Need to sleep

I need to post more pics for my girlies but it will have to wait till tomorrow. We stayed up till 3 a.m. last night (I may have gotten Jeff hooked on Downton Abbey) and we can't do the same tonight. We are not being very disciplined about going to bed. Isn't that the fun of being on vacation though?!?

We biked ALL over today and happened onto a beautiful church which we went in to see. There was a orchestra and about a hundred member choir rehearsing when we went in. They were absolutely amazing. We sat and listened for quite awhile and considered it a gift that we had stumbled into that lovely church when we did.

(Best crepe maker in Paris and trust me when I say, we just about tried them all)

We stopped by the little crepe stand right outside our hotel tonight for a farewell crepe. When we walked up, the guy smiled real big and said, "banana Nutella crepe??" Yes, we're regulars now. We will sure miss this place.

We're getting up early to go to church in Paris before we head to the airport to grab a rental car and drive to the countryside. Should be a great adventure.

More pictures tomorrow sweet girlies.....

Love you!

Day 3 in Paris

"The Hamlet" at Versailles. Amazing.

View of the Eiffel tower from the boat on our nighttime river cruise.

In front of the Louve

Romantic Paris

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Wow. Today was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Turns out this place IS quite romantic and awesome. I was served breakfast in bed consisting of yogurt, granola and a chocolate filled croissant. Yum. Then it was off to the Louve & Arc de Triumph. Those were both cool but of course we always prefer the less touristy things. Favorite parts of today: afternoon bike ride through Paris, listening to incredible Jazz band outside the park behind Notre Dame, lounging on a blanket in the park and our 10:00 p.m. river cruise.

The Venus de Milo was my fav at the Louve.

The coronation of Napoleon was hubby's favorite ("because there are no naked guys in it")

Inside the pyramid at the Louve

Resting on a blanket in the park

Biking outside the Louve

Delicious AND artisitc gelato!

View of the Eiffel tower from our river cruise tonight.

Notre Dame at night

Twenty years of marriage and it just keeps getting better.

I so LOVE this man.

20 Years

This summer we celebrate 20 years of marriage. The hubby decided there was no more romantic place to celebrate our anniversary than Paris, so here we are.

Biked to Notre Dame Cathedral and went to part of a mass.

Biked back to hotel in the rain. :)

Right outside our hotel

The item my hubby will be eating 4-5 times a day while we're here. He only fit two in yesterday.

Long week.....

So it's been a long week. Even though the week I'm referring has only been two days so far. But week sounds better than, "it's been a long two days", don't you think?

Hubby is in China. Things never seem quite right when he's gone. To console myself, I bought myself a new two-pack of pens at Target today. I LOVE them. Paper Mate InkJoy 700 RT - 1.0 mm M. Do you think "InkJoy" is a corny name for a pen?!? I think not. They ARE pure joy to write with. I'm totally serious. It almost made my husband being in China ok. Almost.

So some days while I'm doing laundry, I listen to conference talks, Education Week talks, Podcasts or TV shows on Hulu. When my husband is out of town, I should probably stick to uplifting talks and Podcasts. Today while I folded, I watched one of those FBI shows (can't remember the name). It was about some guy who broke into people's homes after he cut the power and phone lines and killed the entire family. They finally caught him after he killed about five different families. Not the best show to watch while the hubby is out of town you say? Yes, I would agree.

After a morning of frightening laundry folding, I went to pick up the kids from school. Suddenly every scary movie I've ever seen starts replaying in my head. Like the one where the bad guy was hiding in the back of the lady's car as she pulled out of the garage unknowingly. Or the one where as she pulled into the garage, he slid under the garage door as it was closing. Or the true story from Oprah where while the wife is out gardening, a man enters her side (unlocked) door, kills her husband and waits for her to come in. He then rolls her up in a carpet (if I remember correctly), backs his car into the driveway and throws her in the trunk. I won't even tell you what happened after that.

So with all this running through my mind, I took the extra precaution of locking the door between the house and the garage so no boogie men could enter while I was picking the children up and taking them to piano. My paranoia turned out to be a pretty big bummer when 3 minutes later, I had to return for the piano bags I had forgotten and found myself locked out of the house. I brought the set of car keys that doesn't have a house key attached. Sigh.

Maybe there is a door unlocked? Fat chance!! Thanks to said paranoia, the house is locked up like Fort Knox. After trying all the doors, I found an unlocked window (which totally freaked me out but also made me happy as I had no idea how I would ever get in again). I removed the screen and crawled (very un-gracefully) in through the window, grabbed the piano books, locked the window up tight and ran back out, now late, to pick up the kids.

