What I Loved About Last Week 5th Edition

Here's what I loved about last week (4/16-4/22):

1. Paying off Andy's student loans!!!  Quite some time ago (probably close to two years ago) I mentioned on the blog that we were putting away our extra money each month to pay off our student loans.  When Andy got furloughed, we decided to just keep the money in the bank in case we needed it.  We never did have to dip into it and last week were able to pay off his student loans.  HOORAY!!!!  It feels so good to have that debt off of our backs!  Next up in the debt snowball:  my student loans, followed by our house!  Then we'll be debt FREE!!!!!

2. Ruby galloping.  So often throughout the day Ruby gallops instead of walks.  It is the cutest little thing.  A video would probably be more convincing, but for now, you'll have to take my word.

3. Butterflies on our Salvia.  Talk about the glory of God's creation.

4. Rummage Sale finds.  Twice each year, several of the "supermoms" in our parish host a Rummage Sale to benefit the missions.  They collect items on Monday then have a sale on Tuesday and Wednesday where everything is 10 cents.  I was able to find a pair of uniform pants for Ira and two school sweatshirts in the next two sizes up for him.  I also got an adorable dress and 3 pairs of tights for Ruby as well as some sewing notions, some Little Golden Books, and some kitchen utensils.  I think I spent $2.10.  Seriously?!  Does it get any better than that?

5. Rubyisms.  Ruby has been delighting us lately with all her little sayings, so I thought I'd share them with you.  She calls granola bars "monkey bars."  Her sandals are "shoe schlops."   Dump it is "bonk it."  Band-aids are "ban baids."  An umbrella is a "bunumbola."  When you ask her where something is she says, "I don't knoooooow.... I lose it again?"  And she calls the little pocket in the door of the car "the bathtub."  Ruby - where's you're binky? "In the bathtub."  She's such a goose!

6. The new Muppets Movie.  Ira received "The Muppets" for Easter from Andy's parents, but we wanted to pre-view it before we let him watch it.  It truly is a wonderful, wonderful movie.  We laughed a LOT, I cried, and we even re-watched several scenes after the movie was over that were just too funny not to rewatch.  It's definitely a movie we would let Ira watch.  There were just two things that I thought they could have left out: they said the word "butt" once and "idiot" once or twice.  We'll probably watch it with Ira to make sure that we can voice our disapproval over those words, but overall, wow, AWESOME movie!

7. Ruby helping Andy make biscuits.  It's their little thing together and it is so darn precious to witness!


8. We got the 5th bed for our garden done on Saturday.  I tell you what, that double-digging is some arm/leg/neck/feet/back-breaking work!  We still have two more left to do and I can't wait until they're done!

9. We also got quite a bit else done in the garden on Saturday: finishing up the fence for the peas, putting up fence for the blackberry bushes, and planting: green onions, beets, marigolds, cilantro, chives, oregano, and nasturtium.  The kids were dolls and played outside all day.  It just makes my heart swell to hear them playing together.  After wondering for so long if we would ever be able to give Ira a sibling it just feels like I'm living a dream to hear them playing and laughing uproariously together (because they were throwing sand at each other...still...)

10. Cardinal friends.  We have a very friendly male cardinal in our yard who supervises us gardening.  He'll seriously come within 5-10 feet of us and doesn't dart away when/if we move from what we're doing.  Andy was able to capture a picture of him and his lady friend on the bird feeder just a few feet from our house.

I think that about covers last week!  Also, if I could ask for prayers, Andy and I are trying to get pregnant again, which as you can imagine, is kind of a bittersweet situation to be in.  If you would, pray that we are able to embrace whatever God's will is for our family.  Obviously, I hope that means more babies, but there's that whole "Thy will be done" thing that I try to submit myself to too.

It's only water

I have a new favorite song right now: Brandon Heath's "Only Water"  You can hear it/watch the lyrics for it on YouTube here:  It is just a truly beautiful song that is very meaningful to me right now. 

 

If you really love it (or if you love downloading MP3s for free) you can add the code VDAYMP3S to your Amazon account and you will get a $2.00 MP3 credit.  MP3s are usually $0.99 - so you could pick two of your favorite songs and rock out to them all the time.  (Amazon runs these promotions fairly regularly - it's how I've downloaded most of the music I have.)  

If you would like another song to download that will have you dancing in the kitchen (or maybe it's just me?)  There's also Mark Schultz singing "Kyrie Eleison"  Here's also a link to buy Only Water from Amazon. (FYI - if you follow these links, you can see where you add the code - to the right where it says in blue "Redeem a gift card or promotion code & view balance")

Whatever you choose to download - I hope you dance!!

