I do!

The kids!
Thank you Beeps for the bunny ears! Nice!

Miss Bean & My Girls!
Our whole family!
My Man & I
Bret & Nicole

Last weekend we went to the Tri-Cities to celebrate and witness the marriage of a dear gal in our family.

Weddings...I love them!

Mmmm.....Cookies

Mom, "I sure want some cookies!"

Bud,"I'll make you some!"

Life is good!

Organized Choas: Tip of the Week #4

This is one of my favorite organizaitonal tips for families with young kids. This gives them the "organizational bug" that will last them a lifetime...guaranteed! I also find that children are more content with what they own when it's not all thrown into a room and messed up. I'd hate to wrap a present or make a craft when all of my stuff is thrown together into several boxes mixed with tools & winter clothing! If it's just too messy they don't even want to try and find what they want to play with either.

Organize your kids toys and belonging into groups. They can be either all the same types of objects or themes. Examples would be blocks, little vehicles, doll clothes, dinosaurs, or Leggos. Purchase lidded containers in your preferred sizes, taking in to account what you will storing in them. Place a pile of the toys on a table and take an aeriel view of them. Repeat with the rest. Have your photos printed and then tape them to the front of the box with packing tape. Cover every surface of the photo with tape. Place toys inside and voila!...your child is organized!

I started this when my kids were really little. This method teaches them #1 we value and appreciate what we have so we take care of it #2 that everything has a home #3 that I can always find my favorite toys because I know right where they are! The photo on the front helps them to know what goes exactly in the box, especially children that can not read yet. When my kids were able to read I replaced the photo with written words. The possibilities are endless, really. We have boxes down stairs right now that say Leggos, Ello, BB Guns, & Nerf to name a few. And as a collection grows, say Nerf guns, you get a bigger box, create a new label & save the smaller box for something else.

~This also works well with the development of a child. They can learn to play with one box of toys and stay focused on the playing-at-hand. In the older child is also creates spontenaity. "Let's have a Nerf war!" Ok...we know exactly where everything is!

~This block box is the only original one left. These blocks belonged to my nephew who is in his early 20's now. They were passed to my kids, that's when I made the box. Then I passed them back to my sister whose kids play with them today. Lots of Ruff kids teethed on those!

Twitterpated #7

The birdies are growing up! Here they are, about to molt their baby feathers. You can see their beaks beginning to turn orange.

Greek Statue

This is one of the reasons why I love that my girls are home with me during the day!

Sugar is Beeps own Greek Statue!

Prayer Cards

Sometimes I find that I need many things "organized" in my life. My prayer life has been one of those areas at times.

With a busy household and lots of things to talk to the Lord about, I felt it necessary to make Prayer Cards as helpful reminders. Occasionally I'd feel as if I was praying the same prayers over & over again or forgetting to pray about specific areas of my life or the life of others. These have helped me stay focused in my time with the Lord & I find that the days prayer card reminders stick with me throughout the day. I am reminded more often to pray about specific people, circumstances and areas.

This is my version 2.0 that I wanted to share with you! I will hang this on my bedside lamp shade. I like to pray in the morning before I leave my room while I'm still in bed.

My Prayer Cards include every day of the week. Monday is Dave, then Tuesday is the kids, Wednesday our family/home, Thursday my extended family, Friday my church family, Saturday our world, and Sunday me. Each card has the topic of that day's prayers as well as being broken down into more specific areas. One example is the kids: their physical protection, spiritual protection, health, spiritual growth, future spouses, & future plans. Another example is the world: neighbors, community, city, state, nation, world, & our Leaders.

I printed each day onto an 8 1/2 X 11 piece of cute paper using a business card sized template on a computer program I have. I also printed a cover card. Then I went to Kinko's and laminated them inside luggage tags. Kinko's provides assorted clips to choose from also. I chose a name badge holder clip. The whole set of Prayer Cards cost me $12.

Prayer

PRAY.....it's hard to stumble when you are on your knees.

Organized Choas: Tip of the Week #3

This is a storage system I created from powder-coated wire grid cube thingys! You can buy these kits to make cube shaped free standing shelving. I made them with a bin on the botton and a bin on the top. Everyone has there own indicated by a lamenated tag hanging from the top bin. We put outside shoes, roller blades, etc. in the bottom. We put our bike helmets, lunch boxes, umbrellas, & items bought personally, like cool water guns or bike gloves, etc. in the top bin. These have been very effective in keeping everyone's stuff organized & safe from being prematurely trashed.... if you know what I mean. As you can tell by the picture someone put their life-jacket in there, which should be in another bin, geez!....I try. At least it's in her bin!

Our First Day of School

Today was the big day! Oh Lord help me!

Our Weekend to Remember

Wow! I am still on cloud 9....no maybe cloud 10!

