My blessings

We found a beatiful park today and hiked 2.5 miles. I wasn't expecting it to be that long, but the boys did great. I felt pretty good, too :) We even managed to get a decent picture of all the kids together.

The best one...


Some not so good...LOL





We played at the playground there before we started our hike. This was my favorite picture there.

6 Months Pregnant!!

Today I am 6 months pregnant. I feel good and am so relieved of that! We haven't taken any preggy pictures yet this pregnancy so Dan took a couple today after church. They turned out pretty well!

Living is so expensive...

I really consider myself a frugal person. I buy something for the house (decorations, curtains, etc) like once a year, don't shop for fun and dress my kids from Goodwill or Target sales. We do very few after school activities and limit going out to eat to once a week. We rent movies from the library instead of the movie store and get books there too instead of ordering off of Amazon. While I used to buy kids clothes as a hobby, I've stopped that and hardly buy them at all. So why does the money just seem to fly away? We went to the commissary today. It's a little over an hour away so I like to stock up on things that are more expensive at the grocery store. Somehow we managed to spend $100 on mannoyase, ketchup, mustard, black olives, peanut butter, OJ and toaster waffles. "sigh". And it was soooo much cheaper than I would have paid otherwise! The chiro is $35 an adjustment per person and that sure adds up. Not to mention the cost of vitamins for the kids!! I mailed a couple of presents at the post office yesterday and came out $11 poorer. Let's not even go into the $50 I pay on gas a week. Where do you cut back? Buy cheaper less nutritious food? Quit giving vitamins to the kids? Walk your child 3 miles to school each way? Perhaps it's just because I'm feeding 6 people. Although I feel like my meals are very frugal...we use lots of rice and beans. I spend $200 at Costco on friday ($100 of it was for renewal) and all that money at the commisary today and still have to get to the kroger for produce. Which I'm sure will cost me a good $20. AHHHH I've even started going to a couple of different stores to get what produce is onsale (if i'm close...i won't waste the gas driving all over town for a 30 cent savingings on peaches).
It's sort of depressing. I think this week I'm going to write down everything I spend and see what's really going on.