Frugal Birthday Party, Part 2

September 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

We had our almost-triplet birthday party a couple weeks ago for my three little ones.  Landis and the twins are 11 months and 3 weeks apart.

So, these guys turned 2.

              

Then, a week later, Landis turned 3.

So, along with 3 grandparents, 6 aunts and uncles, 1 big sister, and 5 cousins, we had a joint birthday party for all of them.  As I mentioned last year after doing Karis’ 5th birthday party, I aim to be pretty frugal and I’m not much of a party host.  So, with all that, I like to keep things simple.  There’s also the factor of 2 and 3-year-olds don’t have a lot of desires for an elaborate party.  They just enjoy being the center of attention, eating cake, and opening presents.

And while last year, I set out to make as much as possible myself like the meal for the family and the cake in an effort to save money, there are lots of different considerations including time and energy.  With this being the week before school started, I was honestly just tired.

I wanted to keep it simple and frugal. 

So the only decorations were each of them getting a headband or hat along with a little figurine for their favorite character.  Landis loves Snow White and well, I just thought it was cute to do Micky & Minnie for the twins.  We already had a Minnie headband and a Snow White figurine, so we just used those from home.  Then I filled in the rest at the Disney Store and those things doubled as gifts.  They also brought along their soft toys from home of Snow White, Mickey and Minnie.

Since we have so many adults eating, I really wanted to have good food that didn’t cost a lot, but at the end of the day, we just picked up pizza (with a 50% off online code), chips (on sale B1G1), a watermelon (from a farmer’s stand on the side of the road), and bought cupcakes from the grocery store.  They weren’t the gourmet cupcakes, but the kids didn’t know the difference once they licked the icing off!  And did you know cupcakes from one of those cute little bakeries are like $65??  I didn’t!  The 2 dozen I got from the grocery store were $15!  I’ll take it!

            

And then there are those little treat bags for all the kids.  I have a hate-hate relationship with those things.  I do understand and value giving a little thank-you to folks that take the time out to celebrate and bring gifts.  I just don’t love giving or receiving lots of bags of candy (I know!  I’m a Birthday Scrooge!).  So, I chose little things from the dollar store that hopefully the kids would enjoy, badges for the boys, rings for the girls, and dress-up glasses with noses.  Oh and did I mention I didn’t spend the time making these up individual little bags?  I put all the items in a basket and they just picked out a couple items.  Love a timesaver!

Overall, it was a great time!  We have such great family that love our children so well.  All the cousins LOVE playing together and the 3 birthday kids were happy.

If you want to get a better feel of how the evening really went, take a look at this time-lapse video my brother took while we were all together.

Fall Transitions

September 4, 2012 By 4 Comments

We have had lots of new beginnings in my house lately. I feel like the last few weeks have been full of getting ready for the upcoming transition. My oldest, Karis, started kindergarten last week. We got a placement in a Montessori School in our local public school system and are excited about this year! Karis had a great first week and is making new friends every day.

We love these uniforms!!

She felt so much better walking in the first day when she saw her best friend, Destiny.

Landis also started her first dance class. She is really excited about it so far and I like how it gives her something that’s all her own to do with other kids her age.

This class is so cute with all these little ones! (I didn’t get permission to post those adorable faces, so I blurred them out.) :)

With these changes have come several adjustments to our daily and weekly routine and I want to share more with you over the next couple weeks. There have been so many things to think through and plan for, so look for posts coming up about:

Adjusting our daily schedule
Planning for and packing the lunchbox
Transitioning the twins out of cribs
Our almost-triplet birthdays
Keeping 3 toddlers occupied during the day
And more…

Have you had lots of transition getting ready for the Fall?

The Ever-Changing Family Schedule

July 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I realize it’s been ages since I’ve posted!  I’m still here, just trying to find my groove after getting back to China.  During the first couple of weeks the kids were in school and I just stayed busy trying to get back into a normal routine.  Now they are home through the beginning of September, and I’m trying to find our new normal.  Not much has gone as I expected!

I had a well-written schedule prepared for the summer.  Scratch that!  Nothing seems to fit into the schedule as I had planned.

I had our previous house helper whom we adore lined up to come in for 4 hours daily for the summer to help with some kitchen prep and cleaning so that I could focus more on the kids during vacation and less on housework.  She unexpectedly had to return to her hometown for the summer.