Last week we found ourselves looking ahead to a weekend without the kids (thank you G & G Ruff!) so we decided to head to Sandpoint, Idaho, and stay up at the lodge at Schweitzer again.

Road trips are always awesome for My Man & I. We love to talk together. Usually these are the times we make large decisions for our family as well as spending time exhorting & encouraging one another. The Lord has been so good to us. We also spent time thanking Him and talking about Him, His Word, & His people (you!).

Friday night was hard because I got sick. I must have gotten into one of my intolerances at lunch. We went to Mizuna, which is the only place I can eat at, and I've never gotten sick there before. I knew it was my intolerance & not food poisoning because I get a massive migraine and nausea until around 4 am. It's like clock work. With that horrible evening aside we drove down the mountain Saturday to the little town of Sandpoint, parked at the public beach.....& rode bikes all day! Now this may not seem to be a big deal, but IT IS! I have not done anything like this since I was 16 or so. That's the last time I rode my/a bike. (My Mom melted it! That's a story for another blog!) And most of you know that the last 15 years I've either been with little kids OR really sick OR spent money on bikes for kids! My Man bought me a new bike a couple weeks ago & this was my first bike trip. We had so much fun! I really felt free & healty again which is SO awesome for me. Saturday night we headed back to Spokane for church and then headed back to Sandpoint after. That night was much nicer. Jacuzzi, home-made hummus pizzas in our room, little glass of wine....it was amazing. Sunday we drove down the mountain, & quess what? We rode bikes all day! We rode around Sandpoint and then headed south towards Couer d'Alene. We stopped at Round Lake state park and biked around the whole lake. You should have seen the hills I climbed! Then we drove farther and visited Farragut state park and biked around there. We continued to Couer d'Alene and again, rode our bikes all around.

Absolutely wonderful! And I'm only slightly sore today.

Highlights:

Lunch by the Statue of Liberty with our feet in the lake

Racing Dave to the Sub, I lost of course!

The weather was superb. Low 70's and sunny!

Fish Hatchery

Talking politics

Sandpoint Farmer's Market. We had Italian green beans for a snack. Fresh picked, sweet, crunchy & about 10 inches long! No kidding. We shared them with some kids riding bikes that were very curious as to what we were eating.

Fake waterfall we drove to see

The views

Getting locked out of the resort and our room. Our room keys got deactivated while we were in the pool so we had to walk around in our robes until we could get back in.

Fart Bikers. Someone had made a stencil of "gas" and spray painted "farts" coming out the backside of all of the painted road symbols for Bike Lane!

"Freds"

We live in a beautiful part of the country!

Sipping mint tea

Bike jumps

LOVE

Having My Man say he was so proud of me!

Thank you Lord for My Weekend to Remember!

HGS

This last weekend my Man & I hosted our 2nd annual Home Group Sleepover! We invited our church's small group that meets in our home over for a weekend to party! It was a blast! Here is some of what we did:

S'mores......& more s'mores

Outdoor movie night (Oscar) in our 1/2 finished shed

Gourmet breakfast of steak burritos with the works

Junk food

Hotdogs over an open fire

Poetry reading....this was actually really fun!

Bocce including obstacle course

Volleyball

Croquet

Badminton

More junk food

Read books

Told stories

Ministered to one another

Drank coffee & tea

oh yes....and we did sleep a little!

As you can tell by the pictures we had a really nice time. It was so fun & so relaxing at the same time. The Lord is so good to us to allow us to be a part of each other's lives. He has blessed us so richly! Each person in these pictures means so much to our family.....well, actually they are our FAMILY!

*note: after reviewing my pictures from this weekend I have decided to not include some of the...let's just say....unflattering ones! But I'll sell them to you real cheap if you want! heehee

Polka Dot Milkshakes

The last couple of months I've taken my niece & nephew out, in turn, with my kids for a special day with Aunt Stephy & the Cousins. This month it was Miss Bean's turn. First we went to a home school book fair at the Library & bought some books. She bought Berenstein Bears & I bought Abeka Science. She wanted to paint so I took her to Polka Dot Pottery. "Pokery Pottery" as she calls it. She and the girls had a great time painting ceramic. I tried really hard to steer Miss Bean in the right direction. Her mom doesn't know it yet, but I kept Miss Bean from making her a clown she had told me about....my sister hates clowns! Actually I do too, I believe everyone has reason to be afraid of clowns! Anyway.....She also had a hard time resisting the urge to mix paint. What kid doesn't. They don't care if it turns out grey/brown! Afterwards we went to the Little Garden Cafe and the girls had milkshakes. When all was said and done we had a wonderful day filled with lots of fun, laughter, & a sugar high!

Organized Choas: Tip of the Week #2

In our basement this is how I keep my curling ribbon neat. I purchased two thin curtain rods that have one finial on the end that is removable. Then I slid the spools on, replaced the finial and hung them on their brackets. I can add new spools & remove old ones the same way. Neat huh?!