We have had a crazy couple of weeks which is why I haven't had time to blog. April and May is always a busy time for us.
Last weekend we went to see Medieval Times in Lawrenceville. We had a great time! I got a coupon for four admissions for $100. That is usually more than we would spend on an evening out. But we combined our gift $ and our eating out $. It was my mother's day night out since I have always wanted to go. We cheered for the Blue Knight. He didn't win. But it was fun anyway!
This week Gene had finals at school. He is hoping to pull a B out of both of his classes. He is a perfectionist and normally won't be happy with anything short of an A...but it has been a rough semester! School is almost over for the kids, too. 3 more weeks. This week Patrick has middle school band auditions and 6th grade orientation. Middle school is right around the corner...I can't believe it... my little guy is growing up...
We also made the decision to put Morgan back in the public school. She is very excited to not have to wear uniforms! She also got very excited when I took her for a tour and she saw all the technology the public school had compared to the Charter School. Next year is going to be full of big changes for us!! I am honestly not going to know what to do with myself not having to sit in the carpool line everyday!
This weekend we are working on home improvements. We installed new flooring in our downstairs last year with the intent to also install it on the stairs and upstairs hallway. A year later and we are just now getting around to it. Gene ripped up the carpet on the stairs to find a mess... so he is basically having to rebuild the stairs before we can even begin to install the flooring. It has been a lot more work than we anticipated. He is off until Tuesday, so hopefully we can get at least the stairs done... I know it is going to look so good when he is finished. We have saved so much money by doing the work ourselves. The estimates I got for someone else to do it was around $2000 just to do our dining room. We are able to do the entire downstairs, stairwell and hallway for that!
Also this week we began a little weight loss challenge! We are doing Weight Watchers...counting our points... and trying to do 30 mins of cardio a day. My friend and I at work have a challenge going and Gene wanted to join in. So I have promised him a little incentive of a trip to REI if he sticks with it. So far we are doing good! We have both lost 3 lbs in a week! It takes discipline, and it is hard, but I know we can do it. After all...we had to learn the same discipline with our finances... and we have been pretty successful at that... $5000 to go and we will be free of credit card debt!! YEAH!!
Well...back to helping Gene with the stairs!
Take Care,
Krista
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A fun girls weekend
Morgan and I had a great time this past weekend. We started off Friday night going to the new Hannah Montana movie. It was a cute movie. I was surprised by how many teenage girls were there. I thought Hannah Montana was more for girls Morgan's age. Apparently not! They clapped and cheered and sang along. It was cute.
After the movie we went bathing suit shopping. When we were done I asked Morgan if she thought her daddy would like our swim suits. She said "Mommy! I have no idea what is in that man's head!" LOL! I got a good laugh out of that!
Saturday she had a Girl Scout event and a birthday party. When she was done with those, we went to our favorite Girls Night Out restaurant - Olive Garden! We also finished up our summer shopping by getting flip flops and sunglasses from Old Navy. (All of which we paid for in CASH - Dave Ramsey would be proud)
It was a fun weekend!
The boys camped at Lake Allatoona with Boy Scouts.
My grocery shopping went well this week, I spent $75 and saved $50! Not too bad, if I say so myself! :-) Next week looks even better!
This Friday we are going to go for an early Mother's Day to the Medieval Times Dinner Theatre in Lawrenceville. I am excited and hope it turns out fun. I am a little leary of the fact that they dont offer utensils... that ought to be interesting!!
After the movie we went bathing suit shopping. When we were done I asked Morgan if she thought her daddy would like our swim suits. She said "Mommy! I have no idea what is in that man's head!" LOL! I got a good laugh out of that!
Saturday she had a Girl Scout event and a birthday party. When she was done with those, we went to our favorite Girls Night Out restaurant - Olive Garden! We also finished up our summer shopping by getting flip flops and sunglasses from Old Navy. (All of which we paid for in CASH - Dave Ramsey would be proud)
It was a fun weekend!
The boys camped at Lake Allatoona with Boy Scouts.
My grocery shopping went well this week, I spent $75 and saved $50! Not too bad, if I say so myself! :-) Next week looks even better!
This Friday we are going to go for an early Mother's Day to the Medieval Times Dinner Theatre in Lawrenceville. I am excited and hope it turns out fun. I am a little leary of the fact that they dont offer utensils... that ought to be interesting!!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Manic Monday
Well it is another manic monday...I should be cleaning up my kitchen from dinner...but I am blogging instead...I need a brain break after a long day...
The kids went back to school today so the house was quiet. I missed the kids, but I was able to get some work done without hearing "Mom" every 5 minutes. :-) I ended up having to work until 7:30. Did I mention I hate Pacific time and late meetings? But...I am thankful to have a job...so I will just keep doing what has to be done...(sigh)
The chicken tenderloins I mentioned in Saturday's post were "off the chain" as Gene put it! :-) Here is the recipe in case you want to give them a try! YUM!!!! I served them with potatoes and corn on the cob, but it would have been yummy with some steamed rice!
The strawberry pie and Banana pudding turned out great. But the crockpot chicken not so much! I hate when you try a new recipe and it doesn't turn out good. I had to end up running to the store on Easter and buy a Rotisserie chicken. :-( I hate having to make people work on holidays.
