I was frugal today..

I had to run some errands today and pick up some neccesities at Wal-Mart so I had to come up with something quick and cheap for lunch and usually the kids throw a fit for McDonald's because they have Barbie stuff in the happy meals right now...lol but, today, I actually just told them that we were going to Sonic to get a blue coconut slush (they love those) and a cheeseburger and they were actually fine with it!! Yay for well behaved kids!! :) (I was really expecting a fit!)

Anyway, I ordered off of the dollar menu and it was 2:02 when I ordered so our $1 drinks were .50 cents!!!! YAY!!! I ordered 3 Jr. cheeseburgers , 1 small order of tator tots, 2 small blue coconut slushes and a medium sweet tea for me and my total came to....... $6.00!!!!!!

That's right, folks, $6, to feed me and ALL 3 children!!!! I think that was pretty reasonable for a fast food lunch and the cheeseburgers were really good!!! :)

How have you saved money lately???? Inquiring minds want to know!! Please share!!

~Julie~

Oh, I love a rainy day...

Not so much a rainy night because then the girls don't sleep because they are afraid of storms...lol Anyway, today was a good day, considering Claire has been running about a 103-105 temp off and on and vomiting. We took her to the emergency room and stayed there for almost 4 hrs. yesterday and they fixed her up with antibiotics so she should be better soon!! So, we have not been sleeping much at all the past few nights. However, last night, Claire slept almost 11 hrs and just got up twice to vomit. So, Hallelujah!!, we got SOME sleep!!

After all of that vomit talk, if you are still reading, bless your heart. :) Today was just a rainy lazy day. We stayed in and watched movies and played games and I did some laundry and mopping and some baking. I baked 3 dozen cookies (for snacks and for others), 4 loaves of bread (2 white, 2 whole wheat), and we made some Autumn Chowder for lunch and had leftovers and fresh bread for supper. What a yummy treat!

In a few minutes, I am going to head out to the chicken pen and gather our eggs and feed and water (if Charlie hasn't done it already) and then later this evening we are going to watch a movie while the kids sleep and then turn in early ourselves. Hopefully, we will get a good full night's rest.

I am sorry that I have been terribly lax in commenting on your blogs. It seems that our life just gets busier and busier and sometimes I feel as if I can't catch my breath! I can't promise anything, especially as I feel that God is prodding me, more and more, to slow down, to just grab what life I can while I can. I watch my babies grow more every. single. second. and I am aware of time/life rushing by. I feel it literally sliding out of my fingers as I try desperately to hold on....

So, I must slow down and I must reevaluate & prioritize. I am not through with blogging but I may be around sparingly for a time. Please forgive me if I am.

Have a blessed weekend!

~Julie~

Valentine's Day & Claire's Birthday Party pics.......

Me fishing with my girls; ignore how I look, I do not dress up to fish! :)
Lily at the pond
Rose, Sarah & Ashlin (Amanda & Micah in background)
Michael, Granny & Jess
Jesse taking a picture of Aunt Julie taking a picture of Jess(haha!)
Our beautiful niece, Allison! Ann was too busy with the cousins.
Drew-bear up close!! How big is he?!!!! :(
Girls fishing with Daddy :)
Me; you can't really see my hair that great; Charlie's making me laugh
Claire's new outfit from Aunt Cheryl & family; she LOVES the glasses!
Daddy & Drew (ignore my dirty windows;lotion from the girls)
Claire reeling it in (not really but she thought so!)
Claire's cake & Valentine's cupcakes (we just combined) :)


*WHEW!!! What a crazy weekend!! More on Claire's 4th Birthday sometime later (hopefully today) I have done 8 loads of laundry and my house is a total wreck. I have been cleaning like a mad woman all day long and still have LOTS to do!!

Lily has a dr.'s appt. tomorrow to test her blood sugar levels; could ya'll please pray for our baby girl? Thanks so much.

Love to all,
Julie

another wild post....

