was he biting her 'boo-boo?' (obviously, it was pretend biting - there were not bite marks on her leg!) So who is Ben?? Apparently he's a cute blonde headed 3 year old who is in her SS class, and Julia thinks he is hilarious. She giggled when we questioned her about him, and eventually looked at me and said "Don't worry about it." You've heard of flashbacks?? I had a flashforward today of what our life will be like 10 years from now.

What's on my Icebox??

Christy @ Mommybrain had a recent post that I thought was cute; here I go copying it!

Refrigerators are all unique. The insides are almost all ridiculously similar, but the outside is what really gives a fridge it's character. Here's what the front of mine looks like.

Beautiful, huh??
On top: We've got random magnets, a baby birth announcement (hey Tachenko's!), a Little Hands poem/picture that Audrey's SS class made around Christmas, a Christmas tree Julia decorated, Audrey's ultrasound pics, and a collage I had made (for free) of the girls. I know it's odd to still have Audrey's ultrasound pics up. These were taken at 36 weeks 4 days just to check size, position and such before the scheduled c-section. They're the only US pics I have of her. I LOST the pictures from her first ultrasound. I LOST the ones that actually showed her cute little profile and skeleton body. I LOST the ones that had "it's a girl" and an arrow pointing to her girlness! I just knew that we'd find the good US pics 2+ years ago when we moved to this house, but we didn't - all I have are these late date photos. I don't know why I still have them on display like this; I think I'm still hoping the original Audrey pictures show up eventually.

On the bottom half of the fridge is a letter game for the girls. The batteries are out of it half the time b/c the toy refrigerator routinely talks with no provocation. spooky! There's also a worksheet of Julia's from SS this past week.

The side of my fridge looks like this:

There's a Dec. '08 Chuck E. Cheese picture of Julia, a library group picture shot from Halloween 2008, a flower Julia made in AWANA, a small family picture, and our car tag renewal notices. The renewal notices have been there for a few weeks now. As usual, I've managed to wait until the very last week to actually run up there and pay them. That's an errand the girls and I will have to run sometime next week.

What's on your refrigerator???

This & That Thursday

* I just found ants in one of our kitchen cabinets. Apparently, some children's tylenol had a few drops on the side that they were after. I killed all that I could see, but I don't know where any ant bait stuff is - Matt, please take care of this when you come home.

* I joined Blockbuster this week to get 1 month's worth of rentals free. So far, we've rented The Proposal, Inglorious Basterds, Dora the Explorer's singalong, The Maiden Heist, Berenstain Bears, and Couples Retreat. Any other rental suggestions??? We still have 3 week's left of free movies!!

* Audrey has started saying a ton of new words in the last week. Yesterday, after banging her hand, she said, "Ow, my thumb!" Who knew she knew what a thumb was?? I didn't! My baby is no longer a baby!

* Julia's really gotten into UNO - great game idea SANTA! It's definitely the children's game that Matt and I prefer.

* I'm still foul and a little bitter about this job junk. Everytime Matt checks his email, I hold my breath hoping that it's a church contacting him. Same goes for when his phone rings. I'm sure it's worse on him, but I hate it too. Thank you to all of you for allowing me to continually vent about this on here.

* As usual, Julia ran into our room this morning to watch TV while Matt and I took our time waking up. All of a sudden, Audrey came in. Apparently, before she came out of her room, she took off her pj's and diaper and decided to grace us with her naked self.

I obviously had to take a picture that didn't show off everything!

85%

That's how much I saved at Publix today.
My subtotal was $89.79 - after coupons $13.30.
After taxes, the total cost for my Publix trip this week was $15. 88

What did I get for less than $16??

I got...

9 boxes of Betty Crocker muffin mix

12 cans of Green Giant vegetables

8 boxes of Green Giant frozen vegetables

1 Cole's cheesesticks

2 loaves Cole's Cheese Toast

1 gallon milk

12 containers Yoplait yogurt

1 bag vegetable stir fry

3 boxes spaghetti

2 boxes penne

3 Pillsbury crescent rolls

1 travel hand sanitizer

Not too shabby, huh??



The sanitizer was in my diaper bag instead of a grocery bag. I forgot about it until after I'd photographed and put away everything else.

