Sure signs.....

I am feeling so much better over the last few days. Not only has the cold started to take a cue and leave our home for somewhere else but it is something else completely. where I live.... aka the old capital of the mid west, we have some pretty distinct seasons. It is bad enough that many of us actually suffer from Vitamin D deficenies in the winter. We just don't have enough sun shining through the clouds. It is cold,windy, and cloudy most of the time. That seems to cause many of us to go into a depression type state.

I have been so down lately. This is pretty normal for me each year. I think that I am just about at the end of my sanity. Life starts to seem darker and darker. Well, for the past 2 days we have had sun...... lots of sun and warm temperatures. Warm for us lately anyway. It was 65 degrees!! While this is maybe not egg-on-the-sidewalk-cooking weather it is a huge change! The barn doors are open, the llamas out and about. When your outside you can feel the warm on your skin.

For me it almost is like a new birth...... or maybe a great sale. ha ha You know the feeling, just warms you from the inside out. I looked out the window and over the last 4 days the ground is popping with spring bulbs. Yes, life is good. We still have trials and we are still praying and broken for families we know. This little bit of light just seems to make it all a bit easier.

So as I start to flip the wardrobes from warm winter clothes to bright light weight summer clothes I am smiling!!

On another note I must just say I am so proud of the hard work I have seen out of Logan this winter! He is our very professor-ish 8 year old and he has really worked hard in school. He just got the results of the Scantron and he just blew it out of the park. He scored 98% in Math and 97% in Reading Comprehension, he has also ask for more responsibility at the barn. He wants to earn a llama of his own, part of that comes when you are ready to be responsible for barn chores. He does about 1/2 of all the barn chores now. That includes clean-up, watering, and feeding for 12 llamas and 20 cats...... (spayed and neutered, I promise!) That is a post for another day and a pet peeve of mine with people and disposable pets! Anyway back on track.....Good job buddy, you are growing into an incredibly responsible guy!!

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.


Off we go but don't mind me if I pause to cough, clear my throat, or blow my nose. Yep, It's just one of those weeks at our house. It is afterall NOT my own fault, just last week I did NOT mention to someone that we hadn't been sick in over a year except for a few asthma issues with Logan..... Well, three days later I come down with a major bug. Day by day the whole family did NOT fall into a pile of sickness....

Our family did NOT go through 3 jumbo boxes of Puffs in 2 days...... We have NOT spent the last 3 days hanging on the couch, we did pretty good till my dear husband got sick on the weekend. Things did NOT gets amazingly worse when he also got sick. He is NOT the worst sick person on the planet.

I did NOT talk to one of my dear friends and mention that I would need to take down the CHRISTMAS tree soon. She automatically wondered why that wasn't a part of my NOT ME MONDAY. What?!?!?! Could it be that most people do NOT have at least one Christmas tree still up in MARCH?????? Afterall I took the main tree down January 3.....I was shocked!!! hmmmmm and as I looked around the house I noticed that this year I may have missed a few things..... Do NOT notice the dust please.....














Over the past week I did NOT have to do the Spring and Summer shopping for Kendall. My favorite store is going out of business and everything is at least 40% off. So I really had no choice right???? Poor little thing has nothing to wear as you can see in her 12 ft. long closet.



I did NOT do a happy dance all the way to the car with some of my great bargains!! OH wait, maybe part of that was because I got to shop alone!!! No small children tugging, begging, or trying to hide while I carefully shop on a budget. These are not my two favorite dresses.



I also got her Easter dress and it did NOT cost me just $4.19. In the end she got a wardrobe of 9 dresses, 5 capri sets, 9 short sets, 3 long pants outfits, 3 t-shirts, 2 pr of shoes, and 4 hats. The grand total was NOT under 100.00...... Wa Hoooo!!!!!!

After hunting for bows daily I did NOT decide to hang the bows, box the barrettes and headbands...... After hanging them I thought maybe it looked like we had less of them when they were in a box.....



I did NOT spend 2 hours changing the background of my blog last night. I did NOT at one point just scream and wish I had the $$$$ to have a creative blog designer fix me up with something adorable and memorable. Soooooo...... leave a comment and let me know what you think. If I were at all technical I would have some lovely christian music playing in the background but alas...... a techy I am not. I can barely say I pod, let alone figure out how to get music on one.

Another One Bites The Dust

Well, that kind of sums things up at our house. Early this morning ....... about 5 a.m. Kendall woke up screaming. She sounded miserable, I just knew it was bound to happen. So I got up and went to her room, and she was as hot as a firecracker. She was also soaked through so I went to the bathroom and started the tub. When I opened her jammies for some reason her diaper had exploded sort of. Little white junk everywhere!!! So I plunked her in the tub and sat down.

You see Kendall is the last of the crew here to be sick except for Tiffany and that lucky girl isn't home enough to touch germs. Logan got sick earlier is the week from me I guess. Either the Wee Church room last weekend or the grocery is where I got it.
For me a searing throat, headache, a cough and no voice...........great! Now they have an excuse for not listening to me. Logan got a straight cold, lots of snot. Taylor came out Thursday night after being in bed for about 3 hours and threw up on the floor. Friday morning he was tired but that seemed to be it.

Yesterday Tim said he didn't feel well and that exploded into life or death within minutes. Today he is home from work, to sick to do anything including help. I have to bless God for his humor in life. Men are bigger babies than real babies. As for me well it is life as usual. Someone has to keep the boat afloat, but if one more person says "huh? what did you say?" I might just smack them................

God either has a sense of humor or he wants us to all go through it together rather than be sick all spring.