Didn't get to go to church services today. Lily was sick. She's better now. I hate it when my kids are sick. I wish I could take their place every time. Poor babies. :(

Got my running shoes yesterday. Nikes. Silver & kind of a mauve purple. I will have to take a picture. I know a lot of people don't like Nikes for running but I do. These fit the best out of all the options I looked at. Also, I wore Nikes for 7 years playing basketball and they never really hurt my feet. Maybe I won't like them so much after I put some miles on them but for now, they are great!! :) Also, a GREAT price!! Charlie & I both got shoes for what I would have paid regular price for mine!! I LOVE a great deal!

Still haven't found the perfect computer. Still looking. I am such a tightwad. I also have to buy a new printer so I am just cringing at the prices. Laugh if you want. I am serious. This is why my computer is ancient and about to kick the bucket on me. I just hate to buy anything expensive. See above on running shoes. Haha. :)

So, it's a lazy Sunday. I am going to head out in a little bit and get Valentine's for the kids Valentine's party next week and stuff to make them a box.(SO excited about this!!!) I also need to get their Valentine's presents from Mama & Daddy and Charlie's gift. Also, I have to get final things for Claire's birthday party (her birthday is the 15th.) So, I have A LOT to do today!!

Going to do some baking and cleaning. Already did 6 loads of laundry and 2 loads of dishes. Cleaned our bathroom and dusted from the wood stove soot. Argh..... well, hey, it's heat and it's free!!! (we cut our own firewood off of our property)

So, now I am off to go running while the kids nap... I don't know how much I will be blogging this week. Kinda busy!! Lots to do and plan!! Family: I am mailing birthday invitations so you should get them sometime early this week. Sorry it's so late! But, that's how we roll around here. :)

Have a great week, everyone and remember, to keep up the Husband Encouragement Challenge!!! Also, the 31 Days of Praying for your husband are great, as well!! Do these along with the Love Dare and you will be knocking Satan out right and left!! :)

(If you need information on any of the challenges or the love dare just email me at mama2clairelilydrew (at) gmail (dot) com. using the symbols, of course, not the words! I will be SO glad to help you in any way!!)

Love,
Julie

*LOVE, LOVE this on the bottom of my shoes:

"I run like a girl; try to keep up" ;)

my daughter is a southern belle...

Claire, sitting at the breakfast table with her nightgown on, said, "I'll have sweet tea for breakfast, please". (we fix it with splenda & theirs is decaf). After I gave it to her, she said, "Thank you, hon". :) and after she got through with breakfast she said, "I have to go put on my dress now, mercy me, it's getting late". :)

I HAD to share that! SO cute!! Raising her right, I guess?! :)

tomorrow, I will be....

Baking these with my daughters. And these. Oh, so yummy! :) Playing dolls, playing house (me really ironing clothes while Claire & Lily iron on their little ironing boards with irons that MeMe & Papaw bought them for Christmas), playing in the "castle" with Claire & Lily that Aunt Cheryl & Uncle Greg gave them, watching "Gideon-A lesson in trusting God" Claire's current fave movie, a present from Aunt Crystal& Uncle Paul and playing dress up (present from Aunt Tammy/Uncle Jeremy), playing my keyboard while Claire & Lily rock out on their keyboard (from Aunt Lynn/Uncle Billy), reading James and some in my chronological plan (still trying to follow it as much as I can; it's just been hard), doing the "love dare", making something light for supper (due to the sickness), getting lots of cuddles from Drew & listening to his precious little baby laugh! Listening to my sweet little girls carry on adorable conversations with each other and seeing their sweet relationship develop right before my very eyes. :),washing/drying/folding/putting away laundry, calling the dr.'s office,getting paperwork done for taxes,cleaning the bathroom,breaking up little arguments, kissing owies, (hopefully NOT cleaning up puke & poop)doing school with the girls, organizing mine & Charlie's bedroom, scrubbing floors, and whatever else comes up?!!!!

