New Family Picture

My Sister-in-law Jennifer took a new family picture for us when she stayed with us last week. We didn't get many pictures taken because of the fading light and because Karalee does not like to sit still for a picture, but we did get one that is a keeper after a little photo shoping by Art.

This is the picture before Art photo shopped it

This is the picture after Art photo shopped it. Can you find the changes he made? There are seven of them.

I thought I'd share these two pictures because they are so comical.

Here are the changes Art made on the 2nd picture just incase you are curious. (1) He took the chase words and logo off of Chad's shirt. (2) He took out the houses behind us and then had to (3) add a little tree back in. (4) He made Karalee's dress longer so she was more modest. (5) He changed the lighting. (6) He added a little more sock to Spencer's leg so wasn't showing skin. (7) The picture is cropped to so it will blow it to a 16X20 size for our wall.

Thanksgiving Weekend 2008

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We ate Thanksgiving dinner with the Sanders and had a great time visiting, playing soccer, playing in the mud, and having a snowball fight. (Brenda ordered some snowballs from Bahama Bucks.) At about 3:00 that afternoon we went home just long enough to pack our suitcases then we drove to Snowflake so we could see my mom's newly remodeled home and spend some time up there. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

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My handsome boys!

A million dollar smile

Karalee enjoying the snowball fight

Who should I hit next?

The carnage

It's mine

Having a ball

Mindy holding Josh until it was his turn on the horse

Bryant on Chester

Chad taking Bryant on a ride

Karalee opted to ride the fence instead of the horse

Just hanging around

Spencer on Chester

Visitors!!!

I love having visitors and this month we have had my sister Crystal and her son Reggie stay one night and then a week or so later my brother Brandon and his wife Jennifer and their kids stayed with us two nights. Here are a few pictures of Brandon's and my children playing together in the back yard while I was babysitting them.

Weston

Karalee and Weston

Adelin and Bryant

Here's Weston taste testing our dirt for us.

I didn't get any pictures of Kaitlyn and Spencer, but they had fun playing too.

Funny Teeth

Bryant got these rotten teeth out of the prize box at our dentist's office. He fell asleep with them still in his mouth one evening in the car and it looked so funny that I wanted to get a picture. He kind of reminds me of my brother Darin. My brother Darin had dentures and when he would take a nap they would fall out a little bit. His teeth weren't rotten though.

Lemonade

We recently started to get lemons off of our lemon tree. The kids love to make lemonade with their dad. Here are a few pictures from two weeks ago.

Spencer's Soccer Pictures

Here are some pictures of Spencer and his team this soccer season. They are the silver scorpions. This season rather than making a second trip to the soccer field on a Saturday morning the team parents decided to skip out on the professional team pictures and have a parent take pictures one evening at practice. Because our pictures were taking in the evening the lighting wasn't as good, but considering they were free and I didn't have to make an extra trip to the soccer field, I am happy with them. Our photographer also took some pictures during the games and gave them to us which was an extra bonus!!

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On a side note, I thought I should include that Spencer scored two goals in his last game. He was so excited. He hasn't scored a goal since his first game last season. Chad said he was quite a ways back when he scored the goals and that he made a hard kick and they went past a few players into the goal. (I was at a baptism for a little girl in our ward so sadly I wasn't able to watch his game.) Spencer said he was the only person on his team to score a goal during the game and his team won 2-1.

Spencer has an alien on his face because he had just attended his school's fall festival.

Pinching Your Pennies

About 3 months ago I got a subscription of the Sunday paper for the coupons (Actually I get 5 of them for about $23 a month) and I started using a free web site called Pinching your Pennies that shows me where my coupons match the sales for my grocery shopping. It has been some extra work, but I have really saved a lot so it has been worth it. (I don’t even shop at a ton of stores. Only Fry’s about once a week and maybe one other store if they have great deals.) This week has been especially good because my coupons have now built up over the last few months and the stores are having great deals. Today I got such great deals that I wanted to write a post about it.

This is what I bought today at Fry's:

6 boxes of Hefty Storage Bags
6 boxes of Lucky Charms
4 boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
2 bottles of Shout stain remover
10 boxes of Fruit Snacks and Roll ups
5 boxes of instant mashed potatoes
5 pouches of instant mashed potatoes
1 container of whipped topping
10 cans of evaporated milk
1 bag of Honey BBQ Fritos
2 bags of Cheetos
5 boxes of Swiss miss hot chocolate
1 box of pudding
1 container of Quaker oats
8 packages of Stayfree Maxi Pads 24 ct.

This is what I spent: $40.35

I saved $42.60 with my coupons from the paper, I saved $30 by buying the things that were in the multiple of 10 sale, and I saved $88.95 with my VIP card savings, for a total of $161.55 in savings. (Although the VIP saving don’t really count in my opinion because everyone gets that.)

I was so happy with my shopping trip except for the fact that when I got home I realized that I had a couple more coupons that could have saved me $12 more dollars since Fry’s is matching all competitor coupons right now, but I can use them next shopping trip so it's not a total waste. I also didn't really want the swiss miss hot chocholate, but I needed 5 more items because when I was checking out I learned that 5 of the things I got weren't in the sale that get you $5 off and they were the closest items in the special sale to the register and were only $.50 a piece. So I have more to learn, but I am having a lot of fun racking up the savings and filling up my pantry!!

If any of you are interested in starting I would be happy to help you out if you have questions.

Spencer's Drawing

Spencer drew this picture today. It is of Spencer and our old dog Rufus. He asked if me if we could put it on the blog, so today when we went to Grandma and Grandpa Sanders' house we asked Grandpa to scan it for us so we could share it with you. Thanks Grandpa!

Video Clips from Karalee's Birthday

Guess Who's Two?

Our little Karalee is two! We had a great time celebrating her birthday yesterday (Nov. 1st). She is such a fun girl and we feel so happy and blessed to have her in her in our family. Here are a few pictures we took of her birthday celebration.

Here's Karalee opening her gifts. As was custom in my home growing up, birthday gift's don't get wrapped very often. The kids just get to get them out of the bags.

Karalee checking out her remote control catapiller.

Karalee finally got her own bouncy ball. The boys each bought one a few weeks ago with their own money and now Karalee has one that won't get taken away from her by her big brothers.

Trying out the catapiller. The catapiller was a huge hit! I think the boys were jealous.

Karalee eating her birthday breakfast of oatmeal. She usually loves it, but yesterday decided she didn't like it so...

Here was her next choice, Captain Crunch.

Spencer decided to make some decorations for Karalee's birthday. He drew her tons of pictures and wrote her some nice letters and taped them up on the walls.

Here are a few of the decorations from Spencer.

I painted Karalee's toenails for her. She is starting to love nail poilish and makeup. I tried to get her to take off Spencer's flip flops for the picture, but she wanted them on.

Karalee blowing out her candles. We put her candles in a sugar cookie that Amy brought us on Halloween. Karalee didn't have a cake this year for two reasons. #1 - She doesn't like cake much. #2 - I couldn't bear the thought of making any more dessert after all the sugar we ate on Halloween. Hopefully having a birthday the day after Halloween won't turn out to be bad when she gets older.

When the frosting was gone, she was done.