Oh The Games We Play!

I've been so busy since school started with homeschooling one child, which turned out to be much more work than expected but also more enjoyable, and working from home, which I couldn't do without our awesome team...there is no "I" in "team"!  Not to mention the million other things that MUST be done as a wife and mother to 5.  When you add all the things I want to do there need to be 48 hours in a day!  However, I was getting really sick of seeing our book shelves that hold all of our games looking like a twister just blew through (Helloooo Dorothy!) so I took a few minutes out to do some organizing.

Game Book Shelf - Before

Ewwwwww....Right?

So off I went to the dollar store  to see if they had some containers I could use - on the cheap...because that's how I roll.  They had some but I wasn't impressed so we headed over to the local Wal-mart.  I hit the jackpot.  I found these little doosies that had a touch of color as well.  They were only a buck and are a better quality than those found at the dollar store.

I wanted to put all of the games in containers that matched so I found these as well.  These were $3.50 or so but I splurged and bought what I needed.


More expensive but just what I wanted

So then the kids and I went to work.  We put more than one game in a bin and used ziplock baggies to separate pieces and/or games. Below you see the Monopoly game.  Money is paper clipped and put in one baggie, cardstock cards are rubberband together and all the playing pieces are in another baggie.  This board happens to fold into a square...thank you very much...however, not all the boards would fit..wouldn't you know.

Which is where the final container comes in.  It isn't perfect but it works. My Sorry board was too long so I cut it like the Monopoly board.  WARNING!  They don't make them the same as they used to so my board broke in thirds...Nothing a little duck tape didn't fix.  Duck tape is not only for the men anymore!

The games that don't have boards or have boards that don't fold neatly into my wonderful square containers were put in the dollar containers separated into plastic baggies and the boards were put in the "game board" container.  I then used Avery 5265 Full Sheet Labels and cut them to the size I wanted.  I used those because I had them but next time I would use Avery 48264 Shipping Labels.

The end result looks like this...oh yes! I can live with that!

Now for the question of the hour...does it work? Do the kids keep it nice? The answer is absolutely yes! They even played a couple games they have NEVER played. Our shelves have looked like this for over a month already and it still looks the same. SUCCESS!

Pizza Night In

Tonight we made home-made pizza.  The kids were so excited!  I really enjoyed it because I didn't have to do anyting at all! Here are some photos...eat your heart out!

Ainsley made half cheese and half pepperoni

Christian made his with bacon & turkey and
went light on the sauce

Becka chose bacon and turkey too

Ricky went all out bacon, turkey and pepperoni!

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This is our bonus child Lilly...She LOVED the pizza!

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Our kids had THE WORST table manners of any human being I have ever met.  They were so bad that I even resorted (after threatening for months) to making one of the kids eat dinner on the floor in the laundry room like an "animal" because her manners were atrocious. THAT is where our little friend comes in.

I would like to introduce you to our friend Mr. Piggy.  He has resided with us for about 5 months now.  I LOVE him but the kids don't really care for him.  Mr. Piggy sits in the center of our dining room table and joins us for meals. 

If one of us uses bad manners then Mr. Piggy gets to sit with that person.  If a different person uses bad manners then Mr. Piggy goes to sit with that person.  The person who has Mr. Piggy at the end of the meal gets the priveledge of cleaning the kitchen! Ha! Now you know why I LOVE Mr. Piggy and the kids do not. 

The most fantastic thing about this magical ceramic swine, besides that it cost me a buck at the dollar store, is that it only took each child 1 time of cleaning the kitchen to learn to use acceptable manners at the table.  It also provoked a lot of conversation about what is acceptable and what is not.  They learned a lot about manners that may be acceptable when hanging out with friends as opposed to what is expected at a nice restaurant.