This is only the tip of the list of things I have to get done this week!!! Is it any wonder that we as stay home Mom's (and working mom's too) just never get ahead?! That we feel "overwhelmed" if we stop and think about all we have to do?! The best solution, I have found, is not to THINK, it is to just DO IT and GET IT DONE!!!! :)

I may have a lot to do tomorrow but I am SO looking forward to it!! I am really looking forward to the play time with my babies & a clean house after I get it all done this week! Nothing like those two feelings, well, that & a happy husband!!! :) So, please pray for me tomorrow so that I may be focused on my tasks! We all know how much the enemy loves to distract us!!!


Love you all & have a great day!! (I won't be on the computer tomorrow; taking a break!)

Julie

Hello!.....

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! :) Thank you so much for the sweet cards and emails! Your Christmas/New Year cards should be arriving soon in your mailbox, if they haven't already. I am really sorry that I was so late getting them sent out. I tried.

We have had a wonderful Christmas! First of all, Charlie got a week off from work, unexpectedly. It wasn't great because it was a week without pay or unemployment (long story) but it was great because we got to spend a lot of time and have a fantastic Christmas week instead of a rushed week. Thank you, Lord, for that. See, there is good in everything, even financial difficulty. :)

So, our Christmas spending was cut back even more, but that's okay, because we just focused more on important things and the true meaning of the Christmas season. Charlie bought us the book, "The Love Dare", as one of our Christmas presents. We have just started doing this and already Satan has attacked us in almost every area of our marriage. It has been rough but it's funny, too, because we just fight back that much harder and WE are winning! If you haven't started this book, I cannot recommend anything any more than I can recommend this book! It's great!

The girls have had a fun filled time with their Daddy and with cousins and visiting family. It's been a wild week and we are looking forward to settling down this week and just getting back into our groove. :)

Charlie's dad is doing pretty good, considering. He has a really great attitude about everything. He's good like that. :) They did not find any cancer in his bones and it is a really early stage so, those are all great things. Hopefully, they can take care of it with radiation. Please continue to pray. We sure do appreciate all of your prayers. :)

We are looking at a rough year again. HOPEfully, things will improve finanacially and otherwise. We are praying and prayerfully considering some options available to us. Please pray for Charlie as he makes a lot of decisions for the future of our family. He really is trying so hard to seek God's will and direction in his life. I am SO proud of him and in all of almost 11 years (next week) of marriage, I have never seen him walk as closely to the Lord as I see him walking now. It gives me goosebumps just talking about it! :)

*Well, I have to go lay clothes out for church tomorrow and read my love dare for tomorrow and get some sleep. I will try to post pictures of our crazy kids and their wild antics at Christmas if I can get the computer to cooperate! (Because of the week off of work, I will have to wait a little while longer on our computer, that's okay, the Lord is sure teaching me how to wait patiently!) :)

Happy New Year!

Julie

Blessings....

Ah....the blessings of family are the greatest..... some highlights from our weekend thus far.......

* Claire did NOT sit on Santa (aka, Uncle George's) lap, however Lily did & talked up a storm to him! Goes to show what Mommy knows, huh? :) Drew also did excellent! We did, however, get a good picture of Claire with Sarah & Santa Claus a little later. :)

* 4 HUGE sacks of candy, apples & oranges to take home from the sweet family of the American Legion my family has been a part of for 3 going on 4 generations.

* Wonderful parents (and Carissa) who offer to babysit ALL 3 children so we can shop all day undisturbed! WOW! What great grandparents & great cousins our children have! :)

*Lunch with Jeremy & Tammy (Charlie's brother and his wife) after we met up in the city. What fun! We never get to do anything together. That was such a great idea, ya'll!!! :)

*WONDERFUL husband & 3 VERY sleepy worn out babies!!!

Got to go and get the middle child back to sleep! Have a great rest of the weekend!! :)

*Sunday-

*church even though it was FREEZING cold!!! Seriously, people, it was 70 here yesterday. This morning we woke up to 21 and it felt like 11 degrees outside. That is INSANE. and hey, I found my very nice gloves that I lost last year, in my dresser drawer! That's crazy.

