Honey I Shrank Our Spending!

I have not seemed to get much traffic on my new blog. Thought I would remind all of my followers of this blog about my frugal blog. I have a lot of new post about saving money and great deals, coupons etc. Come visit me at Honey I Shrank Our Spending!

I am also now the Frugal Mommy writer for Busy Mommy. You should come visit it is a great website with a wealth of information!

Making Time For the Important Things!

I was reading a blog that I read a lot the other day. She had a story on there that really hit me and I wanted to share it with all my readers. She was talking about her pastor's sermon on Sunday. He got up there and in the middle of a sentence, this guy come in who was trying to run in a race and he had a heavy backpack on. The pastor asked him if he could help him and the runner told him that he was trying to run a race but he could not run because he was too weighed down. The pastor asked him what he was carrying and the man started getting stuff out of his backpack. He took out a cell phone, a laptop computer, several e-mails, a tv guide, and many more things. The pastor said I can see why you were so weighed down and could not get direction. This pastor told his congregation that a lot of the worldly things weigh us down and make it harder for us to get to where we are going. We spend so much time on worldly things that we forget about why we are really here and how important it is to spend time doing the "important" things. For example, prayer. We need to take the time in our lives to have personal prayer. That is our special time to talk to our father in heaven and ask for direction. How many of us say to ourselves, I don't have time for that? How are we going to find our way if we don't make time for it? Also, studying our scriptures is our time for our heavenly father to talk to us. He can help us find the direction that we need to go in our lives, but how many of us say we don't have time to study our scriptures, were just too busy. What are we so busy with that we don't take the time to do this? Kids, our house, that's some of my excuses. But how many of us take the time to watch a certain tv show each week? Play a computer game? Read our e-mail? Update our blog? Surf the web? Take a lot of calls on our cell phone? The list could go on forever. We seem to make time for those things we want to do, why not make time to do those things we need to do to find our way in this world? I added a lot of my own thoughts here, but the girl who this story came from said her pastor gave each of them a challenge. He wanted them to give up one of those worldly things that was preventing them from doing the things they needed to do for one week to see how they felt. Personally, I think this is a GREAT idea. I know that when I make time for those important things in my life, and I haven't mentioned this but that includes spending time with family too, I feel so much better. So, starting next Monday, I am going to give up the computer for a week. So, what am I going to do instead? I am going to spend more time playing with my kids and I am going to spend more time talking to my father in heaven (prayer) and listening to my heavenly father talk to me (reading scriptures). My kids and I are also going to go and visit my parents for the week. It will be nice to take a break from blogging and the computer. After the week, I will come back and report on what else I got done and my feelings during that time. Do you want to join me?
Is there something you could give up for one week?

Going out for my birthday!

Next Tuesday is my birthday so dh is taking me out to dinner tonight to Applebee's. I am really excited! We even have a babysitter coming to our house. I like that so much better than taking the kids to Grann'y house because we only have to take one car. Then we go to my favorite place The Dollar Tree to see if they have any new dollar magazines. they have old magazines one month or newer for $1 buck and I love to go see what they got! Can you tell how poor I am, little things like this make me excited!

I lost my BLOG ROLL! :(

I want to say that I have not been posting much over here. I have kind of been frazzled since changing my layout on this blog. I gave all my information to the person who redid my blog. I thought she would save everything and put it back on for me. Well she did not save my blogroll and I am going to have to find the time to recreate it! I miss it! It was so easy to go and visit blogs everyday, unfortunately I will probably loss some of them forever! I also can not just go to the top to get to the dashboard anymore and that has kind of been different for me. I also need to add the book I am reading to the side too. Eventually I will get this place back in shape, so please bear with me. So, if you visit here please leave a comment to this post so I can put you back on my blogroll. Thank you! Next week I am going to be working on my blog roll.

My Applebee's Date Night

Dh and I went to Applebee's last night for date night. I was very surprised that what I got was really good! I got the Steak & Portobellos 7 point dinner. The steak and whatever kind of mushroom sauce was just so good. The broccoli was so good and had some kind of dressing on it that was fabulous! The potatoes were also good, but they did not have what I think looks like chives in the picture above. Then we had the Chocolate Raspberry Layer Cake. I shared half with dh so it was only 2 points for me. I had read a lot of reviews online that the chocolate tasted like rubber. I will admit that the texture is different but with the sauce it is really good. I also learned something about an appetizer we always order when we go to Applebee's. It is the Buffalo Chicken Wings w/Bleu Cheese Dressing. Dh ordered it again and I ate three pieces. There were 12 pieces in the dish, I counted. I picked the smaller ones and only used a very small amount of dressing. When we got home, I asked dh if he knew how many calories and grams of fat were in that appetizer. He said no so I told him and now I am going to tell you: Buffalo Chicken Wings w/Bleu Cheese Dressing (1724 cal/132 g fat/2 g fiber/) 45 WW Points!!!!! Dh was shocked, he said, "That is deadly!" I do not think we will EVER be ordering that again! I had to use some of my 35 weekly flex points to eat the small portion that I ate. I would have rather spent those points on a Caesar salad! Next time I might just do that! If you are interested in finding out calorie and fat content of things you eat you might want to visit Dottie's Weight Loss Zone. That is the best source I have found to get that information! But I warn you, you just might not want to know! LOL!