I am now in bed. The car doors are locked (even though it's parked in the garage). The house is locked up and every window has been checked. And I may or may not be sleeping with a bat.

I just remembered one time when he was out of town in the summer and it was so hot and I just couldn't bear to close and lock the window so I set an elaborate trap in front of the window so if someone tried to crawl in during the night, things would go tumbling down, make a lot of noise, wake me up, at which time I would leap from my bed, grab my big, heavy Mag Light and charge said intruder in my undies to knock him out with my weapon?!?! What the heck was I thinking?!? I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have ended happily.

And now it's time for some "InkJoy" love to forget all my scary thoughts and hopefully get some sleep.

I couldn't agree more.
Everyone should see this:
Things as they really are

Frugal not Cheap

You know those articles you always read: "How to Save $20 a Week!" or "Living Well on Less"?? I always read them but never actually find something in the article that I don't already do. I can't give up the daily Latte at $5 a pop because I drink water. I can't cut the weekly manicure because I don't get them. I can't swap out a movie night for a video night because we don't go to the movies (talk about a rip off!). You get the drift. I cut my dryer sheets in half, make homemade pizza instead of ordering it, I'm a pretty frugal gal.
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A few people over the years have made the mistake of calling me cheap?!? only to have to listen to a long lecture from me about the difference between cheap and frugal. Frugal people are careful and wise about how they spend their money. Cheap people are, well, cheap. They are cheap with themselves and everyone else too.

I actually LOVE being generous. I love giving to a cause I believe in or surprising someone with something totally unexpected. The more frugal I am, the greater ability I have to be generous. Win-Win!!

I dislike the title of this book (The Tightwad Gazette), but I still bought volumes one and two, have read both, and as you can see, marked them up pretty well. I also own Dave Ramsey's 'Total Money Makeover' (my favorite) and Clark Howard's book below. I love listening to Dave Ramsey's podcast on iTunes as well. I'm weird that way. I like being frugal and reading about how to be even more frugal.

So recently a friend asked me what we've done to cut back due to the uncertainty of the economy. The hubby is self-employed. So, monthly paychecks in a certain amount are not guaranteed. Therefore, we try to save and be careful so if his work slows down, we're still ok. Here are some of our recent cuts:

The Sunday paper. This was a hard one. I LOVE looking at the ads. The kids loved the funnies. The hubby loved the sports section. But most of it can be seen on-line. Sigh. It's not the same but we'll survive.

Monthly Savings:  $8.00

Netflix.  Not as hard as losing the Sunday paper but still a bummer. We are pretty busy and therefore don't watch a lot of tv. But it was fun watching movies on the weekend. But silly Netflix doubled their price. They should know me better. Of course I have to cancel when someone doubles their price.

Monthly Savings: $15.00

American Express Annual Fee:  We love our AmEx because we use it for our normal expenses, pay it off every month and rack up frequent flier miles we can use to travel. But when the statement came with the annual fee of $95.00, I just couldn't do it. I called and told them we were cancelling to use a card with no annual fee. Because they love me (and my money) so much....valued customer blah blah blah...they WAIVED my fee for the year. Woo Hoo.

Annual Savings: $95.00

Halloween costumes: We're recycling this year. Every year, AFTER Halloween, I scan the 90% off clearance rack and get costumes to throw in the costume bin for next year. Many costumes have been worn by several or all of my daughters. I don't believe in buying new costumes for my kids every year. I don't really even like Halloween but hey, I still go with it for my kids' sake. This year we have a Diva vampire, a dead ghost bride and two undecideds. But they will inevitably come up with something from an item they find in the costume bin. Most Moms I know spend AT LEAST $20 per kid making or buying costumes. O.k., I did have to spend $1 on plastic vampire teeth.

Annual Savings: $79.00

Dustbuster:  We use it constantly and recently, it broke. My genious hubby found a replacement part on-line and fixed it rather than buying a new one.

Savings: $80.00


Satellite T.V.: The hubby, bless his heart, loves BYU football more than life itself. I would LOVE to cancel our satellite t.v. but I also love keeping him happy. The compromise, we switched to the lowest, cheapest package available. 


Savings per month: $20.00


"Airport Express": We currently have our home internet service and separate hubby's back yard office internet service. We recently found this little dream device at the Apple Store. It boosts our wireless internet signal from hubby's office into the house so we can CANCEL our home internet service. The Airport Express cost $100 so it will pay for itself in under 3 months!

