Our first house

and so begins a new chapter in our lives. we closed on our first house yesterday! we are filled with excitement, thankfulness and are completely humbled at what God is doing in our lives. you see we started praying for what God what us to do about 2 1/2 years ago. Marley had just been born, we were renting my grandparents house. a house that had never been treated for termites or anything else. and was completely infested with post beetles and termites. our floor was literally falling in at the back two bedrooms and bathroom. there was and is no hope to repair, we were told it would need to be completely gutted and pretty much rebuilt from scratch. which ended our dream of finishing any remodeling and eventually buying the house and the land, that my family had farmed and lived off of. I knew in my heart there was more, I get caught up in the sentimental things like my families land and house. Yet one day we will all be gone, and it will all be dust. So I decided to have an open mind and began to pray.  Pray that as I searched day in and day out on the computer for houses in our price range that God would place something right in front of us. Time after time it would not be the right one. I'm thankful we had a good real estate agent, I often told Chris " I bet he thinks we are never going to buy a house" in early spring of 2012 we were shown a home. liked the location, the neighborhood, it had a big yard, enough bedrooms, more bathrooms, a basement and a pool. the house was a foreclosure, needed minimum amount of work to move in, and was an awesome price. i told Chris i liked it but lets see what else is out there. That was a bad idea, within a month or so i wanted to see it again and it was under contract. The final sale took a long time, so long that i would drive by and call our agent, tell him that the sign was still in the yard and could he check, yet every time was still under contract and finally was settled. On November 2nd our agent called to tell us the home had been relisted, the new sellers were flipping the house. We agreed to see the home again, and said that we would pray over the weekend and make a decision on Monday morning. the catch was that one other family had seen the home the night before, and three more were viewing it the same day as us. On Monday we made an offer at 8:30 by 10:00 the seller had accepted and we were under contract. Yesterday we were handed the keys!

thankful for

I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!
Here are a few things we are thankful for this month .........

Daddy being able to take off work and come to school parties!

having such creative kids

Children that get along sometimes, lol.

what are some things you are thankful for?

and no I have not forgot..... more updates on the new house soon.

Treasure These Day's

I never imagined that I would be a stay at home mother. And defiantly never thought I would be good at it. But in actuality I am, I love that I can plan out every meal. I start every Monday with my coupon book and the sales adds. I plan breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner all the way through Sunday evening. And it saves our family a ton of money! In fact I spend $100 or less every week for our family of 6, this includes detergent, cleaning supplies, and pet needs.  My house is never spotless but I am able to take and pick up all of my children from school, feed them a healthy afternoon snack, help them with homework, and have dinner at least on the stove when Chris comes home. I love that when school is out, I am home with them. I love that we can stay in our pj's all day, or go to the park, play in our yard, make crafts, watch movies or talk about Jesus. Don't you just love the innocence of a child, and how a 5 year old explains his interpretation of the story you just read to him from the bible, well I do and it warms my heart to hear my children watch and do as we do. To hear them not say (God is Great) but their own heartfelt prayer. To hear them tell me ways they think we can help others and people they may know who need our prayers and our help. I love that Marley has really began to pretend play. She wants me to swaddle her dolls, so she can play feed them with bottles.  I love that she makes me snacks in her play kitchen. My favorite is the pretend cupcakes she makes me and then tries to make me eat them :)

I love that she is not in daycare, and I can capture silly moments on camera. Like the one where she fell asleep sitting straight up on the couch with her blanky over her head.

So today I am reminding myself to treasure each and every moment!

Wrapping up SUMMER & rushing into FALL

As a stay at home mother and wife I will tell you that every day is different from the next. I try very hard to keep a schedule but when summer comes that usually goes out the window! I can't seem to wrap my head around summer coming to an end. School was just ending yesterday right?!? I feel like we totally wasted our summer break, and then I look back on all of our summer memories.

There were not 1, 2, or 3 - but 4 out of our 6 birthdays that fall during summer!

                          Our anniversary, and one of my closest friends wedding.

                         There was hiking, swinging, and cupcakes in the yard.

                                              
                                 A lot of splashing at the pool, river and ocean!

