What I learned in 2011...

What I learned in 2011.... its a lot of work growing a person!!  As I was reflecting last night over the last year I realized that all of 2011 was spent growing a person and learning that person!  WOW that was a busy year!  I am so thankful for my little Baby Z he is so special and so fun!  Since he is number 3 I think he is more aware of his surroundings than the other two.  Its so fun to watch him watch his brothers, he gets so excited to see them going crazy!  Big E has been so interactive with him lately, it just melts my heart!  Although I do get a little nervous when I am in another room and the baby starts crying out, then you wonder what happened!  Asking Big E doesn't always help, because he seems to want to try and hide what he did.

I have been trying to figure out what my goals are for 2012, so far I have come up with very little!  Not sure if that's a good thing or not.  For 2012 my main goal is to learn how to be more frugal!  Since adding another boy to your family I just keep adding up the bills in my head (not so much for now, but down the road!).  I grew up with two brothers and I just remember how much food my mom would say she would have to buy in a week!  Its amazing parents didn't go broke!!  5 gallons of milk!!!  3 gallons of ice cream!!!  5 boxes of cereal!!  OH BOY!!!  Frugality needs happen in this house!!

So beginning tomorrow I will be doing the frugally sustainable challenge.  I am really hoping to gain some better knowledge of what that truly means to others and then to apply that to my family.

To be frugally sustainable, to me means, not wasting, being able to produce as much on your own as possible, and reusing things that we may normally just toss.   For the past few years we have "tried" to have a garden, not very successfully, I might add!!  So one goal for this year to get it under control and take some more risks in what we plant.  I would love to learn to can our produce and have food stored up for the winter.

For now those are my goals, I am hoping to add some more to this list in the next few weeks.  Hopefully by the end of the month I will have a good goal set for the coming year.

A road trip, family, Thanksgiving and Christmas, all in one weekend!

WOW!!  We have had such a crazy few weeks!!  First we were preparing for a quick trip our east to visit my brother and his family for Thanksgiving.  Then we were busy unpacking and trying to get back into the swing of things again after the trip.  Finally I have a few minutes to do some blogging about what's been going on!

First about this "quick" trip we took.  This is the first long car trip we have taken with our kids, we have been places that are 3 hours away from our home but no further!  So this 15 hour trip was quite daunting to think about.  The planning and packing and preparing was so exhausting that I was tired before we even left our house!!  Some great tips I learned from this trip though was that driving during the night is the best way to travel with small children!  Although I did feel bad that they were missing out on a lot of scenery, it kept me and my husband sane!  I also learned that thinking ahead about the times you will be in the car will help you pack!  We planned on eating lunch in the car but were never in the car during lunch time, so the bread, peanut butter and jelly were not necessary!  On the other hand we brought breakfast food and that was great to have in the hotel room so the kids could eat breakfast while my husband and I got ready for the day.  We also over prepared for the kids car activities, we brought coloring books, books, crayons, color wonder markers and books, matchbox cars, etc.  When in reality it was dark for 90% of our drive both ways (because we drove at night!) and all they wanted to do was watch movies!  So the DVD player and movies was probably all we needed to bring with us!

My nieces at Thanksgiving dinner!

Big E and Little N

More nieces dinner!

Little N helping Papa change the oil in his truck.

The babies wearing their sweaters that Nana made for them!

This was the first Thanksgiving in probably 5 years that my whole family has been together!  It was so much fun and a great time to share together.  I have two older brother, so with my family of 5, there was a total of 14 kids, and 8 adults (including my parents!)  We are praising the Lord that He blessed us with a beautiful weekend!  The temperatures were in the high 60's which meant that 14 kids could play outside and not in the house!!  While at my brothers house we celebrated Christmas since we were not going to be together this year for Christmas.  We did a homemade Christmas, where the presents had to be homemade and we all drew names.  The kids drew names among themselves and the adults among themselves.  It was so much fun, this is the second year for my family to do this!

My mom had my name and made me a duct tape coupon book!  Love it!!

My dad had my husbands name and made him a duct tape sudoku puzzle book!  He loves it!!

I had my sister in laws name and made her a shopping bag! 

I didn't get very good pictures of the gifts my kids received, but Big E got a picture frame, and Little N received a number memory game.  Such cute ideas!  We didn't include the babies this year because they are both so small! 

The last lesson I learned on this "quick" trip is that Little N gets car sick!!  Thankfully we learned this lesson when we were about an hour from home on our way back!!  The poor kid was so upset!  So along rain, and wind we had to try and clean up a sick little boy and the car!  It was all over his car seat and the van seat!  Thankfully he was able to use his big brothers booster seat and big brother was able to just sit in the seat.  Probably not legally but when you are in a pinch you do what you have to do!! 

We went to the shore and there was this cute Christmas store where we got to talk to Santa!

Little N playing at the Shore!

Big E and little N at the shore

We got to go to a  Lego Store, I think the highlight for my boys!

The aftermath of the LONG drive!!  This is the car seat after the car sickness!  We had no where else to put it!