day 100 - our favorite things

here is our top 100 things we love doing as a family:

1. serving our community as a family

2. going to church and worshiping as a family

3. swimming at the pool

4. playing the wii together

5. snuggling up to watch a great movie

6. great conversations around the dinner table

7. hearing all the little noises around the house bright and early in the morning

8. dance parties to some tobymac

9. eating great food together

10. discovering the zoo together

11. having help when it comes to folding the clothes

12. making new friends

13. playing with friends

14. help with clipping coupons

15. teaching each other how to swim (the boys)

16. jamming out to music in the car

17. mowing the lawn

18. cooking dinner

19. playing outside

20. finger painting

21. coming up with new art projects

22. going new places

23. making pb&j's with more pb that bread

24. eating granola bars like they are going out of style

25. drinking chocolate milk

26. skyping with family across the globe

27. spending time reading as a family

28. family devotions

29. answering questions the boys have about God and the Bible

30. playing mario brothers and getting smashed by my kids

31. visit family

32. going to krispy kreme

33. playing games on the ipod

34. folding loads and loads of laundry :)

35. playing board games

36. earning marbles for good behavior

37. spending our money on special things

38. teaching my kids to be good stewards of their money

39. eat reese's and vanilla ice cream

40. making homemade smoothies and milkshakes

41. eating at chick-fil-a and moes!

42. playing wii resort especially the jet skiing

43. taking pictures of all these smiling faces

44. watching "so you think you can dance"

45. making comments about all the great dancers on SYTYCD

46. attempting to dance as good as the dancers on SYTYCD

47. being robots

48. reading our Bibles together

49. bedtime routines

50. family nights playing wii or board games

51. celebrating birthdays as a family

52. talking with grandparents on the phone

53. being the first one to answer the phone when dad calls

54. playing monopoly

55. spending the night with grandparents

56. helping each other

57. cleaning the house as a team

58. watching our favorite movie "meet the robinsons"

59. having conversations about how great our new family is

60. walking jackson

61. giving jackson a bath

62. deciding who stinks the worst: jackson or the boys

63. trying to make the house not smell like BOYS

64. watching the boys play sports

65. being the loudest and biggest cheering section at the football games

66. speaking truth over our family

67. claiming the promises God has for us

68. sharing God with my kids

69. having them turn their hearts to God

70. knowing 2 of my kids are fighting for God's side now!

71. learning how to fight Satan in a new and real way

72. the reality of the spiritual battles for our kid's souls

73. seeing God receive the victory over every battle

74. cooking for a large family

75. going shopping at walmart

76. making a big breakfast

77. watching the "swagger wagon" youtube video

78. going to happy hour at sonic

79. driving around look at possible and dream houses

80. going to the recycle bin and emptying everything in 1 min

81. trying to locate all our "G" rated movies

82. paying way too much to do anything

83. singing to "disney sing it" on the wii

84. singing every word to every song of taylor swift

85. listening to the boys sing all the songs to high school musical

86. bear hugs at least 100 times a day

87. hearing "secret mama?" then getting a big "I LOVE YOU"

88. watching the world cup

89. teaching the boys to play piano

90. hearing "mama's here" when i come out to breakfast

91. teaching new songs

92. hearing "will you sing to us" every night

93. finding new and fun things to do

94. discovering the world through new eyes

95. knowing this is the rest of our lives

96. watching the boys play with each other

97. hearing the boys ask "can we pray for..."

98. enjoying just sitting next to each other

99. holding hands why we pray

100. hearing "I LOVE YOU" being yelled down the hall

day 99 - summer rewards

it's hard to believe the boys have been home for 99 days. it has been everything i could have ever imagined and so much more. the summer has been the hardest part so far. i'm usually home with all 4 boys most of the day and it gets hard being in our small house 24 hours a day. at the beginning of the summer we instituted a "summer rewards" program. now, at first i really struggled with this because i don't think it's a good idea to reward kids for good behavior when they should be good anyways. well i realized that my situation is different. my kids are still learning what "good" behavior is and i need to help encourage them to make those good decisions. so we are just doing this for the summer.

i did lots of research on summer rewards and found the marble game was the best for us. i went to michael's and got 3 bags of marbles for about $1 a piece. each one a different color. i actually got our boy's colors: orange, blue, and green. this way they can't steal each others without someone knowing. each boy can earn up to 5 marbles a day. they earn marbles by doing something out-of-the-way good. for example helping clean without being asked, playing with little K while i cook dinner, reading with each other, and picking up the sticks and rocks in the yard. those are only a few examples.

