Thankful for a wonderful year!

As we celebrated Thanksgiving this year I was overwhelmed by the blessings from God this year. The first and biggest blessing came in January with the arrival of our sweet baby girl, Sadie! It has been amazing to watch her grow and change everyday! Daustin and I feel so blessed that God choose us to be her parents and has trusted us to raise her in His will. We look forward to the journey ahead! We have also been so blessed at the opportunity we have had to serve our local body in the college ministry this year. Daustin took the wheel from his good friend Blake and has enjoyed serving and ministering to the college age singles at our church. We are blessed by the students as well as the other couples that serve along with us! Another amazing blessing this year came when I was able to stop teaching and become a full time stay at home mom. This can be difficult at times but the Lord continues to teach us to trust Him that He will take care of our family, and the blessing of being able to raise my daughter full time is worth more then any paycheck!These are just a few of the many blessing of the year. We praise God for His blessings and know none of it would be possible without Him! Thank you Lord! We had the opportunity the travel to see Daustin's family in Ohio Thanksgiving week. Here are a few pictures from our trip and a picture of Sadie's first Thanksgiving meal!

Sadie is 9 Months Old!

My little baby is not so little anymore! Sadie turns 9 months old today and the last few months have brought many changes in her life! Today she weighed in at 20 lbs 13 oz, which puts her between 75% and 90% in weight, and was 28 inches long putting her right about 75% in height. She is a girl on the move now a days! She is crawling very well now on her hands and knees, and if she wants something, she can move FAST! Which usually means it is something she is not supposed to have :) She is starting to follow us when we leave the room and wants to be wherever we are! She is also pulling up on furniture and other objects and can even walk along furniture! It won't e long before she takes those first steps...We have had to lower her mattress because when she wakes up from sleeping she will stand up in her bed calling MaMaMaMa DaDaDaDa! Over and over until we get her up. She is talking up a storm and can really "express" herself :) With the addition of her two top teeth that recently made an appearance, adding onto the three bottom teeth she already had, she is moving on to more "real" food like apple and pear and banana pieces, and some veggies and meat pieces. She sleeps well though the night and is such an all around happy baby! It seems like every day she learns something new! i can't wait to see what she does next. I love my baby girl!

Fall Fun

The weather here was absolutely gorgeous last week so Daustin and I thought we would take Sadie out to partake in some fun fall traditions! On Thursday we visited a local park as a family. Sadie LOVED to swing in the baby swing at the park! She also enjoyed some slide time with dad. On Friday we visited the Louisville Zoo for the World's Largest Halloween Party with our wonderful friends the Ring family. We are so thankful to have such wonderful friends! The weather was perfect and we all had a blast! Sadie loved to look at the people in costume and enjoyed her first Air Head candy :) I think her favorite part was the ride on the carousel! We rounded off the week by visiting Huber's Family Farm in Starlight Indiana. We visited the pumpkin patch and Sadie "picked" her first pumpkin, had her first tractor ride, looked at the animals, and even had some Oreo ice cream! It was a great weekend!

Pictures In the Park

Louisville Zoo Pictures

Hubers Farm

 

Fall Wardrobe

Dear Nana and Poppi,

Thanks for the fabulous new clothes for the fall and winter! I am going to look so cute in all of them :) I love you!

Love,
Saide

Sadie is on the move!

After several weeks of trying Sadie can finally "crawl." it is not your traditional crawl. It is more of an army style crawl that involves rocking from side to side but she can definitely get to where she wants! Here are a couple videos we have of her "crawling" :)

CrossGendered

Daustin is the College Minister at our church NAOBC and he has recently begun a new series entitled CrossGendered where he and the other teacher are "reassessing gender amid cultural chaos." The college group meets Sundays at 10:30 for a time of worship and teaching. Here is a promo video I put together for the new series.

Sadie is 7 Months!

Wow time is flying by! I cannot believe my little baby is already 7 months old. She is definitely growing up WAY to fast! She weighs about 19 1/2 pounds now and is growing every day. She is sitting up well and can go from sitting to her tummy well. She is working hard on sitting back up. She is also working hard on crawling. She can stretch and pull herself forward but hasn't mastered coordinating the movements of her feet and arms. So for now when she wants something she just rolls with purpose from place to place. She is also working on self-feeding and eating more solid foods. While nothing has happened new in the teeth department I am sure that her top teeth will soon make an appearance judging by her chewing and drooling. She is a social butterfly and loves having play dates with her friends and playing outside! I look forward to seeing what this next month holds!

