Oh, and a baseball player and a plumber because plumbers make good money.

I found a journal entry of Jake's where he said he wanted to be a ninja superhero astronaut star fleet captain jedi mexican when he grows up. Pretty funny, and yes i was snooping through his stuff. I do it regularly to all my kids.

Joshua

My sweet little brown-eyed son.

You are so very precious to Mama.

When you look at me with your trusting eyes, I'm reminded that I am responsible to God for you.

Your Daddy and I are responsible for raising you in fear and admonition of the Lord.

We are to teach you His ways and who He is.

I'm so thankful for you.

I'm so thankful for your dimpled smile.

I'm so thankful for your blond hair.

I'm so thankful for your love of life and of "your" people.

You are so precious, my sweet little brown-eyed son.

Mama loves you.

More Grocery Gaming!

I love it. I love it. I love it!

Today I bought $285.83 worth of groceries for $101.49!!!

Woohoo...the rundown:

CVS:

4 cans Campbell's tomato soup
6 cans Campbell's chicken noodle soup
6 tubes Crest toothpaste
2 Covergirl compressed powder compacts

I paid $7.03 and saved $38.39!!!

Kroger:

10 jugs of Sunny Delight 64 oz.
10 6-packs of Deja Blue water
6 bottles of Disney gummy vitamins
6 packages of Hormel pepperoni

I paid $37.33 and saved $69.16!!!

Walgreens:

6 boxes of Kleenex tissues, 200 sheets
8 cans Hormel chili
4 cans Butterball chicken broth
2 containers Maxwell House coffee

I paid $20.76 and saved $25.72!!!

Tom Thumb

11 cans Progresso soup
6 boxes Pillsbury funfetti cookie dough
1 box Mike & Ikes (hehe)
4 boxes Hot Pockest, 2 count
6 boxes Red Baron personal pizzas
2 packages Sargento cheese slices

I paid $36.37 and saved $51.07!!!

I can tell when my kids stumble, and I can tell when they jump. I can tell when they love me and truly desire mercy, and when they were being malicious and are just sorry the got caught.

Hmmm...

I wonder what the workers next door are saying...it's all in Spanish. They are all so quiet when I walk outside, but when I'm inside, they are LOUD. Do they really think I can't hear through the windows on that side of the house? I don't really care, it's just amusing. I think they need to be done bricking that house so they can get back to working inside where they'll be quiet. Tomorrow's naptime doesn't need to end up with my kid coming out of his room 15 times hollaring in Spanish.

When ur kids turn about 9, lock them in the house with you and homeschool them. The only contact they need with the outside world is when you are with them. Therapy for social difficulties as an adult have to be better than whatever they can do to destroy their futures as a teenager. This is ridiculous!!!

hmmm...

I am about to start or try something new.

I've always wanted to try my hand at short skits. Like in church. I've never really told many people that because I am terrified and excited about it at the same time.

I have an opportunity at church to do just that, so I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm working through the nerves involved.

The kicker is I have to write the mess myself. I'm not good at that part. Shouldn't there be like a book of skits that I can just pick one from? I mean, why write something if somebody else already has and it's good? That's what I think. But I'm gonna give it a shot.

We'll see what happens.

lots of stuff

This is likely to be a really long post. Or if I get tired of typing, it might not be so long....who knows?

We have moved to Melissa. We have a gorgeous new house that I am totally in love with. God has blessed us so much lately. It's amazing. Simply amazing.

I have the most precious 3 year old son ever! He had his birthday and we just went to Chick fil A for him and then came home and opened presents. It was easy and no mess.

The other kids are awesome, too. Both boys are changing schools and will be at Melissa Middle School on Tuesday for the start of the second semester of their 8th grade. Emily is in 4th and is such a young lady. She is no longer a fan of the color pink - everything is purple now.

