Make a free Hallmark Card for Mother's Day!

Came across this awesome deal today! It is for a FREE card from Hallmark. I went and created a card already and Hallmark will mail it for free too! Click on my Title post and it will take you to the Hallmark site.
Here is the link to Freebies 4 Mom site. This is where I came across this great offer. For detailed directions scroll down her page till you find the Free card offer.
http://freebies4mom.blogspot.com/
Thanks to Freebies 4 Mom for the awesome find.

This offer expires on May 4th.

It did not take me very long to do and the card is really cute. I put different pictures of the kids on the front! Love getting things for free! Let me know if you do one too.

Kids say the funniest things...

Tonight when we were at Brayden's soccer game we were sitting in the truck before his game and a car was coming down the road towards us with a kid hanging his head out the window. Obviously this kid did not have his seat belt on. Anyways, we were all kind of laughing and talking about how he should have a seat belt on and Brayden says "He must be half dog" very seriously. And that is exactly what it looked like, like a dog hanging his head out the window. We all laughed about it. Kids say the most truthful things and it can come out so funny. Now that I am typing this it does not sound as funny, lol. I guess you had to be there to see this kid. Brayden did tell me to get my camera out and take a picture at the time, kind of wishing I did take one to go along with this silly story!

Some great Garage Sale finds!

I am always happy to find things I am looking for at a yard sale for a much cheaper price. Over the weekend I was able to get a wagon for Emily. I had been wanting one, but did not want to buy one new. I spent $10 on it and it is in awesome shape and has storage under the seat, cup holders and a little door. Emily loves it! She loves being pulled in it and loves to try to pull it herself.


I also bought a tunnel toy, not sure the exact name of it. They were asking $10 for it, but it was towards the end of the sale so I offered less and got it for $6.00! It is in excellent condition and Emily loves it. The big kids will like playing in it with her I'm sure. She loves playing peek a boo in it with her Daddy.


I also purchased a Little Tykes Slide for outside, but it would not fit in the back of my Durango so a friend is bringing it to me later this week. I paid $10 for that too and I know she will get a lot of use out of it the next few years. So all together I paid $26.00 for all 3 things. I wasn't necessarily looking for the tunnel but I was looking for the wagon and a slide and I got all three for much less than just one of the items! What a deal!! What are some great garage sale finds you have found??

Look what I found in my flower bed today! Yikes!!

So as I started to walk off my front porch today to go get our mail something caught my eye in the flower bed next to the porch. There in the dirt is a SNAKE! Now I don't like snakes at all. I am still getting little chills from seeing it so close. My son James will be excited since he is way into snakes and even has a Corn Snake at his Dad's house. Now of course I will be very leery of going out my front door for a few days. It's not like I really think it will come chasing after me or anything. I think it's just the element of surprise of it all of a sudden being there. Please tell me I am not alone in feeling this way!! I believe it is a some type of Garter Snake. It is pretty big, probably the biggest garter snake I have seen around my house. This is my new pet snake!! NOT


It slithered under my big rock in the flower bed.

Possible Mother's Day ideas

I was just checking my email and came across this special from Limoges Jewelry. We ordered my mother's ring from them last year. Anyways, if you use the code "GOLD4MOM" at checkout you will recieve $15 off your order of $75 or more and recieve free shipping. I am very happy with their service and with my ring. Click on my post title if your interested in looking at what they sell. If you have problems let me know. Clicking on my post will take you to the ring I recieved for Mother's Day last year! I love it. I have all 4 kids names and birthstones on it.

Playing in the rain

Saturday night we had a cookout with a few friends and family. The weather was warm but waves of thunderstorms were hitting Michigan all day long. Emily was playing outside when it started to rain. We thought she would run back into the garage but she just stood outside in it and was fascinated with it. And no we did not let her play outside in the rain while it was storming!! It was just raining. Anyways she had a lot of fun and played out in the mud for a couple hours. The bath water was brown after I gave her a bath! She was exhausted and slept good.

Bird's Nest

I came across a Robin's nest today. These eggs are so bright blue and so beautiful. Of course I had to run in the house and grab my camera and snap a few pics. It's always fun to find all the signs of Spring! In the 1st picture I was playing with the settings on my camera. The 2nd picture is all natural.

An evening at the Park!

Last Friday night I took the kids to Playground of Dreams. We spent a couple hours playing. By the end of the night everyone was tired and dirty! We then went and got some yummy ice cream and headed home. It was a great night with warm temps and the sun shining. I am so looking forward to being outside everyday. Emily loved the slides and would climb all the way to the top of the play structure by herself and go down the slide, laughing and smiling all the way. She is not much of a fan of the swings though. Last fall she loved them and now she does not want anything to do with them. She gets upset and wants out. I remember Hannah being just like that at about the same age. Just a stage she is going through. James loved the swing though and I have some really great photos of him swinging in the dolphin swing at Papa and Grandma Hisler's house with the wind blowing his hair and the biggest smile on his face. Posted a few pics, could not get slideshow to upload them today. Gotta go, Emily is waking up from her nap.

