IHMS Basketball

Sarah decided she wanted to play basketball this year for the 9th grade team at her middle school. She'd never played before, but went to all the open gym practices, tried out for the team and made it. Her team practiced M-F for two hours a day from November until last week. There are 8 middle schools in our school district and they all advance to the final tournament. Going into the tournament, Sarah's team was in 6th place. They ended up playing great and winning some painfully close games. They finished with second place for the season.


One of the girl's dads is a professional photographer (Kevin Lunt Photography) and did a full photo shoot for each of the girls. He then gave them each a disc with all the pictures on it. So generous!

Lioness Arising Book Review

I recently received the book Lioness Arising, Wake Up and Change Your World by Lisa Bevere to review. This book appealed to me with the imagery it evoked when I read the summary.

"The lioness rises from her slumber, a magnificent image of strength, passion, and beauty. Her mere presence commands the landscape, protects her young, and empowers the lion. In groups, lionesses become a creative and strategic force to be reckoned with, acting as one to change the world around them."

Here are links to the first chapter and how to find the book on Amazon.com.

I've never read a book like this (Christian motivational) and I found I had a hard time with it. The first three chapters moved pretty slowly and it seemed very disjointed to me. I did like the fourth chapter where the author shared a personal story about her desire to get in shape. She talks about hiring a physical trainer and not realizing how weak she was until she met with him and he tested her strength. She uses that story to talk about how women must be strong in all areas of their lives.

I also liked the eighth chapter, "Lionesses Are Strategic". In this chapter she talks a lot about the characteristics of lionesses in the wilderness (protecting each other's children, working together to hunt, etc.). I found those insights very interesting.

Other than those two chapters, I had a very difficult time with the book. I didn't like the author calling me (or the reader) "lovely ones" in the text. I didn't care for some of the analogies like lionesses groom each other or the one about lionesses smelling their children. (Although, the author had a great point that she kissed her children goodnight each night and she could smell if her sons had been up to something they shouldn't have been - alcohol, etc.).

I would give this book 2 out of 5 stars and probably not recommend it to a friend unless they liked information about lionesses or enjoyed Christian motivational books.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Little Star book review

I was recently asked by WaterBrook Publishing if I wanted to "Blog for Books". I said sure. I get to choose a book that they will send to me, read it and then write a review on it. The first book I chose was Little Star since it was Christmas time.


The book starts out with a little boy asking his father which star in the sky is the Christmas star. The father then tells him the Christmas story from the point of view of the stars. Little Star is sad because the other stars ignore him, but on the night of Jesus' birth, he shines the brightest.

Here is a video clip about the book.

I love the illustrations in this book. They are cute and fun at the beginning when telling about the stars, and then elegant when showing scenes from Christ's birth. I really enjoyed reading this book to my kids until I got to the end. The author writes that Little Star burned so brightly that he burned himself out that night. The picture of the little gray burned out star is so sad and I couldn't get past the fact that I don't believe the star only shined for one night. The wise men had to follow the star for months to get to the baby Jesus. This is probably not a big deal to most people, but it really bugged me. The author does end the book on a happy note with the star being remembered each time it's placed at the top of a Christmas tree.

Overall I'd give this book 3 out of 5 stars. I absolutely love the illustrations, but I wish the book ended differently.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Tombstone Party

We were excited to win one of the Tombstone Parties from houseparty.com in October. We received a fun party kit with lots of fun items and coupons.

(I can't find the picture I took of the kit so I borrowed one from houseparty.com.)

We asked the kids to dress up. Here are a few of them. I really wish I had got them all together for a group picture!


Mr. Clean, Pippy Long Stocking, and baby duck.

Playing the madlibs game.

Aaron's amazing garlic bread.Cute witch's hats.


We put together little gift bags for the kids to take home after the party.

Andrew and his preschool teacher at Alta High. He is loving it. Each Senior in the program is assigned to one preschooler. We were so lucky to get Amberly. She just moved into our neighborhood and she is wonderful.

Coupons and Giveaways

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. I've been having too much fun saving money and entering contests. Here are some of the deals I've found this past week:

Rite Aid today: out of pocket= $3.60 (Sorry for the background mess - I had one of the kids take the picture). I can't find the exact site that showed me how to do this one, but here's another site that breaks it down for you if you are interested: cuckoo for coupon deals. I wish I could remember where I first saw the deal described. It was a lot clearer than that post.


