A time for everything.....

Wow...so it has been forever since I last posted something. :( Sad day.
Sorry to my few followers. I do have some what of an excuse but not one that explains all of my absence.

I am pregnant! :) Dowe and I are very excitedly expecting a new addition to our family.
Baby #2 due to arrive around July 28th.
Right now as I type this I am 14.5 weeks pregnant and am slowly starting to feel better.
I haven't been nearly as sick this time as I was with Monkey but sick enough that I have fallen behind in lots of areas in my life. So now I am slowly trying to get back on top of things.

I am beginning to feel the time crunch and the pressure of mounds of things I need and want to get done before I get too big to be able to do them. It's really quite funny and interesting the thoughts that go through your mind when you're pregnant for the second time. Dowe and I are quite sure that we are having a girl this time which primarily means needing to clear out the "catch all" third bedroom and getting it to where it can be Monkey's room. There is a lot to do to get that room to where it can be a really nice bedroom for him. The biggest issue I have with this house is how badly insulated it is and the fact that the third bedroom has no heater in it! So we will be forced to have a space heater in Monkey's room which I am not really thrilled about but at this point in time do not have any other options. Unless you know...someone would like to give us a house with some land to it. (Any takers?!...)

So to the real reason I am blogging now....
With having so much to do, being so far behind (both with work for the construction company I work for, and around the house), and knowing how fast this time is going to go by I have got to implement some better habits for myself and my family. I found this great 2012 Calendar on pinterest that is an organizational Calendar http://www.mysimplerlife.com/2012.htm. "This is the year you get your house under control with daily areas to declutter."   It's pretty much AWESOME. It gives one task for each day Monday-Saturday with Sunday being a rest day or a do something to benefit yourself. And the tasks typically are not huge and completely overwhelming. It's typically one smallish thing to do each day to slowly over the year change your house. My mom and I are actually both doing this together. (She has already started...sadly I haven't really yet..but I intend to Today!)

A while ago I posted about the Chaos Cleaning Project and what all that meant to me.
"For God is not a God of disorder but of peace" 1 Corinthians 14:33

This verse has really hit home for me and has made me realize that God is a God of order and structure.

He wants for our lives to have order and to have peace.

Well a little while ago I was reminded of this at my church's ladies group meeting.

My dear sweet friend Melissa shared about her passion of being organized and why she wholeheartedly believes it is something that God is passionate about. She also shared this verse...

"a time to keep and a time to throw away" Ecc.3:6b

WOAH!!!This is something that so many people (myself included) have a really difficult time with.

More often than not we want to hold onto the little things when it would better serve our families and ourselves to throw it away. Ecclesiastes 3 talks a lot about how there is a time and a season for everything.

This time and this season in my life I need to embrace that it is time for me to throw some things away and to stop holding onto things that truly do not matter. I have some big plans and big goals of things I would like to do this year including how I want to decorate the new baby's room (if its a girl I have several fun projects I want to do which I promise I will blog about as I do them.)

But I cannot accomplish the things that I would like to do this year with my home in its current state.
I am finding that sometimes it really is more important to just throw some things away over holding on to it thinking I may need it or use it some day.
I also want to put some of the things that I have been holding onto for that "someday I want to do this" to good use and either have it be something worth while or it is time to just let it go.

I would like to ask you all to help keep me accountable in this too.  I tend to have good intentions, plans, and ideas but not always the best follow through. So please join me on this journey and print off your own copy of the Declutter Calendar or if nothing else please feel free to post comments to check up on me and share your favorite cleaning/decluttering tips!

So I am now off to start throwing away some things and organizing things that are worth keeping and trying to find real homes for them. :) 

12 by 2012

So I was wandering around in the blogging world and came across someone's post about doing 12 things before 2012. I thought this sounded interesting and wanted to know some more about it and then realized that it was something someone was linking up to. So I went to the originator of the 12 by 2012. Danni over at  Oh, Hello Friend created this as a way to push herself to get a few things done before the start of a new year. (I'll let you check out her blog for the full rundown.) A few things that are just lingering. In checking out several of the others who have linked up it seems as though it is a lot of things people intended to do anyways but need the deadline to keep themselves from continuing to put them off. So thank you Danni for creating this challenge and making it a linky party so it'll help keep all of us accountable. Here's to everyone working to get 12 (or more...or less) things done before the start of the new year. And now I'm off to make a physical list so I can put it up somewhere so I can see it and be reminded to follow through on some of this... (like No.6...)

