Breaking the 24-hr. snow record!

The black line on the roof of the playhouse is a 12-inch ruler!

We also carved our pumpkins on Sunday as our F.H.E. activity! Emily could have fit inside hers if we had put her in it. We hope you enjoy our results!

We wanted to share some of our beautiful Fall weather. We feel so blessed to live in Spokane and enjoy the beauty of all four seasons. Fall has to be my favorite and this Fall has been superb! We are enjoying another week of blue skies, extraordinary colors of the trees and bushes and crisp, cold air! It's the best!

Fall has Arrived!

We have a tradition that Grandpa Mitchell started when Nolan was born. He engraves into the young pumpkin the name of the grandchild and we eagerly watch as the pumpkin grows and so does the name! This year we have 3 pumpkins with our grand children's name engraved! So Nolan, Emily and Gerret, these pictures are for you!!!

Mom's thoughts on food storage and money!

I found a new website called frugalisfab.blogspot. It's a great site that offers tips and hints and actually does a lot of your work if you like to redeem coupons. I'm not and never have been a big coupon person but a couple of tv shows have highlighted how people can buy $900.00 worth of stuff for less than $200.00. So I got really excited and started to look up a lot of other coupon websites and filling out forms and all that. Then I remembered something that Amy Dacyszan wrote in her Tightwad Gazette book. She says to look not at the amount they saved but the amount they paid! And I realized that I had set a goal to spend only $100.00 a month on groceries, including food storage. (We're trying to save money for Brady to go to San Francisco with the band this Spring) So buying $200.00 worth of stuff would actually set me back. Plus I also realized that buying stuff is not what I'm all about. I'm about rice and wheat and canning and saving and family. So I have decided that unless the coupon gets me the item free or pretty darn close to free, I'm not interested. So there you have my pearls of wisdom.

Eagle Scouts are Great!

I want to let each of you know how proud we are of Zach obtaining his Eagle Scout award! It is certainly not easy to do but he did it!!! Zach had great assistance from friends and family and we are all glad it was a success and that the little redhead is now an Eagle Scout.

Congratulations to Patrick!

Patrick was selected as CFCU Employee of the Quarter. Our family knows what a great young man he is and it's always nice when the company you work for also acknowledges it. Keep up the good work Patrick, you're destined for great things!!!

An amazing and growing family that started in 1980 with just two people and now has grown to include 6 children, two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and 3 soon to be four beautiful grandchildren. We are truly blessed to have such a great family for support, love, encouragement and all around fun!!! It truly does not get any better than this.

Command base

So your mom has entered the world of blogging so that we can all keep in touch and up to date on the doings of all the family all over the United States. I'll let you all know when someone has new info and new pictures since I check every day! I'm excited to let each of you know how your extended family members are doing here in Spokane and they in turn will know how you're doing through this blog. Disregard any mistakes, because I am a novice just having fun!!!