I have lost over 30 pounds!

Well I just realized that I have lost over 30 pounds. I usually just say 5 or whatever the loss is but I just realized that I lost over 30 pounds and that makes me feel so good! If you want to see all of my progress go here.
We are all still pretty bad. I took all of the kids to the doctor yesterday. She put all of them except the baby on Tamaflu. I really do not think Tamaflu works on this flu if you want to know the truth, all my kids have fevers right now. I feel better, but my head feels like it is swimming and it makes it hard to do anything and I really have to at least do dishes and some laundry. Well, with fevers they are definitely not into as much, so that makes it a little bit easier! I will be around, but I am a little busy right now with all that is going on.

We have the Flu! :(

I am so sick! I started feeling really bad last night. Dh has been sick almost a week now and he decided to go to the doctor today. He has the flu. The doctor said it was the bad kind type b. So, she wrote me a prescription for Tamaflu. Dh will just have to deal with his for another week or so because they did not catch his in time. I just started feeling really bad. I hope that the medicine will help me, the pharmacist said that she took it and started feeling better the next day. My kids all have bad colds they have had flu shots and their doctor said that it is good for flu type a,b, and c. So, that is probably why they are not so bad. That Tamaflu is $80 for a 5 day supply. I can't imagine if we had an epidemic like they are saying we will have how we would find the money for everyone in our family to be able to take it? That's scary to even think about! I probably will not be around for a few days while we try to get better.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a site for readers. You can list all the books you have read, want to read or are currently reading. You can also list all of your reviews for your books on here. The neatest part of the site is that you can link up to your friends and see what they are reading. I just recently joined but I think it would be a great place for any reader. Go check it out. If you are on there, please let me know so we can become friends!

HI

Hi, have you all missed me? Sorry to post so much this morning. I think I have all of my book and movie reviews caught up! I guess I have been busy with my diet and diet blog, but this is my main blog. I gained .6 pound this past week so I am working even harder this week! I just hope I do better and can get out of the 300's. This diet thing is a one day at a time thing. If it is not, it just gets me down!
Many of you asked about my Valentine's Day outing. We went with 15 other people from our church and ate at the Chinese Restaurant all you can eat buffet. I had a really good time and enjoyed the free babysitting, but I think I would have enjoyed Valentine's Day better if we had just went out by our selves. It was kind of weird with everyone at the table, but at the same time nice to be with other adults. I love Dawn's idea of watching a love type movie, I think she watched The Notebook, with her dh. I think I want to do that next year!
Well, hope you all have a great day! I plan to post some recipes on Thursday and Friday, so check back!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Hope you all have a special day! Our church is having a Valentine's Date night. We are all going to eat at the local Chinese Restaurant. It is an all you can eat buffet with seafood and I do not have a clue what any point values will be for anything I eat. So, I am going to have to be real good today so I will be able to eat tonight. Dh says I better eat something because the buffet is $14 a person. So, I know I am going to eat. Also, our church is providing babysitting. They did this for one other time we had a church trip and it was really nice. Well I hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day. Don't eat too much candy. My favorite Valentine's Candy is the Conversation Hearts and I have not had one.

We had BAD storms last night!

I think a lot of places had bad storms last night! Here is some of the damage that was done VERY close to our house!

This is the county school bus garage right across the street from our house. They are trying to buy some land to build a new one, as you can tell it is in really bad shape!

This is where we keep our garbage cans. This is the back part of that building's roof. Al lot of it was in the street, the fence seemed to catch most of it!

This is another picture from where we keep our garbage cans, you can see the whole wood beam that came off!

This is our driveway. you can see the metal from the garage roof right on it. Dh might have moved it over a little when he left this morning. Our car was in the garage. After the tree fell on our car there we do not park there anymore, good thing!

This is a building right next to the bus garage. If you look above the power line, you can see the big hole in the roof. You can also see some of the roof from the bus garage on the side there.