Monthly Savings: $35.00

New Car: We drive a 2001 Honda Odyssey with almost 150,000 miles. My daughter recently told me we needed to buy a new car because the C.D. player was skipping. I explained to her that the CD player was fine, it was her CD that was scratched. Said she, "we should still buy a new car. This one is old!" Sure, a new car would be nice. But this one works perfectly fine. And thankfully we buy foreign cars that run forever so we'll talk after another 50,000 miles perhaps.

Yearly Savings: $35,000.00

Food: We NEVER buy our kids fast food and we rarely eat out as a family. None of us buy or drink soda, ever. My kids think it's a really special treat to go to the drive through at McDonalds and get a .50 cent ice cream cone. Hubby and I try to use coupons to eat out on date night and our weekly family meals consist of homemade meals with food that was purchased on sale. I hardly ever buy something just because it sounds good. It HAS to be on sale. Even when we travel, I pack and bring lunches so we don't have to buy airport food. That's just the way I roll.

Monthly Savings: A LOT

Total yearly savings:
$36,190.00

Living frugally brings peace and makes it so we can do awesomely fun things like taking our kids to Europe to see their cousins this year.  

F.U.N.N.E.S.T. thing we've done as a family E.V.E.R.! 
And in my opinion, one of our best investments to date!

We could lose the house, the cars and the money....but the memories are OURS FOREVER.

I LOVE this quote. I guess it was just what I needed to hear today.

"I see women who are doing their absolute best in every way – but they keep track only of their mistakes. They make lists of things they haven't done instead of the phenomenal amount of things they've accomplished. No matter what mountain of achievement they've just climbed, they stumble over molehills, saying things like, "But it's not enough," or, "I didn't do it well enough."


The good news of the gospel is that who we are is okay. Our best is good enough. The Savior came for us –just as we are.…perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief."     ~Chieko Okazaki

Guatemala!

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 The hubby and I just returned from a week in Guatemala with all of these amazing girls.

How many teenage girls do you know that would willingly spend a week of their summer working their buns off in Guatemala?!? Not only did they go and work but they earned the money to pay for their plane tickets AND raised money to help pay for the stoves we were installing in the homes.

We went to help chaperone and to help WORK!

We were literally hiking through the jungle every day to get to the homes where we were installing stoves. Corn stalks so high that we would have never found our way without guides.

A Mayan family at one of the homes where we installed a stove and water filter.

This is how they cook prior to us installing the new stove....an open fire in their home. Soot icicles hang from the ceiling and it's just filthy from all the smoke. Kids sometimes fall into the fires and get burned. They are also much more likely to have respiratory problems and it takes A LOT of wood to keep the fires going all day....expensive and time consuming.

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A typical bed was a frame with a board to sleep on. No mattress or anything soft at all. Just a blanket to put over them. A few families had the luxury of a concrete floor but most just had a dirt floor.

There's my man working hard. He was a work horse! I'm so glad I didn't marry a girly man!

 The new stoves being installed use 75% less wood and cooks very efficiently. More importantly, we put a flu in that vents all the smoke OUTSIDE!! No more soot covered walls and lungs.

The cockroaches don't like having their home disturbed. It was a good thing it was dark and I couldn't see very well the hundreds of cockroaches scurrying about. 

 The distortion in this picture is from the soot floating in the air as we were shoveling out all the ash from their indoor fire. I could hardly even breath. Tailor and I kept trading off so we could go outside and breath in a little fresh air in between shovels full of soot. 

A family with their newly installed stove and a flu to vent the smoke outside! Yipee!

 We hiked through lots of mud in the jungle. It was awesome!

This cute little boy when he saw me working in the rain, came and held an umbrella over my head while I worked. The children were so incredibly cute and sweet!

My awesome Father-in-Law came on the trip as well. He's a lot of fun and an incredibly hard worker. He taught my hubby everything he knows!

When the work was finished, we would play with the children.

This is a picture of them playing tag around Papa. He sat in the middle of the room while the kids ran in circles around him. It was pretty cute!

My sweet Mother-in-Law watched our kids while we were gone. She said they weren't very good about doing the dishes.  Sigh. Welcome to my dirty dish world! 

In spite of them not liking to do dishes, they're good-hearted girls!! They had a pancake breakfast before we left to earn money to sponsor a family in Guatemala. We had about 80 people show up and they ended up earning enough to sponsor nearly THREE families. We were so grateful for everyone's generosity and I was really proud of the girls and all their hard work. I hope we can take them to Guatemala someday to experience what we did.

More info. about the awesome charitable foundation we worked with....

www.mayarelief.com

He Lives!

Happy Easter Everyone!

Click here:
He Lives: Testimonies of Jesus Christ