*I got up at 6 am and made chili and left it cooking on my wodstove all morning while we were at church! Came home to Frito Chili Pie(I have had 3 bowls) shh..... oh, it was good! :) And, I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder cooking on my woodstove!

*When the kids wake up, we are going to bake more cookies, make more spice ornaments, and tonight open Christmas pj's (that I got at Old Navy for $5 each! Can you belive that?) and after baths, take our traditional picture under the tree. Hopefully, Claire will get a barbie nightgown from MeMe because that is all she has asked for and I can not find one!! Silly Mama, I waited until the last minute. But, all is not lost, I still have a few days. ;)

*We have been watching Barbie's "A Christmas Carol" and "The Nutcracker (which is where I first heard the name Clara (hence, Claire)). I love both of these movies just as much as the girls and I am not afraid to say so. It's so much fun watching my little girls and remembering back to my childhood and dreaming along with them.... I LOVE being a Mama! SO Much!

Well, I have to go and feed Drew. He made the paper today. He was in the baby's first Christmas. I haven't seen the kids Santa Claus letters yet. Hopefully soon!

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Julie

sweet tea....

*I've has some requests to share how my family makes sweet tea so I thought I would use today to do it. I grew up with this and even my unsweet tea is sweet (I use Splenda). I don't even know how to drink tea without sugar or Splenda. I hate tea with any other kind of sweetener or just plain tea with nothing. HATE it!! YUCK!!! (sorry if you do like unsweet tea) :)

Unsweet tea, in my family, is a sacrilage. lol. :) You drink sweet tea with every meal and as a refreshing beverage out in the hay field or after working in the heat fixing fence or moving or vaccinating cattle. It's ALWAYS a welcome beverage and it's always served ICED. NEVER HOT, although I do like sweetened hot herbal tea, as well. :) shhhh............................

Here it is!

2 Cain's (caffienated is best) tea bags (can also use Lipton but prefer Cain's)
sugar or Splenda

Place tea bags in saucepan. Fill with cold water. Heat until just starts to boil. Place 1/4 of tea pitcher with sugar or splenda. With spoon; hold tea bags back against saucepan and pour tea liquid into pitcher. Fill saucepan with cold water and continue until all tea liquid is squeezed out of bags. Fill pitcher with cold water. Serve with plenty of ice. (I don't add ice to my tea pitcher unless I am taking it somewhere because I find that it waters down the tea).

There you go, simple, good ol' Southern Sweet tea! I do know people that boil their tea bags with sugar to make a syrup and continue with the process but I can't drink it that way. It tastes like syrup and not tea, to me!

Hope you enjoy!! :)

A sabbatical...

I am going to be taking a winter sabbath from blogging. I will hopefully be back sometime in the next few weeks. :) I am feeling some not so little "nudges" from God that I need to put blogging way farther down on my list this Christmas season. It's just consuming way too much of my time , time that I could be devoting to other areas of my life. I guess that "simplifying" would be the word. I just feel this deep need to be more "present" in the lives of these precious souls around me and I want nothing to distract me from that.Most of all, I feel like I have some problems and decisions that need an enormous amount of time in prayer and that doesn't leave much time for blogging. So, until I can become better at putting everything in my life into it's proper place, I must take a break.

I would appreciate your continued prayers throughout this winter as we are facing a lot of financial strain and just some very hard decisions as a family. I will not be able to post on the 1 Corinthians study because of my break. Please forgive me for such late notice for those who were planning to join me. I am grateful for your love and friendship. We will pick back up on that after I have worked through everything. :)

Much Love to everyone & I pray that you all have a Blessed Christmas & New Year,

Julie

*I will probably be back periodically to post pictures and I will be emailing, just not as much.

I'm under attack...

*edited to say: I know that people love me, that friends and family love me. Deep down I know that. This is just the battle that I fight every day with myself. Not anything that anyone has or hasn't done!

