Thanksgiving

We aren't back from Thanksgiving yet but I wanted to write down some things I am thankful for before I forget.
1. Health (What's up with being sick. I got pneumonia last Thursday (20th) and spent 3 hours in the ER. Who knew that it hits so quickly and that it feels like someone beat the *#>* out of you with a baseball bat. All I could do was lay on the couch and cry because everything hurt so bad-labor was nothin' compared to this-hence why we finally ended up at the ER)
2. Drugs (They gave me a shot of morphine to ease the pain and boy did I feel better!!!!!)
3. Sam (He really should be at the top of the list. He took off work the next day and just took care of me. What an amazing husband I have. He even said to me later, I was so stressed trying to play with the kids, clean the house, make dinner, do the dishes, take care of you and everyhthing else. I don't know how you do it. I will gladly go to work but I forgot how hard it is to stay home.)
4. Family (We have had so much fun hanging out with all our family, especially seeing Uncle Spencer come home.)
5. Pine Trees (Don't they smell so good?)
6. Rolls with leftover turkey (so yummy!!!)
7. Good deals (we actually got up at 4:30am and went shopping. This was the 1st time in like 5 years I have gotten up early and it wasn't too bad :)
8. Diet Coke (I missed you after 5 days of laying on the couch. A doctor told a lady I visit teach that if you struggle with hormones you should drink some caffeine. No wonder I like it so much, or maybe I just like the excuse!)
9. Settlers of Catan (Boy do we play all the time)
10. Books ( how can I leave off my old friends)

We will post some pictures when we get home of all our adventures!

Coupons

I don't know how many of you are into coupons but I found this blog that is giving away a whole bunch them. If you are interested you should check it out. It is savingourcents.blogspot.com

Update

Wow it's been awhile since I kinda wrote about what is going on in our lives. We are in the midst of life and I guess that explains why it's been awhile since I wrote. We just finished with all our paperwork for foster care and are waiting to start our classes that you have to take before you can get licensed. Sam is loving his job and is very happy there, which makes the rest of us happy. He definitely has longer hours and between that, his calling and the chorale we see him on Monday nights and the weekends. (Good thing all the networks have their shows going again, I just watch TV and work on projects :) I am staying really busy with my calling, doing things with the kids school, projects and life. How else do you explain a mom's life? We have started a "Total Money Makeover" in our lives and that has brought a lot more peace and joy to our lives. It's amazing when you can pay bills and not have it be stressful. I love that feeling. We are only on "Baby Step 1" but it has already made a huge difference.
Seth stays really busy with school, homework, scouts and violin. He is loving it and asks if he can practice more. Isn't that weird? I about fainted the first time he asked me. He had a very sad experience the other day. At about 3pm there was a knock at the door. I thought "oh good he's back from school". The girls answered the door and he came stumbling to the couch and collapsed and started bawling. I said, "Seth what's wrong?" And then I remembered. Such a bad mom I am. He had taken his tackle box full of rocks to school with him for show and tell. Well that thing is quite heavy. So the bus stop is about a 1/4 of a mile from our house and he just walks home. Well this day he had to carry home his tackle box in his backpack (and there was no space for anything else in there), an over-sized book on the universe, his lunch box, his big winter coat and all his pokemon and yu-gi-oh cards. AND I FORGOT TO GET HIM at the bus stop. He was so sad that he had to carry all the stuff home. I felt terrible!!!
Sarah is loving learning how to read. She is constantly sounding out words she sees and is always excited to go to school. She still loves all her horses and is saving up to buy one, that's what she tells us anyway.
Kathryn is in preschool and loves to get out of the house. Her speech therapist just tested her again for her yearly evaluation and she scored in the normal range. YEAH!!!! All be it the low end of normal, but this is the first time she has ever scored in the normal range. We were excited for her.
Luke is still our busy boy. You cannot leave a chair down anywhere or he will push it to wherever he wants to go and get what he wants, like a drink of water, gum (he loves that lately) or just something to eat. This one definitely takes after me. He absolutely pop and chocolate. Poor boy! He has also discovered the joy of cars and trucks and plays them most of the day.
Anyway that's is some of what is going on with us. Next week we will be gone for awhile so I guess I will be taking a break from blogging then too. My brother comes home from his mission and then we get to spend Thanksgiving with my family. We are excited.

Now...to every month!

LESS THAN 1...AGAIN!!!
So since I have had two tests less than 1 (but not quite 0) I can go to one a month for 6 months. It should go well and then we can move on with the next chapter of our lives.
We are in the process of doing all our paperwork for foster care, so on that note we are going to go private. If you would still like to be included, let me know and we will shoot you an email. You have a week and the time starts now.........

Happy Birthday Elder McIntyre!!

Hope you enjoy! Can't wait to see you :)

Sarah's 1st Lost Tooth

So it was Sarah's turn to say family prayers last night. She is taking awhile to start so I look over at her and she has a really funny look on her face. I didn't think anything of it, so I tell her to go ahead and start. So she says the prayer and then runs into the bathroom. All of a sudden she yells, "I lost my tooth!" (I guess it came out right as she was trying to say the prayer :) We only just discovered the night before last that it was loose. The other funny part is that we asked her where it was and she told us she had thrown it away (hence the running into the bathroom). The sad part is that after we salvage it from the trash, Sam decides to rinse it off before she was going to put it under her pillow, and accidently dropped it down the drain. No savin' that one! Sarah started crying, thinking the tooth fairy wasn't going to come, but we reassured her she would still come since it was daddy's fault for losing it.

Less than 1!!!!!!

Hangin' Out On a Lazy Saturday

Doesn't that look amazing!!! One of our friends was a chef in a previous life and he loves to make awesome confections. They came over last night for dinner and some games and he showed up with this. I just had to get a picture of it. It was so good (by the way the cupcake part is really white chocolate), looking at it just makes my mouth water. Anyways...

We had a wonderful Saturday yesterday. We did some of our big cleaning projects in the morning and Sam replaced our toilet. He is quite proud of it, especially because it was free and it has an elongated bowl, which I am told only guys can appreciate! Then I got to go to lunch with friends and no kids at a very yummy restaurant. We go out for each other's birthdays and have a fabulous time (sure miss you Ann and Cynthia).

The rest of the day we spent hanging out and having fun. Seth is in the middle of the 3rd book of the Eragon and series and is madly trying to finish before it has to be turned back into the library (our waiting list here is about 600 people long!).

The girls spent most of their day playing in the unseasonably warm weather. Thanks Grandma for the skirts. They are so cute!!

Luke loved being outside too. He just wanders around looking for something to get into and unfortunately stepping in dog poop, most of the time. He could care less, but his mother doesn't!

Halloween Happenings

We hope that you all had a great Halloween!! We had a great day. Here are a few pictures that we wanted to share with you. Sam (aka: Homey da clown) hangin' out with Luke while the other kids were getting ready.

Posing for their outside picture, before setting off to trick-or-treat.

Sarah the gymnast

Luke the duck

Seth the vampire

Kathryn the ballerina

Before we went trick-or-treating we had dinner in a pumpkin. Yummy!

That morning we also had a Halloween party with our friends (our kids didn't have school), playing games and eating good food :)