Spring

Well, I guess it is pretty much summer, but I wanted to share a few pictures of our Toba Hawthorne tree from a few weeks ago.

I think it had white flowers last year. This year was pink.

Holiday Shopping

I hit the Jackpot at Goodwill today (50% off almost all colored tags).

Here is the preview:

If you want more details, check out my other blog HERE.

Twinz day

Hey.
It was Twinz day at school today.
Here I am with my twin!

Here are some other twinz:
It was also a carnival day. Here was the 8th grade booth sign:WE had donuts on strings hung over the soccer goal posts. They gave us a ticket, and then they got to eat the powdered donut.

Oh what fun...well...at least crazy. I got not much done in my classes today.

Still 2 weeks of school left

Most people are counting down the days until the end of the week because they get finished with school. We don't get finished until the 29th. It isn't actually that big of deal because I will be so busy with lots of extra things that I really won't notice. It has been hot here though. I hauled out my summer clothes, and I'm wearing flip flops around the house instead of slippers.
I ran a 5K (3.1) on Saturday with some teaching friends. It went great. We did it at a decently fast-talking pace, and I ran a bit faster at the end to make up about a min.
Next I hope to try a 5 mile run in a month.
The bummer was that about 20 min. after I finished running I developed severe allergies to something. All day my nose was running, I felt like I had to sneeze, and my eyes were watery. I stayed inside on Sunday and it want away! Crazy how you can develop allergies just like that!
We watched Wolverine on Thursday night. I enjoyed it- but it does have a lot of fighting. Anybody else watch any good movies?
No pictures to show for my week, but I just thought I would ramble about what is going on :)

Ahhh the memories

This was our church music crew this past week.
Goodbye to Andrea- our piano player and organist (and table fellowship buddy) who will be spending 9 wks in Peru for studying and fun.
Goodbye and Congrats to Hunter- our other piano player and singer who Graduated from UNC and will be working at Disney's Universal studios this summer as one of the characters!
Congrats to Graham- our bass player and djembe player who graduates from high school.

A Perfectly Happy Saturday.

This morning I participated in the church garage sale, only it was different than some church garage sales. I donated $10 to a charity (through the organizers) and got a spot on the church parking lot. I got to keep all my own profits. I was surprised when I hauled all the stuff up from the basement, that it barely fit in the xterra. The church is a great location for a garage sale too...although it wasn't in a "garage". "yard sale"? "parking lot sale"? Whatever.

I drove home with only 3 1/2 boxes to bring to Goodwill, AND I made $130!!
At least $20 of it was hygiene items (like this)that I sold. (I told John it was my Garage sale shopping money to use for this summer...although we might just pay bills with it:)

In other news, I have decided to do my own "eating out of the pantry" challenge. I got the idea from Money Saving Mom's blog HERE.

Since I love shopping so much I tend to be very excited about the deals...and I keep stocking up. Now I don't really need anything except the occasional milk and eggs. I have avoided the grocery stores now for 1 week. (Ok...I went to Walmart, but all I bought was free after coupon items, my favorite cream cheese for bagels and ice cream-which I needed anyway)
I made chicken enchiladas, salads with hard-boiled eggs, free food using coupons from chick-fil-a, fajitas from a bag, and we ate a lot of leftovers. I was pretty proud of myself. This week I will need to get a few things for a dish I want to try (pesto chicken pasta stuff), but I'm going to limit myself to $10 or less in the grocery store. I think more than saving the money by not going to the store each week, I like the challenge of trying to use what I have. This may be kind of surprising because I don't like to cook that much. (I love to bake though.)
Anyone else want to try the challenge? I guess my rule will be...spend $10 or less at the grocery store each week, and try to be creative with meals to use stuff up. The hard part will be the produce but I can buy some produce with the $10 and rely on canned or frozen fruit/veggies I need to use up anyway. I will end my "eating out of the pantry" the week of Memorial Day -because they always have great stock-up sales then.

Showers this weekend

I went to 2 baby showers this weekend. A lot of other people I know went to baby showers too.
One was for my friend Betony.

We laughed a lot, and the hosts did a great job being Martha Stewart hosts:) (Notice the water with lemon and mint in the next picture)
You can see some of their fabulous work ON KELLY'S BLOG.
Amy had the coolest lamp.


The other one was a church shower. I helped organize it and it went great. I am especially proud of the centerpiece I came up with.

I got helium balloons from the dollar store, a basket (that kind of looks like a hot air balloon basket) at a garage sale for .10, Ribbon for free from another garage sale. Candy for .35 after coupons and rebates, a bear from the dollar store, and diapers and wipes from free samples that I signed up for.


Oh happy day.

The Rest of Oregon

To see our trip part one and two...check out these posts:
http://angieshaler.blogspot.com/2009/04/trip-to-eugene-part-1.html
http://angieshaler.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-oregon.html
Here are a few more pictures I wanted to highlight from our trip to Oregon.
John played drums in thier church. The kids loved watching him practice.


We went to a beautiful park during the afternoon on Sunday.



We gave the kids baths more than once. This one wasn't so happy:)


Bedtime was fun...


Saying our goodbyes.