We figured it out!

We have figured it out! Not to the meaning of life or anything, just what it is that makes Evangeline cry (and then sometimes me too). She was tired. Now that she is old enough to go longer without sleep, and after you check all of the other things like diaper, hunger or itchy clothes; we have a happy, pleasant, smiling, and rolling baby. She and I get up once at night still, but some day soon I will be able to get it together enough to teach her the bottle so Hans can get up with her too. Hans is so wonderful with her. I get a little teary sometimes because I am so grateful for my family.

I just laid dear Evangeline down and let her cry herself to sleep for a nap. I am sitting at the kitchen table watching the cardinals swoop in for the food Hans provided them (in a lovely white / black / white pattern). I keep trying to get a photo for you too, but the birds get scared if I lift my arm. I have 15 minutes before the girls get home off of the bus and homework and dinner take over our life. It is snowing here and the kids and I are hoping for a snow day tomorrow.

I am so grateful for our warm large sunny home in not-as-cold-as-Iowa-or-Wisconsin Ohio.

(Well the girls are home and the baby is still crying and I didn't get my post done quite as fast as I'd like. But maybe when Hans get home I can get some peace.)

Christmas Pumpkins

Merry Christmas everyone! Here are some fun photo's of our some of our pumpkins! Just today I finally carved Gabriella's pumpkin for her. A little late maybe? Well I hope she is surprised when she gets home form school. She drew the pictures and I did the carving. Better late than never. . .

Oh NO! What is this!?

When a baby sleeps through the night because she was sucking her fingers. . . Do you stop her?

Colorful Fun!

oh baby! Our Evangeline is 3 months old now! Here are some photo's from this week. She is beginning to be on a more predictable schedule and sleeping quite well at night! The colic is lessening as well. Yeah for everyone!









































Smashing pumpkins. We didn't carve pumpkins this year. But we did have some fun with one!




















And on a green note! Our new car gets 45-55 miles to the gallon (depending on who is driving)! It is a RED Toyota Prius and we are so blessed to have two vehicles and such nice ones at that!

Baby picture

It is too dark to take a picture of our new car that we bought today. . . I will post more about that later.

Here is a cute photo to prove Evangeline isn't ALWAYS sad or serious. Enjoy

New Entertainment. . .

Coupon / Q-pon. I am having WAY to much fun saving $$$ at the grocery store. I went to 3 stores in 4 hours with my list and my huge stack of coupons. I bought things that I needed and that I wanted and we have more food in the house than ever before!

In the photo that I am posting here, I spent $80.00 for all of this food and saved more than $125.00 with store sale and coupon matching (mostly found on line!). I bought nuts, and produce and dairy that wasn't on sale and I even shopped at Trader Joes (an expensive healthy store)! Here in Dayton there are a lot of stores that double coupons and there are a lot of stores that take manufacture coupons and store coupons for the same item (even Target does this!) So this is my second week of sucess. I don't know if I could devote this much time always, but I am having fun. Now I have to buy a storage shelf with our left over budget money for the overflow of food! Notice the healthy food I usually avoid because of the price like the no preservative lunch meets and the fiber juice and yogurt?

I learned about how to do this at happyhomemakercindy.com and a class I took by Cindy. I wonder what will be in the flyers next week!

Do you like my loveley assistant Gabriella!? I am pretty sure she was glad to be at school and didn't need to "assist" me for four hours of shopping!!!

Halloween

For Halloween, we checked out two neighborhoods; ours and another slightly fancier neighborhood. Our neighborhood had more candy per city block, and the other one gave WHOLE candy bars! What did we learn from this? That kids don't care where they get their candy as long as it isn't too cold outside and they don't have to share too much with Mom and Dad!

I'm morning my sweet tooth a little. I find I am a candy snob and only like a select few candy's now. I like 70+ % cocoa dark chocolate and no one gave that out! If only that was the key to my weight loss predicament. . .