Kids Eat for Free!

So I was browsing some blogs and found this awesome list of where/when kids eat free! I know that I am always looking to find some places/ways to save money. Feeding 3 boys can get expensive, so wherever I can save a little money, I will! Check it out here!

Things I never thought I would say...

Ok so the other day, I realized that I say things all the time that I never thought I would say.

Joey! Don't dump your poopy diaper on mommy's bed!

Joey! Dont give your food to the dog!

Joey! Don't put your toys in the toilet!

Joey! Don't pee on your brother!

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Joey! Don't let your brother stick his fingers in your nose!

Joey! Don't scratch your butt then put your hands in your mouth!

Just keep reminding me that I love my children, I love my children!

Edited: Joey! Don't poop on the floor! Now mommy has to clean it up!

Johnathan! Don't steal your brother's paci just to put it in your mouth! You have one right next to you.

Count Em Up Monday

10 Dirty Little Secrets

Hmm what are 10 of my dirty little secrets? (and please don't judge me for them either)

I can't skimp on my toothpaste. It has to be a name brand.

I am so anal when it comes to washing/folding my cloth diapers that I don't want anyone to do it in case they mess them up.

I want to sneak shrimp into something that my husband eats. He says that he is allergic, but I don't believe him. (this is a bad one, I know, but I honestly don't believe it)

I so desperately want to be organized, but at the least sign that it won't work, I give up.

I am not the best driver and I know it, but if you ask me, I won't admit it.

I really love drama, only if it's not mine.

I used to match my underware with my clothing, but since having kids, I really don't care anymore.

Sometimes I think that I am better than other people because I cloth diaper my little ones.

I feel like a rebel when I put disposable diapers on them.

I wish that I had really good and clear skin, but I am too lazy to work for it.

4th of July!

So I know that this is late, but I am just learning how to post pictures to Blogger from Picasa. I can upload the pictures from my phone to Picasa then post from there to blogger! This might come in very handy!

On our way to the fireworks!

The boys once we got there!

Its been a while

So I just checked my blog and realized its been a while since I have posted anything, much less anything pertinant to my life. Life has been busy. It has had its ups and its downs. We have had so much trouble with our cars lately that its so frustrating. On Friday July 23, I headed up to Wood River to meet a girl that I went to high school with to give her some clothes to borrow for her son. Well I left the van running and all of the things on (ie Dvd player, AC, phone charger, GPS) So coincidentially, I needed to get gas and I figured that I just ran out of gas. The girl that I met went and got her FIL and some gas. They put it in the tank and I tried to start it. It wouldn't work. We finally realized that it needed to be jumped. We jumped the battery and I headed over to Walmart to get a new one. My mom had met me and took the kids for a bit while I tried to get the battery. Went to Walmart and they checked it and said the battery was bad and the alternator was fine. Great! Easy (but expensive) fix. Waited a while for them to put the battery in. During that time, Mom dropped the boys off with me so I am sure that I looked pretty funny walking around Walmart with 3 boys in a double stroller. Marc met me there and the people in the automotive department overhead paged me and told me to come back to my car. They told me that they tested the battery and that it was fine and so was the alternator.

After things were confirmed ok, we headed up to the inlaws house. We had a nice evening going to Festival Days and hanging out with Chris and Renee. Marc stayed up with the boys that night and I got to sleep without having to be up. That day, we spent some time with his family and then we headed back home. We had a few things to do that evening, so we were home.

Sunday, we went to church and hung out at mom and dads house. We took a nap and did some canning of pasta sauce and pizza sauce. We then went back home and got things ready for the week ahead.

On Monday morning, I got things ready and took the boys to mom's house so that I could go to work. Right before I got there, the tire went flat. No way! So I got it into moms driveway and parked it. I drove her car over to work. Marc went and got the tire looked at when he got home from work. It was fine. It just had to have a plug put in it. Great! It only cost $15 to be fixed instead of at least $150 for a new tire. Wednesday came and I went with mom to get Joey's hair cut. I was opening the sliding door to put Joey back in the van after his haircut and the handle for the sliding door broke. I was so afraid that Marc was going to get mad at me for breaking one more thing on the van. He just laughed and said it happens.