Couponing

Couponing and meal planning is something I used to do when we first got married but with the business of work and school I let it fall to the wayside. However, now that I am not working and we added another person to our household it has become even more important to try to be good stewards of our money. So in order to help reduce our grocery spending throughout the year I have taken up couponing again. Twice a month I plan our meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for about 2 1/2 weeks worth then I use the meal plans to create our grocery list for food. I ten cut coupons and create a plan based off local sales papers and coupons on where to purchase our food needs for the meal plan. Using a meal plan has greatly cut down on our grocery spending and I find when I have things planed for meals we are less likely to go out.

With the remainder of our grocery budget, I look though the sales papers and coupons to create a plan to purchase our health and beauty items as well as our household cleaning items and paper products. If there is something we are out of I will buy that but beyond that I only purchase items that are on sale and I have coupon for. This allows us to “stock pile" on items like toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent to name just a few so that we do not run out and I am able to purchase items at their lowest out of pockets cost. I know it seems time consuming but with a little patience to look though the ads, cut coupons, and meal plan along with help from great FREE websites like Money Saving Mom and Southern Savers I have had great success reducing our grocery spending.

Using this method, I have been able to save tremendous amounts of money on products we use a lot! I have a fabulous example from this week’s endeavor. At CVS this week I purchased the following items:

Tide Detergent, Dishwashing Tabs, Diapers, Face Wash, and aMulti Pack of Water(not pictured)

The total out of pockets cost before sales, coupons, and extra care bucks would have been $39.99.After the sale, my coupons, and using extra care bucks I only spent $4.88 out of pocket. That’s a savings of $35.09! Plus, I earned another extra care buck to spend on my next purchase!

I hope this has inspired you to consider couponing if you haven't already. I certainly believe it is worth the effort!

Sadie is 6 Months

Last week Sadie turned 6 monhs old! She has grown and changed VERY much in the last month! I took her in for her 6 month well visit and she weighed in at 18 lbs 3 oz which puts her in the 90% for weight (her doctor likes to refer to her as being very "healthy" :D ) She was 26 1/4 inches long which put her at about 80% for height. She has learned many new things in the past month! She can now sit up on her own for longer stretches of time (but we still keep a pillow behind her for when she does lose her balance!) She can roll very well and often she will roll from one side of the room to the other to get to a toy or Sophi. It will not be long until she is crawling! Speaking of Sophi, she absolutely loves her puppy and Sophi loves her. It is great to watch Sophi lick Sadie and hear the sweet laughs that come from my baby girl. Sadie enjoys playing in her jumpy play gym and watching Mickey Mouse Club House or Agent Oso. At 6 months Sadie has her two middle teeth on the bottom. She is enjoying  using her new teeth and eating skills that come along with them to try new foods including carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, apples, and bananas. Now she is also learning how to feed herself little puff cereal pieces for babies and drink water from a cup. Sadie has also become more social and loves to watch and play with other babies and kids. She absolutely loves when we get to my sweet friend Lydia's house! Lydia has 3 wonderful kids and her youngest is a baby girl named Emery who is only 4 months older then Sadie (and despite their age difference they are about the same size!). The two of them already love to play together and Sadie also enjoys watching the older 2 kids as well! I cannot wait to see all this next month holds for Sadie!

Emery and Sadie

Home Made Veggies

As I told you in my last post Sadie is know eating "solid" food. In order to be sure she isn't allergic to any foods I introduce her to 1 new food every 4-5 days.Sadie is moving her way through the baby veggies. I have been making her baby food and so far it has gone very well and is a lot easier then I expected, but at times it can be a bit more time consuming! It is worth it though because I feel so much better knowing exactly what is in her food! She has tried carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes from the "yellow family" of vegetables, and she has liked them all but I think squash is by far her favorite! Now we are moving onto the "green family." Last night I finished her first batch of peas, and today she seemed to really enjoy them. Maybe it had something to do with the fact I choose to cook sugar snap peas :) All that matters is that she liked them, and I think she is well on her way to eating a whole rainbow of foods (more then I can say for her daddy!) She is continuing to grow and everyday she seems different. We also had the arrival of her second tooth last week! It is located in the lower center right next to her first tooth. I am looking forward to seeing how mush she has grown at her 6 month well visit next week! I will update you after it... Before that here are some pictures from her first day of eating peas and a few more "random" pictures, enjoy!