                       Naps in Mommy and Daddy's bed, and tons of movie time.

Visit to the museum, aquarium, and fun at the zoo with friends!

We enjoyed play time on the bunk beds with daddy's old halloween mask, a nerf gun, and a noodle spoon.

Sometimes our pets got a little too much love, and sometimes they had stories read to them.

We got a little dirty playing outside in the dirt, and pulled each other around in the wagon.

                                                     
                                                           Water sprinklers were a blast!

 And then came the first day of school
for 3 out of 4 of my children
August 16th, 2012

         But the fun didn't end there. Nick had his first flag football game this past Saturday.


That is Nick in the orange about to get a flag!

Hey guys are you watching me or not?



Too tired to finish watching the game

And then on Monday August 20th my sweet girl started her first day of pre-k in the 2yr. old class. She is going half days on Monday's and Wednesday's at a private church based pre-school. But her going to pre-k was a huge deal for me, even if it is only half days! She has been at home with me everyday since her birth. The first day I had to sneak out of her class so that she would not cry.  She went most of the day without her paci and blanket- which that in it's self is a huge deal if you know my child! She did fall and bump her head on the playground, but all around had a wonderful first day. 

Treat for her teachers on the first day.

 Today was her second day, and I almost cried. She wouldn't even tell me bye when I dropped her at her class. She marched right in with her cute little backpack and started playing with her new friends.  Mom is sad for now :(



December through March and then some

Wow has it really been since December that I updated our blog?!? Well there is so much to share some exciting and some disapionting times and of course pictures to go along with it all. This post will be pretty long so bare with me. December was filled with lots of laughter and love, there is nothing like the sparkle in a childs eye and the magic that children believe that time of year.

 But it is also warming to hear my children remind each other the real reason we celebrate Christmas and that is JESUS. Im so thankful our children are continuing to learn of others less fortunate and that we have so much to be thankful for! Each of the kids filled a box for Operation Christmas Child for a coresponding child of their age, and we delivered them to a drop off point. I also paid the shipping online so that the children would recieve notification of where their boxes were delivered to.

Belize! Our boxes went to Belize they were so excited. The email had a link that provided us with information on the country of  Belize, I showed them where Belize was on the map, we looked at pictures and read all of the stats. It was a very heart warming moment and a huge blessing! We have already started buying items for this years boxes. With a little over 2 weeks off for Christmas break, that gave us time to make a ton of sweets! I can't even begin to tell you how many dozens of different cookies we made but here are a few pictures.

Making Gingerbread Men

The Finished Product

And each and every Christmas card we recieved was so thoughtful!

And then the big night comes Christmas Eve, being the procrastonator that I am we didn't complete Marley's big Santa present until the kids were in bed. And then we were up until almost 2am sawing, drilling, nailing, and painting four coats of paint, just so that our little pumpkin could play with her first kitchen playset (custom built by Daddy and painted by Mommy) on Christmas morning!

Valentines Day came and went the kids and I made some heart shaped sugar cookies with frosting.

 Chris surprised me with a new Willow Tree Angel- Je t' aime which means I Love you!

Then before I knew it.. it was here consignment season! For those of you that don't know I run a semi annual consignment sale called Be Green Consignment. You can visit my website at http://begreenconsignmentga.com/ The week of the sale was crazy as usual! It has grown a little each time, we had 5 new sellers this time and made over all about $400 more than the last sale. There wasn't a lot of profit because we bought all of our own clothing racks instead of borrowing like we have in the past.

Of course the same weekend as my sale the circus was in town (Atlanta) and we had tickets. I couldn't turn it down and it would be Marley and My very First time to the circus! And boy was I excited!

We had the best time, hope to take the kids again someday!

                                From March to April Alex had golf, they had a great season!

Marley loves watching her big brother play golf and thinks she can play too!

The months of March and April also brought Little League! I feel like we live at the ball field,  between Nathan, Nick and Chris softball we have games every night.

Nick's team the Ironbirds on opening day before the parade.

I would say from December to now we have been pretty busy! Just wait until I post our sprink break adventures, and after that I will really really try to stay caught up with our blog.