Time for a break :)

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it is easy to get lost in the go go go mentality. Toss in a hurricane, all the headache that goes with that, add a broken air conditioner, plus meetings and tons of paperwork~ I am drained physically, emotionally and mentally.

We have decided we need a break from everything and want to reconnect as a family, reconnect in our marriage and just spend some good ole fashion family time together without distractions :)

Our Trip to Georgia :)

Things you don't see behind the computer screen are frustration, hurt or sadness.  I was struggling and needed a break.  I noticed my boys were frustrated more than normal with their school work- they needed a break.  Hubby and I decided we needed time away from it all.

Without getting into too many details, I feel that people need to remember....

Words can be a powerful tool.  They can be uplifting, encouraging and positive. They can also be destructive, hurtful and damaging.  I urge you to take time to process your thoughts before saying something that you can't take back.

Back to our get-a-away :)  With everything going on in the world, we decided that camping would give us the most undistracted family time.  Social distancing in the woods was just what I needed mentally.  We explored Georgia :)

We had quite the fun filled schedule planned.

We started our trip at Crooked River State Park.  It was so nice.  We hiked, we explored and we had a fantastic time.

My Morning View :)

After exploring Crooked River State Park, we headed north to Jekyll Island, where we walked on the beach, saw the Atlantic Ocean, were greeted by various sea critters and learned a lot of history about the Island.

On our way across Georgia, we made a detour to Saint Simons Island to climb the 129 steps to the top of the Lighthouse :)  I still can't believe that we actually made it to the top :)

After our detour and a beautiful picnic lunch right on the water, we finally made it to our final destinations~ Florence Marina State Park and Providence Canyon State Park.  

The views of the canyon were absolutely breath taking.  We got to hike down to the canyon floor and explore many of the canyons and then came back up and got to walk around the top of the canyon :)

I am so happy and grateful that we got this opportunity to spend time away from distractions and got to focus on us and nature :)

I can't wait to see where our next adventure takes us :)

I need......

Between, school, work, sick animals, appointments, etc~ I need a break.

I feel like I'm being pulled in so many different directions.  I need to take a breath.

My family has decided we need a break.  A break away from work, school, social media~ EVERYTHING to spend some much needed quality time together :)

We hope everyone has a wonderful week.  We send our love and hugs and will see you in a week :)

Our eventful weekend.....

 How was your weekend?

We hope you all had a fun and fabulous weekend.  

We had a very eventful weekend....

I was exercising on my glider and listening to Dawn from The Minimal Mom on YouTube talking about Family Minimalism.  I didn't realize that I wasn't the only one listening :)  When I finished, my youngest son told me that not only was he listening but he had this desire to clean his room.  I jumped into action and wanted to take advantage of this rare opportunity.  With the help of both the younger boys we tackled their bedroom.  I wish I had taken before and after pictures of their room.

Decluttering with a 16 year old and an 11 year old is quite entertaining :)  Our 16 year old doesn't want to deal with anything and just wants to throw everything away.  While our 11 year old wants to analyze everything he touches.  I had them make piles.  One pile was to donate, another was trash and another was what they wanted to keep.  Needless to say, there were a few things our 16 year old thought our 11 year old wouldn't notice and needed to be moved back to the keep pile :)

We had to stop for the day when my vehicle was full:

The boys are very happy with the way their room looks now.  We won't talk about their closet.  That is for a different day :)

Now for the Sunday fun :(

The short version:

One of our cats has been dealing with an abscess on and off for the last year.  We are very lucky that our vet has Sunday hours :)  The vet wanted to sedate the cat to get a better look at what was going on.  Well, that turned into a very long surgery :(  On a positive note, we discovered the root of his abscess, got everything taken care of and the cat will make a full recovery :)

Now for the fun part (not really).  We have to try to figure out how to give him medication and flush his ears out twice a day until his post op appointment in 2 weeks.  Please leave any tips or tricks you might have on getting a cat to take liquid medication in the comments :)

Super Duper Excited :)

Well we did it :)

Something we have been working on for some time now.

We finally made our last credit card payment~ YAY :)

We are officially out of Credit Card Debt :)

There were times I never thought this day would come.  Every time we made a plan, something happened.  Whether it be unexpected vehicle repairs, sick pets, house repairs, broken appliances, unplanned dental bills~ something always happened.

It was very easy to get discouraged and want to quit.  But we kept plugging away.  If we had anything left over at the end of the month, it got added to our credit card debt.  

