Thanksgiving Times Two!

I wanted to blog about Thanksgiving before it was too late but our computer got a virus so we had to reformat . . . It was very frustrating and now I have to transfer all the pictures back to the computer. So no pictures today, but we still had a great Thanksgiving. We went to Nate and Jill's and there was sooooo much delicious food. I couldn't stop eating! After lunch everyone played Apples to Apples while I napped. Then we played Trivial Pursuit. I really like that game. We munched and visited all day. Thanksgiving is a great holiday!

Then on Friday we went to Terry's aunt's house to celebrate with his side of the family. Again, there was so much food I couldn't even sample all of it. We got to see Lisa and Treg and their kids which was really nice. I can't wait to see them again on Christmas. There were alot of people I didn't know but I think Terry didn't know them either. : ) It was alot of fun. We are so blessed to have such a big family!

Halloween!

Tato's second Halloween! I decided to do something fun this year instead of handing out candy like I did last year, so I decided to go to Nate and Jill's and go Trick-or-Treating with their kids.
Terry had the great idea of dressing Tato up like Minnie Mouse becuase we already had the red polka dotted dress. Jack dressed up like a Jawa, Bella was a Peacock and Sophie was Tinkerbell, or as she calls it Pinkie Bell. They all looked so great! After dinner everyone hurried into their costumes and we set off around the neighborhood in search of sweets. It was a lot of fun but very tiring for me. I carried Tato half the time and the other half just pushed her in her stroller when I couldn't bear to lift her anymore. At one house she got a little spider ring and I let her carry it. She had a death grip on it the entire time. It was so funny. Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Fall Festival and Happy Anniversary

Monday night Terry and I went to our apartment complex's Fall Festival party, and although it was cold, it was a lot of fun. First there was a pie eating contest and since everyone was too timid to enter alone they decided to make it a couples pie eating contest. Everyone felt a lot better about eating a half a pie rather than a whole one. Terry and I did not win. We didn't even finish our pie and poor Terry (who ate most of it) was feeling sick after. Then they had the chili cook-off. Six people entered their chili. I was very shocked when we won! I felt kinda bad because our chili is just the recipe on the back of the McCormick chili seasoning lol. It has 4 ingredients, and it seemed like everyone else put a lot more work into their chili than we did. Shhhh, don't tell anyone. It is a dang tasty chili though. After that we had the pumpkin carving contest. We carved our pumpkins ahead of time since it takes awhile and we just had them judged there. We didn't win that one either. The guy who won went all out. But we did win free movie tickets for our chili!
This is our pumpkin. It's supposed to be a vampire turning into bats. Some people thought it was cool, others couldn't even tell what it was.

This is the one that won. Pretty cool looking I think.

This week Terry and I celebrated our 4th year anniversary! Cassie saved our bacon when our babysitter got swine flu at the last second and she agreed to watch Tato for us so we could have a real, live date. : ) We went to Carrabba's (my favorite) and then we used our newly aquired free movie passes to see Surrogates. It was actually pretty decent I thought. I can't believe 4 years has gone by already! I remember our wedding so vividly. Anyways, thanks for a great 4 years Terry!

And now here is just a bonus video of Tato. I think it's funny. Ok, I know, I think all of her videos are funny.

Recent Tato Pictures

Tato's First Birthday!

So Tato's Birthday was a month ago, and I'm just barely blogging about it! That's it, I'm fired as this household's blogger. Anyways, her birthday went really well and we were so excited to have the whole family there. (well almost the whole family, missed you guys who couldn't be there) We had a BBQ (my favorite) and then we had cake and opened presents, and then we visited while the kids (and the bigger kids : ) played football. It was perfect weather and a great day.




Here is Tato eating her cake. As you can see she is really enjoying it. Well, until mommy takes away the candle that is.

Yeah, she is not happy. She cried for quite awhile after I took the candle away, not realizing that the cake in front of her is still ripe for the picking.

Then someone had the ingenious idea of giving her a spoon, which she was quite happy about.

She then happily proceeded to smooth down the cake for about 15 more minutes. There are too many cute cake pictues to post, but here are just a few more.

Camping

We went the camping the week of the 24th of July and although we didn't get too many pictures, I promise Tato was as cute as ever and she had a lot of fun! I didn't get to go four wheeling because of the whole being pregnant and all, but I still had a lot of fun and my favorite part was making smores at the campfire. It was Tato's first time camping, and her first time having spaghetti!

