Paying it Forward during the Holidays

This year has brought many wonderful things and a few challenges but overall it has been AMAZING! A few years ago I was introduced by a stranger "pay it forward", she sent me a beautiful pirate themed blanket for free!! (here is her site: Spit On This)  Just for agreeing to have a caring and sharing heart to others, the only thing I needed to do was pay it forward to other people. So that year I sent out picture notepads, and calendars.

What was I going to do this year? Well December rolled around and I had done nothing to pay it forward this year. I also have 3 boys that I wanted to teach what the spirit of giving mean't (they are 3,5 and 6) in terms they'd understand. So what was a girl to do?

I contacted The Methodist Home for boys here in our town, St Marys Georgia and asked if they were in need or took donations for Christmas time. I explained that I wanted this also to be an experience that my boys could have. So I set myself on a mission to get as much things/toys that the boys home could use (they have boys from 11-18) and get it for FREE.

I went to our local Walgreens here and scored a great deal on these babies..... These are on sale this week for Buy 2 Get 1 Free.

 By using this coupon (12/2 SS) I got all 21 for FREE.

I then talked to the Store Manger Mr Dinkel and he was thrilled to help sponsor the boys home this Christmas. After a day of waiting for the proper paperwork to be faxed over to them, I went back and did a little shopping for the boys. I bought a few toys for the younger kids at the home and Mr. Dinkel donated stuff for the older boys. We have 6 Axe body sets, 3 sports balls, lego set,, skateboard toy, a remote control car and some stocking stuffers for the kids.

I was able to buy the toys and smores with the rewards points I stacked up along with their instore coupon they have right now.

 I also buy toys through out the year on major sales for near free prices so I went into my stockpile and got 2 of these Hess truck sets.

It has brought me great joy and even a tear or two to my eyes that Walgreens really does try to help the community. I am thankful for this experience and excited to see the smiles on some of these boys faces this Christmas.

All in all I spent only $17 for all this!




I encourage you all to Pay it Forward. It can be homemade, store bought or even sung but get out there and do it.

The Circus is coming to town

It's that time again, birthday planning. Connor will be 5 this year and after 2 weeks of trying to convince him he doesn't want a Dinosaur party, we have SUCCESS!!

I searched online for birthday party themes and came across a CIRCUS PARTY....Perfect! here are the invites that I made with some inspiration from Armelle. I've got tons of things to make and plan out but this is something I love doing.

Here is the invites we sent out:

 I used red, green, yellow and orange cardstock and created the tickets on Micro Word 07 . I cut them out in the shape of a ticket.

 On the back of the ticket is a chance to redeem for an extra prize. They have to blow the balloon up and submit the password that is written on the balloon.
The tiny wording says ( disclaimer: password may self- destruct..)

To top it off I put the balloon in a small bag and stapled a "tag" to it. The tag was hand stamps with

" ONE ( THE COLOR OF THE BALLOON) BALLOON"

Wish me luck on the rest of the party planning. I will post picture of the party after we have it :-)

Drinks and Quality time.

As many of you know, I'm a mother of 3 very energetic and crazy boys. Time for me is precious and very limited when it comes to things I want to do personally. After a crazy week Val and I NEEDED ( can you sense the urgency of that?) to get away from everything, unwind and have some girl talk. We hit up the local 'Red Lobster' and ate and drank till our hearts were satisfied.

most yummy food ever!

This is Val.

 I often feel like I don't do enough for my boys, that the time spent with them is not quality time. I have set it in my mind to take at least 30 minutes from my day to spend with each individual child and spend another hour with all 3 of them doing something fun and enjoyable.

It was play day in Aiden's room.

 So far I have noticed an improvement in their overall attitudes and I get more smiles now ( AWESOME!!) so maybe there is something to this quality time,huh? I just hope I remember to bring my camera out .

reading books are a fav in this family.

Things that make me lose my mind.

My husband

Dinosaurs

All my projects

Eating MISO soup because I can't sleep.

kids eating things off the floor.

THE END.

Legos and Guns

 LEGOS and GUNS. What is it about those two that appeals to boys? They build grand "daddy dragon mansions", planes, submarines, "ak40s" and turbos... They save mom, kill mom and rescue poor Indian children from communist while traveling through the jungle, no wait that was my grandmothers childhood story.

A Computerworld columnist writes:

There are a couple of truisms: Lego just goes on and on, and on… and, when it comes to guns, boys never really do grow up.  Some comments posted on the Brickarms forums: “I want human-sized Lego weapons”; “As a child, I always wished that Lego would come out with some grenades for my dudes to throw at each other”… and so on in similar vein.

Here's a snippet called Fathers & Sons from the Wall St Journal:

I can't shake the sense that boys are supposed to become manly. Rather than neutering their aggression, confidence and desire for danger, we should channel these instincts into honor, gentlemanliness and courage. Instead of inculcating timidity in our sons, it seems wiser to train them to face down bullies, which by necessity means teaching them how to throw a good uppercut. In his book "Manliness," Harvey Mansfield writes that a person manifesting this quality "not only knows what justice requires, but he acts on his knowledge, making and executing the decision that the rest of us trembled even to define." You can't build a civilization and defend it against barbarians, fascists and playground bullies, in other words, with a nation of Phil Donahues.

 Everyday they talk about saving the world and mom from doom. They talk about being like daddy, diving deep in the ocean and using guns to shoot the bad guys. Often I find myself encouraging these rough manly attributes and although that is a quality woman look for, we look more for those that are respectful, have pride, honor and courage.

My husband  thankfully has all these attributes to instill in the boys. These are things they will learn as they grow, through trial and beatings  errors but for now they need to enjoy this part. CHILDHOOD... because as we all know, it goes by too fast.

I do love watching them build castles, guns and the lot.

My baby is growing up

 That's my baby, my 1 year old baby.... we celebrated his birthday before his actually BIRTHday because well the hubster will be on a deployment before the actual date. We normally go all out for birthdays but this time a low key party was in order. In recent weeks the hubster and I were at ends with each other and were forced to spend some low key moments without interruptions. It never ceases to amaze me that kids can be entertained by simple balloons and cake, makes you wonder if spending all that money we tend to spend on bounce houses, clowns, food to feed and army and presents to give your guests are really worth it. It's their birthday, isn't it?
Back to my baby.... he is a stubborn lil runt who decided to come 5 weeks early with BREECH!! yeah Breech. It was the day I was going in to try to turn him around  and my water broke. Did I mention my husband was deployed? oh and I have two other children whom at the time were 3 and 2. So you can imagine I was NOT ready for my baby to come. After a C-Section, 1 1/2 weeks in the NICU out precious baby came home

 And now our LITTLE ( HA!) baby is growing into his own person, with his own likes and dislike...with the like being more then the latter. he loves to EAT,DRINK and follow his older brothers oh and EAT...did I mention EAT?