One thing that really helped us "see" our credit card debt was a coloring page.  It was fun to watch how pretty paying off our credit card debt could be :)  And we knew that the closer we colored to the end of the page, the closer we were to having a $0 balance :)

Next on our Debt Free Journey~ paying off our vehicle.  I have a scheduled payment going in next week.  I will update the actual amount we have left to pay as soon as it updates.

Where are you currently in your debt free journey??

My Birthday Adventures

Friday started out like any other day :)  School work, chores and all that day to day stuff.

My youngest son made me a card that melted my heart and hubby came home with a scrumptious Triple Chocolate Cheesecake- yum yum yum!!!!!

Fast forward to Saturday~ Our oldest son took me to the movies to see BumbleBee :)  And yes, I ate entirely too much popcorn at 10 in the morning :(

Later in the afternoon, I had scoped out the perfect place for my small garden.  My container garden didn't exactly grow as planned.  So, I decided to try a small in the ground garden and see if I have better luck.  (Keep your fingers crossed)

I even convinced the boys to take their mother on a birthday walk :)

Normally, Fridays are our pizza and movie night but since Friday was my birthday, pizza night got moved to Saturday.

Everything was going great~ dough was made and rolled out.  Went to preheat the oven and we were not prepared for what happened next.....

All of a sudden we heard a loud noise followed by a glow, like your oven is on fire kind of glow, coming from the oven :(  Not good, not good at all.

Hubby pulled the oven apart and found the source of the sound and glow:

Well, that's not supposed to look like that :(

Hubby called the appliance repair shop and was told that he didn't have the heating element in stock.  It would need to be ordered.

It looks like our oven is out of commission for the rest of this week.  Thankfully, our dinners are crockpot recipes :)

People giggle when I tell them there is never a dull moment in our home.  The "excitement" in our home is not always due to the boys :)

So, how did your weekend go?? What sort of excitement did you have??

Happy Thanksgiving :)

Our family would LOVE to wish your family a very safe and happy Thanksgiving.

May your tummies be full, but not too full, save some room for some pumpkin pie :) 

May your travels be safe and may you enjoy your day with your loved ones :)

May you laugh and share wonderful memories as you make new ones today :)

Give thanks to the Lord for all your blessings :)

I am thankful that the Lord blessed me with an amazing hubby and 4 wild and crazy boys.  I don't know where my life might of taken me without them :)

Take a moment and remember those who have gone to Heaven and can't physically be here today.

Come Along With Me.............

As I take you along with us and show you what we did over the weekend :)

Our grocery shopping was already done.  We had nothing planned for this weekend.  Toys R Us was hosting a My Little Pony Event, so having all boys, they were not at all interested.  My hope was to get some things done around the house.

I started my weekend with my usual Lesson Plans, getting worksheets together and making a trip to our library.

I checked my email before leaving for the library and noticed an email from Kohls with a One Day Early Bird Special.  I went over to the Kohls website and noticed a pair of shoes we have been looking at for Nathan was on a really good sale~ only until 1pm.  I remembered I have $10 in Kohls cash I needed to use before it expired.

We ran over to the library and then over to Kohls.  After searching and searching and having to call someone over, we finally located the last pair of size 7 shoes.  Thankfully, they fit :)

I was super happy to be able to get a $40 pair of shoes after its sale price, 20% off coupon and the $10 Kohls Cash for $10.17 :)  Yea!!!!  Now Nathan has a new pair of shoes that  he absolutely loves :)

We went home, ate lunch and I knew I wanted to get some snacks and veggies prepped for the coming week.  We made these super yummy no bake energy balls and roasted carrots :)

Unfortunately, the no bake energy balls didn't make it too long~ Oops :(

I can't wait to see what we get into next weekend :)

Come Along With Me............

As I take you with us and show you what we did last week :)

Last week was the week of all weeks.  We have all been there.  Everything seems to break at the same time and nothing goes the way we wish it would.  That was our week last week :(

Let's start with our microwave.  We had no clue how old this microwave truly was.  It came with the house.  And of course, it dies right when I am trying to defrost ground beef for dinner.  Ugggg :(  No worries.  I know plenty of people that don't have a microwave on purpose.  We suddenly discovered just how much we really do rely on our microwave.  Thankfully, we only needed to go without for a week.  Something I was waiting on finally arrived and allowed to be able to purchase a microwave :)

I now know why people pay Lowes $115 to install their microwave.  We decided that we could do it ourselves.  Oh my!!  What a pain that was.  The new microwave is bigger than the old microwave.  Meaning hubby had to undo and install the new bracing and make a new hole in the top for our over the stove microwave.  A few hours later and Voila~ we now have a working microwave and a kitchen filled with sawdust.

