Updating Life

Every Friday Aspen's friend, Sofia comes over for the morning. This week we also had Peyton. It was a very busy day going from two to four kids. Almost like having two sets of twins! At least we had beautiful weather and were able to take a walk.

Peyton peeling the bark off the tree on our walk.

Here's the crew on our walk. It was challenging to keep all four on the sidewalk and in view!

Aren't they adorable?

Yes, he has entered the age where it is almost impossible to get a picture of him without a weird face.

Finally, one good picture :)

Savings Blog

I have joined up with my sister-in-law, Christina on her savings blog
www.saving4myfamily.blogspot.com
For those of you that are interested, I will be posting my savings over there!

October Savings

I decided to try out the cash envelope system for budgeting in the month of October. We have never really used cash and have never put ouselves on a budget before, but with the economy the way it is, we have been searching for ways to decrease our bills.

Here are the ways we were able to save money this month:
Car insurance - I shopped our car insurance and was able to save $95 a month by switching to GIECO! Ha, Ha. But really, we did. :)

Switching our cable TV from Comcast to Direct TV. We will save about $70 a month.

And, drum roll please.............Groceries.
I put $220 in cash in our grocery envelope for the month. I only spent $205 of that!
I have $15 in cash left over to put toward November's budget, $24 in coupons off my next purchase (used like cash). And I saved 77% on my groceries for the month!

Unfortunately, we did go over our eating out budget of $100 for the month, but over all, I think we did pretty good considering we have never put ourselves on a budget :)

October Beach Weekend

Journey "feeding" her baby sand.
Aspen 4 1/2 years, Journey 21 months, Peyton 15 months
Playing at the sand hill in the boat we used to play in when we were kids.

Mark and Aspen checking out the Garibaldi bar conditions. It was a really rough day!

It was a beautiful, sunny weekend. Better weather than any time we were at the beach in the summer.

I love this picture of Aspen, but it really weirds me out! How is it possible for me to have a boy so old already???

We had a great weekend with my family at the beach this weekend. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and the kids had so much fun running on the beach that they were squealing the whole time.

Oh, and we have great news as a family. Actually two things.....

Congratualtions to Charity and Justin on the new baby. I am so excited to be an aunt again!!!

Also, Congrats to Adrian and Rachel on the engagement. So excited for you guys. Adrian, you got a great girl. We are so happy that Rachel will be joining our family :)

Girl Time

After a super busy weekend with Luke and the Halloween party, Journey and I had a little time to ourselves to just hang out. It is hard for me to see her getting bigger and becoming more of a little girl instead of a baby. Why can't we just freeze time? She is a very sweet, gentle girl who loves her dolls and is such a little mommy to them and her cousins, Peyton and Ava. I do have to add that she has become pretty good at holding her own with Aspen though. She lets us know if he is bullying, bugging or annoying her too much! In the last picture she is sharing her bottle with her baby.

She is talking quite a bit more, and is slowly becoming more independent. Slowly :)

So that I can remember later, here are more of her words now:

waffle

Grammie (tries to say, but isn't very clear yet)

Ava

please

thank you

pasta (when ever she is hungry she asks for pasta)

oatmeal

milk

Pey Pey (peyton)

trees

Naniel! (Uncle Daniel)

Fia (Aspen's friend, Sofia)

bear

Hola! (hi in Spanish)

Also, when Journey talks about snakes, cows, monkeys or cats, she uses the sounds that they make. Aspen used to do that at this age too. It was actually quite entertaining for his older cousins to go through the list of all the animals they could think of to have him say their "sounds".

Early Halloween Party

We decided to have an early Halloween party here this weekend and it was a blast! The kids looked adorable in their costumes, and really played pretty well together considering we had 11 kids, and all but one were five years old and under.

Aspen the Fireman
Batman Luke
Princess Journey and Peyton the Monkey
This wasn't all the kids, but a good majority.

From the top, Aspen, Luke, Adam

Sofia, Journey, Peyton

and Ava.

It is so hard to get a good group shot! Someone is always trying to run off :)

Playing "Simon Says" with Justin. The kids loved the game. He had them jumping, spinning, wiggling, on the ground, etc. Thanks Justin!

Activities of the Night:

Isaac bobbing for apples in the bathroom sink with Lexi, Aspen, Luke, Adam and Ben looking on.
Success! Adam catching his apple.
All the kids eating their prizes. They all did great and got their apples without completely soaking themselves or the bathroom :)
Next, we decorated pumkin sugar cookies.
We had planned for the kids to carve their pumkins, but by this time, they were done with the organized activities and left it to the adults.

Here are a few more pictures from our busy weekend. We had Aspen's cousin Luke, and Ryan and Christina had his brother Adam for the weekend. We met up at the mall for coffee and play time at the play structure. The boys have had such a great time playing together this weekend. It has been such a treat as we do not get to see them very often.

Luke 3, Aspen 4, Adam 5 years old
Journey 20 months
Ava 17 months
Aspen, Adam, Luke and Journey playing at the mall.

See Journey's bear? Mark and Journey built it at the Build-A-Bear store in the mall.
Journey fell in love with the bear as we were walking past the store and Mark couldn't say no :)

Thoughts..

Journey really loves her dolls. She has discovered the baby carrier and carries her dolls all over the house in it. I love my girly girl! On another note, she is really becoming much more confident in walking. She even crawled up the whole flight of stairs for the first time this week.

Aspen just started Kidmo!, a kids group on Tuesday nights at Abundant Life Church. He loved it!

For the past month, I have been thinking about what is really important to me, and how to make sure that the busyness of life doesn't overshadow what I feel is really important. I decided to make a list of goals/priorities for myself to see what would come out of that and then shape my schedule around that. Here's what I came up with....

- Aspen memorize at least one scripture (group of scriptures) a month

- Work on preschool type activies including learning to write letters, math, learn to tell time, matching words with letter sounds, etc. (I'm pretty much just feeling my way through this!)

- Library - 2x per month

- Work on charictar qualities - kindness, gentleness, manners, respect, etc.

- Dinners together as a family - takes organization and pre-planning on my part!

- Make up chores chart for Aspen? Not sure on this one yet.

This has been the first week that Aspen and I have been working on "school" together. So far we have had a Letter of the Day theme, and have worked on A and B. I got a few preschool workbooks that we have been using. The biggest challenge for Aspen right now (besides wanting to do this) is the writing part. He has never been an artsy type of kid. Doesn't color or draw, and has just figured out how to use a writing grip on the pen.

So I am basically still working on a schedule for us. I have decided to go back to work on a temp basis, hopefully one day a week. I will be in a group at church one day a week, and will have to try to balance the office work for Mark inside all the other stuff I am doing during the week.

I guess I don't have any set in stone answers for myself, but just analyzing this has lead to me making sure I am spending a little more time playing and reading to the kids, and a little less time cleaning and on the internet (unless they are in bed!).