sometimes the boys earn all 5 marbles and sometimes they don't earn any. marbles that have already been earned in previous days cannot be taken away but until the day is over the 5 marbles can be removed.

marbles can then be redeemed for various prizes. we didn't do any material prizes but more fun things to do. some of our boys spend their marbles every chance they get. but our oldest is saving up his marbles for one of the big prizes. here is a list of our prizes:

who says you have to skimp on the good stuff?

going from just 2 people to 6 people has been a huge adjustment for our budget. and i probably get more questions about how we keep food in our house with 4 growing boys over any other question. and honestly the only real answer is God. as much fun as i have with all my bargain shopping i humbly come before God asking him to guide me and lead me so that i may serve my family and be a good steward of what he has given us. when you surrender your budget to the Lord he somehow provides more than you could ever imagine. and he doesn't skimp either. people always ask "if you buy store brand it is SOOOO much cheaper." and i agree that store brand is cheaper than regular price for a name brand. but when i have a coupon, it's BOGO and i get money back (making it practically free) why would i NOT buy it. here is a few random pics of what my food storage looks like (this is at the end of our week before i grocery shop on monday).

this is my little pantry i got for mother's day. it doesn't really hold much but it is great for canned goods and a few everyday foods.

i try to keep only food that is currently open and we eat on a regular basis in our cabinets (we only have 2 cabinets with food because we are so low on storage space in our kitchen).
the space above my cabinets is my storage. i keep my stockpile up here. you can see i have tons of cake mixes, ketchup, mac & cheese, juice, pasta and a few other things. most everything on this shelf i either got for free or less that $1 a piece. it's nice to know i always have something on hand. you can also see that most of the stuff on the shelf is name brand stuff.
one of my favorite steal-of-a-deal is shampoo and body wash. now, i know there are a lot of really cheap shampoos and soaps out there but they all stink or don't do a very good job. so i love that i can get my favorite $8 bottle of shampoo or body wash for about $.25 each. this is my small section of toiletries (10 bottles of body wash, 4 bottles shampoo, 12 sticks of deodorant, 2 bottles of dish soap, and the new lysol hand soap thingie). this has all been accumulated in the past month since after the flood we were able to give all our stocked up toiletries to people who needed them. everything on this shelf was less that $.50 each.
one awesome surprise we got this week was my parents dropping of a stack of groceries. my mom hit up a food lion going out of business and everything was 60% off. way to go mom! here is what she got for us!

i've added a few buttons on the side of blogs that i use to help me keep my food/toiletries budget under control. if you have any questions please feel free to comment or email. i'm more than happy to share more specifics of how i can save so much!

grocery shopping for 6

buying groceries for a family of six is going to be a huge adjustment for me. i've spent that past year perfecting our grocery budget and can spend only about $30 a week on groceries. that is including all our toiletries and cleaning supplies and even stocking up on diapers. well with have 5 males in the house that $30 might only buy meat for the week.

i'm a huge coupon fanatic and follow several different blogs that help me get the most of out of my shopping trip. blogs like moneysavingmom.com and faithfulprovisions.com and southersavers.com. these blogs are fantastic and help me match my coupons to the sale items. it is very rare that i ever pay full price for anything. and my average cost per item is about $.50 an item. it's like a game to me and it actually is a huge stress reliever for me to go grocery shopping.

so how do you shop for a family of 6 with 5 of those being males that could each eat you out of house and home? i'm learning alot about nutrition and what will make them full but still be good for them. since i still have a little time before they move home permanently i'm trying to stock up on some items when they go on sale. these boys will eat anything you put on their plates so i'm stocking up on anything i can. i have several vegetables and sauces i have chopped and put in the freezer for different meals. this past week publix had pasta on sale for about $.50 plus my coupons so i got several boxes for the pantry.

however, even with all the preparation i'm trying to do i'm having to release myself from my $30 a week challenge. i'm not saying that i'm going to buy everything in the store. but i do want my kids to have plenty to eat and to have healthy food choices. it's totally worth the money. so i'll keep stocking up on cereal, granola bars, pasta, muffin mixes, crackers, popcorn, and everything else while i anxiously await the larger grocery bills that are in my near future.