Our church is wonderful. We're getting into the swing of everything being over here. I'm actually, maybe, probably, possibly going to be involved with the drama team. I'm scared, happy, excited, nervous, confused as to why I wanna do this, you know...and I'm NOT a writer. I can blog all day long, but not write like that. I'm supposed to have a little blurb thingy to her by Friday and I guess it's coming right along, but it's not pleasant. I haven't told her that for me to write, it's like pulling my fingernails off a little bit at a time. I have zero confidence and no structure. I suck at it.

That's ok.

I have the most wonderful, Godly, sweet, dedicated, sexy, loving, affectionate husband in the world! He is so good to me. I do not know where I would be without him.

Oh, and the Grocery Game! I can't say enough about the Grocery Game! My precious friend, Ginger, introduced me to it sometime back and I regret that I did not take advantage of it until now. Well, not now, about a week and a half ago, really. I just shopped it for the second time yesterday. It totally rocks! As you can see from my previous post, I was quite the champion of the checkout line! haha. Ok, well, I really wanna just start putting all the stuff I got on here because, well, this is my blog and I can if I wanna.

From CVS, I got:

4 boxes of Kraft mac n cheese
4 boxes of Quaker granola bars
3 bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby wash

All for $16.96 - with a discount from sales and coupons of $18.72!!!


From Walgreens, I got:

2 boxes of Fruity Pebbles (kinda' anticlimactic)

All for $2.50 - with a discount from sales and coupons of $6.50!!!


From Albertsons, I got:

8 lbs of ground turkey meat
20 cans of Chef Boyardee pasta
2 jars of Albertson's salsa
5 Lunchables

All for $31.00 - with a discount from sales and coupons of $25.77!!!


From Tom Thumb, I got:

3 boxes of Pop Tarts
4 bottles of Welch's squeeze jelly
2 big bottles of Coffeemate flavored creamer
1 package of Lucerne string cheese
12 3-packs of Rolaids rolls (they paid me .21 per roll to take these!)

All for $18.29 - with a discount from sales and coupons of $26.37!!!


From Kroger (my personal favorite), I got:

4 gallons of milk
4 dozen eggs
12 boxes of Kellogg's cereal
4 lbs breakfast sausage
4 loaves of bread
4 32 oz Gatorades
6 cans of Campbell's condensed soup

All for $29.58 - with a discount from sales and coupons of $48.00!!!

I got $223.12 worth of groceries today for $97.76!!! Not bad for my second week grocery gaming.

I just told Joshua not to kick my chair and he said "I obey Mama." so sweet!

Its funny how my kids can not even have television and still quote commercials.

Obviously it worked!

Ok. So if this works, it'll be really cool. Let's see...

I think I'm a blogger at heart

just not in real life.

BUT

I just learned that I can post a blog FROM MY TEXT MESSAGES ON MY PHONE!

WOW!

Haha. Now, I'll be sending them from time to time I think. Maybe. But I'm on the computer all the time anyway and don't blog, so who knows?

Anyway, things are crazy around here as normal. School is in full swing for the kids and me.
We are in the process of trying to buy a house. We have found one we put an offer on yesterday and it is great! Hopefully we'll hear from them really soon about accepting that offer and moving forward. It has 5 bedrooms! That rocks!

Anyway, gonna check out the mobile post...

Today...

I'm grumpy. I think I'm a bit overwhelmed. School just started for me and the kids. We are buying a house in Anna. Julie's getting married in December and I'm her matron of honor, a title I'm honored to have, but it's gonna be a busy couple of months! We are giving our notice tomorrow that we'll be out of here the end of September. Crazy!

Anyway, my weeks are packed! Tuesday and Thursday mornings I'm at school. Saturday I'm at school all day long. Tuesday nights are guitar lessons and life classes at Hope Fellowship. Every other Saturday night is our Bible study. Wednesday nights, the boys have youth group. We're about to start stuff on Monday nights with Vintage. Every other Sunday night is a Vintage meeting.

It's all making my head spin and it's just manifesting as grumpy. Not ok at all. I need to repent to my kids and get over it.

On top of it all, I uploaded bunches of picturs to Facebook and somewhere between my computer and Facebook, they disappeared.

