Swimming

The girls did great yesterday at church. First we went to a Sunday school at another church that is doing it in Russian for a bunch of the kids who are being hosted. Then we went to our church. After church we went swimming. Yes the girls can and yes they love it!

Monday we went swimming at a friends. We picked up the girls orphanage directer and one of the chaperones and took them with us. We all had a blast!

I can not get over how these girls are just fitting right in with our family. God is so good.

Giggles, giggles, giggles

Daniella is loving having "sisters".

My house has a new sound, it's giggles. Giggles as they read phrases from the dictionary, giggles as they try to teach Jeshua Russian, giggles as they run through the house playing hide and seek. It is amazing to me how well they fit in! I am thrilled. Last night we took them to a birthday party, they picked right up on the games. There were lots of relay games and they would be the 3 or 4 to go and have it figured out by then. Olga will try anaything (so far) and really tries with the English, Katerina will try if coaxed, Kristina not so much. Two examples green beans and pizza. Olga tried it, was OK with it and ate two pieces, Kate (pronounced KatEa) would eat the crust but not the pizza part, Kristina wouldn't try it (but loved the cheetos). I made green beans one night, Olga ate 1, Kate put it to her mouth, Kristina wouldn't touch it. But they love cucumbers and 2 minute noodles so we are good. And they ate the mashed potatoes and steak that went with the green beans.

The Girls Are Here!

The girls arrived safely last night. I was interviewed by Fox5, and they included a little blurb in their report, you can see it here http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/Program_Gives_Orphans_6_Week_Stay_in_US_062409
They are smaller then we thought they would be, but way less reserved then we thought they would be. My house has been full of giggles all day and we are having a lot of fun. They are trying to teach us Russian and to learn English already. This is going to be a great summer.

Hey Ladies there are some great deals this week.

RiteAid has Colgate on sale $0.88 with in-ad coupon, use the $.75 from the 6/7 SS insert, pay $0.13 each after coupons, be sure to use both. Not free, but not bad if you're not stocked up on toothpaste yet.

There are 3 deals at Walgreens (I know) that would be worth shopping there, even if you don't have all the coupons. The first is to stock up on razors (and if you got 2 papers for $2.50 this will pay for them):

Buy 1 Schick Quattro Razor For Men--on sale Buy One, Get One Free (prices start at $9.49)
Buy 2 and use 2 $4/1 coupons from 6/14 SmartSource insert, $0.75 each after coupons

The 2nd deal is a freebie and possible money maker if you have the coupon:
Buy 1 St. Ives Bodywash at $2.99, Get $2.99 Register Rewards. It's free!
If you have coupons from 5/10 SmartSource use $1.50/1 coupon Free plus $1.50 in overage after coupon and Register Reward.

The 3rd deal is a bit more complicated:
Buy 8 Selected Unilever Products, Get $8 Register Rewards
Here's the deal idea (not mine, it's listed on at least 4 websites I looked at)
Buy 4 Ragu at $2 each
Buy 4 Skippy Peanut Butter at $2 each
Use two $1/2 printable coupons
Use two $1/2 coupons from 4/5 RedPlum insert
Spend $12 plus tax out of pocket, Get $8 RR back
You can use your RR from the St. Ives deal to help pay for this if you buy them in separate transactions.

My favorite CVS deals are:

Dry Idea ($4.49) or Right Guard Deodorant ($3.69) B1G1 Free
Use $2/1 Dry Idea Printable coupon (buy 2, use 2 coupons) or $1/1 Right Guard coupon from the 4/19 SS insertPay $0.24-$0.64 cents each after coupons

Select Kellogg’s Cereals $1.88 Use $1/1 from the 6/7 RP insert Pay $0.88 after coupons

There's some other good deals so check the sites to see what's out there, sorry I don't have time to post them all. Remember if you wont use them it's not a good deal!

We are getting 3!

We are very excited, we will be getting all three girls pictured below. Stay tuned for details.

An extension

When I called to see what the absolute deadline I had to let them know by, New Horizons said Monday morning! Woohoo, that gives us two extra days to get the money. I am confident we will be doing the two girls but my heart breaks for Olga, she has ben in the orphange a very long time. I am wondering if God will work a miricle and let us bring her too. My heart is really knit to her, maybe because I was leaning toward her and then she was the one David picked too, without me saying anything. Last night David was looking at the photos of all the kids and talked to our kids about who they wanted to host and why an he decided that the photo I posted would be the two if that's all and if we get a third it would be Olga. Pray with us that God would provide for us to do it OR that someone else would step up at the last minute and host her. I am good with only doing two, I just hate for her not to get hosted! Of course this close to the deadline it seems impossible, fortunately nothing is impossible for God!

Which one?

Well all the girls that we had originally picked got hosted! We are very excited about that. So we called and got more info on some of the other girls, and then when it looked like we might have get two we called and got some info on some of the sibling groups. Then I sat down with David, told about the girls and asked him to pray about it. We still don't know if we're getting one or two, or I suppose 3 or 4, but here are the girls we are leaning towards. What we're really praying is all the girls will get hosted except the ones God wants us to host so it will be clear!
Last night we were at 69% to host 2.

We Got One!

Sorry I have have been so bad about posting. I have been very busy posting on FB and Twitter and sending e-mails and WOOHOO God has given us enough to host one orphan and we are working on the seccond. We started asking people to consider giving up one McD's meal and giving $5 to help an orphan, and to let everyone they know about it. And it is working!

Multiplying!