I know there are no produce items that were bought today - NO WORRIES! We still have fresh oranges, apples, grapes, carrots, potatoes, and onions left from previous week's purchases! I promise that my children don't eat entirely from a box!!

Another upside to our shopping trip today - Publix was sampling cinnamon buns, red bell peppers, and penne pasta w/meat sauce. The girls turned their noses up at the peppers, but the other items were SCARFED down! Thank you to the pasta lady for giving us extra generous size samples - she could tell it was closing in on lunchtime!

Our Valentine's Day

My husband thinks Valentine's Day is an absolutely pointless "holiday" that is only around in order for retailers to sell a bunch of junk. Fortunately, I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day either. Last week, I told Matt that all I wanted was a card with something nice written in it. Then, I told him that Publix had $.99 Hallmark coupons all over the place, so a $.99 Hallmark card would only cost $.08 in tax. He "splurged" and decided to spend $.24 - 1 card for each of us girls! Julia and Audrey loved getting Valentine cards from their Daddy. Audrey loved that her Valentine had a picture of a dog on it - Julia said that Matt wrote too much on her card. She might think that now, but I have a feeling Julia will eventually think all his writing is mighty special!

We were planning on going out to eat after church today, but we didn't. I'm not going into the details behind our not going - I would probably come across a little crazy in that explanation... Instead, we made a big breakfast for lunch. Cinnamon pancakes, cheesy eggs, breakfast potatoes, and apples! yum, yum!

Tonight, we cooked hotdogs on our "campfire" and ate outside. After hotdogs, cheese, and grapes for dinner we OF COURSE roasted marshmallows and ate them with graham crackers for dessert. During our time outside, Julia decided that cooking out was what she wanted to do for her birthday dinner in a few weeks. Sounds good to me!

After dinner, we went in and watched a rented Berenstain Bear video (free month of rentals with Blockbuster new membership - If you thought I'd actually PAY for a movie rental, you don't know me at all!) The first episode in the video was about camping out. Julia was so excited when she saw Brother and Sister Bear eating hotdogs/marshmallows! "That is just like us!" and "We had hot dogs too!" It was the perfect video to cap off our evening.

I hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day! Happy President's Day tomorrow, and Happy Mardi Gras Tuesday.

Making Valentine's

We made Valentines earlier this week to send to the grandparents. Stickers, markers, and cutout hearts were our decorations of choice. Audrey LOVES playing with markers...

Snow Day

It snowed in Phenix City yesterday! Easily the most snow we've seen in the 5 winters we've lived here. We had a fun time throwing snowballs, attempting snow angels, making a snowman, and eating peppermint mocha snowcream! The girls also practiced their iceskating skills on the slippery deck. I was out and about yesterday afternoon when the snow was at it's "worst", and the roads were never really bad - YAY! We played outside for a few minutes this morning, but the snow has now melted away. Well, it's all melted away EXCEPT for our snowman. Julia tackled him to the ground this morning, so we currently have a snowman laying down in our front yard.

This-N-That Thursday (on Friday!)

** Julia and I had to go shopping Thursday; those size 4 pants were getting way too short! We headed to Kohls (had merchandise credit there) and found 2 pair of Size 5 slim jeans. We also found a casual pair of black pants in the clearance section that we liked. YAY!

** When Julia and I returned from shopping, we walked in to a rearranged living room. Matt decided that it was finally time to go back to our pre-Christmas arrangement.

** Matt received a text from a professor this week asking for permission to show other students a paper Matt had written as an example of "excellence." This same professor also mentioned Matt in an email. Prof said that other students should look to Matt (and 2 others) as examples of how to correctly do their discussion boards. Yay for Matt. Isn't geekiness grand??!!??!!

** I haven't really had anything to blog about this week. I've been feeling a little down. Job wise, we have no prospects right now to even pretend to get excited about. I'm annoyed, frustrated, and sick of this.

** We are currently under a winter storm warning. Maybe, when I wake up in the morning there will be snow on the ground! Play, play, play! I RARELY go to Columbus (bigger town 35 minutes from home) but of course tomorrow afternoon I have a Dr's appt. Do you think I'll be able to drive in the snow?? Probably not, I'm really not a very good driver.