11 Weeks, 14 Items... I can do this!

1. Spend real quality time alone with God at some point in time during the day, every day, even if it can't be first thing in the morning. 
2. Give the beautiful trunk a major face life and get it in our room with the extra blankets inside.
3. Give the mirror a face lift and hang it in our room 
4. Clean out clothes I do not wear and take them to a consignment shop.
5. Send a card to a different friend once a week. (11 Cards in total. 3 of 11 Done)
6. Exercise at least Three times a week in my home. (5,10,15) 
7. Make Home Made Bread Dough 3 Times. (giving me 9 loaves of bread.)
8. Finish reading at least one book. 
9. Make some major strides in the Chaos Cleaning Project. (Including scrubbing the shower, fridge, and washing machine.)
10. Take more time to get down on the floor and play with my son. (not that I don't do this but I also need to make a more conscious effort to do this and take the time to just get right down on his level, not make him come up to mine.)
11. Sit down with Hubby and revamp our budget and really stick to it so we can get out of debt together.
12. Make realistic goals for starting the shop including short term and long term goals.
13. Complete Two Mei Tais.
14. Blog about each thing as I check it off my list. :)

Waiting....

Some days I feel like we're just waiting for our lives to begin.
Like we're waiting for something that'll finally start our lives.
Maybe its that we'll finally have our own place and that will make our lives begin.
Maybe its that my husband will finally have his dream job and that will start our life.

"I get so afraid sometimes that our lives are never going to start." -Holly

"Baby, we're already in our life. It's already started! This is it! You have to stop waitin', Baby." -Gerry

But I am done waiting. I'm sick of waiting. I'm tired of waiting.
I want to live.
Obviously there are things we will still be waiting on, like Dowe's dream job and our own place.
But I can still let myself live life to the fullest in the here and now.

So that is what I am doing.
Do I know what this means in its entirety?... No.
I am looking forward to this journey though.
I do know it will mean more projects around the house, spending more time relaxing and living, more time with my boys, more time with family and friends, more time to just stop and enjoy the coffee.
It will mean less time stressing out and worrying, less time wasting time waiting, fewer days of sitting on the couch in pjs because I just don't feel like the day is worth getting dressed for. (yep, I have those days too.)

What about you?... Are you living? I mean really living, or are you still waiting?

This would be a perfect day for you to start as well.

The End in the Beginning.

Well this concludes the first week of the new start.
Hubby is off for the weekend from work, Monkey and I are slowly starting to adjust to the new schedule, and I am looking forward to being back on Second Shift.

Who would have thought that the one thing I hated most (being on second shift for the past two years) would be the one thing I would look forward to most!

When Dowe was applying for supervisor we thought we had two options. Stay on Second or move to Third. After much prayer and consideration, along with a pro-con list, we had decided to make the move to Third. We asked God to do his will and that we knew that whatever happened we knew it was His best for us.

Just before the factory made a decision I began to realize how difficult Third would really be. I would no longer have my husband in bed beside me every night. A time I have really come to cherish with him. We tend to do a lot of our best talking just before drifting off to sleep together...plus I LOVE to snuggle. I love laying in bed with my head on his chest getting to listen to his heart beating and the rhythmic sound of his breathing when he has fallen asleep. He usually falls asleep before me but laying there in the quite listening to him more often than not puts me to sleep.

I began to question our decision to make the move to Third.
But then, God always has a plan.

Dowe's Brother, AirBear, also works at the factory. They both worked on Second together for a long time just with different roles and responsibilities. Then back around two months ago AirBear took another position that landed him on Third. Dowe questioned if his brother would really like being on Third and reminded him that once he had moved to Third he would be there for a year. This was all before there was even any thought that the Second or Third shift supervisors would be leaving.
Because AirBear and Dowe are brothers, Dowe can not be his boss. Thus making it so Dowe could not go to Third.

 I am thankful. God had a plan. He always has a plan. We just don't always realize what those plans are and need to learn to trust that He has our best in mind. He knows the desires of our heart even when we do not realize what those desires fully entail.

I am looking forward to the new schedule and how it works with being back on Second.
Monkey has been in bed and asleep the last TWO nights in a row by 10:10pm!!! (our goal again is to have him in bed at 10pm.) I am of course up a little later tonight as I am finishing up this recap of the first week of new beginnings but am headed to bed myself shortly.

A few goals for this up and coming week are as follows:

• Spend Good Quality time with God EVERY DAY
• Make Mother's Day Cards for my mom and my mother in-law
• Make my "Baby Backpack" (Monkey has been very clingy lately and wants me to hold/carry him all the time but he is already half my height and weighs 23lbs at 11 months...So it gets very tiring.)
• Continue working on Chaos Cleaning
• Put in as much time for work as possible this week (I need to make up for the lack of working I did this week...ugh.)
• Continue planning Monkey's Birthday Party and begin to buy things for it

New Beginnings.

