Here’s a bit of random information about our family right now:

• My kids are obsessed with grapefruit.  I mean, they LOVE it.  Cheers all around when I pull it from the fridge.  I certainly can’t complain, but it still strikes me as a bit strange!
• Mackenzie is convinced she is much older than she is.  She has one of those personalities where she wants to do (and can a lot of times) whatever anyone else is doing, and just doesn’t get why she can’t sometimes.  She is very outgoing and still the comic relief in our household.  She even beats up on her older siblings.
• Jackson loves math.  And he’s really good at it.  I suppose this isn’t surprising considering Gavin and I are good at math as well (not at English though, at least for me), but he gets really excited when he pulls his math books out of his school workbox.
• Morgan has surprised me in school with what she already knows.  It’s easy to underestimate her, and she is showing us that she’s 3 and can hold her own and do a lot of things!
• I am finally back to using my cloth diapers after a 5 month break because of early pregnancy and summer camp schedules.  It’s so nice to not have to buy diapers anymore, even though I always got them on sale.
• I can’t even express how ready I am for fall.  I know it’s still a ways away, but the fact that the temps have dropped from the mid-90s to the low-90s has gotten me hoping anyway!
• I am teaching a PE class for 4-5 year olds, and assisting with a LEGO class for 6-9 year olds at our homeschool co-op this semester.  This Thursday is our first day, and we will meet every other Thursday for 3 hours.  All of the kids will be in some classes (Mackenzie in the nursery)
• I’m almost 25 weeks pregnant and we have taken 1 picture of me thus far (at 16 weeks).  I suppose this is a preview to the documentation child #4 will have.
• We also have hardly thought of names for this little girl.  I obsessed over them with the others.  We thought of one name we liked a few weeks ago, and haven’t talked about it since except to inform each other that we haven’t thought about it.
• The older kids are outside playing in the (rare) pouring rain right now.  Mackenzie is extremely upset she’s not out there with them.
• I’ve been very disciplined since we started school to not be on my computer at all in the morning, so I’m not distracted.  So far it’s working well, and I’m pretty proud of myself!
• Mondays are now my baking days.  I get the kitchen all messy, my mixer/food processor out, the oven going, and my flour mill to grind all the flour for stuff I need for the week.  Most gets frozen, and I absolutely love having things to pull out for breakfast, snacks, or anything else I have planned for the week.
• Meal planning for me is an absolute lifesaver.
• Morgan and Jackson are getting along better these days.  I think partly because of a set daily schedule, and partly because Gavin is home and our family is back to normal again (mostly anyway, he’s still gone a few days at a time)
• I actually made my own deodorant this summer.  Yes, I’m strange.  But I also like knowing exactly what is going on my body, and it actually worked pretty well.  I also like the Arm and Hammer naturals as far as store bought kind, and I’ve heard that Toms of Maine is good too.  I’m slowly switching our family over to all natural toiletry items.
• Jackson has started writing letters to a boy in Tacoma, WA - I am friends with his mom, and we thought it would be good practice to be penpals and actually write letters.  He mailed his first one off last Friday, and can’t wait to get one back.
• Neither Jackson nor Morgan is night-trained, and if they don’t have on a pull-up or diaper, will sleep in a wet bed all night since they sleep so heavy.  I know those things take time, but I think I will not be so keen on buying diapers/pull-ups for 4 kids come November.
• When our energy bills were going out the roof because our house is essentially a sieve, we decided to keep our temp at 78.  Yes, that’s very warm.  Especially when in the kitchen with the oven and/or the dryer on.  Or cleaning bathrooms.  Or doing just about anything except sitting.  But, hopefully it pays off with our next bill, we’ll see!
• When thinking about moving into a new house, choosing paint colors and decor totally stresses me out.  Like choosing the color of a new fridge, cause it’s not like I’m going to replace it later when I choose a different color scheme.  Or carpet color.  Paint I can change I suppose.  Either way, it’s completely overwhelming to me.
• I order everything possible online so I don’t have to go to a store.  Amazon is my best friend (or anywhere I can get free shipping, I refuse to pay for that in most cases!).  The UPS lady, on the other hand, is probably not my best friend considering the number of times she hikes up our driveway.

Ok, that’s all.  Random things, but maybe they are interesting??

Gavin took these shots last night at camp when there was a storm about 60 miles to the south.  The cool thing about being at camp is that when you stand in the main area, it’s on a hill so you can see far off into the distance.  There have been amazing storms all around camp this summer, but virtually nothing has hit camp, almost no rain at all! The structure you see in the pictures is the new gym under construction - all the steel beams are up. It will be ready this fall.

We unknowingly conducted an interesting experiment today.  We have had issues in our house with ants on a wall above the counter in the kitchen - they come in from that outside wall.  I noticed a bunch again today, so wanted to put out some bait for them.  Our ant bait was gone, so I decided to make a homemade solution out of honey and borax.  I did just that, but it looked pretty solid, and Gavin wasn’t convinced the ants would go for it (our normal ant bait stuff is liquid).  So he made a solution of the fake maple syrup stuff and borax, heating it so that the borax dissolved.

Fascinating what happened.  He put the fake maple stuff next to the real stuff (raw honey), and within just a few minutes, every ant in a mile radius of our house was feasting away on the honey, and not a single one wanted to touch the syrup.

Amazing that ants know what is real and good for us (aside from the borax which will mean they will meet their fateful end very soon), and humans have such a hard time figuring it out, and we keep filling ourselves with the stuff that’s full of junk and chemicals.

