Another Household Expense

The oven in our house is really old, and we knew it wouldn't last forever... can you see where this is going. Leah's birthday party was on Saturday and I decided to serve frozen pizzas for dinner. First problem was the pizza's are supposed to cook at 425 degrees. Well our oven has been working, but only at 350 degrees for a little while. We made a total of 4 naturally rising pizzas (two at a time) which each were supposed to cook for 20 or 25 minutes. So in theory we should have been able to eat in no more than an hour after I put the first pizza in. Well two hours later we were finally sitting down to our pizza... I think thats a bad sign. The burners on the stove still work fine... but now that winter is coming up I'm going to want to bake in the oven more and its probably not very energy efficient to have to cook things for so long.... let alone the fact that not everything will turn out when baked at 350 degrees. So it looks like this guy and this guy will be finding a new home in my kitchen on thursday. Good thing we have some Lowes gift cards and a 10% off coupon... that will make it a little more affordable. We are still working really hard at paying our new central heat and air we had installed when our main window airconditioner died on us in the hottest part of the summer. Oh the joys of homeownership.

Our oldest turns 4 today!

It's so hard to belive that Leah is 4 years old today! It seems like just yesterday we were starting out on this journey of parenthood. Now 4 years later we are doing it all again for a third time. As I write this I am 34 weeks pregnant with our third daughter. It was just hitting me the other day that Leah's birthday and the new babys birthday could potentially be very close. My due date is just over a month away, but I've been having a lot of contractions lately so its possible I may go into labor early.

Leah has been so excited about her birthday this year. She told us today that this is her best birthday ever. Last night my mom took us all to Chuckie Cheese and then we went back to her house for presents and cake. Today my dad stopped by first thing this morning with a card for Leah (and she is very excited to spend her birthday money by the way). I took the girls to Target for a birthday shopping trip and then we picked up Chickfila for lunch. Daddy stopped home on his lunch break and Leah got to open up her presents from Grandma-ma. She opened up her presents from us last night at my mom's (I know I'm not sure how I got that one past the present nazi - we don't open presents early in our house) :) Then tomorrow (day three of celebrations) is her birthday party with her friends. This will be Leah's first birthday party and she is really excited. We are just having a couple of friends over for pizza and cake, but Leah is really excited. (so is Hannah for that matter). Well all this talk of the party tomorrow reminds me that I need to go clean the house.

Back to blogging

So I think I'm finally going to start blogging again. I know, I know you probably thought I died. I'm going to attempt the whole blog thing again. Its hard to believe its been almost a year and a half since I last blogged... where has time gone. First of all... we left Arkansas (yay us), went to St. Louis for about 2 months and then ended up back in Iowa at my moms house. We lived with my mom for just over 2 months and then finally bought our first house. We were so excited to get our stuff out of storage and have our own space again. We purchased our house in December of 06, and have been learning more and more about frugal living each day. Through trial and error (and of course God's provision) I have learned many ways to stretch a dollar and we are actually doing much better financially now than when we were making double the salary in Arkansas. I am very thankful to God for all the ways he has provided for us and blessed us in the last year. Its really amazing when you think about it all.

Well since I spend so much time online looking for great deals, I figured I would start blogging about some of them. Hopefully I can create a one stop place for my fellow frugal friends to find deals, plus it will be nice to have a record to look back at and see all of God's provisions.