And here you thought this post was going to be about the time that I was filling a pot beside the sink and I forgot about it and it overflowed all over the kitchen and my hubby said, "It's only water."  :-)

Another new one

I have a feeling this is going to be random, so consider yourself warned! Ruby was up late last night, and I haven't even made my coffee yet.... now that's dedication!

Tuesday was laundry day around here. I don't really dislike doing laundry, I guess we just have too many clothes or something, because I only do laundry about once every 10-14 days. When we were rolling the laundry cart out to the utility room, it proceeded to fall apart. (It's tube-metal framed and has 4 sacks. I keep it in my closet and use it as a hamper so that come laundry day, I don't even have to sort the clothes.) The thing has been a piece of junk since we bought it at my favorite store (NOT) Wal-mart. It never stood up very well (Andy said it needed some cross-bracing.) So it just fell completely to pieces (stripped the screws out of the pipes and everything.) It seriously made me so mad that I wanted to bend the pieces in half like the Incredible Hulk. I refrained, thinking that might not be the best thing to teach Ira. Andy's diagnosis - it's toast for good. Ugh... For now our clothes will be in piles on the closet floor... Ugh

Yesterday, Ruby slept good during the day, but once evening came she didn't really sleep much at all. So she was up until about 1:30. Poor dear. Poor me. I really need to take the advice of my much more logical, level-headed, and apparently mature younger sister who had a baby 3.5 months before Ruby who said, "I just have to tell my self, 'It's okay to get up and still be tired.'" Yeah, whatever. Thank God for coffee is all I can say!

For my free shopping this week, I managed to get 3 bottles of Nivea Women's bodywash, a bottle of men's Nivea bodywash, a bottle of Irish Spring bodywash, and 2 rolls of tape for 1.52 out of pocket at Walgreens. I finally "bought into" the Register Rewards program there last week. (Spent $16, got $16 in Register Rewards - essentially gift certificates for Walgreens that expire 2 weeks from when you print them.) So I actually spent 7 of those yesterday, but I got 7 more back. That's my goal now, to just keep rolling them over and accumulating free stuff and getting the same amount (or more if possible!) of RR back. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me! This is how big of a nerd I am, I laid awake Tuesday during the night pondering the deals I could get at Walgreens this week with my combination of coupons, sales, and RR deals. Yep, I am a card-carrying, bonafide dork. So sue me...

Later gator!

Late nights!

The last two nights have been kind of late nights for Miss Ruby! On Monday after I posted, she woke up and was awake for most of the rest of the day, and evening, and night... she would only sleep about 15 minutes at a time and was nursing about every 1.5 hours. It definitely made for a long day. She didn't go to sleep for the night until 3 AM! Thankfully, Andy heard me grumbling and crying at one point, so he got up with her for awhile, but it was hard to sleep b/c I could still hear her crying. I think I did sleep for like 15-20 minutes maybe. After 3, she slept till like 7:30 - not too bad I'd say! When Ira got up, he watched Winnie the Pooh so I could sleep a little more, pretty much a necessity for me. I can't fathom when I was in college and even after Andy and I got married and we could go on very little sleep. I can't do it now!

After we all got up and around, we went into town to go "free shopping." It's my latest favorite thing to do. I follow a blog that posts deals that in combination with sales and coupons, allows you to get things for free or close to free. I spent around $3.75 yesterday and got 6 boxes of Ronzoni Smart Taste pasta, 4 boxes of crackers (2 Special K, 2 Wheatables Nut Crisps), a can of shaving cream, a package of flossers, a package of pads, a 4 pk of Reveal bulbs, 2 jars of Lea & Perrins thick worcestershire sauce, 6 rolls of 3M Packing Tape, and a set of JCPenney towels (2 bath towels and a hand towel.) They say shopping is therapeutic (and I do tend to find that to be true for me - I know, it's "consumeristic," nonetheless, it's true.) Well this is just a great way to get some retail therapy for little to no money. Both kids were AMAZING! Ira has always been a great traveler and a great help when shopping, but Ruby struggles with her carseat. She hates it sometimes, so going anywhere is kind of a crapshoot. We've started to notice that if you nurse her (well if I nurse her) right before I put her in it, then she seems to do okay. That was the case yesterday, thankfully. I returned home a happy momma!