Well yesterday, Marc was going to AT (he has home station AT this year because the 739th couldn't get their act together and by default, they are doing home station AT) and on the way, the car broke down. We thought it was just the serpentine belt and tried to replace it later that day, but the compressor on the AC broke. (or at least that is what I think it was.) We had to have it towed home. So need less to say, we haven't had good luck with cars lately. The guy that is going to fix the car won't be back from vacation until next Monday so we will be without a car almost 2 weeks. Pray that it gets taken care of!

Thousand Dollar Day..

So I was browsing a blog and stumbled across a blog, Where He Leads Me, and she brought up a fun day of daydreaming for me. What would I do with $1000 to be spent only on me? I will tell you first of all, that would never happen to me in a million years. But to play along, I will tell you what I would do. Her blog gave me some ideas on what I would like to do.

First of all, I would drop the boys off at my parents house (I would drop them off at the babysitter if I didn't have to take that money out of my $1000, but if I had to, I might just to spend the day with my mom as well.) Don't get me wrong, I love my boys, but I haven't been shopping without them in who knows how long.

I would then schedule someone to come clean my house. I don't really have time to do it (ok so sometimes I don't make the time because its so overwhelming) and its hard to do with kids underfoot. That would be about $150 I am guessing. (never had it done before, but I will start there)

After that, I would head to the salon and have my fingers, toes and eyebrows done. Who doesn't love a good mani/pedi! With tip, this should cost about $45. I like the place inside the local Walmart, so its not such a bad trip to get them done. Hmm what is next????

A massage!! I haven't had one since I was about 34 weeks pregnant with Joey. It was heaven! I need a good massage to relieve some stress in my life (what's that? I have stress in my life, NO WAY!!) I think that the last time I had one it was about $60 so with a tip, that knocks out about $75.

Man this is hard to do! I am never thinking about what I would spend on myself. I always want things for the boys. I want to get them new cloth diapers, or make sure we are stocked up on baby food, or buy them new car seats, or something that is for them. I can't remember the last thing that I bought for myself (excluding food)

I would then head to lunch. SUSHI! Love that stuff. I would have a shrimp tempura roll and then try a new one that I haven't tried before. Love being adventurous. This will cost me about $25 because I will get one of the expensive ones to try. This would be followed by some ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery. Coffee lovers to be exact. Love the mix of coffee ice cream, almonds, heath bar, and caramel. $5 because I would leave them a tip to make them sing to me. mmmmm

This is harder than I thought..

I think that I would head to the Mills Mall to find some stuff for me! I would first go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and get some new things for the kitchen. I would love some new mixing bowls, new spoons, and I would spend about $75 on some new kitchen gadgets. I would then go to Old Navy and drop some cash on me some new clothes. Well actually just some new shirts, because none of their pants ever seem to fit me very well. Let's say about $75there. I would then head to the bookstore and then I would buy myself an Ebook reader. I have been drooling over this for a while. I think that I would buy a gift card so that I can get some ebooks when I need them. This would probably be about $175 for the ebook reader and then another $50 for ebooks.

I would probably stop and buy myself a tanning package. I know that this is a controversial thing, but you know what, its my $1000. I feel better and think I look better when I have a little bit of color. Lets do a package for the rest of the year that is only $75.

I would then go to the fabric store and buy about $100 worth of fabric. WHAT I WANT. Not things that I have to get, fabrics where I could make pretty quilts or just other things that would make me feel accomplished!

Well that's it! I guess I could have spent less and taken my husband out to dinner, but its all about me right now huh? LOL I would most likely shave off other things (like the tanning package or the clothes) and do this. Oh well. Its my money and I will spend like I want to!!!

