New

Don't you love new things?

Opening a new can of coffee
A new shirt
A freshly cut lawn
A new car
A new house
A new cabinet full of groceries
A new bottle of lotion
A new haircut
A new highlight
A new shade of make-up
A new recipe your family loves

New is good. It is fun. It is exciting. It is a fresh start. It is, well, new.

I read something last week that was long the lines of, "If your walk with God is tired and old, God is probably as tired of it as you are."

I read something else this morning that said, "You hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation."

God will work in you to will and act according to his good purpose for you.

Yea for the new! Yea for the fact that God leads us along paths of newness!

Come to Jesus Mtg.

This afternoon at 1:49pm we had a Come to Jesus meeting. The boys were SO EXCITED about it. The meeting occurred right before Mommy snapped, yelled, repented and sent everyone to bed with strict instructions not to come out before 4:00pm.

The following is a depiction of what occurred while I was on business calls for about 45 minutes. Tonight we had 30 friends over for dinner and as you can imagine having to clean this up was, well...we'll let the photos speak for themselves.

I just grabbed the camera and snapped 2 quick shots. I kid you not, this is the 3 ring circus we were running around here. 3 half dressed kids bouncing all over the place. One of the reiterations during our meeting was you are only allowed ONE SET of clothing per day and ONE SET of pj's. These gir...boys change more than me. I want Superman underwear. Now I want Spiderman. Hmmm. On second thought I feel like Batman pj's with a cape. And in the end they wind up with nothing on anyway.
I love em' to pieces though. They do the sweetest things like help me in my laundry room decorating. They were so proud of themselves and had me close my eyes and led me to the laundry room before we showed our house a couple days ago. They said, "Mommy, we helped decorate the laundry room!"

F.Y.I.

This morning I went to the store, early and I was the first car to park on the entire row right in front of the store.

I just realized that Kroger is open from 6am-1am. I always thought they were open 24 hours a day. So, if you need a carton of Breyer's Ice Cream that's on sale for $2.29 this week and it is 3am, you need to go to the SuperCenter instead.

There is a new website I just learned about called http://www.zennioptical.com/ and you can get lenses and frames for $8. Shipping is a flat $5 no matter how many pairs you get. Thanks Amanda.

Here is my new invention I'm waiting on my Patent for-use the lid of the shaving cream can to hold your razor in place. I was having trouble with it falling off the shower caddy and with 18 kids that seemed to be posing a potential hazard. The lid has solved my problem and it does not fill up with water or get yucky. Nice.

My parents really recently treated our entire family (16 of us) to a week of vacation at Big Cedar Lodge. We all went grocery shopping when we got there, and ended up with 7 bunches of bananas in the room. The joke for the week was if you came to the door you got offered a banana as a welcome gift and as a parting gift when you exited stage left.

It makes me feel really rebellious to buy white bread vs. wheat. I have white this week. They make the best PBJ's. And the Welch's Squeezable Strawberry spread-don't even get me started-that stuff is delish.

The Decorated Laundry Room

I got some inspiration from some pictures to do a little decorating in my laundry room. Why not? You go in there every once in awhile right? This is what mine usually looks like. See my lime green cleaning caddy? I just purchased that for $1.50 at Wal-Mart near the automotive department and it is wonderful. It has a handle (my Flylady feather duster is hiding it), which makes it convenient to carry from room to room.

Here are my inspiration photos that got me all excited about making some laundry changes. All her cute, green fabric is camouflaging shelving with supplies. The green fabric on bottom is also camo-ing some pipes and stuff.

I know, every time I re-look at these I freak out again too. Sheer Genius. Laundry Room-Drop Your Pants Here-if that doesn't get you excited about doing your 31 loads for the week I don't know what will...

Seriously, how cheerful and fun is that? I'll be prowling around yard sales and such to find some cute things to Cheer Up my laundry room. 'Till then, I rummaged through my garage (a.k.a. sometimes we'll be out playing and a car will slow to do a drive by and I think-folks, this is not the house having the yard sale-it's down the street). Anyhoo, I shopped my garage and found a couple things to play around with.

Cut some fabric and rubber banded it under the lid to hide the Coke part. What a fun idea to put the Tide in a canister.

I'm so excited. My ultimate dream is to paint the walls Dockside Blue (Sherwin Williams) and paint the cabinets white. Blue and white look so clean and fresh in a laundry room. But for now, this is more fun than the cleaning supplies and Tide box.

I think we should all load up and celebrate this fun with Route 44 Vanilla Dr. Pepper's? Yes?

#3

#3 God bless em. After lunch he gets the good ol' fashioned wipe down.

#1 & #2 Got complete wardrobe changes. As you can see from the pictures, #3 gets the damp rag wipe down and it is mostly a crumb removal from the clothing approach with a 12-18 minute dry time. As you can see he still has pizza sauce on his person and who knows why he has wet spots on his derriere.

This is a photo #2 took. As usual-no head, just an obscene shot that makes me think about working out for about 8 seconds.

Summer Lunch

Yep, Summer's here. Does this scene look familiar. That's right baby-the Party Pizza & Fruit lunch. Today marks the day for millions of Mama's across America who will be facing this classic summer lunch in the upcoming months. As you can see from the fresh strawberries, I just went to the store. As the weeks go on, this scene will be replaced with canned varieties such as Mandarin Oranges, Peaches (gag), or Pears.

Cheers!

Happy Father's Day

Shane,

Happy Father's Day

Enjoy the new fishin' pole from Bass Pro

You are a great Dad

Our boys are super blessed

And so am I

Love,

Anna