Last night, I started in on the process of re-sorting/marking all of Ira's clothes and Ruby's clothes too. We broke down and bought some storage tubs for them (we had been using these barrels that Andy had gotten leftover from a job, but they were just too big and too awkward to move.) I'm just going to mark everything, that way when someone needs them for their kiddo (my sisters and I share clothes) they are already marked. I'm excited to get this project underway - I'll probably work on it most of today.

Well, I suppose I should wrap this up - Ira is almost finished with his chores and he keeps saying when he's done that he wants me to clothespin a blanket to my shirt, then he can go inside it and pretend to be a baby and kick and I can feel it. (The child has been obsessed with birth lately - last week he pretended the new UV tent we got for Ruby was a womb. I went in the living room to find him inside the tent, and the tent covered with blankets so that it was "nice and dark and warm." After I went back into the kitchen, he said "Mom, you need to come see this tiny baby that was just born" (through the opening of the tent/blankets.) Obviously this is all stemming from Ruby's birth I'm sure, and the book "Angel in the Waters" that we read to him throughout my pregnancy. I love to see him so excited about babies/birth. He will make an amazing husband someday if that's what God is calling him to be. Or maybe he'll grow up to be a good, Catholic OB/GYN. Lord knows the world needs MORE of them!!

Right now on my mind: trying to decide whether to wake Ruby up earlier in the mornings so that she'll go to sleep earlier at night. (last night it was 11:30, not too bad, but still...)

Right now my house is: even more messy than last post, but only b/c I've got even more clothes out to organize... I like to think of it as the storm before the calm!

Consignment Finds

So I am WAY behind on blogging... what can I say, life's been a LITTLE busy lately!

Last Thursday, my mother-in-law went with me to one of my favorite consignment sales, called "Mulberry Bush." I think it is one of the largest, and nicest sales in the area. It did not disappoint this year either! There was more stuff there than I'd ever seen at a sale! My mother-in-law and several other first-timers that I saw there went so far as to call it "overwhelming." I just thought it was AWESOME!

I had great luck for both kiddos, which was really exciting, because usually the little boy clothes are few and far between by the time they get to Ira's age (would you be able to sell many of your 3 year old little boy's clothes?... I didn't think so...)

Here's the run-down of what I got:
For Ira:
8 pairs of shorts
1 pair of jeans
1 jacket
8 shirts
1 pair of shoes
3 Veggie Tales Videos

For Ruby:
3 pairs of pants
3 rompers
11 outfits
8 onesies

The best part is, they're all really nice clothes in really nice brands... GAP, Children's Place, OshKosh, Old Navy... I can't imagine outfitting my children without consignment sales... they'd probably just go au' natural if it weren't for these sales. I cringe when I have to pay retail price for clothes or shoes, it's INSANE how much that stuff costs!

Here are pictures of my haul:

What we've been up to

We had a really nice Christmas this year. Ira is finally getting old enough to sort of understand the whole Santa thing. This is him on Christmas Eve in his Consignment Sale $6 suit and his $1 Van Heusen shirt and tie from JC Penneys. (Not that I'm proud of that deal or anything...)

Santa brought Ira what he had been asking for for nearly a year: a drumset. He absolutely LOVES playing his drums!! (Although right now he currently can't play them because his drumstick made its way into the bass drum via the hole for one of the toms - can't really play with one drumstick, can't really play the bass or it might ruin it... bummer... he's still trying to figure out what to do about that one...)

Notice the tic tacs sitting on the "throne" next to Ira. They were in his stocking. Of the 60+ tic tacs in the package, I think he had about 17 left by the end of the morning. (As a side note, I think Ira really looks like me in this picture.)

Baby and I are doing well! This is us the day after Christmas (29w5d.)

Our crib we ordered finally came in! (Ira's was one of the Simplicity ones that had been recalled, so we took it back and got our money back and got this one from Tiny Tykes instead. No moving parts and solid as a rock! Our grandkids (God willing) will be able to sleep in this crib!)

Andy and I on our annual trip to Kansas City to see the lights at the Plaza.

Look at that cutie pie of a baby! We think it has the most precious chipmunk cheeks! This was at our most recent Bio-physical Profile Sono this past Monday. Everything still looks great with baby, so here's hoping we can go all the way to 40 weeks!

Other than that, we haven't been up to a whole heck of a lot. We started making a chore chart for Ira, in hopes that by the time baby comes, they will be old-hat/habit. We'll see how that goes. Well, I think I hear Mr. Man awake from his "Quiet Time" So until next time!