Walgreen's last week: out of pocket=$1.00


Kohl's last week: out of pocket= $2.36 (Christmas gifts for the girls)

I've also entered and won a few contests lately. One of the blogs I follow and enter contests on is Mrs. Nespy's Frugal World. She had a great back to school giveaway event. I won three of the prizes. There are still a few giveaways left on her blog and she told me she's doing it again in November for the holidays. Here's what I won:


A wii remote soap (I can't wait for this one to arrive. It's going to be a Christmas gift for Addison) from Digital Soaps. (These pictures are from her blog).

A set of cleaning supplies from Conserve.


And a $10 credit to Dodeline Design etsy store. I chose this cute set of thank you notes (picture from her store).

Anyway, take a look at her site if you want to try your luck. :) I even helped my mom enter a few contests online and she won a cool science kit for the grandkids.

If you are interested in winning books, you can check out Hachette Books Giveaway page. You can look through the titles of the books they are promoting (if you click on the title it tells you what the book is about) and go to each blog listed under the title for a chance to win it. I think the Achoo! and Glamour of Grammar books look great.

I promise the next post will be more about what the family is up to and less about coupons and giveaways.

Family Reunion

We just got back from our family reunion out by Altamont this past week. My parents rented this cabin for the reunion. It was beautiful. There were five bedrooms and six bathrooms.

This was our view from the cabin. We had the first two lakes to ourselves (they come with renting the cabins). Bret is in the boat with Jenna and Andrew in this picture.


An unexpected bonus was all the crawdad fishing the kids were able to do. Addison was in heaven. His uncles loved it too. Here is one of the little guys we caught. They cooked up a crawdad feast on two of the evenings. I didn't participate, but they assured me it was delicious.




Our 91 year old grandma with her newest great-grandchild.



We had a lot of fun activities. One of the funnest was a shaving cream hair design compliments of the kids and moms. Jeff ended up with a completely covered face. I'm not sure how he could breathe under all that shaving cream. He did say sound was muffled and he couldn't really hear us.
We had a ton of fun. I may post more pictures later.

Anna Update

Since it was Anna's birthday last month and I didn't post in June, I thought I would do a little "Anna" post. For her 6th birthday we took her to get her ears pierced. She wanted the cute little pink gemstones. Since they are $10 at Wal-mart and $37 at Claires, we chose to go to Wal-Mart. Not a great choice. The lady pierced her ears on an angle so the earring on her left had the back coming out the base of her earlobe. After about three hours I decided they needed to be re-pierced. I didn't want her to go through life with such a ridiculous ear piercing. We took them out that night. She was so sad. She's been asking for years to get her ears pierced, but we had told her she had to wait until after kindergarten, because that's how old her sisters were when they got theirs pierced. Now she's too afraid of the pain and doesn't want to get them re-pierced. Twice she asked me to take her in, and twice we went to the mall to Claire's and then she'd change her mind. I told her it was fine and she could wait as long as she wants to or not even get them pierced if that's what she wants.


Her birthday party was fun. We had 5 girls over to play water games in the back yard. She was a little exuberant with the water balloon toss.



Anna and her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McGarry. Her teacher was wonderful. Anna preformed gymnastics at the kindergarten talent show on this day.


I don't have a picture for the last news about Anna. On Saturday she was playing in the back yard going down the slide - with water on it. She hit the ground hard on her shoulder and complained that it hurt. When I got home from work she was still complaining so I took her in to see a doctor. We got there at 7:30 p.m. and waited until 8:00 to see a P.A. The office closes at 8 so they were starting to lock the doors and turn off the lights. The PA really didn't think anything was wrong and said he didn't feel like we needed to x-ray it. He did send us home with a sling and said she'd probably just bruised her shoulder.

The next morning she was still complaining that it hurt and it looked swollen to me. I called my friend who is a nurse to come and see it and she said to give her motrin and keep it in the sling as there's really nothing they can do if it is broken. This morning Anna woke up at 4:30 crying in pain. I decided this was definitely more than a bruised shoulder. My favorite doctor couldn't see us until 5 p.m. so we kept her arm in the sling and went in at 5. The doctor looked at her, felt her clavicle with her fingers "walking" up the bone and found a fracture. She x-rayed it to be sure and it's definitely broken clear through her clavicle. The break looks like this ">" through the bone. Luckily the two sides are lined up correctly. We have to keep her in the sling for 3-6 weeks depending on how it heals. She's a pretty miserable little girl right now.


That's not a very happy note to end on. Here's a picture of her at a picnic at Snowbird with her cousins, family, and grandparents. I'm sure it won't be too long until she's smiling again.