We have a working microwave and all is right again~ or so I thought.  Somehow something happened to trip our outside water breaker and we had no water :(  Called hubby who had just left for work.  Poor guy turned around, came home and fixed the problem and went back to work.  I am thankful that it was an easy fix.  We just had the water guys out a few weeks ago to fix what the hurricane broke and that repair had a few dollar signs in front of it :(  We are happy that we didn't have to call them to come back out.

Now we have a working microwave and we have water :)  The boys were all excited to go to Toys R Us for the Hatchimal event.  We were running a few minutes late and by the time we got there they had already hatched the Hatchimals.  We missed it :(  The boys were kind of bummed but got a goodie bag.  I know what Hatchimals are but had no clue that they are marketed towards girls.  My boys were the only boys there and Toys R Us had gone to town with pink tablecloths and decorations.  We kind of felt out of place.

One of the reasons we were late to the Toys R Us event was that we made a pit stop to our church's Thrift Store to drop off a trunk full of stuff we no longer needed.

Luckily our week had some good in it.  We made it to the Menchie's Buy 1 Get 1 Free Event~ Mmmmmmm :)

After our Toys R Us event, we walked over to Party City and looked at the giant wall of costumes:

Thankfully, little Michael saw something that he really wanted to be and it fit into our Halloween costume budget :)

Even though we had some ups and downs, we made the best of it and are now ready to get back to normal.  Or at least our version of normal :)

Do you ever have days like this? Please tell me I'm not alone :)

Come Along With Me...........

As I take you with us and show you what we did last weekend :)

I had everything planned out.  We would start at the Toys R Us event, do our grocery shopping and run some errands since we were going to be in that part of town.

Friday, we get a phone call from our neighbor that his wife was in labor and already at the hospital.  It has been wonderful seeing her pregnancy progress.  The little one decided it wanted to come almost 6 weeks early.  So it was definitely a shock and surprise.  I can't wait to hold and meet that beautiful bundle of joy :)

Saturday morning, I got up early and arrived right when Aldi opened.  Luckily I didn't need a lot so shopping was quick and easy.  We came home, unloaded the groceries, put everything away and ate lunch before heading out to Toys R Us for their Ninjago Lego Event.

We came home to get some more work done on our yard.

The pile grew twice this amount by the time we were done gathering all the storm debris.

We finally got all the hurricane shutters down.  I can finally see outside- YAY :)  I kept going to the window and seeing this:

After seeing this, I started to feel closed in :(  Not a great feeling.  It is such a wonderful thing to be able to see outside again :)

There is one great thing about having to evacuate from the hurricane.  We got to spend some time with family that we don't get to see very often.  It was nice to be able to relax and visit, even though we were super worried about our house.

We are very thankful that our house is OK with minor damage.  All is fixable and nothing major :)

We are now looking forward to getting back to normal :)

Come Along With Me......

As I take you with us and show you what we did last week :)

The rain was not that bad during the day on Saturday.  We saw a few flooded streets and a man kayaking down his street.  Our street was not flooded and we were able to get out, so off we went to Toys R Us for their Nerf Event.

I forgot my phone at home so no pictures :(  The boys had a blast shooting a couple of Nerf guns and everyone who participated got a small package of Nerf darts and 2 Nerf cars.

After Toys R Us we headed over to a couple of stores and did our shopping :)  We didn't need a huge amount of groceries so shopping was a breeze :)

On our way home it started raining heavily.  Sunday was little Michael's birthday and I had a cake to bake.  I baked the cake and hubby decorated it.

I cannot believe my "baby" is growing up so fast.  I need something to slow him down just a little.  It just hit me that next year Nathan will be in High School and I only have 4 more years left to teach him.  Where is the time flying to??

Michael loved his cake :)  He was so excited with this Poke ball cakes :)

By the end of the evening, the rain was pouring.  The next day some of our road was flooded so I had to end up taking our oldest to work.  Good thing I did.  I'm not sure he would have made it to work on his bike.

This is not our road but it is one of the main roads we have to take to get Chris to work.  It was not fun to drive in but we made it safe :)

Other than our minor flooding, we had a blast not spending any money other than for groceries.  I can't wait to see what we come up with to do for FREE next week :)

Come Along With Me.......

As I take you with us and show you what we did last week :)

Most of you already know about my dental visit.  My stitches felt like they were going to be in my mouth forever.  The dentist told me that if they were not out in 10 days and were really bothering me to call the office to have them removed.  Well, on the 10th day, go figure, these super annoying stitches finally released and came out- YAY :)  I have been enjoying solid food again :)

Since I wasn't sure when my stitches were going to come out, we planned a family game day at home.

