The Gift of Organization

For my birthday my wonderful husband gave me the gift or organization! I long to have a completely orderly house and I am working towards that and Joshua is helping me. He made me this shelf that goes next to the computer that I can keep things orderly on it and it also came with a new printer/scanner! We needed that quite bad since our printer just broke and it was rather annoying to have a scanner and printer sitting beside you taking up so much space. Anyway, the shelf is beautiful and I feel much more orderly! On another note, my sister-in-law and brother gave me an amazing gift that others will just laugh at. It's the new Downy Unstoppables that make your laundry just smell soooo wonderful even through wearing and to the next wash. I so need to go start a load of laundry, it makes me want to do laundry more!

Gideon begged for his picture!

All Dressed for Football

My friend Stacey took these cute pictures of Tirzah a couple weeks ago when I saw her...isn't she sooo cute dressed up in her Daddy's school colors!

Daddy's Hat

Gideon loves hats and is always putting one on to go outside...today he got to wear Daddy's and he had to look way up to see out from under it!

Wearing a Hairbow

So I'm not big into little girl hairbows but Tirzah's hair is at a stage where it needs something and so I tried the little headband bow and loved it! She looked adorable and hasn't taken it off yet! Thought I would share my very girly, adorable girl!

She loves sale papers!

Mama's girl

Categories in my Envelope System

I still need one for clothes, but here is what we have right now....

Relationship/Dates

Food

Gifts

Eating Out/Shops

Household

Miscellaneous

My very own cloth cash envelopes!!!

So Joshua and I use the cash system and try our best to avoid using credit or debit cards. We still use it for some things like gas but we are trying to adhere to our budget and the best way is by using cash. Amazing what you realize you don't really need when you are paying in cash. We started out just doing a "food envelope" with cash but have slowly been making more and more envelopes. If you've ever used the envelope system you know how terrible using paper ones are since they deteriorate and get ripped and you could actually lose your money. Well I've been dying to make my own cloth ones and I finally got around to making my very own set of cloth cash envelopes. Below are pictures of them and each envelope is different and has a fabric that reflects the category--can you guess what they are? Also they magnetically close which is so amazing!!!

Winning a Gingerbread Decorating Contest

So my sister Beth and I decided to enter a gingerbread decorating contest at Joanns Fabric a couple weeks ago. I happened to see an ad about it when I was in the store. So we showed up with our undecorated house and supplies and took our time decorating right in the front of the store where lots of people watched as they stood in line to check out. It was so much fun...we did win 2 $25 gift cards and a free class. We won't mention that most people who signed up didn't show up and that the only other two people in the contest worked at Joanns but one of them was the Wilton instructor and her house was not too impressive. Also they both used kits, we didn't. So here are some pictures and we sure are grateful for the gift cards!

Some Thanksgiving Pictures

A family picture in front of the truck that has a tree growing out of the bed. :-)

Yay Hokies, they won!

How sad is my family, four lap tops and three iphones

A new fun game, Guillotine

Pops and Tirzah

Benji and Gideon watching Cars2

Stacey and I

A tale of Potty Training

These pictures below are taken back in April when I tried to start potty training my little boy...well after a couple of successes he decided he wasn't interested and although I've tried off and on I finally decided to give up! It wasn't worth the time to have him make a mess on the floor later. He just wasn't interested. Until last week...we were sitting at the table having dinner when Gideon said he needed to go peepee, not really thinking he was serious I let him down and he went and brought his potty to the dining room, sat down on it and went in the potty! Amazed we praised him and rewarded him with an M&M, well then he decided he needed to go every two minutes, which was just fine with me...later in the evening to my even greater surprise he went poop in the potty all by himself! I just couldn't believe it! The next morning I hoped he would continue but didn't have my expectations too high...but after I put him in his cars underwear he continued like it was the normal thing to do going to the bathroom on his potty. Needless to say we praise him and thank him and he has continued doing it even when we are out and about...although we do take his potty with us wherever we go! So all that to say that my little boy is potty trained when I least expected it!!!! And he did it himself!

Visit to North Carolina

 We took a little trip last week to visit Joshua's cousin and her family who are on furlough from Indonesia. It was nice to let our kids play together. Their little boy Elijah who is a couple years older than Gideon loves Cars so those two had fun playing together as long as they weren't taking toys from each other. We had a wonderful visit. We then stopped off at some friends of ours who have quite the farm...they have llamas, pigs, cows, chickens, guineas, ducks, turkeys, donkey, dogs, birds, goats and a couple cats. It was so much fun! Gideon had a blast with all the animals. I think we'll have to return for a longer visit.

Moriah, Elijah, Micaiah and Tirzah

Gideon and Elijah playing with cars

Watching Cars

Rooster at farm

Pig--that was trained to sit upon command

Look Daddy, look!

chicks

Danielle and goat

Emily and baby goat

Baby goats feeding

Decorating Gingerbread Houses

So last week my sister Beth came over to help me decorate the gingerbread houses. We accomplished 15 by the end of the day. It is quite the operation when you get down to it. But we took up different tasks and completed it by the end. Then we shrink wrapped them and tied them with ribbon! All ready for selling!

Lots of little people

The table covered with supplies and houses

Work in progress

Bethie working hard

Tirzah having a blast with all the mess!