Emily enjoying a Spring Evening!

One evening last week, Emily and I spend a couple hours outside. We have been outside most evenings that the weather is nice but that night I grabbed the camera and followed her around. She loves to explore and goes from one end of our yard to the other. She smelled the flowers I have blooming, played with rocks in the driveway, kicked a soccer ball and chased birds! It's so much fun at this age when everything and anything is fun and interesting.

Special picture

The other day my sister in law Serena gave me some pics from my Baby Shower for Emily. One of the pictures was of Kyle's Grandma McNamara holding Emily. Of course she is a natural at holding babies since she had 17 kids herself! It's the only time she saw Emily. She passed away a few months after she was born. It's a beautiful picture and I'm glad we have it for her album.

Great Crayola Giveaway

Just wanted to post a great contest for anyone who uses Crayola products and would like to win some free Crayola stuff! Click on the title of my post above and you can enter to win $80 worth of great Crayola products! They have some great new items out. I am excited to get some for Emily to start using.
Good Luck!

Relay for Life

I have decided to join the fight against cancer and join a Relay for Life team this year. My Dad was diagnosed a few months back with Prostate Cancer. His prognosis is good! I know that cancer touches many people lives. Just a couple weeks ago a family friend passed away after a long battle with Prostate Cancer. I am excited to participate in this race to fight cancer. I have joined a team that will be participating in the Charlotte, MI event on June 19th and 20th starting at 3pm and ending at 3pm on Saturday. I have included the link to my personal web page if your interested in making a donation or if you would like to join my team! You will have to copy and paste this link or go to my sites I visit and click on the Relay for Life link.

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/wendy.mcnamara

Our team is also selling bracelets for $3.00. They are very pretty and have all the colors of cancer on them. I will be getting one this next week and will take a picture and post it here. If you would like one just let me know. If you would like to buy a luminary in honor of someone who has cancer or has lost the battle to cancer they are $10 and you can decorate them yourselves.

I will keep everyone updated on this event.

Resale Shops are the best!

I absolutely love to shop, but I don't like to pay full price, especially for kids clothes. I have been doing a ton of my kids clothes shopping this past year at Children's resale shops. I know that some of you already do this too. I have been shopping at three shops on a very consistent weekly schedule and have come across some great finds. I shop at one in Charlotte, called "Waddles and Toddles Boutique". I really love "Angels & Rascals" in Holt and I shop at "Happily Ever After" in Hartland. Back in January I went thru all of Emily's old clothes and took them into Angels and Rascals. They have been giving me 50% of the price they sell the clothes for! If you keep your money that you make in the account and buy clothes from them they also give you 25% off your purchase!! I have made over $150 at least in the last couple months. It's fun and challenging to find what your looking for. So if you have not tried shopping at a resale shop or consignment shop you should give it a try. I love getting name brand clothes in like new condition for dollars less than in the retail stores. Sometimes you find items that still have tags from their original store on them too. I have posted some of my most recent finds below. Good luck!

Hannah's "new" swim suit. I beleive I paid around $4.50 for it!



6 new pairs of shorts for Emily!



3 cute sun dresses for Emily. I can't wait to put them on her and get pictures!


3 pairs of shorts for Brayden and James. All name brand shorts.


3 shirts for Hannah, the purple tank top is brand new with store tags on it!

Found a great website!

Just wanted to share with everyone a cool blog I came across yesterday. It is called "deal seeking mom". I have a link on my blog if your interested. It has a lot of great info and links to other great moving saving blogs. I was just on the coupon cravings site. Anyways, for all you moms out there that are on a budget and like to save money or get things free, check it out.

Easter

We had a very nice Easter. We started our day with yummy cinnamon rolls. We headed to church. After church we go the rest of our food around and headed to my Parent's house. Dinner was yummy. My brothers Jeff and Jim and Sister Julie and their families were there. After dinner the kids went on an Easter Egg Hunt. Every year we have been filling more and more plastic eggs. We all chip in on candy and coins. This year there were about 630 eggs!! We had 9 kids searching for them. The kids ran around the yard. The weather was beautiful and so nice to be outside. Emily got the hang of the egg hunt and carried her bucket around and said eggs! She found about 30. Her Daddy had fun helping her. James was the lucky one this year and found the $3 in an egg! After the egg hunt we headed to Carolyn and Dan's house. (Kyle's mom and step dads) We snacked on dessert and the kids did another small egg hunt and played outside. It was an awesome day and was nice to spend it with our family.