Tomorrow starts a whole world of new beginnings for my little family.


New Job for hubby! YAY! Yes, My love got the job! He is now Supervisor and starts in the morning with training. We're so super excited. I cannot tell you how honestly excited I was to be washing his work uniforms for the last time this weekend so we can turn them in tomorrow! (In fact I even stayed up a little later tonight just to finish drying and folding the ones to turn in so they will ALL leave the house at the same time tomorrow!) Yes he will have a uniform still but as silly as this is I like the new style/colors he gets with this promotion. Plus they wont be as hard to clean now. :)


New (more normal) Schedule for us. Both of my boys (Hubby and Monkey) were asleep in bed at 10pm. Seeing as Dowe is training on First Shift for a week or two before going back to second we have decided to try to get on a better schedule starting tonight/tomorrow.  I especially am looking forward to this and am interested to see how it goes.


New Budget. As I have said before we are taking the FPU class at our church and with Dowe's new job we have to redo our budget and I'm actually looking forward to it this time! :)


New Ministry outreach with my church. I am going to be the coordinator of a meals ministry for families who have just had a baby, lost a loved one, or are having serious health issues. 


New Goals. I have a whole list of new goals, some starting tomorrow and some starting in a few weeks when Dowe goes back to his shift. So here they are.....

• Get rid of things we do not need/want anymore. Yes this has been part of my Chaos Cleaning To Do's but with Dowe's new job we are seriously considering the fact that we will hopefully actually be able to get a place of our own fairly soon instead of renting much longer. I do not want to move things we do not need/want. 
• Read more books.    I am a book lover. Have been since I was little. However, since I have had Monkey I have not really had much time to read. I am hoping that I will be able to put him to bed at 10pm, and then spend that time from 10pm till around 11:30pm when Dowe will get home from work reading.
• Do More Crafts!    I am also a craft crazy! I love to crochet, knit, scrapbook, sew, even cut pictures out of magazines and do collages. You name it I probably like it or would at least try it! (Can also use time after baby goes to bed for this.)
• Be More Consistent with my alone time with God.  Though I have been doing better as of lately than I have ever been before, I still am not doing it every day like I need to. Something always seems to come up. :( I am hoping that I can get up a little before Monkey in the mornings, have breakfast and do my devotions.
• Spend more time out doors. As the weather is slowly but surely getting nicer I want to be out doors more.  Cleaning up the yard, cleaning out the flower bed, going for nice long walks with my boys, cooking out, whatever! I just want to get out there and get some fresh air! (this one really isn't too difficult to do but still.)
• Be more consistently doing Elimination Communication with Monkey. For more information on this look up the book "The Diaper Free Baby"
• Take  better care of myself so I can take better care of my boys.
• Look mad hot for my husband for our anniversary trip. This means being able to wear whatever Pre-Baby stuff I have that he would want to see me in for our little get away sometime this summer. (Possibly including a 2-Piece Swim Suit....GASP!)

Those are all of the ones I can think of right now but if I come up with any more I will let you know. :)
But for now I need to get myself to bed so I can also get on this new exciting schedule! :)
Good night world.

Peace

Often times I have more thoughts running around in my head than I can handle. 
Last night was no different. (In fact I hardly slept because of it) As you all know we've been praying hard about my husband's job and last night we were given some news on it.  We are no longer waiting.


Though it is not exactly what WE wanted, we know God has it all in His hands and that He knows what is best for us.


As my Husband told me that we are no longer waiting for answers but was unable to tell me what the answers are for a bit I began to wonder and get antsy for what those answers would be. I called my hubby out on it telling him "You suck for telling me that much and making me wait but I love you and respect your decision to wait." He didn't want to have to give me any sort of news (good or bad) over a text message or over the phone. The only thing he would tell me was that it "wasn't exactly what we wanted."  


And then, Peace. 
I just felt this overwhelmingly sense of peace. 
And as I talked to my friend Kay about what my husband had said and that we are no longer waiting but still don't have answers it was ok. I was ok. 
I know that He knows our hearts and our desires. However, He also knows what is best for us. The God of the Universe loves us so much and wants better for us. More than we could ever dream or imagine. So tonight I have peace in knowing that His plans and will is better than the dreams we have for ourselves.

Grocery Shopping.

So as I have said before Dowe and I are taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class at our church. We have really been enjoying the class and though we are not even half way through, it has been life changing. Dowe went to college, I did not. However, just from his years in college we have quite a bit of debt. Since starting this class we have paid off over $3,000 worth of debt! That is huge. We also know that we will have all of our debts (school loans and car loan) paid off in the next 5 years at most! This is also huge as our loans would have taken MUCH longer to pay off without the knowledge we have gained from this class.


