Free Budget software

Check out this link where you could be the lucky winner of budgeting software, even better than quicken. The ladies at fabulously fugal do a great job.

Usborne Books and More

I am so excited to tell everyone that Usborne books now has a new name with the same great product and more. They recently bought a small publishing company called Miller Kane. They are best known for a book called Everyone Poops. We used this book to potty train all of our kids. Anyways I have many of the books now and love them. They are such cute books and the kids love them too. So now not only can you purchase the wonderful Usborne books from me, you can also choose from over 100 more new titles. You can look on my website at www.readonemore.com. If you want to see all the new titles click on the new titles link. If you haven't heard of Usborne books they are the best educationally fun books around. One of the best things is that you can get them for free too. I became a consultant a year ago and have enjoyed sharing them with many families. I also earned a trip to Rome! If you would like to know more about these great books let me know.

I'm not having twins

I went to the doctor today. I was reassured that I am not having twins nor do I look like it. I am measuring normal, and I only gained 4 pounds. I also got to have my glucose test, what fun, and shot in the back side that I flinched so bad the nurse was worried about me. Oh well, the good news is I'm not huge!

Parker likes coupons now too.

So this morning the kids found the cereal in the pantry, and Parker asked if it was all for us. I said yes and he said wow we will have cereal for a long time. Then I told him I got 8 boxes for a dollar and he was amazed and had to tell Londyn that I got all that for a dollar because I had lots of coupons. Then I told him about the table being full last night and he was further amazed, especially because one of the items was Chex mix and I never buy that stuff. I didn't tell him about the 15 boxes of fruit snacks. Maybe he will start collecting coupons, or I can get him to cut them all out.

Coupons!!!!!

Well I have a bunch of friends that have been telling me about their coupon experiences. They told me about a great site that posts lots of good deals. So I looked through it this evening printed out my coupons, because I haven't had time to store any up yet, and went to the store. I was a little worried about everything working correctly so I decided to try 2 of my 5 transactions and if those worked I would get the rest. Well after those worked and I ran my groceries to the car I went back for more. It was great when I came home and carried a few bags in with me, then told Rob to help me with the rest. He was a bit surprised with everything I had. Then he asked me for the grand total. It was less than $20. Here is a picture of everything that I got. It was quite fun and I even ran into someone I knew that was also there with lots of coupons. Fun new hobby and I got lots for my food storage. Krazy coupon lady is having a give away for lots of coupons, I hope I win so that I can have my own coupon binder. Check it out.



I got 8 boxes of cereal, 15 boxes of fruit snacks/roll ups, 14 cans of soup, 10 cake mixes, 5 cookie mixes, 3 tubs of frosting, 4 bags of chex mix, 5 biscut tubes, and 4 pasta boxes.

COUPON GIVE AWAY FROM KRAZY COUPON LADY!
ONE WINNER will randomly be chosen to receive 3 weeks worth of newspaper coupons!!!!
January 25, February 1, and February 8FIVE SETS FROM EACH WEEK. This would be a perfect start for you coupon virgins, or great for adding to your supply if you are seasoned.Visit http://krazycouponlady.blogspot.com/ for contest rules.

Seriously!?!?!?!?

OK so I haven't posted in a while. But after tonight I thought I needed to share this with everyone. So we went to the temple tonight and I was waiting for Rob to go get the car. A lady who was leaving stopped and started talking to me. She said oh you don't look like you will be around for the temple to open. I didn't understand what she meant so I asked her. She replies well the temple opening is in two weeks, your due before then aren't you. I nicely told her no I still have 2 1/2 months to go. She then says oh well you must be having twins then. I said no I was not. She then goes on and says oh you sweet thing you must be feeling very pregnant right now. Then she leaves. Seriously!?! Am I really that huge? Like I can control how big I get. Why would someone go on talking after they have already insulted me? Some guy had almost the exact conversation with me when I was pregnant with Abi. Then another time at the temple while I was waiting to get dressed some lady came up to me and asked if I was 4 or 5 months along. I said no I wasn't pregnant. She says oh you must be postpartum then. I said year a year postpartum. What is it about me that says hey come tell me I look fat? I have decided I can no longer go out in public. And now I am going to go wallow in a carton of Rocky Road ice cream.