Aren't we classy?

We've tried twice before to get Julia to put on a fake tattoo (last summer and again at Halloween) but she was a little scared of them. Unfortunately, I picked out this year's Valentines LAST Feb. 15 or 16 BEFORE I realized Julia disliked them. Today, though, we came home from the library with leftover Princess Valentine tattoos and Julia was all about putting them on. Even Audrey joined in on the fun.

We have a tattoo on each arm...


... and one on Audrey's cheek...


... and one on Julia's neck.

First, you roast a mallow...

I mentioned yesterday that we put together a small fire pit in the back of our yard. Today, we put it to use. We didn't have chocolate :( but we did have grahams and some mini marshmallows that had melted a little at some point and therefore stuck together in nice size chunks! So, we roasted those mallows and enjoyed ourselves on this brilliantly sunny day. I'm thinking that hotdogs are going to be on the menu sometime soon too!

Advil PM & Fire

I've been feeling bad the last 36 hours or so - just a head cold I'm sure. I decided to take an Advil PM last night and wound up fast asleep around 9:45. SincJulia often comes into our room during the night I wasn't surprised to wake up with her next to me - the problem was that I woke up to Julia W-H-I-N-I-N-G. My response (apparently) was "SHHH! If you want to whine, you can just go back in your room and do it alone. I'm REALLY tired!" Then I went back to sleep. After church, we were eating lunch and Matt started laughing about the whining episode. He said that it occured after 6 this morning. I was talking about how TIRED I was after I'd already been dead to the world for a good 8 hours. oops! Then, Julia chimed in about the bad dream she had last night. Now, I'm not sure if I believe her completely - she often says she's had a bad dream when she comes running in the living room 10 minutes after we've put her to bed. But what if she did? Perhaps, my 3 year old did have a bad dream last night and the only response she got from her mom was "stop whining or go to your own room." The possibility of that makes me sad.

Anyways

This afternoon, Matt took the girls outside to play. All 3 of them wanted me to join in on the fun, but I took my time getting out there. When I did walk out, I realized Matt was "making something." Making what?? A fire pit of course! All 4 of us wound up walking around the back ally looking for rocks.



We didn't actually cook anything on it today, but Matt did start a little fire for the girls to see.

Couponazi's strike back

Ok, The Incredible Edible Egg Facebook Fan page was giving away 30,000 buy one/get one dozen egg coupons, so naturally - I was ready and waiting at 10AM ready to get some free eggs! Apparently, so was the rest of couponazi nation. The system was crazy overloaded and the couponer crowd was getting a little frustrated! The comments on this page were often just ridiculous! Here are just a few of the couponazi comments:

"HEY FANS DONT WORRY!! WE'VE ALREADY WASTED YOUR TIME AND WE'LL CONTINUE TO DO IT!! WE'LL TREAT YOU LIKE A DOG FOR A PATHETIC $1.5O COUPON!! ARENT WE GREAT!!!! WE TREAT YOU LIKE ROADKILL AND WE DONT CARE!!! KEEP WAITING!!!"

"this is the most stress ive been under in my life...i am devastated!!! i stayed up all night 4 this coupon...i am sitting here crying i am so frustrated"

"I'm still trying although I am about to pee on myself!"

"tried and tried and no coupon,why even bother to promote something when its a hoax. Bad marketing and moronic use of Facebook"
(a hoax?? really a hoax??)

"steak is murder.. we replace it with eggs.. and hope the chicks are raised well.." (what does that even mean?????)

"its a joke..they are overloaded and about 1 out of every 1000 people is getting a coupon. these people should be ashamed of themselves. try hiring someone to do your website with more than a third grade education."



I'll admit, I like to save money with coupons too. But seriously - smack me if I turn into one of these crazy people!

Entertainingly, there were also many EGGSAMPLES of Egg related puns...
**The server is scrambled this morning.
**This deal is poached.
**There's no sunny side to this deal.
**This is very eggravating
**I'm so steamed, I'm about to be hard-boiled!!
**This isn't eggsactly what I eggspected.

HAHAHAHAHAHA - couponazi's are either crazy psycho or crazy "punny!"
I wonder where I fit in.