But now down to what I REALLY want to blog about today.


Grocery Shopping!


UGH!!!! I HATE IT! 
Let me explain farther. I ENJOY the shopping part. Picking out things to make for my family. I love to cook and to try new things. However, I HATE the sick to my stomach feeling I get in the pit of my stomach EVERY TIME I get to the checkout line and I hear the BEEP-BEEP-BEEP as the items I have selected get rung in and I feel what little money my family and I have fly out of our hands.  I usually only go grocery shopping once every 6 weeks (at most) other than for a few little things here and there in between (mostly Milk.) But the main part of our grocery shopping I do in one trip and not very often. So this means I have one grocery cart piled high for more than a month's worth of dinners. 

Today was different. 
As Previously stated with taking the FPU class we are now on a budget. Cash in hand, I went grocery shopping with both boys in tow. Calculator in hand we stayed under budget and hopefully have enough food for 2 weeks. Today was the first time in the almost 2 years my hubby and I have been married that I DID NOT feel sick as our groceries were being rung up. 
I had to change my entire mindset today. I felt like I had nothing in my cart as I went up to the checkout.  I've gotten so use to shopping once for more than a month's worth of food that this was a really difficult shopping trip but it was actually pretty enjoyable. I'm really hoping I  actually have enough groceries in the house to last two weeks but haha we'll see! :) 




In the next two  weeks (before the next "major" shopping trip) I have a new goal! 
Thanks to a friend I heard about "Extreme Couponers" and though I do think that some of these people are excessive and potentially even slightly neglectful of their families, I do feel the need to learn some of their ways. Can you imagine?...Never having to pay for tooth paste, toilet paper, and other necessities again?!  NO we are NOT talking about stealing! These women and men have learned how to use the manufactures and store coupons to their advantage and sometimes even get PAID to take products out of the store!!! 
Just a few weeks ago my friend Kay and I were talking about coupons and where she clips them off the internet. I told her I really need to start doing that and I actually started looking at coupon tips on the internet. I started feeling like its not worth it and I wouldn't know where to start! After reading about these "Extreme Couponers" and saw video clips of TLC's new show, I started looking into it more. Now I do not plan to become EXTREME but I would like to be more fugal and wise with the money God has given my little family. I am so thankful for the income we have (even if it is small) and that my husband is will to and works so hard to provide so I can stay home with our son.

Change

How is it possible that one single word can mean so much and cause so many different emotions and reactions? new, different, unknown, anger, hurt, excited, scared, thrilled....Change.


I think that a lot of the time the word "Change" is a scary one.
More often than not we think of change as being bad. Things being new and changing are scary and we don't know how to handle what we feel we have no control over.
But change can also be good, welcomed, and needed regardless of control.


My little family and I have been experiencing some changes as of lately:


Monkey (our 10 month old son) experiences change every day of his life as he grows and gets ready to walk. He learns things so fast and surprises me everyday! I know this may sound dumb or like I am making it up but my son says over 15 words! The latest word: "Ti-ter" that would be how he says Tigger. Tigger has become the new favorite and he HAS to have him to sleep at nap time and bed time. :) We also know this is what he is saying because Monkey will point at and say "Ti-ter."




Dowe's (my Husband) Job: Change with a prayer request attached to it.  Dowe's Boss "J" is leaving the Factory. Dowe is currently at the highest position he can be without being part of the management team. Until just a week ago this wasn't a possibility as there are only a handful of management positions and once they're full, people tend to stay there for years. 
So the prayer request is that my husband would get this position if this is God's will. We have been praying about his job situation for quite some time as he is our source of income. We weren't sure if he should be looking for another job or if we should just wait. Currently, we feel the answer is wait. We are really trying hard to be patient and not get TOO excited. But it is difficult just waiting knowing it could be a couple more months of waiting. The Praise in this though is that the Factory Manager told Dowe, when he went in to talk to him about the job, he had already been thought of and was already being considered for the job. So that is very encouraging and exciting. 




Dowe and I have been taking the Dave Ramsey FPU class to help us get out of debt and become wiser with the money God has given us. This has caused us to make several changes in the ways we deal with and think about money. Including making a budget and trying our hardest to stick to it! We've just started the budget portion so I'm sure you will get updates on how it's going in the coming weeks/months. :) 
We're also starting to look at the possibility of buying our first home. This is all very exciting change but also a little challenging. 


Which brings me to a question for you all: What are some of your favorite money saving tips for grocery shopping as well as favorite inexpensive meals? I am working on trying to get my shopping list around and seem to be really struggling with it as of lately. So any help would be warmly welcomed!