Grocery Smarts Class

Hey Everyone.

I am having a Grocery Smarts Class the first week in May. I have sent out a bunch of invites but I know I am forgetting people. Plus there are probably some blog-stalkers that might be interested in attending:)
So if you are interested in coming and haven't yet recieved an invitation please leave me a comment with your email and I will send you the info.
I attended one of these classes last year and actually did what we were taught to do and it was amazing how much food storage we were able to build up without spending any extra...in fact we soon started spending even less.



Come Learn How
To Feed a Family for A LOT less!

• Shop at only 1 store – no running around town!
• Buy all of your family’s groceries, household, and personal care items (including diapers) all for about $180 a month for a family of four – while building massive food storage at the same time!
• NO clipping and filing individual coupons! Very quick and easy! A HUGE way to save money!
• Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet and have ease in meal planning!
• FREE WEBSITE and FREE CLASS – there is no cost to attend and no cost to use the website!
What could your family do with hundreds extra every month? Bring friends! For more information please call Ku’uipo Vea at Grocery Smarts at 801-680-2513 and visit www.asweetsale.blogspot.com



One more thing. Please RSVP to your evite if you are planning on coming so we know how many people to expect.

Family Home Evening

I have to admit that having FHE with an almost two year old has been very difficult and so for awhile we quit doing it....or we waited until she went to bed. Well, we are trying to be better. So if anybody has any good FHE ideas that include a 30 second lesson and a long activity, please send them my way.
This is what we did this last week. We talked about how Heavenly Father gave us a beautiful world to enjoy and created the animals for us. Then we spent the next 30 minutes making animals out of play-doh.
Luke and Claire hard at work


Mommy's Cat

Daddy's Bear

Claire's ??? Use your imagination. I don't have a clue but she sure was proud of it. By the way, I really do her hair at least once a day. But for some reason it is always hanging in her face when I break out the camera.

Is she trying to tell us something???

We took Claire swimming several weeks ago and she has been talking about it nonstop.
This is what has happened since that day...
-One morning Claire found my swimming suit and brought it to me.
-Another day she went through the dirty laundry and brought out our beach towels.
-One sunday morning I found her trying to take off her sunday dress as she was in the process of putting on her swimsuit instead.
-When she wakes up from her nap, the first word out of mouth is either 'swimming' or 'floaties'. No Joke!!!
-She has worn her swimsuit over her clothes on more than one occasion.

-She had a meltdown the other day because she wanted to wear her floaties...so I had to run out to the car in the middle of a snowstorm to get them for her.


So we decided to take her swimming again. We had actually meant to take her the week before but I didn't feel comfortable taking her until her head healed up. We picked up Rilynn and stayed at the pool three times longer than we normally do. She had a blast!!

How different can two little girls be. Ri had to be coaxed into the pool and then she had to be held the entire time. Claire tried to run and jump into the pool all by herself and then she was only content as long as mom or dad didn't get close enough to touch her.


When it was time to leave, I ended up carrying a screaming Claire out to the car and she was let everyone know she was not happy about leaving. All the way home she kept informing Luke and I that she was "so sad".



And once again, going swimming is all she has been talking about.

Easter was great this year...even if it did snow and was cold. We met at my cousins house instead of going to Stansbury Island and just hung out with all my cousins. Easter is one of the few holidays that we all get together still. We had a really good time.


Look at that face!!! She wasn't very happy that we took her away from her playing to take a picture.


Claire and Jensen.


Claire and I turned our lips blue with the robin egg whoppers. She thought it was hilarious, especially when I tried to kiss her with my blue lips.


Claire is the biggest helper ever and she thinks we can't do anything without her help. I walked into the kitchen and this is what I saw. She is helping her daddy set up our new dishwasher. One of her favorite things to say is "I'll fix it".


AND THE HUNT IS ON...




Claire and Rilynn. It is a love/hate relationship that they have. Thank goodness they were getting along this day.



When we are shopping, if Claire graps more than one sucker I will take the extras away from her. So when she found three suckers all together on the ground during the hunt, she looked up at me and headed off running thinking that I would take the away. She is a funny kid.




Then on Sunday we had another family party but being the slackers that we are, we got there late and missed the Easter Egg Hunt. But it was still great to hang out with family.

..Things we do over Spring Break..

So much for playing outside and working in the garden.
I think we got more snow over spring break than we did during the winter.


...and to think I almost put Claire's snow stuff away just the day before.
Despite the mean face she is making, she really had a ball!!

Claire helped me make some Easter brownies and I taught her the most important part....tasting the frosting. Apparently she really liked it because a minute later she tried to stick her whole hand in.

Easter Eggs and FHE

We decided to have a short Easter lesson for Family Home Evening and then color Easter eggs. And when I talk about coloring easter eggs, I mean getting out a few markers and crayons to use. There was now way I was going to make some dye for the eggs...not with my little girl who loves to dump things out just so she can clean them up:) All I can say is maybe we will have better luck next year. Claire learned two things really fast....
1. Eggs make a really cool sound when when they are hit really hard against the table.
2. It is just as fun to color on your legs with permanant marker as it is to color on an egg. (My fault, I know. But permanant markers are all that I had since I threw the other ones away)


We took Claire swimming last week for FHE and to say she loved it would be an understatement. It is all she has been talking about since we went. And she has insisted on wearing her "swimsoup" almost everyday since then. She even tried wearing it to church on sunday. Here is her lovely outfit from yesterday....