Multiplying, that is what we are trying to do now. We have sent out e-mails and asked everyone to forward them. We are hoping for 500 people to give $5 towards our hosting an orphan for the summer. Actually we need 2000 people to give and we'll host 4! Our 11 year old son is the driving force behind this mission and the real prayer warrior for it too. See our link under the orphans picture to donate your $5!

Party, party, party!

Let's see if I can get this in the right order, I forget if the first photos go at the end or in the order I add them, so if it backwards, sorry.

First we had Ana's party on Tuesday. Here's the photos:

The next day we went to the King Tut exhibit.

Then back to my sisters hotel for some swimming and pizza.

Thursday my sisters family came to stay with us, the two who had been staying with us left and my parents arrived for the weekend.

Friday was Daniella's party, we had over 80 people! I think she had a great time.

Sunday was Easter and Rezin's birthday. He really enjoyed his icecream cake. Today is Daniella's actual birthday. Tomorrow we take a break from cake for at least a week. But life's a party so we will continue with that. God has risen, Jesus is alive, we have so much to celebrate!

Our big thing now is raising money to host orphans for the summer? Want to know more? please contact us or check out our webpage at: http://www.active.com/donate/2009summerorphans/MooreHosting

The Care and Feeding of Many Children

I've noticed if I feed the kids they stay happy and quiet.
I sure hope I am not overfeeding them!

Oops I forgot to add the photos

The Boys!

Can you find the white spot?


Name that cousin.

NOT TO BE OUT DONE BY THE LITTLE KIDS

Yesterday after church I brought Zeke, Eli, Ike and Mathew home with me and Ana went to Carolyn's. Daniella went to the Peter's to work on a skirt she's making. Of course the boys had a great time. I hosed them down afterwards and gave them a Johnson's Bath Buddy and told them to was off. Then they came in and I fed them and took them home.
The kids are doing great but really starting to miss their mom and dad. I think if we can make it through today it will be fine. Tomorrow is Ana's birthday and we'll be partying and the next day we have the field trip and getting ready to go home. And the last day will be packing up so today is the only nonbusy day, but since it is beautiful out I am going to try to get everyone to help me get cleaned up outside for the party. Well I better get back to party central.

Gardening

What happens when you garden with 5 kids under 10? The youngest isn't pictured as he had already striped down. Don't worry he's the only one. I don't know what they thought I meant by if they got muddy I was going to hose them off. But when I pulled out the hose and started spraying them down they seemed a bit surprised. Yes I did give them permission before they got really muddy, but lets face it they weren't clean out there helping me plant the tomatoe plants. After I hosed them down I put the 4 boys in one bath and the girl in another and had a few uninterrupted minutes, it was worth the laundry. And they all had a good, nice, hot soak with a Johnson's Bath Buddy to scrub down with. And I knew none of the boys would drowned, they were wedged into the tub too tight:)

OK obviously I am just learning. The cake should have come under the other picture.

The cake.

Welcome to party central!

OK I set this up to learn how to do the whole thing, haven't had time to really work on it. So no comments. But no one has this address anyway so it is a safe place to post and JIm and Jane can check up on their kids and the rest of the family can see how I am doing. First I am going to post Gabriel's birthday pictures.

First let me say this is so boring looking, I am working on it but with 6 kids I have little time.
OK here are my deals!
I was very disappointed at Walgreen's I am liking shopping there less and less. I'm not even going to post about it.

But I did GREAT at CVS this week:

Accu Chect Monitor 9.99
Scrubbing Bubbles disposable tub scrubbers 2 @ 2.99 = 5.98
Sally Hansen Nail Polish B1G1 2 @ 2.79 = 2.79
CVS tall kitchen bags B1G1 2 @ 7.49 + 7.49
Huggies Travel wipes 2.00
mini stix pretzels 2 @ .79 = 1.58

Total before savings: 28.83

-5.00 off 30 or more
-2.00 any purchase
-2.00 off Huggies
-2.00 off 2 pretzels
-2.75 off Scrubbing bubbles
-2.75 off "
-3.00 off 2 Sally Hanson
-3.48 ecb

Savings = 22.98
Got 9.99 ecb back

Walgreens this week

The only deal I got excited about this week was at Walgreens. OK I am going to try to do this like I have seen on other posts:
I got:
11 cans of Tomato Sauce @ 1/$0.99
4 boxes of Cerel @ 4/$10

Cost would have been $20.89

I used an in-ad coupon for the sauce making it $0.39 each. reducing them to $4.29 instead of $10.89
I used 4 $1/1 for the cereal
I used $6 register rewards from a previous purchase.

Total cost $4.29 plus tax which I paid for with a gift card.

I got back $2.00 register rewards for the cereal
And will get $5.00 rebate on the sauce plus the additional $0.50 for getting it on a gift card.

Total back: $7.50

Giving me $3.21 in profit! I love it!

So what have you saved this week? Let me know in the comments or leave a link to your page with your deals.

I had a great shoopping day today. I will try to add the photos tomorrow. I got 4 boxes of cereal, 2 Glad air fresheners, a shampoo and a conditioner and spent less then $2!

$50 give-a-way

Not Made of Money is having a $50 Target gift card give-a-way.
Here's the link to go directly to the give away page or click the button below.
http://notmadeofmoney.com/blog/2009/03/50-target-gift-card-giveaway.html#comment-229543
Hurry the deadline to enter is March 10, 2009.

My first blog entry.

Welcome to my blog!
Well I have been thinking about doing this for a while and have finally decided to just do it! This isn't actually the blog I had planned to start but we will see where it goes.
I love to save money! And when I do I love to share a deal, so here is where I'll do it : )
I hope you'll join me on this great adventure in saving and share your deals with me!