Winter Break Recap!

The kids had last Thursday and Friday off and Monday and Tuesday this week off. I haven't blogged because I have barely even sat down at the computer.

Thursday we had parent/teacher conferences. Friday we had company for dinner, therefore, I got to spend the day cleaning and cooking. This was a good thing. I love getting the house ready for company, it is so nice to have a reason for a really clean house. We also had my niece and nephew spend the night which was a fun treat for the kids.

Saturday I tackled my first real shopping with coupons trip that I briefly mentioned here. This week went much better than my random try last week (that is why last week didn't count as a real trip). One grocery store I got $97 of groceries for $42 and the other store I got $48 worth of groceries for $17 - that one was fun, with multiple bags of goldfish and boxes of triscuits for 39 cents each!! This is a game now and I'm excited about the challenge. If you are a number person it really does cause you not to spend as much money because you don't want to buy anything at regular price and throw your "score" off.

Saturday night we decided to treat ourselves to a 'sorta-Valentine-date' and Jason went and picked up Chili's while I fed the kids. By the time Jason got back the kids were downstairs playing and we got to eat in peace. Sunday we decided not to go to my parent's for lunch and just stayed home, took naps and watched NASCAR (yes, it is that time again). It was a wonderfully relaxing Sunday!

Monday was a crazy day. I had made dinner for two different new moms in our church. I was supposed to deliver the meals before I met a friend and her three kids at McDonald's for lunch. Tavis went to start the van and locked the keys in the van (and didn't even start the van?). Apparently, in typical Tavis form, he didn't really lock the keys in the van, he just had gotten in from the back door, which I didn't realize wasn't locked until 30 minutes later. lots of confusion, too many details, blah, blah, blah. After lunch we ran a few more errands that seemed to take us to the opposite end of the earth.

Tuesday (oh, wait, that is just today) we had a Behavior Boosters class for our Mother's Encouragement Group. It was full of great ideas of teaching your children good behavior while helping them understand scripture (more on that later).

And now it is tonight. It is no secret that I love sports, so the Olympics are just absolutely exciting to me. I love that my children are really getting excited about them - some may say I'm forcing it on them. Since they were off school, I've let them stay up 2 hours past bedtime the last two nights to watch different events.

Funny side story about my funny monkey, Capps! The Nordic Combined was a very tense race that the American (who wasn't really expected to win) was almost to the finish line when he was passed at the last second. He was excited to get the silver medal and we were excited for him, but Capps cried and cried because he was devastated that he didn't wind gold. Maybe we are putting too much into The Games???