The Basement is finished!!

So we finished the basement over the weekend. The carpet was installed on Thursday. It looks awesome. The kids were so excited and ran down to see it and started rolling around on it! Kyle put the doors back on the rooms and Friday night him and Nick put up Hannah's drop ceiling. We bought the boys new bunk beds! They slept in their new rooms on Thursday night. Emily loves going up and down the stairs now that they are carpeted. It feels like a brand new house downstairs now. I can't wait till we can start working on the upstairs. It will be a lot of work but so worth it. I cleaned Hannah's old room and moved all of Emily's toys, etc. in. It looks really cute. She seems to like having her own space. Now I need to clean the boy's old room so we can paint it. We will then move our computer in there and I will have a scrapbooking area set up all the time!! I might actually get more pages in my albums done. I am more behind than I would like. I will post more pictures of the kids rooms when they are finished. Still getting organized.

Happy Easter!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter! Enjoy your day with family. The weather is looking nice for today and I am excited to watch the kids do their Easter Egg hunt after Dinner today! I was told that they will be "hunting for over 600 eggs!" Remember the real reason we are celebrating Easter today. He is Risen!

Update on our Basement project!

Well we are almost done! It has been a long project. The last few weeks have been very busy with lots of painting, doors and trim going up, more painting, lots of taping for painting and more painting!! Thursday our carpet is being installed! Here are some pics of how it looks today before the carpet goes down. We have to take the doors off before they come still. After the carpet is done, then just touch up the walls and trim that might be scratched and we have to put a drop ceiling in Hannah's room since she has lots of plumbing and heat ducts above her room. The pics have some dust spots in them since we just cleaned and swept the floors and the dust was flying. We still need to wipe the walls down in the family room, they got really dusty when Kyle was cutting trim and door casings. We will probably take a little break but then we will be tackling the upstairs. I will post more pics on Thursday when the carpet is done! The plan is to let the kids start moving their stuff down Thursday night. I am very excited to get Hannah back in her own room so Emily can have the girls' room all to her self. It is to small for both and Emily's toys are all out in the living room. I am so ready to have it all in her own room except for a few things of course. Enjoy the pics!


The stairs leading to our kitchen upstairs. Kyle had to fill the backs of the stairs in for the carpet to be installed.


The family room. We went with a dark green color called "Olive Smudge" I love it!


Another view of the family room. In the far back corner there is a little cubby area that we will build shelves and it will house all our board games, etc...


James and Brayden's room. They went with the color called "Hanging vine". They want a Jungle themed room.


Hannah's room color is called "classic lilac". It is beautiful! I can't wait to help her decorate it.

A busy week

Been a couple busy weeks. We have been finishing our big basement project and we are almost there. We just have to have carpet installed. Hopefully by the end of the week it will be done! I will take some pics this week to show everyone how it is looking!

Brayden wrestled in a "fun" tournament on March 28th. It was called Border Wars and was held in Mason. He took 3rd! He got a medal with Taz on it. He was very excited and his medal collection continues to grow.


A great picture of Brayden wrestling!


His Border Wars 3rd Place Medal.


Monday brought a field trip to the IMAX theater with Brayden's 2nd grade class. It was a 3D movie called "Under the Sea". It was pretty cool. Very real. I was glad I went. It was a fun morning.

Brayden's Teacher conferences went great. He is doing well and according to the teacher "a great kid and fun to have in class!".

Friday night we took Brayden to weigh in for States. After we took him to Red Lobster for dinner. We had promised him at the beginning of the season if he made it to States we would take him to whatever restaurant he wanted. He choose Red Lobster since he loves Shrimp and crab legs. He had never been either so he was very excited. Grandpa Dan and Grandma Carolyn met us for dinner. It was a nice evening and of course everyone was stuffed!


Emily loved the Lobster tank!


Brayden happy and full!

Saturday morning was MYWA States for Brayden. It was held at the Jenison Field House on the campus of MSU! It is where the college wrestlers wrestle! Brayden wrestled very hard. He lost his 1st match, won his 2nd and lost his 3rd. Losing his 3rd match sent us home, but he did an awesome job and had a great season of wrestling. We are very proud of him.

He won his 2nd Match!


Waiting to wrestle a match.

So now we are on Spring Break and this is what we wake up to this morning!!!! SNOW! I almost forgot it is April.




Looking forward to getting James and Hannah later this week for Spring Break!

James' Choir concert at school

Last Tuesday morning I went to James' school for his choir concert. It was his 4th grade class and the title was "Michigan Music". His class sang 6 songs. James had an extra special part in the song "Lumberjacks love Flapjacks". I have tried to post the video I took of him performing to this song but it won't load. I will keep trying. It is to cute. It was a nice morning.