I did go out on the 17th for the Cape Coral Aldi Grand Opening.  Since this one is a lot closer to our house, I didn't have to get up and leave as early as the last Grand Opening.  In 1 hour from the time we got there, all 100 tickets had been given out.

I was number:

18 is a good number for me.  I was born on the 18th day.  I was feeling really lucky.  When it was opening time, I got a gift card for the amount of:

$25.  Not bad.  I was really hoping for the $100 gift card.  That would have been amazing but $25 is still great and helps so much with our grocery budget.

Over the weekend, we had a fun game day, filled with Hungry Hungry Hippos, Operation, many hands of Uno, Slap Jack and many many more.

Mario Memory

Dutch Blitz card game

We are having so much fun not spending any money :)  I can't wait to see what we come up with to do for FREE next week :)

Come Along With Me.........

I don't know where to start.  I had my posts all planned out in my head last week but unfortunately didn't have a chance to get them typed out.  And then it happened.....

I broke a tooth- ouch :(  I called the dentist who couldn't see me until next month :(  Thankfully, they had an office the next county over that could see me the next day :)

Now remember, I went in for a broken tooth and somehow got talked into getting my last wisdom tooth cut out :(  Now I have needed to get his done for some time now.  My poor wisdom tooth came in sideways about 15 years ago.  It needed to come out.  I just didn't think that Thursday was the day.

So, I have been on the couch recuperating and on a not so fun soft and liquid diet :(

My dentist appointment last week was also the same day as I was supposed to post my Come Along With Me from the week before.  So that didn't happen.  Guess what??  You all get a bonus~ 2 week recap :)

The week of July 30- August 5th:

This week was an exciting week.  I helped out with Rev Week at church.  It was for Middle & High School students and it was awesome:

One of the nights, our library was hosting a Space Bingo Night that I signed up for but Nathan and I couldn't go due to Rev Week.  Hubby and little Michael went and had so much fun and won cool prizes:

Saturday, Hubby and I got to go to an adult art class.  We had so much fun creating art.  This is the first time in a long time that we got to do something together by our self.  It was nice :)

From August 6th to 12th:

You already know about my dental issue :(  I was so afraid the boys were going to miss the Pokémon Event at Toys R Us.  But hubby told me that he would take them and that he would take the list and go to the grocery store as well~ with the boys :)

I had no problem taking him up on his offer.  Hubby and the boys were not home- oh my.  That meant a nice quiet house for me to do something I haven't done in so long- relax and enjoy the quiet.  It was so nice :)  And to have to grocery shopping done for me, was oh so sweet :)

Now things are back to normal :)

We are having so much fun not spending any money :)  I can't wait to see what we come up with to do for FREE next week :)

Come Along With Me............

As I take you with me and show you what we did last week :)

I actually remembered this time :)  We made it to a library event that I had signed us up for.  This event was a Meet & Greet with the local Police Department and their K9's :)

I am so glad we went.  We learned so much about the K9 unit of the Police Department and got to pet this gorgeous dogs :)

I had been counting down the days for the Aldi Grand Opening in the next county.  This one will be closer than the one we are currently driving to.  Chris decided he wanted to come along with me bright and early Thursday morning.  I figured we would get held up with morning commute traffic, so we left at 6am.  The roads were clear and we got to Aldi's a lot earlier than anticipated.  We got in line:

Even though we waited in line for 2 hours, it wasn't that bad of a wait since I had someone to chat with.  Some people in line had books and brought chairs :)

I won a $25 gift card and Chris won a $10 gift card :)

We can't wait to do it all over again in a few weeks when the Aldi in our area is having their Grand Opening :)

We also had Michael's brother fly down and spend time with us.  That was nice.  We haven't seen him in quite a while.  He was nice enough to tune my guitar :)  Guess I should try learning how to play that again.  When I got my guitar many many years ago, YouTube didn't exist :)

We ended up making super yummy brownies and chocolate chip cookies~ Mmmmmm :)

None of them lasted very long.  They never do.

We have been doing so well with our No Spend Month that we were able to give our credit card company $673~ YEA!!!!!!!!

We had a blast last week and it was all FREE :)  We are having so much fun not spending any money :) 

We are doing so well that we have extended our No Spend Month into August :)  I am so excited to see how much we will be able to give our credit card company this month :)

I can't wait to see what we come up with to do for FREE next week :)