I wish I could say this little angel was my idea but it was not.  I found it on Pinterest from a blog by Becky Madsen.  I also used her idea of the rummage box.  Where she would pick up things her kids left behind and put them in "the ransom rubbage box".  To get an item out, instead of paying money out of their allowance (which is what we used to do until they no longer got allowance), they had to pull out a chore.  This is so much better than paying because your house gets clean in the meantime.  My kids sometimes don't care if I take things away...how horibble is that....so I told them that if after a week the item was still in the box it would be donated to charity.  That worked wonders also! :)

An Update....A Year in the Making

Wow! It's been a year since my last post.  I hit a hard wall of writer's block and just didn't have anything to lend.  That was then.

It's been a good year.  We've met some more incredible people who I just know were planted here for us.  I have personally been on a journey with God for this last year.  My OP (Original Pastor) haha Trent Renner used to say that God loves us just as we are but he loves us too much to allow us to remain as we are.  That phrase has stuck with me and I definitely understand the immeasurable truth in that today.  I was recently learning about some of the prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of Christ and realized that I don't really care about prophecy being fulfilled.  I don't need that type of proof that God is real, Christ is the Messiah, died on a cross and rose from the dead.  The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.  The trick is not to put God in a box.  What knowledge we have is so limited that we cannot even begin to understand His ways.  All I know is that when I pray, when I release my (perceived) control, when I surrender to God, AMAZING things happen.  My life is so much fuller, peaceful and joyful than it has been, maybe ever.  I am a new person in Christ today and I am in the midst of a struggle.  A journey that on some days, in some moments takes every ounce of strength I have but I am grateful - Yep, I can say that truthfully.- I am grateful for this difficult journey because without it I may never have started the journey to become the woman God intended me to be. 

I'm also so incredibly lucky to have my best friend taking this journey with me.  He doesn't always understand but he always seeks to understand and support me.  We celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary on the 4th of May.  10 crazy years.  I can't imagine what the next 10 will bring. It will bring 4 of our 5 kids to graduation and the youngest into high school.  I can't imagine how much gray hair I will have by then!  Hopefully it will see us move one more time...to someplace perfect for us but beyond that I couldn't even begin to imagine what God has in store for us.  It is so obvious...painfully obvious at times, that God has something he is preparing us for.

May 2nd was another anniversary we celebrated.  Ricky & Becka have been with us for two years.  At times it seems like just the blink of an eye and at others...well....I have MORE gray hair than I would like to admit.  I can't believe how much they have grown up since last year. 

The kids sleeping quarters...see the river off to the left?

May 11th was Ainsley's 9th birthday and we went camping on our anniversary (May 4) to celebrate.  Chris now works for Schwan's Food Service and has a 4 day work week.  With this particular schedule he gets a 4 day weekend every other weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Monday) and gets EVERY weekend off!  So we took off on Friday afternoon, met a friend in Santa Fe and headed up to the Pecos River.  What a beautiful place!  We camped right on the river until Monday and even got hailed on. It reminded me of a little trip with some great friends at Blue River once... ;) Good times, Good memories, Good family and Good friends.  What more can we ask for?

 

Pecos - Just out side our camp

Chris said the area looks just like where he and his family used to camp in the White Mountains in Arizona so you know he was....wait for it....a happy camper!

We had the lovely company of a skunk on Sunday night because I left out some dirty utensils -Well it started to hail!  My momma didn't raise no fool...she taught me to get in out of the rain! lol - The skunk, by the way, is probably what ate the bananas we left out the night before...I know...you'd think we'd never been camping before...BUT in our defense it has been three years.

The kids went fishing...well we'll call it fishing...the water was running really fast so we didn't see any fish...although when I got Addie's line stuck in a tree it came back missing some bait...she figured a fish ate it! I think she enjoyed the fishing the most.

Addie "fishing" & Christian doing what he does. :)

I am looking forward to yet another crazy year as I will probably be home schooling Ricky or something of the sort.  I've just figured out that when a child is behind there is nobody in the system that has the time to help and sometimes we just have to take it into our own hands.  God has lead me to believe, in a big way, that this is what I am supposed to do so I will be obedient even though I've always said I could never home school my kids...I'd probably kill them...oh wait! Dang! Never....NEVER NEVER NEVER say Never.  Another example...God has a sense of humor.