Sad Day

Last thursday was a sad day at our house for Parker and Londyn. I arrived home from work and Parker was tearfully telling the next-door-neighbors that he couldn't play with them because our rabbit Sparky had just died. He was bawling. I inquired as to why he was over at the neighbors and if there was something we could do to help Sparky. Was he really dead or just near death? Well, we went back to the cage and sure enough Sparky was gone... cold and stiff. Parker was distraught. Sharee and I had repeately warned Londyn and Parker to make sure he had enough to eat and drink, but I think Sparky starved to death. It was a sad thing.

Parker and Londyn wanted to bury him in the yard. Our yard is tiny and the only spot not covered by grass is the garden and we didn't think it would be good to rototill him up in the spring, so Sharee suggested Parker get a shoebox and prep a coffin for the little guy and have the garbage man take him and bury him in the dump. Parker proceeded to write a special note to the garbage man asking him to carry Sparky in the front so he wouldn't get squished in the back. His note said "Special Rabbit" please carry in the front of the truck. "Very Memorable." (keep in mind this is the poor animal the starved to death).
Well, the garbage man wouldn't take it because of the note. So it sat in the garage for a week and ended up going in the back of the truck anyay.

The sad thing was the poor rabbit died and the kids felt bad. You should have been here for it though.

Parker's car: The pinewood herbie:
4th place 2008 Pack 87.

I love pink!

Well after INTENSE pressure from my sister, who has just become a blogger, I have decided to take back our blog. I had a bit of fun with it today, when I should have been getting other stuff done. Oh well it is cute now. Rob may not like it all that much, but he is used to me getting my way. I think I may be better with posting to it now that I have moved things around and can navigate through the site better. Hope you all like it. More posts to come.

I have lost most of your phone numbers

In my rush to get home last week, I neglected to securely zip a pocket of my backpack. This is the result. While this phone wasn't the latest and greatest item, it did have iTunes and some fun features including fairly loud speakers. I'm trying to rebuild my phone book, so call me if you have my number and I'll add you back in... good excuse to see what's going on.

More snow

The last post was pretty lame with barely enough snow to amount to anything. It melted off and we got about 8 inches one Sunday morning. We shoveled the driveway snow into one pile in the front yard and more video below... As it turns out, we forgot about the superbowl and had fun without it. The neighbors came over and tried it out. Since our area is mostly flat, it was fun for a week or so to sled.

SnowJumps... back yard fun

So I have this video we made of sledding in our flat back yard with less than an inch of snow. I hope to have it posted soon. It is too big and taking too long to download... I don't know what format and what tool is best to reduce the file size and still maintain some measure of quality... anyone?

I figured I'd just cut 90% and put something up rather than be accused of all talk and no action.

Here it is:

4x

So today was a landmark day. Parker finished the "Mad Minute" 4x multiplication sheet (50 problems in 2.5 minutes with better than 70% correct. We raced a few times and he really didn't want to do it, but did it anyway. I'm pretty proud of him for it. He did one sheet and I did two. I finished and he didn't the first try. The second try, he did one and I did three. He almost finished it the second time. The third time I did 4 sheets and only made it through half of the last one. He finished while I was half way through the third sheet (30 seconds left). The fourth time was a gut check: Parker vs. the clock and he finished it with 100% and 1 second remaining. He's the man. He's here with me as I type this. Good luck with your math everyone. Parker is "Getting it" now.

Day After Christmas

Londyn really wanted to type, so here is her typing:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZI

We are well.