Highs and Lows...

What a Week!!
High...

Last weekend was our 5th anniversary. All I can say is that the last five years have flown by. Shortly before we got married a friend of mine celebrated her 5th wedding anniversay and I thought to myself "I get imagine being married five years". It is crazy how fast time flies. He was my best friend five years ago and he is still my best friend now. Marrying him was definately the best thing I ever did. We headed up to Midway since neither of us had been there before and we totally enjoyed just hanging out together. And then my dad gave us tickets to a Jazz game.

Not only do I get to spend each day with my best friend, I get to spend it with the best daughter in the world. They both make me so happy.

Low...
The moolah that we had set aside for this....

was instead used for this....



High...
The only good thing about our 20 year old dishwasher dying is that we happened to be by this around dinnertime when we were shopping for a new one....

and I think Luke planned it that way.

Low...
My new phone quit working (I can hear other people but they can't hear me) on the day that I REALLY needed it to be working.. Claire's first real injury.

Low...
I was helping my sister move to her new house when I my mom called to tell me that Claire fell off the couch and might need stiches. So I hurry home totally expecting to run into the house to a screaming kid. Nope, not my little Claire!! The bleeding on the back of her head had stopped and she is just playing and having fun. The only thing she is upset about is that Rilynn is sad. Rilynn is the kid that is traumitized by the whole incident, not ours, and Rilynn is sitting on the couch shaking. So after a trip to the ER, seven staples to close her scalp, a dose of tylenol, the promise of three suckers (a blue one, a orange one, and a pink one, to be exact!!), Claire is good as new. The only upsetting thing about the entire day to her is that we wouldn't let her play on the swings that evening.

High...
I have the absolute best calling ever. Saturday night I went in to the Conference Center with the YW in our ward for the Young Womans Meeting. All I can say is that it was amazing....especially Elder Uchdorff's talk. If you didn't get a chance to hear it, you should definatley go to LDS.ORG and download it.

St. Patrick's Day

I had big plans for St. Patrick's Day. I was going to get up early and make Luke a green breakfast and lunch and then make some green bows for Claire's hair since she doesn't have anything else green to wear. Ha, Ha, Ha.....I totally forgot it was St. Patrick's Day until several hours after being awake. I guess that is what happens when you don't even know the purpose of the holiday. So in an attempt to make up for my forgetfulness, Claire and I made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with green m&ms.

I think Luke would have preferred that I had forgot completely about the holiday when he saw that I had dyed our dinner green. He said it tasted good...as long as he didn't look at it while eating:)
Doesn't our Chicken Stir-fry look tasty!!!

The best part of the day was definately the nice weather we had. Claire and I spent hours outside playing and trying to get the garden ready to plant. And within minutes of Claire waking up from her nap, she had talked her daddy into taking her out to play on the swings again. Not that it takes much to talk him into doing something for her....she has him wrapped around her little finger.

Proud Mommy Moment

Today when I went to go pick up Claire from nursery her teacher told that the lesson was about the prophet. She said that the second a picture of the prophet was shown to the class that Claire, all by herself, told the class that his name was President Monson. Let me just add that she says his name soooo cute too. And later when they started singing the "Follow The Prophet" song, Claire started singing too. It is just nice knowing that she is listening to the things that we are teaching her. I am so glad that I am her mommy.

A Review of this Week

The sick bug has been visiting our house this week. It started with Claire and then she passed it on to me. It is amazing how slow the week can drag when you don't really get out and do anything. My mom and aunt came over this week and we tied a couple of baby blankets for all of the new babies that are/have joined our family this year. But other than that, Claire and I have been reading books, watching movies, and just hanging out at home. With all this extra time at home, you would think that I would have the time to update my blog....should have but couldn't think of anything to write a whole post about. So here are a few things I was going to blog about but they are totally random with not alot to say and no pics either.

1. My sister blessed her baby last week. Her little baby wore a handmade knit dress that this wonderful old lady in Chile made for me before I came home from my mission. Panchita was a sweet lady that was unable to walk the several miles to church each week but she would feed us missionaries every thursday and ask us to share a message with her. She made me a really cute baby blessing dress so I could bless my first daughter in it. Well, our first daughter was six months old and wasn't about to fit into this dress when we blessed her. So I was really excited that my sister's little baby girl was able to be blessed in it.

2. I stumbled across a blog that sounded familiar and then realized that a potential birth mother that had been writing us had mentioned this blog. So after a little investigation I found out that this potential birth mother wasn't just (emotionally) scamming us and one other couple like we had orignally thought. She was scamming about ten other couples and I was able to read about all of their encounters with this potential birth mother. It just make me sad that this girl was pretending to be pregnant and playing with the emotions of people who want a child more than anything in the world yet are dependant on another person to make that happen for them.
Adoption is the greatest and most unselfish thing. We are so greatful for our wonderful birthmother for helping us have a family. She is the most amazing person that we know and we love her so much. We are hoping and praying that we will have another special baby join our family through the miracle of adoption.

3. I was hoping to have Claire's big girl bedroom done by now so I could post some pics. But what can I say.....I am a big time slacker. Maybe next week, or the next, or the next.