It's a Love/Hate Relationship....

There is this thing I have to do every week. Sometime more than once a week....and I just hate it...unless I don't have the kids and then I can sometimes enjoy it....

WAL-MART

Our small little town has 2 grocery stores besides Wal-Mart. One of them is too expensive, the other I will go to get meat and some other items when I'm in a hurry and on that side of town (5 mins across town....how spoiled am I)

Things I love about Wal-Mart...
2 minutes from my house
Can get most everything there
Best prices in town
We still have our fabric dept :)
They have cute clothes that fit me
The Pharmacy...three of my friends work there so I feel like I could call them day or night!
Did I say cheap prices

Things I hate about Wal-Mart...
puts the little man out of business
Never enough checkers
Something always goes wrong in the checkout line....today the satellites weren't working for debit and credit cards....ugh! Luckily I had a check!
Taking away fabric depts in stores...please leave ours:)
Other Walmart have cuter clothes and more things than ours.
Takes all my $$$$

I guess I just need to get used to it...it's about all we've got!

Pop Tabs for Ronald McDonald House

Do you ever think that there is nothing you can to do to help people because you don't have time to volunteer or don't have the money to donate....

There is something simple you can do to help families that take refuge at the Ronald McDonald Houses. You can begin collecting pop tabs from aluminum cans. Check out this website to see what it's all about.

We started this as a philanthropy project at my son's school. The kids get so excited to bring their bags of pop tabs. According to the Ronald McDonald House Website a gallon of pop tabs is worth about $1. 49 but I look at it this way....It's something that you were throwing away so why not keep it and do some good from it. If adds up over time!

You never know when you or someone you know might need to use the Ronald McDonald House. For more information about the Ronald McDonald House Charities click here.

How Comfy do I look?

We ran errands after school today...selling tickets to the chili supper at school, library, etc. A was wired....I don't know what they fed her at school but man she usually doesn't have that much energy after school. In fact, my kids are usually pretty good when we go into a friends jewelry store with lots of breakables but not today. A game of chase proceeded! Thankfully nothing broken!

Got home around 4:30. Instead of hearing the kids fight over what they wanted to watch I let A go into E's office and watch NOGGIN...her favorite. She hollered at me to get her a drink and it took me a few minutes...usually she'd ask again but didn't hear anything. I went to check on her and this is what I found.





I think that she is just a little bit sleepy!

The Letter "M"

Here's the deal:
If you want to play, leave a comment on this post letting me know, and I’ll assign you a letter. You write about ten things you love that begin with your assigned letter, and post it at your place. When people comment on your list, you give them a letter, and the chain continues on and on..

Meredith has assigned me the letter "M"....thanks Mer for the easy letter.

Things I love...

1. My Family!
My Family is awesome! Yes I may gripe about them but who could ask for more. My husband is wonderful and takes good care of us. My children may fight too much but they are healthy and sweet and loving and smart....
2. My God!
Where would I be without him...He has been with me all my life and takes care of me. He has given me everything on this list...I only wish everyone knew my God and my Savior Jesus Christ!
3. My Friends!
I have some of the best friends...You guys support me so much and love me even when I'm not my best. I love my new blog friends too...It's fun making new friends!
4. My Church!
We have a great church....We have a rotation of bi-vocational pastors so we get the benefit of learning from several great teachers. The worship is awesome...I left this past Sunday in awe of God's power.
5. My Home
We've lived in our home for the past 2 years. We didn't buy this house the first time around but 6 months later when it came up for sale again we knew God was telling us it was time. It's perfect for our family.
6. My Town! Read this to see why I love my town
7. Mexican Food
I love Mexican food especially EL MARIACHI!!!!!!!!!!! It's a little mexican restaurant in our town and my new favorite Jose's in HS.
8. Michael Miller Fabric
I love me some fabric and Michael Miller is one of my favorite designers. This outfit is made of Michael Miller favorite.
9. Making Things
I love to sew, knit and just come up with new things to make. Visit my other blog to see what I've been doing in the craft/sewing world.
10. Meredith
Visit Meredith here. She's one of my dearest friends. It made me so sad when she and her sweet family left our town. She was my rock when I had my first baby. I would call her crying and asking for her advice...she had just had her 3rd. We've been able to reconnect through Blogworld. I miss her so much!

Like I said I got any easy letter....let me know if you want to play along.

Please Pray

I have been following Kelly's blog for about 2 weeks now. She is a woman of profound faith and has just delivered her first baby girl, Harper. Harper is having some problems breathing and they have transported to another hospital 3 hrs away (which is a wonderful hospital). Here is a link to her post requesting prayer.

I've been tagged!

Lisa tagged me with this....

Here's what you do:

1. Go to your 4th folder where you store your photos.
2. Select your 4th picture (no exceptions)!
3. Post the picture with an explanation and link it back to your tagger.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same!!

This is Halloween 2007. My kids love Veggie Tales and I found these costumes so of course we had to have them. A is Bob and L is Larry. My kids decided they wanted to be Bob and Larry again this past year...didn't bother me at all...No cost and no thinking!!!

I'm not going to tag anyone but if you want to do it let me know so I can take a look at yours too!

Fundraising Fun

One of the reasons I wanted to be home so bad when my kids got to school is so that I could be at the school to help out with whatever needed to be. Well all I can say is...I've got my hands full or should I say...my table full.

This is what I got when I went up to the school this week. This is about 2 weeks worth of box tops, pop tabs, Campbell soup labels, coke lids, and Tyson chicken labels.

We collect Box Tops through the Box Tops for Education program, Campbell Soup Labels for the Labels for Education program, coke lids for the My Coke Rewards program and Tyson Chicken labels for Tyson Project A+.

We get $.10 for Box Tops, points for the soup labels, 3 points for every coke lid or 10 pts for the code off the box and $.24 for the Tyson labels.

All these things are things that people would normally just through away so the frugal mom I am decided to be the coordinator for these programs. So far we have earned at least $300 through box tops...not sure about all the rest of the programs but will figure it out this week. I know $300 doesn't sound like a lot but it was just going in the trash before.

I've also been known to walk up to someone that has a coke box and ask for it...hey it's worth 10 points. Some ladies that are collecting pop tabs for us even found someone that has 3 gallon ziploc bags full that he is going to give us.

Pop Tabs you ask...We're collecting these for the Ronald McDonald house. One of the local tv stations is having this contest for one county in the state. They may open it to the rest of the state next year so we decided to do a little philanthropy and be ready for the contest if it is opened up to us next year. I have counted over 3000 pop tabs so far and have about 10-20,000 left to count. We give each kid credit and the one that gets the most will get a prize at the end of the year. Next year there may not be an incentive so we don't have to count :). I counted the first few thousand by hand but I think that I'm going to use a scale and my mathematical skills for the next batch.

I also have a friend whose school collects plastic sacks. When they fill up a 60 gallon sack with sacks then they get $5 from Walmart. How hard is that? I'm trying to get our school signed up for that too.

So you see what I will be doing for the next week...what does your school do for fundraising?