Christmas Eve

It rained a bit this morning and then it turned to snow rather quickly... a nice heavy wet snow perfect for snow men. We made 3 of them. Here is one:

It lasted about at week

An update on the gingerbread house: Everyone who came over took a piece of the gingerbread house... after a week, it looked pretty bad. It got to the point where the kids had a butter knife and were popping things off and bits of sugar would fly everywhere, so it has been condemned and demolished. The photos are immediately prior to demolition:

My Birthday Project

Sharee gave me a project for my birthday. She decided she would whip up 4 batches of ginger bread and enable me to build a modest gingerbread house. I found a piece of plywood in the garage, foil covered it and decided that since the board was bigger than the average gingerbread plot, I would build a gingerbread manor, or mansion. I baked the bread that Sharee mixed up while Sharee did dinner and helped the kids we had over for babysitting group. They then all decorated graham cracker houses with some of the colored sugar I purchased earlier while I continued to bake. I finally started assembling the house at about 10PM, and got all but the center section roof together. After church today, Parker and Londyn wanted to help, so they were patient enough to place the items I told them and they waited for instructions. It was a lot of fun as we assembled the finishing touches for several hours this afternoon. The pictures below show the size of the mansion. The foil covered plywood plot is about 2' x 2'. Check it out.

-Rob

Notice the chevron car in included for scale. The candy pillars in the front are about 9" tall.

The gumdrop overhang began to sag and fell off this morning...

Fat Turkey Day

So yesterday was a big turkey day. I ate a bowl of cereal in the morning and a huge plate for lunch... then sat and played a little nintendo with Parker and we all went to see BEE MOVIE. It was... interesting. Seinfield is the voice of the main character and at the end his whiny attempts at emotional expression are a bit of a stretch ... to put it nicely. Parts were funny and the kids enjoyed it. We went with Sharee's family as we are having Thanksgiving in American Fork with her older sister and her parents.

Hint for those of you not aware: buy tickets early or you will be driving all over town to find a show with seats available. That was turkey day. Pretty low key. I hope you all had a great day.

-Rob

Cold November

So we are hanging out waiting to get ready for Stake Conference. It is rainy. Yesterday we were going to finish staining the fence that we started last week, but it started to rain just as we finished the scouting for food project, so we did some inside jobs and then I worked on my truck. Parker and Londyn are contract laborers on the fence and they are earning $0.10 per slat, but they won't get paid until the entire job is finished, so there is some urgency to finish.

Parker and I went to the $3 theater yesterday and saw Ratatoille. It was pretty fun. This $3 theater is way nicer than any other cheap theater I've attended.

Londyn went to a movie with Sharee on Tuesday, so the guys went out last night.

Abigail turned 2 on Thursday. She had a barbie birthday cake. It was angel food cake with whipped cream frosting. She is now doing quite well in her finding nemo underwear. She has occasional accidents but lately only when she has trouble getting them off. She has started singing for us. I got some good video of her singing "Give Said the Little Stream." This is a phonetic spelling of what she sounds like: "Seening seening all-DE-day, div o way Oh, divb o way." It is really cute. Whenever anyone asks a question, Abby says "I own no!"

Anyway, we better be on our way. Hope everyone is well. We hope to have some new pictures up soon.

-Rob

On and on it goes

So we are headed to Yellowstone tomorrow to rendevous with the Wilcox clan. Parker and Londyn started school (3rd and K). Friday last week, Abigail fell off the neigbors' slide platform and fussed a bit. Saturday she used her arm a bit and we figured she'd be fine. Sunday morning Parker was helping her put on a backpack and she really freaked out because she was hurt, so Sharee insisted that she be taken in right then. I was figuring that it was "just a sprain" and resisted the push to take her in, but I did so anyway in the middle of sacrament meeting because she wouldn't stop fussing. Sharee had nursury and so I took Abby to the quick care and we missed the rest of our meetings. She was such a trooper at the Doctor's office. She played for about an hour while we waited and then she fell asleep just before it was time to x-ray. She was semi lucid and did not resist at all the placement of her arm on the cold metal x-ray plate. Apparently if you fall hard enough you can get a "buckle fracture" in your bone... similar to hitting the end of a wooden stake with a hammer, the end splits and mushrooms out. Abby has two broken bones in her arm just above her wrist on her right arm. She now has a bright pink cast on her right arm from her hand to her shoulder, but she is much happier now that her "owwie" is protected. One interesting thing is trying to watch her eat out of her right hand because it is too far from her mouth with the cast. I thought it was funny to see her negotiate with the cast. She as taken to torturing Sharee by calling "MOMMY" and pointing each different signature on her cast repeatedly until Sharee tells her the person's name, after which she points to the next one and does it over and over. Anyway, that is the latest from up here in dry and burning Idaho.