Wordless Wednesday..... Musical Genius at work

Oh my ................ Jack and Lilly

I think I have made a few new friends! It is absolutely no secret that my little girl is a girly girl. It is also no suprise that I do everything in my power to dress her in style..... all on a budget. While blogging on a commenters blog,(a really ool blog by the way...... check it out for yourself.... http://nateandjakeandme.blogspot.com),I came across the Jack and Lilly shoe website. I was mesmerized as I scanned the page....... cut-outs, colors,straps, lordy........ I LOVE these shoes! We will be adding a couple pair to out collection. Our HUGE collection....... My little one well she has about 5 times the number of shoes I do. I love to get her the perfect shoe to top off an outfit. She is MUCH better dressed than her Mom!

Go see for yourself....... http://www.jackandlily.com/

Not Me Monday!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Well this week like all others I did NOT do a lot of things that some people might think are questionable. I have decided that this is not a once-in-a-while thing for me so really I must Not think that the behavior is too off the wall. You be the judge!

Things have been weighing a bit heavy on my mind this week and I feel that I should be working harder to be a servant for God. I need to reach out to others and offer help when I see them struggling. When I pulled into the grocery today I saw a man standing with a sign. "Will work for food". Seeing this man and knowing the bind that this economy has our family in I decided that I would bring him something warm out to eat. The weather was cold, windy, and about 30 degrees. I wandered the store carefully picking bargain meals for our family. I did pretty well if I do say so myself. 81.00 for a family of 6 for over a week,including a bag of diapers and a bag of wipes. I had several coupons and a gift card. In the end I owed about 32.00 and I bought a package of bows for Kendall's hair. Not bad!!! or.... i guess in this post "bad". As you can see I am NOT pretty proud of my penny pinching. So on the way out I stopped at the deli and bought a warm sandwich and drink for the man. I drove out and stopped to give it to him. He told me essentially "thanks but no thanks" Excuse me?!?! No, see he really would just rather have money. I told him I was sorry but I had no money to give him but thought he might want something warm to eat. Nope........... I did NOT drive away deciding that he really didn't want a hand he wanted a handout. I was a bit disappointed..... then I decided that maybe I was NOT offering for the right reason. I asked God to allow me to be a servant to someone in need........ As I left the parking lot of the second store there was a lady struggling in one of those wheelchair carts to get up and get her things in her car. I stopped and helped her out, it felt good. The wind was blowing hard and it was cold. She barely could get herself to her car let alone get out of and unload the basket. Her smile was so warm when I offered to help her..... I felt like it was summer.........she warmed my heart.

I did NOT feed my family dried beef gravy for under 5.00 with green beans and pudding. I have NOT started to figure the cost of each meal around here. I have two growing boys and a daughter that loves food as much as she loves me. I expect that they are going to only increase the food intake as the days turn into years. Better start to economize.

I have NOT spent a lot of time this week not only praying for a tiny girl whose blog I visited that just had a heart transplant. She was having problems with the new heart and I wanted to keep her in prayer. Problem is I can't remember where it is anymore.......... that is NOT a symptom of old age memory loss! Nope.... I would prefer to call it pregnancy brain. After all I have done that 5 times and I know each time I seem to remember less. So if this blog is familiar with you could you please help me out????

I did NOT cancel the Llama and Alpaca show for March that I have put on for 9 years. I am NOT so upset to not get together with all the friends I have made over the years. We certainly can't have a show if it doesn't pay for itself. I really will NOT be bummed bad the third weekend when we should be partying with the people.

I did not spend way to much time in the "bow department", we have gazillions of bows why would I need more? Well I found new shades of the same colors and you know what a bow girl I have. She asks every morning for her bow as she picks out her shoes.

The little kids and I did NOT spend all morning and afternoon watching I LOVE Lucy. I do NOT love the show so much that I have it as one of the ring tones on my phone. I am not secretly thrilled that the boys like it almost as much as I do even though it is in black and white.

I did NOT vent to my dear husband that he needs to buck up and help more. Not Me!! I just watched Joyce Meyer tell me to be humble and cheerful to my mate. I did NOT pray just this morning to help me to try to follow and not lead. I did NOT fail horribly............... At least I did put my cart back at Wal-Mart! Joyce likes it when you do that.

I have not spent most of the day with a scratchy throat and eyes that seem to be on fire if I close them. I do NOT know what is coming and have already been hating what my next few days will be like. Around here there is little relief for Mommy when she gets sick. Who else would keep this boat floating??? I just hope that none of the rest of the crew catches it or it will really NOT suck!!! (spraying myself with lysol..... and the keyboard......... and the phone......... and the doorknobs........ you get the idea.

This is what happens when you turn your back and leave the foam shapes unattended



Shewwwwww! I feel so much better getting that out! Hopefully you'll have some good ones of your own. No hugs this time, I wouldn't want to pass my germys on to you.

The little things in life.........................

Well, it's that night again. In our house Thursday night means the whole family sits down and watches Survivor. While I don't encourage very much TV watching this is one that we all enjoy. Picking a person or team as your favorite and rooting them on is a pastime out here in the boonies. It is maybe a silly show but our family has made a routine of it since the show first aired. Before Logan could talk well he would know "vivor" night meant pizza in the family room and everyone was home. When the boys started learning the days of the week there was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Survivor day, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

So yes we are an over-the-top family when it comes to the show. It is a nice break to get to sit as a family and watch. So often these days we are not all together so I really enjoy the little things I guess. With the season just starting we have several weeks to cheer on our favorite player!!

I think the trend is continuing, Kendall boogies and dances when the music starts. Courtney came home and added ring tones if you remember to my phone one of those tones is the Survivor Theme Song.

The only bad thing about Thursday is the ending of ER. I have enjoyed it from the beginning and while I am really enjoying this season it is the end. Sad.......... for 15 years the show has been my favorite, lots of changes have happened during that time but I guess I really like the writing.

Yipppeeeeee!