Jacob's First Birthday

Our rambunctious little boy turned one! (Actually it was 2 weeks ago- on the 7th) The first birthday is always a little bittersweet for me: it's a very exciting time, yet it's so sad to say goodbye to the baby days and look back and see if I paid attention enough to remember 20 years from now what he was like when he was a bouncing baby boy. Thank goodness for blogs!!

Both Grandmas came down for the festivities (and Aunt Laurel too!). Boy, did he LOVE all the attention!!! Whenever we were all looking at him (which was a lot as you can imagine) he would bounce up and down and do this little jig, all with his scrunched-up-breathing-out-of-his-nose face he does whenever he's happy, which is quite often, thankfully. So fun. I have GOT to get that on tape!

He's still not walking, but that's totally fine with this mama! He's already getting into everything, I don't need his extra mobility to add to that. But he's such a fast furniture walker (for the past 2 months!), and the other day I caught him crawling onto the top of the couch. And whenever we change his diaper we have to make sure the gate is up otherwise he's all the way upstairs before we're finished taking the diaper out to the garage. That boy is fast.


He had his arms up in the air for awhile. Silly guy.


Jacob LOVED his cake! He went to town! I tried to upload the video cuz it was so cute, but oh well.


Grandpa Wilson gave Jacob his very own football from Jeromy's high school. I think it was Jacob's and Jeromy's favorite gift.


He makes some really funny girgley kind of noises (sounds like "golly-golly-golly-golly" really fast) that nobody can imitate, and we tried to get it on video, but he was enjoying his spoon too much.



Well, little guy, it's been an exciting year. We're starting to see how everyone says boys are rambunctious yet so delightful. We love you! Happy Birthday!!

Thoughts

I've been trying for the last few days to put into words my thoughts and feelings of the sweet funeral I attended on Saturday. But, alas, I am not good with words, and much of it is too personal to share anways. Suffice it to say, that I am constantly amazed by my dear friend, Megan, who is going through some unexpected trials right now, and yet she has such great perspective. I think we all (myself very much included) could use a little more perspective in our lives, as we go about our daily tasks, to remember that we have a loving Heavenly Father who's looking out for us and our families because he wants us to come back. He places such great special love in the hearts of mothers for a reason, and he won't take that away, but will make it last forever. May God be with you and your family always Megan, and may the Lord continue to bless both your precious twins through their missions, here and there.

A Favor

I really should be cleaning instead of posting this, but I thought it was so funny.

Audrey: Mom, can you do a really important thing that I'd like? A really important favor for me?

Mom: What is it?

Audrey: Um, could you clean the whole house before Grandma gets here? Because I really don't want her stepping on all our stuff.

Mom: Well why can't you help me clean?

Audrey: Oh, cuz I'm very busy.

Uh huh. Coloring is so much more important than cleaning the house to a presentable level for company. Uh huh. Whatever.

Eternal Beauty Makeup

My sister came across this while shopping for makeup:

http://www.beautifulgirlminerals.com/item_195/Eternal-Beauty-Kit.htm

So cool!

Our Beautiful Basement

Ah, the spoils of my labors with coupons!

This is how our food storage side of our basement looks. I tried to get everything in these shots, left to right. It's just so nice to have everything organized and waiting for use!!

This Coupon Gal Is Back!

I took a break from couponing when we moved, and it was really hard for me to get back into it. I know, shocker!! I'm not totally back up and running (i.e. cutting coupons monthly if I'm lucky instead of weekly), but I have done some coupon shopping lately. I forgot what a high it can be!!

My favorite shopping trip was Rite Aid's freebie deals last month: they had a bunch of cold medicines, etc. for free after rebate. So I got about $70 worth of medicine for free, I just paid $5 in tax. Awe-some! Even more awesome that we had to use some of this the following week when we all got colds, and I didn't have to venture out and get medicine. Yipee!

Of course, all the case lot sales were way fun. We were down to our last dozen boxes of cereal (wow for us), so it was nice to be able to stock up (80 boxes) on our favorite healthy cereals for .50 to 1.20 a box. I'll post pictures soon. (I know, you can't wait;)

And Walgreens last month had some fun stuff too. I got:

Loreal facial cleanser
Nivea body wash for men
Halloween stickers and puzzles and pencils to keep kids busy
3 things of Pepto (including for kids)
3 name brand toothbrushes
2 Puffs tissues
2 boxes of envelopes
4 small notebooks
4 things of Trident gum
3 Children's Tylenol
3 Infusium shampoos
Huggies big refill wipes
2 small Huggies diapers
5 Softsoap bodywashes
3 Tylenol cold medicines
3 Herbal Essences shampoos

All for $60 (after $95 in coupons and $35 in rebates)!!! It should have been about $190 normally (or about $150 if bought at Wal-Mart), so I figure I saved about 60-70%!!

Woohoo! I'm back in the game! And loving it!!!

Mom Tricks

Thank you, Bethany, for giving me something to blog about:) My friend put some great tips and tricks for Moms on her blog, and I highly recommend checking it out! Awesome!!!

Nothing

Maybe it's just me. But do you ever feel like there's nothing really to blog about? Nothing going on that's blog-worthy? The longer I go between posting something, the higher my standards get about bloggable stuff in my life. I guess I could post old pictures that I never got around to posting, or (shoot) Halloween pictures. I just hate uploading photos. Maybe it's good that nothing's going on right now, no drama. I'll come up with something. Jeromy's gone all week, so some drama is bound to happen.