For the last week, I’ve been revamping our plan, finding our new normal, and revamping some more.  I’ve got some ideas for helping our summer days flow smoothly, but I’m sure that by next week, my plan will probably need more revamping.  Is there anyone else who feels like things are constantly changing now that you have kids?

Just for fun, here are a couple of pictures from Vera’s kindergarten graduation.  She has been at the same school with the same teachers and classmates for the last three years.  If you click the last picture to enlarge it, you can see that some kids weren’t too happy about moving on to first grade!

Hopefully part of my revamped summer routine will include more time for blogging!  If my posts are limited during the rest of the summer, please know that I’m enjoying my children and trying to keep them as my top priority while they are on summer break. :)

Happy 4th of July!

July 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Hope you have a great day with family, friends, and good food!  That’s our plan!  We’ve been busy so far this summer with lots of…

TIME AT THE PARK

FUN WITH WATER


 

and MORE TIME WITH DADDY

Have a great day!!

Watts Family Adoption Update

June 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Remember the Thirty-One Giveaway we did a couple months ago?  Remember the sweet Watts family who is raising money for their adoption?  You can read more in their last post here.  Well, they got a call about 2 weeks ago about a baby boy due to be born June 30.  And today they got a call that the birthmom will be induced tomorrow and they are on the road to meet their son!  I’m super excited for them and wanted to share this news with you.

Another huge part of this story is the continual fundraising they are doing.  Since they have had very short notice to get the last funding in order, they need the last of their funds now.  Their target goal is $8000 and they currently have $3250.  Folks, $10 is helpful and $100 is helpful.  Any amount helps them get the funds raised and allows them to focus on loving their son and making this transition smoothly.  Check out their website here and donate if you can.

Thanks for letting me share!

Be a Part of Little Aaliyah’s Story

May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

My dear friend’s sister is in the process of adopting this precious little girl, Aaliyah and I want to share more of their story and give you an opportunity to give to their adoption fund.

You can read more of Donita’s story here on my friend, Shawnda’s blog.  But here is an excerpt of Donita’s testimony of how God led her to bring Aaliyah into their family.

“In 2005 God led us to start a new church, Crossroads, in an effort to reach a younger generation in a more casual, contemporary atmosphere.

After giving birth to three boys, I believed our biological family was complete.  We have always said, “if someone wanted to give us a little girl, we would certainly take her, but we are finished having babies.”  While we have always been open to the idea of adoption and have known and supported many adoptive families, we have never felt led to pursue adoption ourselves, although we have said, “if there was a child who needed a home, we would be willing to provide a home.”  We even had this conversation as recently as last summer!

Two years ago, our youth did a visitation project to invite kids to VBS, and our oldest son, David, knocked on the door of Lois Montgomery, a great grandmother who had just moved to town with her four year old great granddaughter.  Lois and Aaliyah began attending Crossroads, and although they visited other churches for a while, they always felt led to return to Crossroads and have been faithful attenders at Crossroads for a little over a year. In February, Lois approached us with a dilemma.  She was concerned about what would happen to Aaliyah when she was no longer able to care for her.  Aaliyah’s mother and grandmother had abandoned her shortly after she was born and Lois knew there was no one in her family who would love and take the responsibility for Aaliyah.  She also wanted Aaliyah to be raised by a mother and father in a Christian home and have siblings.  She told us that she had been praying about it for quite some time, and that she continually felt led to us, and asked us to pray about adopting Aaliyah.  After praying about it and discussing it as a couple and as a family, my husband and I felt that our decision had already been made many years ago, when we first said “we would be willing”.  We came up with many excuses about why we couldn’t, but they were all selfishly motivated.  As adopted children of our Heavenly Father, He was giving us the opportunity to show His love to a little girl and her great grandmother through earthly adoption, and we knew that He had placed them in our lives for this very reason.

Because we had made no previous plans for adoption, we had not financially prepared for the cost which would be involved.  There are attorney’s fees and home study fees, but our biggest expense has been converting our garage into bedrooms so that we have room to add a little girl to a house full of teenage boys.  We know God has always known this was in His plan and has prepared for it, even though we didn’t.

Aaliyah is currently living with her great grandmother until her room is complete.   The target move in date is June 1st, the day after school is out.  We are excited about God bringing a girl to the Byrom family and how He will write this new chapter in our lives.”

I LOVE this story, how it sort of happened to them.  I love how they are being so faithful to what could seem inconvenient for them and their family.  Look at the widget in the sidebar and be a part of this amazing story. Any amount will help bring Aaliyah home.