Red Square (not the one in Russia)

Oh my goodness where to begin. Yeah it's been two months since I've blogged anything! I just haven't wanted to for some reason. Not like I haven't had time. Well I'm just gonna break it up into a few shorter posts. This one will be about Tato's red square. She absolutely loves satin, and there happens to be two red satin squares on the quilt that Jessica helped me make. Anytime she is near that blanket she searches for the red square, sticks her thumb in her mouth, and strokes the red square. At first I just thought it was the color, but later I noticed her doing the same thing at night with her crib blankie (which has two pink satin squares). Now sometimes it is the only thing that will calm her down when she throws a fit. Just throw the blanket over your shoulder making sure the red square is positioned on your shoulder and she'll lay on you and suck her thumb. It's really quite funny I think.

4th of July

Our 4th of July holiday was a great one this year. Although I do miss the fireworks show in Idaho Falls, I still always have a great time on our country's independence day. On July 3rd we decided to go see what kind of festivities there were around town and we ended up at the Freedom Festival . We initially went because the website said there would be a lot of free things to do (which there wasn't) but we had a good time anyways. We wanted to get Tato's face painted but there was an uber long line so we changed our mind. We walked around and looked at all the stuff people were selling. There were a lot of cute things. We also went to a booth where you dress your little girl up like a fairy and a photographer takes her picture (this picture was taken by us, not the photographer). Tato was really good and looked so cute!

They also had an area sectioned off with a colonial theme. Everyone in that area was crafting things like they did in the olden days. There was a guy making candles, all sorts of seamstresses and people doing something with muskets. I only took one picture though (see above) . This lady was making lace by hand! For some reason I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I felt like I was a kid again watching how they make crayons on Mr. Rogers. Anyways, it looked very complicated, I just never imagined that much work went into making lace back then.

The day was pretty fun but it was way too hot and way too crowded so we went over to Muse Music and got something to drink.

Tato had something to drink too.


For the 4th of July we went over to Terry's brother's house for a BBQ. Good times!




Tato had a ton off fun with her cousins (she really does love playing with other kids).

When it got dark we started lighting off fireworks. Amber got us these glowstick bracelets. Bracelet buddies!
Tank Wars was a tie this year becuase we gave the tie breaker round of tanks to Alyssa and Jordan. They were way excited about it! It was a close match but Jordan's tank won! Hope everyone had a great holiday!

More Vacation

So mom thinks this is child abuse, but Jessica said if you blow in the baby's face they will hold their breath for a sec and you can dunk them under water. I just don't want Tato to be afraid of water/drowning like I am. I want her to be comfortable in it. So we tried it, and since it didn't seem to bother her that much, we did it again and taped it. She is gonna be a great swimmer!

Budget Blog

I've been thinking a lot about budgeting, saving money, and our financial future as a country. I've always been interested in frugality, but it seems lately it's coming more out of necessity rather than enjoyment. It seems harder and harder to get by these days on just one income and it's almost like everyone just expects women to go back to work after they have their babies. I am doing all I can to continue to be a stay at home mom but it's kind of looking grim. So this blog post is about a few things, and I hope I get lots of tips from anyone who reads this.

1. What are some possible things someone can do from home to earn extra money?

2. What are some ways to save money on anything (car insurance, credit card interest, groceries, entertainment, baby clothes) ?

3. What are some of your family's favorite go-to meals? (cheap and easy to make)

4. What are some fun free or cheap things you do as a family for fun?

You can leave a comment and if you think of something later you can leave another comment. Or if you know my email address you can email me. I thought I would start the discussion and tell what I am already doing in an effort to save money/get by. Then if you feel comfortable you can tell me what you do to save money. I really don't want to leave Tato at a daycare so please give tips freely!

To save money I:

Buy the cheap diapers
Breastfeed
Use only half a paper towel at a time
Don't go shopping . . . ever (well except for groceries of course)
Rent movies from the Redbox instead of Blockbuster
Only go see movies in the theater about . . . once every 6 months
Have the lowest minute option on our cell phone plan
Don't have a land line
Don't have cable
Got rid of our WOW accounts . . . (this was mostly out of boredom though, as our Wow accounts were our only form of entertainment and 13 bucks a month for entertainment is actually pretty cheap, we just got sick of the game)

I know it's not a lot, but it's what we're doing now. Now for the things I desperately need help with.