This-n-That Thursday

**Matt found my passport the other day and had the nerve to say "you don't look 18 anymore."


**We checked this book out at the library this week for a reason...



**I was looking at some January pictures and I don't think I had my hair down in a single one of them. Perhaps a ponytail shouldn't be an EVERY day of the week/month/year look.


**Matt took a recent test for his Church History class. After it was graded, he just KNEW that a question that was marked wrong was actually CORRECT! After verifying this in his textbook and video lecture, he respectfully emailed the professor about the test question. The professor's response was: "Yes, based on the textbook and lectures you were given, your answer is correct. This particular test question has been an issue in semesters past, but I have no authority to change it. (adjunct/online prof.) Surely, you can make up the 2 points elsewhere." (quote is not verbatim.) Matt is annoyed with this.


**I realized this week that while reading is a great hobby, there are some downfalls to it.
1. I don't get as much sleep as I would if my head weren't stuck in a book. I finished my library books 3 days before our next library trip, and consequently went to bed a good 2 hours earlier those 3 days than I normally would have.

2. Reading broadens my vocabulary, and this is great if I'm just typing. When I actually start to use some of these words in a conversation, though, I find that sometimes I'm terribly unsure of the pronunciation. This makes me flounder around searching for a synonym, and I wind up looking like a moron. Perhaps, I should develop the habit of looking up the pronunciations of new words.

3. Reading apparently makes me a nerd. I've come to this realization since here I am focusing on broadening my vocabulary and using correct word pronunciations just for the fun of it.

What Do These Pictures Have In Common?Guest Post by Matt Bowman

The link between these two subjects may not be readily apparent to the untrained eye, but I assure you the link is very, very real. Let's break it down.

Now my man crush on Tim Tebow & my unquestioned devotion to Gator football is well documented & at times an embarrassing thing to behold. If you need to know something about Tim Tebow's career, his back story, Gator football, or college football in general, just let me know, & I can fill you in on some pretty minute details. Apparently, Valerie finds such discussions boring & stupid. Please pray for her, she doesn't understand. However, while I disagree with her feelings about football, I think I'm beginning to understand the general feeling.

Valerie has always been (how shall I say this nicely?) frugal. Yeah, that's it frugal. But recently she's gotten into this coupon thing. It's become an obsession really. There are piles of coupons all over my house. It's like being on an episode of Hoarders, but in the end she does use them. Now I'm all for saving money; it's great. But I don't need to hear all about the how the coupon on First Aid Kits was so good that you actually made money by purchasing them (even though we don't need them). Great we saved money, next topic please.

I guess this is how Valerie feels when she asked who won the football game, & I begin to break the game down like an ESPN analyst. I still don't understand why, I mean come on, it's SEC football. But if the way I feel after listening to a half-hour sermon on the virtues of couponing (not to mention having to read about it on her blog) is how she feels after listening to me breakdown the Gators' latest win, then I think I'm going to stop talking about football because the coupon talk makes me want to jab something, anything in my ears to block it out.

whymilk.com

OK, I promise I'm not going to turn this blog into a couponing/saving money blog! Today, though, I'm going to promote whymilk.com's Great Gallon Give. The campaign is giving out free milk for a year... if you win, and chances are most certainly you won't! However, just for entering you will be able to print off a coupon for a free half gallon of chocolate milk with the purchase of a gallon white milk (any brand of either.) You can enter the drawing everyday. I don't think I've EVER bought chocolate milk before, but I've now got 2 coupons to get some for free. I thought somebody who reads this might want to use this coupon for a special treat at home or church.

my P.I.C.

Partner In Couponing that is! It's not hard at all to convince a 3 year old to help out if helping out means she gets to use scissors. I told her REPEATEDLY to go slow and cut in the middle of the coupons (3 per page) instead of on the lines. I pretty much told her this EVERY time I handed her a new sheet. Julia finally looked up and said, "Momma, you don't have to keep reminding me."

Fellow Bloggers!

Help! I messed something up, but I don't know what I changed! My blog gadgets are all at the bottom of the page instead of on the right side. The Blog Layout page looks normal. Has anyone else had this problem or know what I can do to fix it??