How I Became an Accidental Housewife

May 15, 2012 By 6 Comments


As I sit here in the middle of my house that needs to be cleaned and hear my four children starting to wake upstairs, I sort of know what my day will be like as a stay-at-home mom.  I do a lot of cleaning, cooking, dressing, redirecting, correcting, hugging, changing, helping, and laughing.  However, as I think back to what I thought my days were going to look like in this stage of life, it was a very different picture.

I’m intentional about most things I do.  But being a stay-at-home mom was not one of them.  I didn’t always or only dream of being a full-time wife and mom.  I graduated from college fully convinced I would have a 30-year career in teaching.  When we got married, we didn’t start saving for me to stay home in the future.  Even after I got pregnant with our first child, we just didn’t feel like we could afford for me to stay home full-time.  I did transition to a part-time job because I wanted to be with my new baby more than I was away from her and that worked for several months.

So how did I get to be at home full-time?  Well, again, it wasn’t because of a great plan or a big promotion where we could afford it more.  It was a mixture of desires and a failed business.  The older Karis got, the more I wanted to be home with her every day.  The back and forth of working every other day was wearing on me and I wanted a more consistent routine with managing my home and being a mom.  Then an opportunity came up for me to take over a local advertising business that I could mostly do from home and make a lot more money.

This seemed like a great plan until the Recession hit that year and it became evident that this business wasn’t quite in the successful state that the previous owner had described.  I was about 6 months in running that business, working a lot more hours than I expected and just trying to break even with the costs of the business.  Then I found out I was pregnant with our second child.

So, Dee and I started discussing how we could make it work for me to stay home full-time.  It just didn’t seem like a feasible thing to do until it hit us somewhere in the middle of those conversations that I hadn’t brought home a paycheck in 6 months anyway.  Even though the numbers didn’t add up to be able to make it on just Dee’s salary, somehow we had been making it since the business had not been profitable at all.  It was giving me long hours, lots of stress, and a good bit of debt.

We decided to shut down the business since it definitely didn’t look like it was going to turn around.  We did examine our budget on paper to see how it could work on one salary and began a stricter financial journey to get rid of our debt.  Due to the expenses of the business, we had doubled our credit card debt (which we just completely paid off a couple months ago, but that’s another story).  We learned to live on less and be more faithful with what we have.

What did we learn from all this? Don’t make plans because they don’t work out anyway?  Well, no.  I’m still very much a planner.  I just aim to hold those plans a little more loosely in my hands.

“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”  Proverbs 16:9

What’s your story?  How did you get to where you are now?  I would love to hear more about you!

Come back the rest of the week for more “accidental” decisions I’ve made in parenting.

Finding Joy – Twin Picnic

May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We had lunch outside last week and it was the first time I’ve given the twins any food without them being strapped in somehow.  Surprisingly, they did really well, kept their food on their little plates, and ate it up.  And, I must say, they looked pretty cute while they were doing it.

What has brought you joy lately?

Finding Joy – Sister Snuggles

May 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

We recently got rid of Karis’ twin bed and converted Landis’ toddler bed into a full size bed.  They sleep together on most nights anyway, so we thought we would give them more room.  There has been a little arguing at bedtime, but no more than when they had separate beds.  Mostly, they love it and I hear more giggles coming out of that room than ever.  When I checked on them the other night, I found them all snuggled together.  I love it!  I hope they always stay close.

What has brought you joy lately?

Arrived in the U.S. and Staying Busy!

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One wonderful thing about having a blogging buddy is that when things get busy, there’s someone else to keep things going.  Busy is definitely a great way to explain the last week.  After an easy and “short” 19 hours of travel, we arrived in the U.S. last Tuesday night.  We’ve been keeping the kids busy since we got here.   This week will be no different.  We are heading to Orlando this afternoon and going to Disney World tomorrow thanks to my generous mother who is giving this trip to us as Christmas and birthday gifts from the last year.  The kids are all very excited even though the boys don’t seem to have a clue what Disney is.

What exactly have we been up to?

The boys went to the train depot while the girls went to the Cabbage Patch Babyland General Hospital.  Sorry, I don’t have pics of the girls.

Lots of swimming…

And watching little pills that Tobey thought you should eat transform into sponge animals.

We are enjoying being with family and friends as we make the rounds throughout the Southeast.  Thank you, Stacey and all of the guest bloggers who are filling in for me over the next few weeks so that I can enjoy this time we have traveling.  I’ll keep updating along the way!

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