Charlie and I went to see Fireproof on Sunday night. It was, as I already said, in a word, AWESOME!!! It has been life changing for us! I am seeing things in my husband that I have prayed for and now they are coming true! Last night was a very huge moment for us. Charlie took me down on the floor with him on our knees and he prayed over us. :) I cannot stop crying today. Just tears of absolute joy everytime I think of my precious husband and how he is trying so hard to be the husband/father he is called to be, how his heart is so tender towards me now and most important, He is walking with Christ every step of the way! :)

We are going through some major things right now and I am not afraid. Charlie is standing up and taking control and I am SO proud of my husband! However, the problem is with me.

Satan is atttacking me; big time. I have a major self pity thing going on. I am not able to focus so well when I am in prayer. I just feel like I need to sleep and have no urge to take care of my family or my home. Sounds bad, huh? But, I have to admit it. I must get this out so that Satan has NO power over my mind. I have learned exactly what to do to make him go away! ;)

I am just in a major funk. I feel like no one cares about me and I have been trying to reach out to others but feel rejected. I hate that feeling and it makes me start questioning myself. It makes me feel horrible because I feel not worthy of friendship or of anything good in my life. I hate this about me, that I let my mind control me so many times.

My parenting has definitely suffered. I am very easily angered and struggling to stay calm and let the little things just go. Lily is a little screamer when she doesn't get her way and listening to this ALL. DAY. LONG. is driving me insane! Claire is going through a thing where she hates to wear pants (of any kind) , her seat belt, etc. and throws a screaming fit when she has too. Which, you know, is any time we go anywhere at all. Drew is doing pretty good but I can't give him the attention he needs because I have spent most of my day today defusing temper tantrums and wondering if I am losing my mind?!

And, I have surgery scheduled for Tuesday morning. I am always worried when I have surgery. And this is a very hard and sad day for me. Without going into our reasons or our decision, I will not be able to have more children. We know that this is the right decison but we are very sad. My life is my husband and my children. That's all I know and I love every second of it. I really believe that my conflicting feelings are the source of a lot of this mess I am going through this week. Please pray for us.

Anyway, I just felt like I had to get this said. I know that I have not been walking around with my "full armour of God" as my protection against Satan's attacks. I must stay in the word, that is why I am starting the memory verse. I must focus on what my family thinks of me and their needs from me as a wife and mother. I HAVE to get to that point where I no longer worry about what people (even family) think of me. I have to stop letting other people's opinions of me control me. I KNOW WHO I AM. I KNOW I AM WORTHY. I KNOW I AM CALLED TO BE CHARLIE'S WIFE AND CLAIRE, LILY & DREW'S MAMA. THE LORD IS MY HEAVENLY FATHER AND HE LOVES ME.

and that's all I need to know.

Julie

Fight for your marriage!

*updated: read my husband's movie review here!

Charlie & I went to this movie last night. Words cannot explain how deeply this movie touched both of us. I can say without any embarassment, that many things in this movie have been us. We both left the theatre with tears running down our face. Everyone in our church went and we are going to be doing the Love Dare. I just cannot say enough what a blessing this movie is to us. Please, please go see this movie. Take your kids. Show them what true love is and what marriage is supposed to be. Show them a movie that treats marriage as sacred and not just a piece of paper. "a covenant, not a contract".

I am going to start this challenge soon. Hopefully I will get the book this week. Join me, please. Treat your marriage as you should, make it your highest priority.

Love,

Julie

*thanks to our church members who took turns babysitting the little ones! It was great to see this wonderful movie as a couple. What a sweet family of believers we belong to! :)

pray for us, please,,

I am asking prayers for my husband and our family tomorrow. Charlie has a dr.'s appointment and some tests tomorrow and we are not sure at all what they will find. We believe that it is a hernia that will have to be fixed with surgery but we are not 100% sure that is all that it is. He is having some pretty severe pain with it so, hopefully, tomorrow we will know more and none of it will be bad news. Please pray.

My appointment has been rescheduled for the 12th and my surgery for the 18th. Please keep me in your prayers, as well.

Thank you all.

Love,
Julie