AND I need to do laundry in the worse way. But that's always it seems like.

Ok, enough. We're leaving for guitar. Maybe I'll try those pictures again when we get home tonight.

I've been listening

to Duane Sherriff's messages.

Wow!

The current series I just finished was on the end times. He teaches that we shouldn't use prophecy to try to predict the future, but should know God's Word and his prophecies so that when something happens, we can say, "Oh, that's what He was talking about". That way prophecy is faith building, which is one thing it's intended for.

I love...Brother Duane. hehe.

Oh, and I got a really cool MP3 player for my birthday early and I love, love, love it! I can put all my music and Duane's messages right on there and listen whenever I can plug it in. Cool.

Gonna go watch Dumbo for the 3rd time today with Joshua.

Being in God's Will

I am so not a writer. But I would love to be. I wish I could just capture an audience with writing. But I don't wanna learn techniques and practice and all that mess. I just want it to be natural. haha. So not me.

It's not that I don't have little pieces of things running around in my head. And I also get the gist of how I want the reader to take what I write. I understand how I want the message to be received and what I want to say. I just have a block as to how to write it out and make it that way.

Every now and then, I'll get one down absolutely awesome! And then the computer will dump it. I think God does that to keep me humble.

I'm not good at everything I touch.

Anyway. That was just my random thoughts that come out sometimes. This post is about being in God's will, not my writing abilities.

There is a huge difference in being in God's will and doing God's will. Think on that. When we are being something, it comes from deep inside us - it's just who we are. When we are doing something - we don't have to really be that to do it. It's a state of our heart. I want to simply be in God's will. Then everything I do will be in His will because that is where I am to begin with. What I do will simply follow suit.

It's amazing what God will show you if you'll pay attention.

Yes, Ma'am...

Yesterday, Laura and Julie came over to farm. Haha. Yes, we are dorks or geeks or whatever you wanna call us, but it's fun. And it's social time with two of my best friends....

Anyway, I can't really remember the exact circumstances, but Joshua started saying "yes, ma'am" when he was addressed! He was so cute and I thought the first time I had misunderstood him. He went on to say it twice more before the day was over. Oh, this child is so cute! I could just eat him up!

So...

I guess I'm here for my monthly post. haha. No, really...

Anyway, Joshua is sleeping in his big, big boy bed now. I took the crib down today. I wasn't as sad as I thought I would be. And he looked sooo proud when he crawled into the bed. He just makes my heart melt.

We moved Emily's bed over to Joshua's side of the room and Dad and Trey brought Karleigh's bed, which was Jacob's bed over for Emily. It's all set up and ready to go, but I have no clue where the shelves that go with Emily's bed are going to go. No clue.

This week has been a change of pace. Emily and Cody are gone to San Antonio until school starts when Cody will come back. School starts August 24. I have a friend's kids this week, but only this week. Last week, this week and next week, I've got another friend's baby for three days of the week. He's sweet. I'm glad I can't have any more. I like to hold him, but really, really don't want one.

Dena and I are going to take the little kids and go to Missouri August 10. I'm so super duper excited! I can't think of anybody I'd like to spend that much of a drive with (besides David). It normally takes 8 hours, but well, you know...it took us 13 when Josh was a baby. We'll see.

Oh, the biggest thing! David's going through the interview process with the Dallas Police Dept. I'm super excited for him! When he gets through all the red tape, he'll spend 8 months in the
Academy, then be a rookie for a while before he's cut loose as a cop. I think he'll love it.

We've been all over the place as far as churches go. We've been to Hope Fellowship on Sunday mornings, Vintage meetings on some Sunday nights, and have been once to Victory Life in Sherman on Saturday evening. We definitely plan to be at Victory Life as much as we can - it was awesome! Hope is really great too. Oh, and of course, CLA on Wednesday nights for youth group. Wow, we are church-hoppers. Our first commitment will be with Vintage, and then we'll hop after that. On top of all that, our Bible study is now going to be on Saturday nights every other weekend.

I'm gonna go peek in on Joshua...