Ways I am NOT saving money:

I way too often have Terry pick up fast-food on his way home from work
I buy those easy skillet meals which are like 5 bucks a meal (maybe that isn't a lot for a meal for two people, I don't know, is it?)
I buy baby food
Our car is pricey
Our rent is pricey

Most of our spending has to do with food actually. This is why I need tips about cooking for lazies and stuff like that. I'm not sure what I can do about the car and rent, but tips are still appreciated. So I think food is our main problem. We just really like good food. We just don't want to make it ourselves. : ) If you have any motivational tips too, like how to get excited about cooking in addition to recipes, that would be nice too. But really anything you can think of to save money is interesting to me.

Vacation!

We just got back from an awesome vacation to visit my sister in Texas. It was so much fun and we definitely needed the vacation. The only bad part was the drive. It took us about 23 hours to get there and we decided to do it all in one day so we didn't have to waste vacation days driving. We got there Friday night and had to leave the next Saturday morning so we had a whole week of fun in the sun!


Monday or Tuesday (now I can't remember which day) Jessica took us to a delicious BBQ place called Spring Creek. They had the best rolls! Really they were like little piping hot loafs of bread but they we're unlimited so I just kept eating and eating. It was a really good place.

Most of the pictures we took are of swimming. I didn't really think to take my camera out at any other time. We went swimming a couple of times and even though Tato looks horrified in this picture, she absolutely loved swimming. Every minute of it. For awhile there she had a perma-grin. Guess we'll have to take her swimming more often.

This is what Terry looked like most of the time. He was usually dragging a few kids around the pool.


She liked this little dolphin thing that Jessica had, but after awhile she got way too relaxed in it and started to doze off so we took her out of it.




Perma-grin.In addition to swimming Jessica helped me make a quilt. Ok really I helped her make a quilt. She did 98 percent of the work. But I did pick out alot of the fabric and I sewed some squares together. I also ironed alot.
Here's the finished product. Cool huh! Thanks Jess for helping me make a quilt. We also made cards and did all sorts of crafty things. I had a lot of fun.


Well since we did so many girly things like quilting and making cards (we also rented "He's Just not That Into You" which is a chick flick), I agreed to take Terry to go see the new Terminator movie while Jessica babysat for us. We found an AMC so that we did not have to go to a Cinemark. The movie was decent. Pretty much what you would expect from a futuristic robot movie I guess. I've never seen any of the previous ones though so I don't know. Terry liked it ok. He still likes the other ones better though.We had a gift card from Applebee's that I got for my Birthday from Tricia so we went there after the movie.
We did other things like play games with the kids, watched movies, visited and stayed up way too late most nights. It was a very relaxing time. We definitely needed this vacation and we had a ton of fun. Tato did too. I think she's gonna miss playing with all her cousins.

BBQ

This year for Memorial Day we had a Barbecue at Nate and Jill's house. Now I know Memorial Day was a few weeks ago but that is how long it takes me to put the pictures on my computer for some reason. Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Jill's mom and grandma even came into town for the long weekend. I really love getting together with the family, and of course the great food doesn't hurt. I love good ole BBQ food. Burgers, Mac salad, chips, soda, dessert. Yeah, it's a real wonder how I've gained 30 pounds since High School. A real wonder. We ate, talked and played games. It was a lot of fun. Tato always has a good time over there too because she get's to play with her cousins. I know Terry will be dismayed in my choice of picture of him, but that is what he gets for being such a goofball. : )Marshall helping the kids search for bugs.

I love this picture. Bella always loves reading to, and playing with Tato. They are little buddies.

In other news (and I'm sure most of you already know) I am pregnant . . . again. Yes it was a "surprise" and yes I know where babies come from. It will take me awhile to get used to the idea of another little rugrat around the house, but I am finally starting to get excited. I had my first ultra-sound and somehow I am 12 weeks already. I seemed to have missed the first 6 weeks of my pregnancy. That's ok though, it's sure catching up to me now. Anyways, I'm open to suggestions for a nickname for the new baby. We don't know the gender yet so it kinda needs to be cute for either gender. We've been using Peanut for now but it just doesn't fit like Tato did. She is just a little Tato, that's all there is to it.