What would you do with $1000 to be spent only on you?

Multiples and More QOTW-Do you believe in CIO

How do you feel about CIO (cry it out)?
Well if you would have asked me 2 years ago what I thought about it, I would have been totally against it. I would never have thought that I would let my baby just cry. Well when I had DS#1, I changed my mind. He was an easy child. I didn't have much problems when it went to getting him to sleep. Until he hit about 7 or so months. When I would put him down, he would just cry because he didn't want to go to bed or that he just wanted to be near us. I had made sure that I had fed him, changed him, and made sure that he was tired before I layed him down. He just would cry. So I would wait about 3-4 min and I would go back in his room and reassure him that everything was ok. If he would cry again, I would wait a little bit longer before I would go back in there, say, 8-9 min. I continued this if he kept fussing. After 3 or 4 days, I didn't have to go back to his room because after about 5 min of him fussing or crying, he was asleep. Since then, we haven't had any problems getting him to sleep. Same thing, we make sure he is fed and dry, we then put him in bed, pull the covers up, turn on the radio and we walk out. Thats it! People are amazed on how well he goes to bed.

Now with the twins, it's a different story. They are still in our room. They share a crib. So these are factors that play into our sleeping in our house. Until the twins were about 3 months old, if one got up to eat, I got the other up to eat. It was better on my sanity. I couldn't be getting up 4 times a night. I would have lost my mind. Anyways, at about 3 months, they started sleeping through the night. Mommy was in heaven (It didn't make that much of a difference to daddy because he didn't get up with the babies at night.) Well a short 4 weeks later, they hit their 4 mnoth growth spurt. They were getting up once, maybe twice a night each! EACH!! I was so exhausted for the next 2 months. Its not easy to used the CIO method with twins who are sleeping in the same room as each other, and also in the same room as another adult who has to get up and go to work the next day (not including mommy who has to work 3 days a week outside of the home.)

Do/Did you use this method for sleep training?
Unintentionally I did with DS#1. I didn't realize it was a form of CIO that I was doing, but it worked. Now with the twins, they are somewhat sleeping through the night. Just this past week (a few days after they turned 6 months) they started sleeping better. I don't know what it was, but it has been a world of difference. I don't think that this method is good for us right now, seeing as that they sleep in the same bed, and in the same room as their dad and I do. I am just afraid that if I let one cry until they go back to sleep, then they will wake the other up and I will just have to start all over again. Oh well. We will find something that will work for us. I have even thought about putting one of them in the dining room and keeping one in our room just to see if they slept better apart. Since they aren't doing bad, I will just keep doing what I am doing now. Nothing. Just changing and feeding them right before they go to bed. We do try to keep the room pretty quiet, either no noise, or just the tv turned down pretty low. I try to keep DH quiet too. He doesn't have the quiet gene. It's either loud or louder. Oh well.

How well do your multiples sleep?
Well as I stated above, they have been doing better, but still not STTN all the time. I just hope for my sanity and for their sleep patterns, that they sleep better forever!

Do you think that you were/are more likely to allow your child to CIO because they are multiples?
No. I think that them being multiples and cosleeping with each other makes it harder to let them CIO. Like I said before, if things aren't great in a few months, I might separate them see if CIO works. (well mommy and daddy might be moving our bed to the basement to let the twins have their own room since we only have a 2 br house.)

What instances do you think it is appropriate/inappropriate to let a child CIO?
Honestly it depends on the child. If your child can be self soothed, then I think it would work. If they are only soothed by parents holding them or nursing, I don't know how it would work. It would be inappropriate when the child is too young. A 2 month old doesn't need to CIO. I think there is an appropriate age for all kids when it comes to this sort of thing. It is up to the parents though. They are the only ones that know for sure if their kids are ready for some sort of sleep training. All of the child's needs need to be met before they should be allowed to CIO. They should be changed, fed, and in a safe environment.