The Burell Family's Easter turned out nice. We had a nice breakfast at church followed by an awesome worship service! After church, we made homemade pizzas with my parents and had some of the leftover pie and pudding. Then the kids invited some neighborhood kids over and we hid Easter Eggs for them to find. My kids have outgrown the "Easter Bunny". But it is still fun to hunt for eggs. The rest of the day we just chilled. It was nice. We usually have FPU (Financial Peace University) on Sunday nights. It was a nice break to be home for a change.
The kids went back to school today so the house was quiet. I missed the kids, but I was able to get some work done without hearing "Mom" every 5 minutes. :-) I ended up having to work until 7:30. Did I mention I hate Pacific time and late meetings? But...I am thankful to have a job...so I will just keep doing what has to be done...(sigh)
The chicken tenderloins I mentioned in Saturday's post were "off the chain" as Gene put it! :-) Here is the recipe in case you want to give them a try! YUM!!!! I served them with potatoes and corn on the cob, but it would have been yummy with some steamed rice!
The strawberry pie and Banana pudding turned out great. But the crockpot chicken not so much! I hate when you try a new recipe and it doesn't turn out good. I had to end up running to the store on Easter and buy a Rotisserie chicken. :-( I hate having to make people work on holidays.
The Burell Family's Easter turned out nice. We had a nice breakfast at church followed by an awesome worship service! After church, we made homemade pizzas with my parents and had some of the leftover pie and pudding. Then the kids invited some neighborhood kids over and we hid Easter Eggs for them to find. My kids have outgrown the "Easter Bunny". But it is still fun to hunt for eggs. The rest of the day we just chilled. It was nice. We usually have FPU (Financial Peace University) on Sunday nights. It was a nice break to be home for a change.
This picture is the best we could get of our kids who did NOT want their picture taken!
If you know us well, you know we are working as hard as we can to be debt free! I updated our "Debt snowball" today and we just broke $18000 paid off since July 2008! Go Burells!! We are moving along quite swiftly and hope to be credit card debt free by this fall! I will keep you posted on our progress! :-)
Well I hope you all had a great Easter and that you have a great week. It is going to be another busy one for the Burell Family...
Take Care!
Krista
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Back to Blogging
Well, I haven't done a blog in a long time....but I figured I would get back on the blogging bandwagon to keep everyone up to date on all that is going on with the Burells. (If you really want to know :-))
It is Easter weekend and the sun has just finally shown itself at almost 6 PM. Isn't that always the way it goes? Hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow. After church we are hoping to have an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. Gene is cutting the grass now, so they don't have to hunt eggs in a jungle of weeds.
I just got done grocery shopping. I usually go on Sundays, but I went today since tomorrow is Easter. I saved about $60 combining coupons with sales. I am trying to be a good couponer, but I'm just not as good as the people I read about. I guess $60 a week (which is about my average) is over $3000 a year. That is pretty good savings! :-) But I am going to keep working to get better. Southern Savers really helps and does a lot of the work for me. Thank you Southern Savers!
Yesterday was my nephew's Birthday. Gene and I were both off work, so we decided to make the most of our drive to Warner Robins. We started out in Fort Valley at Lane Packing Company. We ate lunch there (which wasn't all that great) and then we went out to pick strawberries. If you have never picked strawberries, it is a lot of fun. The pretty ones just BEG to be picked. We ended up with 8 lbs of strawberries!!
It is Easter weekend and the sun has just finally shown itself at almost 6 PM. Isn't that always the way it goes? Hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow. After church we are hoping to have an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. Gene is cutting the grass now, so they don't have to hunt eggs in a jungle of weeds.
I just got done grocery shopping. I usually go on Sundays, but I went today since tomorrow is Easter. I saved about $60 combining coupons with sales. I am trying to be a good couponer, but I'm just not as good as the people I read about. I guess $60 a week (which is about my average) is over $3000 a year. That is pretty good savings! :-) But I am going to keep working to get better. Southern Savers really helps and does a lot of the work for me. Thank you Southern Savers!
Yesterday was my nephew's Birthday. Gene and I were both off work, so we decided to make the most of our drive to Warner Robins. We started out in Fort Valley at Lane Packing Company. We ate lunch there (which wasn't all that great) and then we went out to pick strawberries. If you have never picked strawberries, it is a lot of fun. The pretty ones just BEG to be picked. We ended up with 8 lbs of strawberries!!
After paying for our strawberries and some pecans, we went to the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins. Gene and Patrick love history and they had a blast. Morgan and I were interested for about the first 100 planes...and then we kind of got bored.... We ended up spending about 3 hours there before heading to the birthday party.
Today I am making a strawberry pie with some of those strawberries we picked yesterday. Because Gene and Patrick don't like strawberries, I am making them banana pudding. Yum! :-)
I was planning on cooking a Chicken in the crockpot for dinner...but I am having one of those days...and I forgot to plug in the crockpot! So our chicken...isn't going to be ready until about 10 PM... We are having grilled chicken tenderloins instead.
I am on a mission to try to include new recipes every week into our menu. If you have some recipe ideas, send them my way :-). I am getting a lot of new ones from Southern Plate.
We are also having an impromptu bon fire tonight. Gene has a lot of wood that he cut up in the yard and wants to burn it off. So we invited the neighbors over for Smores. Should be fun.
Hope everyone has a Happy Easter!!!
Krista
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