money savers

In hopes to spend our grocery money wisely I've changed how I buy lunch meat and sliced cheese. I read this in a book called America's Cheapest Family. They say never to buy prepackaged lunch meat because it's so expensive for the amount that you get so I keep reading to find out what I should do. They go on to say to buy a boneless ham or turkey breast and take it to the deli counter and have them slice it, it ends up being a lot cheaper than regular lunch meat. And I have to agree, it cost me $6.98 for 5 lbs. of lunch meat that I had the deli slice for me versus $2.98 for about 8 oz. of prepackaged lunch meat. So I'm at Wal-Mart yesterday and I need some cheese so I did the same thing, I picked up a 32 oz. block of Colby Cheese for $7.00 and took it to the deli and had them slice it and now have lots of cheese versus 32 slices for $6.50 for the package I normally buy. I wish I would have thought of this about 11 years ago.

ants?

Last night after small group we were in Caley's room and it was later than normal so we were just going to pray and then the kids would go to bed. So David was praying and was praying for our familes and specifically our Aunts/Auntie's and then he continued on then said "Amen."

Blake looked up and said, "Daddy, why did you pray for the ants?"

January Favorite Things

In an effort to keep my house in better order for 2009 these are 4 of my favorite cleaning helps.

I got a new dustbuster because mine bit the dust. It works great! I had had my other one for 4 years and it just wasn't doing it's job so great anymore. With two kids I use it quite frequently.

Next on the list is my new Eureka "The Boss" floor cleaner. It's like vacuum but for hard surfaces.

Third on the list is Scrubbing Bubbles wipes. I like them because if you need to clean or touch up the bathroom but don't have time for a full cleaning you can use these and then toss them in the toilet and there's no dirty rags to worry about.

Last on my list is something I haven't gotten yet but my sisters and mom love it. It's the Bissell Steam Mop for cleaning hard surfaces without the need of a mop. I'm going to get one with my birthday money. I've very excited about this purchase coming up this month.

oh my aching back . . .

Well not really my back by the muscles in my stomach/side. Somehow I've really pulled or ripped or did something to the muscles on the right side. The pain was so bad the Saturday before Christmas I thought that I might need my appendix taken out. Anyway it turned out not to be my appendix but some muscles in my stomach that I've hurt. I even have a bruise about 4 inches long to prove it although I'm not showing anyone. So I survived Christmas and fun times with my side of the family and we are back home and back to the normal routine for the Hinkle Hut.

So a couple night ago we started a new bible story book and we read the first story about God creating the earth and then we wrote down what we are thankful for in our Thankfulness notebook. We each say it out loud before we write it down and I said, "that I was thankful to be home and that my side was feeling better." And Caley looks up at me and says, "Oh Boo Hoo, Mom." So I don't really know what to say back to her so I look at David and he's laying on the floor laughing at what had just been said. Caley just has a smile on her face and I'm sitting there speechless.

my 4 new favorite things

Just wanted to share a few things that have recently become my favorite.

* Snuggle liquid fabric softener Blue Sparkle. My good friend Vicky uses it and it makes your laundry smell so good.* Pillsbury Crescent Creations. It's like a crescent roll but it's all in one sheet so you no longer have to press the seams together. What a great idea, one that I wish I would have thought of.

* The Purpose for Christmas by Rick Warren. It's a great little book on the reason for Christmas, one I think everyone should read and it's great for a gift.

* Strawberry Jam that my friend Lauri makes. It's so yummy on fresh bread, biscuits, toast, etc. You get the picture, I'm sure the container she gave us last night will be gone by the end of the week.

being thankful

Every family has lots to be thankful for each day of the year. So we've decided to start doing bedtime a little different at our home. We were reading a bible story and then a short book and then praying before we put the kids to bed. But with 4 people on a twin bed that doesn't leave much room for paying attention to the story when the two little people just want to climb on top of daddy.

So we've moved our bible story time to 7:00 pm in the living room and it's worked so much better, the kids are paying attention and asking questions about the story and Jesus. Yeah! We've also started keeping a notebook of the things that we are thankful for each day. I bought a cute notebook from Target and each night after the bible story we talk about what we were thankful for that day. Caley gets to write down her own with a little help from mom and dad. She can do that now since she's a big girl in Kindergarten she tells us. Blake tells us what he wants us to write down and then he makes a few marks on the page because he's a big boy and can do it himself.

It's been really neat to listen to what the kids are thankful for each day and takes the focus off ourselves and we can focus a few minutes on Christ and show the kids that it's important to think of others and not ourselves. I'm looking forward to keeping track and then in a few years going back and reading them with the kids and watching them grow through being thankful.

pizza family night

This past Friday we did our first "official" family night, except that we did it at lunch because we had plans later that day. So we decided to make pizza for lunch and pizza cookies for dessert. First we made the cookies so that they would be cooked and cooled so we could decorate them after we ate our pizza. Caley and Blake were excited that they were going to have pizza cookies. I just bought the Pillsbury shortbread cookie sheets and we used a cookie cutter to cut them out.

We made 4 large pizza cookies and 4 small pizza cookies. They wanted to make more but we ran out of dough.

Next we played the "Pizza Game." For this we had 6 different colors of felt that were cut in the shapes we needed for pizza. We had crust, sauce, cheese, olives, green peppers and some meat. We assigned numbers 1-6 for each item for the pizza and then we took turns rolling the dice to try and get the 6 pieces that we need to make our pizza.

Blake ended up winning the game but we all had a lot of fun playing it. And we've played it through out the weekend.

Here are our pizza's once we finished the game. The picture is kind of hard to see so here's the list of the numbers that we assigned to each item. 1. crust 2. sauce 3. cheese 4. green pepper 5. olives 6. meat.I also wrote the items in the same color so that it would be easier for the kidsespecially since they can't read yet they could figure out what they needed by the color.

Next we moved on to making our pizza's. We let the kids make their own and they got to choose what they wanted on top. They both just chose sauce and cheese. Then I made a pizza for David and myself and we cooked them and then had lunch. Caley's pizza is on the left and Blake's is on the right. After we ate them we decorated out pizza cookies. It was really fun and no too were the same.






Caley's pizza cookie had some candy corn on it.

Blake's pizza cookie included a big blog of icing and lots of chocolate chips.




Needless to say this was a fun and creative way to spend time as a family. Keep posted for the next Hinkle Family Night.

(Like my friend Starr said in her blog about their families night. Just because all the pictures have smiles and everyone looks have and that we are having a great time. It wasn't without a few arguements and kids getting upset with each other.)