Spending Month: Day 18

Well, I did it. I had my little, “I can’t spend money where I want to spend money” pity party! I had a doctor appointment in the city today. I had a sitter all day for Addi (because those things usually take forever) and the big 3 were in school. It was the fastest doctor visit ever… in and out in less than an hour. So that left me with a whole day, in the city, kid free…. Except I couldn’t spend money. 

I wanted to go out to eat… not on the list. My husband offered to pay from is separate account, but that still felt like cheating (because of the his money is her money and her money is his money thing)… so again, not on the list. I wanted to do a little Christmas shopping… not on the list. I seriously had no idea what to do with myself. So I threw myself a pity party, got gas (because it IS on the list) and went and picked up Addi. 

I want to tell you some awesome lesson I learned, or how God showed me something miraculous about myself today, but it didn’t happen. It is most likely because I was having a really bad attitude and not really opening my mind or heart to learning anything. 

So that’s it… 8 months and 18 days in and I still have days with a bad attitude and closed mind toward an incredible adventure (that I chose, no one forced me to do this) and learning opportunity. We all sin, and we all fall short. I’m thankful for HIS grace and mercy and a new tomorrow.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Spending Month: Day 15

We had a girl’s weekend… without spending money… and it was fun! 

Eric and the boys went deer hunting this weekend. It was the boys first time to go, and apparently deer camp is fun “boy” place to be. They seemed to love it. I think Landen enjoyed the “hunting” part more than Brayden, but just being away with their dad, grandpa, and uncles  I think made them feel special.

Headed to deer camp.

The girls and I were left at home to figure out something fun and girly to do without spending money. I will admit my first instinct was to pout about all the fun things we “could” be doing but can’t because of the spending restrictions. I have been dying to take the girls to the American Girl Doll restaurant… and this would have been a great weekend to do it, but alas, it was not on the list. So what should we do? 

First of all you should know, the girls are grounded from nail polish… that put a damper in the “girly” part of any original thoughts I might have had. (They have been grounded since September and get to paint again on Thanksgiving… it is a long story that involves nail polish, carpet, and me scrubbing for 2+ hours and all kid nail polish being pitched).

So I tried to think of all the fun things they like to do and incorporate them into our weekend. Redbox was out, so we headed to the library again for a girly movie or two. The Last Unicorn… who remembers this? I remember watching it when I was little, and this was their pick… so yeah for reminiscing. 

My girls love to craft, so Saturday morning we headed to Orschelns for their free kid clinic to make glove turkeys. I thought it was super lame… but the girls loved it! Another win!

Glove Turkeys

Saturday night I let them choose dinner. My girls are good eaters, and by that I mean, they like real food. If I would have asked the boys what they wanted for dinner it would have been something like hotdogs or chicken nuggets… but my girls… Cream cheese chicken chili… yum-o! Something I could enjoy too! So I put down a table cloth, served them in in the “fancy” dishes, with cloth napkins and decorations, and had sparking grape juice in a bucket of ice. I thought Eleni was going to jump out of her skin with excitement! She kept saying things like, “this is so special… good thing no boys allowed” and “I love you so much mom… this is so fancy”. My favorite was when I poured her sparkling grape juice… “It’s just so sparkly and bubbly… it’s kind of like Sprite until you swallow it”. They were super excited, which made me super excited about having a special moment with them. It took so little effort, no money, and was way better than driving to the city and spending mega bucks on dinner at the American Girl Doll restaurant. Don’t get me wrong… I will do this some day… but this was a different kind of special.

Fun glasses!

Fancy dinner

We rounded out our weekend with the final movie, Secret of the Wings (with Tinkerbelle and Periwinkle). Both girls got dressed in costumes to represent each of the sisters in the movie and we all snuggled on the couch before bed. 

Tinkerbell and Periwinkle

Though I could think of a lot of fun things we could have done, it was a pretty awesome girl weekend without spending a penny! Lots of fun memories and some pretty great quality time.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Spending: Day 10

So I had my first moment when I shopped outside my 7 designated areas. The stuff was not for my family, and all for donation (which I knew would be a possibility… hence placing it in the rules) so zero guilt. Operation Christmas Child… we love it! We have been participating in this program for… well this is our 8^th year, crazy! If you don’t know anything about Operation Christmas Child it is definitely worth checking out. In a nutshell it provides Christmas presents (shoeboxes full of toys, hygiene items, candy, and booklet about Jesus) for children all over the world, even very remote places, and while doing that opens the doors to learning about Jesus Christ. They have a follow-up program… it really is a miraculous, insanely well put together organization. You can check it out here:

 http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/

 (FYI… I have never made it through an OCC video without shedding tears… you have been warned.:)) This is also through Samaritan's Purse, the same place that my kids are trying to purchase a well for an entire village to have clean drinking water. Great organization!http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/

For the last several years I just keep a large tub in my basement that collects OCC appropriate items throughout the year. That way when I see a great bargain on a large quantity of things, I just buy them. I would never buy 90 bracelets for one child… but I find them super cheap, I can put those in my tub then lots of little girls get bracelets when we bring our stuff to the packing party.

