Great Minds Think Alike!

So I was talking to my sister the other day complaining about how I wish I had more Gospel resources to use to teach my kids with, especially for Family Home Evening. Buying church materials is expensive!! I remember growing up my mom had a felt board with felt stories she would use, and I really liked that. So I looked online to see about buying some felt stories, and if you buy them as a set they are $150!! So I had to scrap that idea, way too expensive, and started looking for tutorials and such, and I found this ladies website where she downloaded all this LDS clipart, colored the pictures using her computer program, put them together in a printable format, and put them on her blog to share with everyone! I got so excited and was telling my sister all about it, thinking I'm amazing for finding her website, and she was like "that's funny, I found the same site and am working on doing the same thing for our ward!" It was funny that we would both be working on the same project from something we found online without talking about it first....except she is doing it for her ward, and I am just doing it for myself!
I thought it was a great idea for Family Home Evenings to get Sammy interested in Scripture stories, and making it easy to understand. A short story with pictures..perfect! She put up stories from the Book of Mormon, Old and New Testament, and Church history stuff! I am almost done with my stories, I just have to find a cute way to make my felt board! The other great thing....Joann's has all their felt on sale this week too! It's my first project of the year! Finally!
You can find this ladies blog here
Here are just a couple of my stories that I've already finished! The Stripling Warriors, and Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar

Extreme Couponing!

So I promise that I'm not sitting around watching tv all the time, but when I saw the previews for this show I knew I HAD to watch it! In the last couple of years I have been trying to get into clipping coupons and saving money. I think I was motivated by two things: One, well of course it was out of necessity. Food is expensive (even more so today) and not having a lot of money forced me to try and save money on food. And lets be honest, I don't think a rich person would automatically say "hmmm I think I'll start couponing today" because it is a lot of work. My second motivation was my sister in law Hilary. I almost think that she should be on this show because she is amazing at finding a great deal. She could probably come out of Target with two carts full of toys and clothes and spend $20! which is exactly what these women on TLC's Extreme Couponing do!! Man they have it down to a science! One lady's grocery total was over $1000 and she ended up paying like $2!! Okay I could NOT spend 4-5 hours a day on the computer looking for coupons, going dumpster diving for coupons with my young child, or spend 5-6 hours in the supermarket gathering all my deals and stacking my coupons! What?? It was fascinating to watch, and I felt like I related to some of these women (and 1 man) because it does give you a high to go grocery shopping and saving 87% on your bill! Yes that is my highest amount ever!
In recent months I haven't been as diligent with couponing, but after watching this show I feel a bit re-motivated about it all, not to go to the extent that they do, but to get what a need, and maybe a LITTLE extra. Because the biggest thing that I HATE HATE HATE about couponing is when you go to allll the work of putting all your coupons together and matching up sales with coupons, which takes a lot of time, and you finally get to the store at the time of day when your kids are the most happy, and you're ready to get all your stuff, and it's alllll gone because the other crazy coupon lady decided she need the entire shelf of bathroom tissue, soap, crackers, etc. leaving nothing for the rest of us! I guess I'm just not the early bird, because there are too many times where I have not gotten the worm and I just get frustrated That's my biggest hang up, but maybe if I get a little crazy about it too, I might get more lucky!

Confession

People who know me, know that I love the Musicals. I have also occasionally watched and episode of Grey's Anatomy here and there (mostly the older episodes). But I heard they were doing a musical episode and figured I would watch, not expecting much because seriously, a drama medical tv show singing over dead bodies? The only medical show to ever pull off a great musical episode was let me hear it...The "Scrubs" musical episode. Funny...."Everything comes down to poo! From the top of your head, to the sole of your shoe...our number one test is your number 2!"....even my Dad enjoyed that one.
The Grey's Anatomy musical extravaganza was a bit weird to watch as I expected. The main reason I wanted to see it was that Sara Ramirez who plays one of the doctors on the show played the lady of the Lake in the original broadway play "Spamalot" and she has an amazing voice, so I wanted to hear her. The very last song of the show she sang was amazing. It was worth sitting through the whole show to listen to her sing that song. So good! Listen...

Taylor's 1st Birthday!

Has it been a year already? (at least it feels that long since the last time I did any blogging). Getting through January (and February for that matter) was a big struggle, and I know that it's due mostly to the weather. But it is finally April and things are looking up!
Taylor's 1st birthday was this week on March 29th!! The year has definitely gone by pretty fast. She has grown rapidly, although she was pretty huge to begin with. At a year old she is a spunky, fun kid, but a little timid. She still refuses to fully walk but she has been perfectly capable since at least 10 months old. She doesn't even like to ride in the swing at the park, and yet Sammy is on the big slide going down backwards head first! But she is very sweet and loves attention! She loves to put things on her head, yet she won't wear a headband and her hair is still so short people think she looks like a boy. oh well, I think this year will be a big one for her hair.
Last weekend we went down to Salem and had a birthday party for her with the Demcaks. She got her very own mini cake from Nana that was delicious. She took the huge frosting flower and stuffed it right in her face.






On Tuesday for her birthday, we ended up going to the new Pizza place in town that has an all you can eat buffet of pizza, salads, pasta, soup, desserts, and you can choose from a bunch of different themed rooms to eat in. Then there is another area for playing games, riding rides, and winning tickets for prizes. It was nice to go there and not have to worry about making food and a cake at home. Low stress for me! It's a really fun place to go, and it's now the second time we've gone! Mark and Tracee and Doreen came to our party too which was nice to celebrate with friends and family. Taylor made a big mess of herself by taking the plate of food, most of which was covered in chocolate cake and put it on her head smearing the chocolate and mandarin oranges all through her hair. Whaddya do, it was her birthday and she loved it! The only hard part was that she was sick and so she was a bit cranky. I found out the next day that she had a viral infection and got red spots all over her body. Poor kid to be sick on her birthday.
Happy birthday to our funny Tebow!