living the GOOD life

Why I love Craig's List (and Goodwill. And yard sales.)

(Other possible titles for this post: "Why my love for spray paint is justified" or "Proof that buying a paint sprayer is a good investment"or "Buying new is dumb." Get the point?)

This morning, I slept in. Actually, I got up at 8:30, but lately, that is totally sleeping in, big time. And actually, I was awake for the last 45 minutes. And I was looking around my bedroom, and got curious about how much we had actually spent on furnishing said bedroom. The curiosity continued, so I tallied up the entire house.

Ready for this?

If we don't count the piano and Kevin's massive TV, we have only spent $4,000 furnishing our ENTIRE HOUSE. Spread out over 8 and 1/2 years.

We have a pretty good sized house, you know. And if I do say so myself, I think our house is pretty cute.

That includes beds, dressers, couches, love seats, chairs, tables, desks, futon, shelves, entertainment center, end tables, bedside tables, ottoman, benches, lamps, and yes, the ping pong table. 

The majority of that budget was spent in the family room, because as I've mentioned before, I prefer new couches. And really, most of the furniture in there was bought new. So that accounts for about half of that $4,000.

See why I can't bring myself to buy a dining set for $600, when I paid $30 for ours?

And why when I see a little girl's bedroom set listed on Craig's List for $1,900, and see that they originally paid $4,000 for it, I am a little disgusted? Especially since Emily's furniture is WAY cuter, and I paid less than $100 for all of it.

More tidbits I want to remember:

-The kids threw me an early birthday party today. They wrapped all my presents in butcher paper. I got a pencil, a bobby pin, a handful of weeds, a hair elastic, a barbie bean bag game, and a bracelet made out of tinfoil, tape and string.

-At dinner, Jake said, "Jesus doesn't want me to have quiet time anymore."

-When discussing our upcoming trip to Lake Michigan, Daniel said,"I could just give you all my money so that we could stay an extra day." I told him how sweet that was, and he said, "Well, you know I'm just trying to be like Jesus.

-Ben loves to eat Salsa by the spoonful

-Jake: My birthday is in Vember. Mom: No, Jake it's in NOvember. Jake: YES it is! It's in Vember! Mom: I know Jake, it's in November. Jake: (crying) yes it is mom! It's in Vember! Mom: Jake, it's called November. Jake: No, it's called YESvember. 

-Ben has been attempting to potty train himself. Several times over the past few days, he has come to me and said, "Mom! Poot!" and so I take him to the bathroom, and he goes. It's fabulous. Except when he yells it during sacrament meeting.

-I spoke in sacrament meeting last week. My kids were extremely loud. They were in the back row. Ben kept yelling, "Hi mommy!" over and over.

-We bought the kids scriptures so that they can follow along during scripture study. We didn't buy Ben one, so he uses a copy of "Persuasion". It has a black cover and he thinks it's the same thing. 

-Daniel has lost one of his front teeth. The other one is so loose, it has migrated over to where the other one fell out. It's disgusting.

-Every night, Ben said, "Mom! Love you!" and I say, "Love you too!" And he says, "Love you more!" and then he says, "Squish. Kiss." and so I squish and kiss him and he lays down and says, "Goodnight! Love you!"

-Emily and I have been reading "Little House in the Big Woods." I love it. I read those books probably a dozen times or more when I was a little girl.

-The other day, I was talking to Kevin on the phone while looking at pictures on the computer. I told him I loved him. He asked what made me say that out of the blue. I told him I was looking at a picture of him. He said, "Oh well, yeah, that makes sense."

Soccer season only ended two months ago.

Emily's team was the Green Wolves. They all loved to howl instead of cheer. Emily was always very, very serious on the field. She was always concentrating very hard.

 

Daniel's team was called the Shamrock's. Daniel did great this season, and his coaches were great with him.

 

He had a hard time at first, but by the second or third game, he was loving it. He got pretty good too!

 

We are taking the fall season off. Three practices a week, plus two games gets a little crazy.

I want to remember...

How much Benson loved the water when we were at Raccoon Lake. How he was totally fearless, and wanted to spend all day running into it.

 

 

How Daniel and Emily begged the Optometrist to prescribe them glasses even though they don't really need them. So they have as low of a prescription as possible. They look pretty dang cute, don't they?

These faces. And the personality that goes with them.

 

How much I love my husband, and how everything seemed right with the world when we were walking along the beach in Florida.

New Spice

Hilarious. It's okay, you can watch it more than once. You can even watch it five or six times like me. Don't worry about it.

When the semester is over...

I am going to:

-go to Boise for Shauna and Rob's wedding reception.

-go the the Boise temple much more than once.

-raid Ross in Boise.

-potty train Ben. He is beyond ready.

-organize my junk closet.

-deep clean the heck out of my house.

-organize the garage.

-spend all day reading Little House on the Prairie to Emily.

-read the new Hunger Games book. 

-be better at magnifying my calling.

-work in my yard. 

-get my hair cut.

-relax. Because, holy cow, I am a mess:

(I should mention, I have about 2.5 weeks to do all this before fall semester starts. AH! I do love being back in school. I do, I do.)

TA-DA!

Worth watching, I promise:

If a tree falls...

After getting up at 3am because of a tornado warning, this is what we found the next morning.

 

Had it fallen just a few feet to the right, it would have landed on the neighbor's deck. But where it landed, all that got hurt was the fence. Within a day, the HOA had come and removed the tree and cleaned it all up.

I couldn't resist the chance to take some pictures of the cool stuff (what is it called?) growing on the trunk:

 

 

 

Father's Day...a month late

the kids and I woke up early and made cinnamon rolls. The boys were great helpers.

 

Daniel made a little treasure hunt for Kev that led to his gifts.

 

Daniel wanted to make the biggest card in the whole world.

 

Emily made him a whole pile of cards and love notes.

We surprised him with a fishing pole for himself, and one for each of the kids so that they can go with him!

I hope he had a great day, because he is a GREAT father.

Raccoon Lake

Last minute, we decided to drive down south to Raccoon Lake for a couple of days. We wanted to go to Lake Michigan, but the campground was full. So we went for second best :)

 

The first night it rained, hard. But we stayed dry, and watched movies in the tent. However, being stuck in the tent for so long made me threaten to pack up and go home more than once.

The next morning it was overcast, but we went to the lake anyway. It was fabulous. We were alone on the beach, it wasn't too hot, but the water was warm. Best of all, the kids LOVED it. They stayed at the beach for 6 hours that first day.

 

I'll be honest, it was a poor substitution for the real thing. But the kids have never seen the real thing (not that they remember anyway) so they didn't care.

 

 

Jake kept kneeling down in the water, so that his chin was barely above the water line. Then he would pop up and say, "I'm just kidding!"

 

This is Ben when he realized we were NOT going to let him drown.

He was very upset that we made him wear a life-jacket. 

 

 

after the beach, Ben was exhausted:

 

And most of my beach time looked like this:

This was the first camping trip we have been on as a family where I wasn't totally ready to go home at the end. I really, really wanted to stay, but Kev had to go back to work.

In a couple of weeks we are going to Lake Michigan.

I can't wait.