This was the first year each of my kids packed their own boxes. Everyone was given a set dollar amount and then allowed to shop to fill their box for someone their own age. I LOVED watching them do this! It was an amazing feeling to watch my children carefully pick out each thing that would be the “perfect” item. Each child got their own shopping basket and was instructed it must have toothbrush and toothpaste (which Landen fought me hard on…didn’t see the need). Addi struggled only having one basket. At one point in time she had two baskets (because they are at then end of the aisle… so she took it upon herself to grab an extra) so she could get stuff for her in one basket and stuff for her designated child in the other. This picking out things you like to give away is a hard concept for a 3 year old… this is probably why I have waited so long to do it. Everyone (except Addi) was really excited to get home and pack their box for their “Christmas Child” as Eleni kept referring to them. 

Their individual purchases.

all their packed boxes and the extras.

We (Addi and I) took our packed boxes and our “extra” stuff to the MOPS packing party. Our local MOPS group is what introduced me to OCC years back, so even though I don’t belong to the local MOPS group anymore, they were super kind and allowed me to join in on the packing party! Always love doing it (and Addi had a good time playing with other kids for the morning).  We, as a group, packed 150+ boxes to be shipped out. So AWESOME!

Packing party!

We also hit the dentist today… all 6 of us! Insurance change has us at a new dentist… so we all went in for check-ups and teeth cleanings. It was a long 2 ½ hours, but we survived. Landen (who often lies about brushing teeth and has to be sent back to “do it again” refer to the above of fighting me on packing the toothbrush) was our cavity culprit… good thing dentist/doctor is on the list because we will have to head back.  Addi had her first full blown cleaning. She has been 2 other times, but this is the first time she sat through an entire cleaning. She was a superstar and took it like a champ!

She looks like she is lounging on the beach with the hands behind the head. :)

Spending month… going great!

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

Spending: Day 8

Family pictures are a big stress for me. Family pictures during spending month become an even bigger stress. This all started way back in June…

In June, I found a super cute navy blue dress in Eleni’s size. We just finished painting the living room, it was shades of blue, green, and browns. I knew we wanted to do family pictures with in the next couple of months and was looking for a lovely (large)family picture to hang on the wall, and wanted it to semi-coordinate (at least not completely clash) with the room… seeing as it will be hanging there for at least a year. This dress was perfect… plain, cute, simple navy… I can find a ton of stuff to match with that. So the dress was purchased and I had my mind set everyone was coordinating around this dress.

Well the summer slipped by, things got busy…no pictures. Then surgery and recovery, then the marathon, then convention, then HOLY COW it is late October and well over a year since our last family pictures! So I needed to book pictures. I got a time slot booked with my lovely friend Sarah Kliethermes for November 12^th. I had plenty of time… 3 weeks out. Well, I didn’t really think about it until the day before the spending fast (actually NIGHT before) was to begin. I franticly contacted her to put a check in the mail so she could get paid (she wasn’t on my list of 7) assuming that everyone would have something in green or blue in their correct sizes, I didn’t worry too much about it. I would have assumed wrong.

I spent the 2 weeks before pictures contacting various people trying to get certain items for everyone to wear in coordinating colors. And of course I needed options, so let me tell you… family pictures… it takes a village. I have awesome friends! We borrowed boots from Bree, jacket from Ella, shirt from Kirstin, sweater from Faith… along with other “possible items” from Cynthia and Missy and a whole slue of people with a “I will let you know if I need to come pick it up”.  The boys are wearing hand-me-downs from my sister’s boys… so if you look at family pictures, Eric is actually the only person dressed entirely in his own clothes. I was literally vomiting the night before with anxiety (by the way… weather played a factor and we had to bump up our picture day knocking 2 days off my “track stuff down” time). 

It was half an hour before pictures and I was still trying on options of clothes for my husband to choose the right outfit for me to wear. If it was not spending month, I would have definitely just gone out and bought Addi and I completely new outfits (and Eleni and jacket and boots)… probably spending $100 or so on clothes… for a 1 hour photo shoot. God put me in a position… or maybe I put myself in a position (because of shear procrastination) to let the Holy Spirit do a little work on me… asking people to borrow things is not a comfortable thing for me, I just don’t like doing it. But God gave me the opportunity to reach out and lean on my fellow sisters and ask for a little help. And you know what, it wasn’t the end of the world. 

In Philippians 2:3-4 it says ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. I have always considered this verse as directed to me as serving/meeting the needs of others (which I do believe is true). But I struggle with being the person that this verse is referring to… the person who someone else is must “value above themselves”. I personally find it more difficult to be on the receiving end of someone humbling themselves and putting my needs before theirs. I think sometimes the way we please the Lord is by allowing (even if it is very difficult and sometimes very humbling) others to be able to serve too, and by that I mean serve us…me. This is an area that God has really been working on me, throughout the entire fast, but was made abundantly clear with the amount of people I needed to reach out to for one silly hour photo shoot.

So even if it was a trivial (and yes I realize in the grand scheme of things… the clothing is not what really matters in family pictures) God taught me, as He continually does, another great lesson.

I put a few shots from the sneak peaks from our photo session. Our photographer was Sarah Kliethermes Photography (check her out on Facebook!). She did an amazing job with our crazy crew. By the end we had two kids with grass stains, a kid that laid down in dog poop, 4 cold kids, and one exhausted mama… and somehow she worked her magic and they were fantastic! (bribing small children with ice cream also helps :))

Thanks for joining me on the journey!