If you haven’t just eaten, here’s the scene.  Honey up on the ledge, fake syrup down below (I promise it wasn’t just location - they were *everywhere before congregating on the ledge).  See the black?  Those would be the ants.

I’ve been wanting to write a post for a while now on my developing thoughts about eating good wholesome foods versus eating frugally.  For a long time now I have been striving to do this to some extent - I cook good meals for my family mostly from scratch, and we seldom eat out of a box or bag (frozen pizza on occasion and a couple frozen bagged items we like from Costco/Trader Joes).  But lately I’ve been reading a couple books, following a blog I enjoy a little more closely, and I went to a healthy eating class at Bread Beckers (where I get all my grains from to mill my wheat) for the past few weeks.  All this has gotten me thinking and made me realize there is so much more that I want to be doing.

Currently I regularly purchase organic apples and organic milk.  I have added in a few other things recently which are only slightly more expensive than non-organic, like carrots, potatoes, and celery.  But that’s all I have done on a regular basis up to this point.  (I occasionally would buy the Stonyfield organic yogurt when it was on sale - I’m actually making my own organic yogurt now, but that’s a story for another post!)

So I have decided to make baby steps towards my ultimate goal.  I would love to buy all organic seasonal produce (and locally, if possible - especially in the summer), buy only organic meat, eggs, and dairy, and leave out most processed food (including processed white flour and sugar) from our diets.  This is a goal, a long-term goal.  I know I can’t do all that on the budget I have and the time that I have.  But I can take baby steps in the right direction.

So, my baby step #1 is to switch over to buying organic meat.  This is actually a huge step for me, as I’m used to buying whatever is on manager’s special at Kroger, or chicken when it bottoms out at 1.99/lb.  So I don’t even buy regular meat at anywhere near full price, yet I really want to buy organic chicken (5.99/lb on sale), and grass-fed beef (4.99/lb) for our family to eat.  And I want to do this on our current budget.  I know this will mean a couple more meatless meals than normal in a month, and I will need to find ways to stretch the meat that we do have a bit further.  This is a lofty goal, but one I really want to try out.  After reading a lot on it, I really feel that consuming the right meat is the next best step for us to do.  I know I will occasionally purchase non-organic meat, but I want to start switching over as much as possible.

How will I do this?  I think that just by sticking primarily to the perimeter of the grocery store will help me out.  I also know that I purchase some things each week that are unneccessary.  So the combination of sticking to foods in their raw state (to be cooked and made at home by me) and cutting back on a couple unnessary items, I think I can do it.

I know that as I make each step my costs will increase, so at some point I will most likely need to increase our grocery budget.  However, I am coming to realize that this is something that is becoming really important to me, and where we spend our money reflects what is important to us.  I also know that eating good food pays off in the long run medically, so maybe it’s frugal in the long run?

Anyway, this is just my new journey I’m on, so thought I would share it since I regularly post about my frugal shopping.  I will probably be using less coupons, and will be making regular trips to the Dekalb County Farmers Market (which I posted about in the last post) where I can get good produce at a reasonable price.

All for now, we’ll see how this goes!

Jackson has been very into crossword puzzles lately, and I got sent a link to this site where you can create your own crossword puzzles - it works great! I just ask Jackson what kind of puzzle I should make (like the names of his soccer team, weather words, states, etc…), put them into this program, and it makes me a crossword puzzle for him to do!

This is a trailer of the documentary that is coming this fall about 4 Iraqi solders who attempt to compete in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing (my sister Melissa being one of them):

http://warriorchampions.com/

For those of you who enjoy keeping up with my sister Melissa, here’s the latest she is doing: CBS Chicago Triathlon

(and here is a link to her blog with all the other crazy things she does)

This is the view right now out our living room window:

For some crazy reason yellow and brown leaves keep falling and falling onto our neighbors yard across the street (and yes, that is a nice big branch that fell in our yard last night).  When we came home from church yesterday Jackson took one look across the street and said ‘is it fall?’  And looking outside, especially when it is clouded over and slightly windy like it has been the last couple days, it totally looks like it could be a nice crisp day in early fall before the grass has turned brown.

BUT… one step out the door to enjoy that nice fall day and I am reminded with the big smack of heat and humidity that is Atlanta in August that fall is still a very very very long way away.  *sigh.  At least for now I can sit on my couch and look outside and pretend.

After almost a month, our website is finally back up with a new domain name.  Rather than go through the hassle of renewing the site each year through our friends in Slovakia, figuring out how to pay them (and with it being more expensive than here in the US), we decided it was time to switch our website address.  This all coincided with the end of camp and lots of things going on, and then a few issues getting wordpress to know we switched our site.  Anyway, we are finally back up - yeah!

Now I just need to remember all the posts I have wanted to do for the last month and try to play catch up.  Check back for new posts, as I have a few I want to do!

For those of you that keep up with this blog I have to let you know about my friend Sara - she is SO talented at sewing and creating super cute things.  She is doing a great give-away on her website right now, and she also has recently opened up an etsy shop with a whole bunch of adorable re-usable (and reversible) shopping bags, and coffee cozies. She is has teamed up with the Charleston Breast Center, and some of the proceeds from certain products will be donated to them.

Sara has been a great friend of mine since our days together at Furman.  She was a computer science major, like me (bet some of you didn’t know I’m a computer nerd ), and we had some fun times together.  She was a bridesmaid in our wedding, and lives in Charleston now.  Anyway, hope you at least check out the great things she makes - I only with I had the talent (and time) to sew like she does!