All At Once :(

I know I have so many things to be grateful for and I am. I know in this life that we are suppose to have trials, but when they hit you all at once it is just so hard to take! We had a tree fall on our car, our other car brake down, this ordeal with Nathan, and now my other car(the only one that works) has a bad leak in it. It will probably cost us about $100 to get the leak fixed. The car that doesn't work is going to cost us about $200 at least to fix. We got the money from the insurance to fix the car hit by a tree but until we get our other car running, we will not get the other car done because we will be without a car for two weeks when they fix the damage from the tree! Arggg..... I just want a break! I want things to start going right for once. I know that all of these things have me so stressed out! I just want a break!

Please Pray!

They took my son Nathan by Helicopter to Leaxington and I am going there now. Please prayfor him. He ate something he was not suppose to. Please tell others who know me on boards to pray! I don't have time to tell everyone.

Lorie

Mental Heath Day

Today I had what I like to call a mental health day. I have not really gotten many of these so they are really special! My dh stays home and I get the day to myself to do what ever I want! I went to the library, Food City and Wal-mart. I am kind of boring , I know. But I really had a great time. The thing that I remember most is the silence and how much I loved it and miss it! I remember when I was single being so lonely I wanted a family of my own so bad and I was LONELY. I remember driving in my car and being so unhappy because I was so lonely. Well, 9 years later I am spending the day by myself and loving it. I miss that quietness, getting to be by myself, and choosing what I want to do without asking anyone and just worrying about my needs and nobody else's. So, why was I so unhappy and lonely back then? Hmm? Now, I miss that and want it back. Now don't get me wrong, I still love my family and would not trade them for the world, but I just find it interesting that what I had and thought I did not want anymore that now I miss it some days.
Now I am really kind of tired! I stayed up most of the night with my youngest last night. He has pink eye and he got some shots yesterday. Keeping his fever down was hard last night and it just made him feel bad. He also has this terrible swollen red eye that just looks nasty. I wish I knew where he picked it up from because none of the other kids have it. I hope this medicine that the doctor gave me does the trick and that he sleeps better tonight!

Bread Machines

I have a bread machine and I love it. Amy Clark from mom advise.com gives a segment on how this machine can save you money. Go watch it here. I thought it was interesting.

Happy New Year! 2008

I would like to wish all of you a happy new year! Thanks for all the time you have spent here with me at my blog in 2007!

I will be gone for awhile!

I probably will not be around for the next three days. Hope everyone has a great time with there families this Holiday Season. My parents sent us money to go visit them so we will be there tomorrow and then we come home and go to my dh's grandmother's. Christmas morning is spent at our house and we have a big Christmas morning breakfast and then open gifts. So, I think they will be so much fun. See you after Christmas!

My Car update

Well, I spent all morning cleaning glass out my car. The glass was everywhere! Dh cut his hand even in gloves. We vacuumed most of it up and then The glass people came and put our new back windshield in. The car seats were the worst with glass and several people have told me not to use them again because the huge tree limb actually fell on top of the car seats. But right now buying 3 cars seats really is not an option so we got one for Katie Sue and Nathan from somewhere else. So, now Neil is the only one who needs one and I think I will be able to find him one at least to use for now. Around the first of the year, we will have to buy some new ones. We also took the car and got the damage estimate. Can you believe it was $3,890? Yes a tree limb did that much damage! The insurance only told us to get one estimate and I was told that this guy is the cheapest? He also will work with us on paying the $500 in payments. So we shall see. But at least for right now my car works and has a window and if I needed to go somewhere I could.

My First Cookie Exchange

Well I have always thought a cookie exchange would be so neat. I loved the fact that you could get some really neat cookies and only make one really neat one yourself. So I was so excited when our church said they were going to do a cookie exchange during our Christmas party. I looked for over a month for the neatest recipe even though I knew that it would be hard. I knew though that I would be getting some nice cookies without the work. So finally I settled on a cookie that I saw on The Food Network Cookie special. They were Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies. Now I have never made any cookie with this much work, but really it was not that hard and I think they came out nice. We were suppose to bring 4 dozen cookies and take 4 dozen home, but it really did not work that way. Turns out that there were only three desserts for the Christmas dinner so people started eating the cookies. I did bring some home, but I guess I was a little disappointed because I had worked so hard and the cookie exchange did not turn out anything like I thought it would. But I really think my cookies were good and I was really proud of myself for making the effort to try something new and a little more difficult.

Car Update

Well I talked for about 2 hours with several different people today and they will fix the glass right now and I will not have to pay anything, right now. The car does have some bad dents in it so those will have to be fixed, but really we can't afford that until tax time, but at least I will be able to drive my car! Thanks for all the prayers.