My own little laundromat, the Ten Commandments, and a GIVEAWAY!!!

Woo hoo!! After a few months of seemingly never getting caught up on laundry, I finally got my dream. Well, almost my dream. My dream was to have two NEW stackable washer/dryer units.

I didn't get new units, but I found the smaller unit on craigslist for a great price. Then, when I was getting cash out of the bank to pick it up, I was explaining to the teller about what I was doing and that we were going to keep looking for a large unit.

She then explained that her grandmother had had one, then got cancer and moved away. It was sitting in her own carport a few blocks away. So, we got that one for a great price too!!

My laundry now gets done in HALF the time!

YOU can win this chocolate!

I've been going to church all my life, and this past week, we've been reviewing the Ten Commandments. The missionaries taught Josh a way to remember all 10. Josh then taught us, and I was so surprised that I couldn't remember them all off the top of my head, at first.

So, for the giveaway...leave a comment and post all the 11 (yes, I said 11) commandments that you remember, without looking them up. I won't award the chocolate to whomever remembers the most, but will rather do a random drawing from all the entries.

I'm just trying to make myself feel better for not knowing them all. :)

The contest will be done at 12:01 AM next Wednesday, December 2, pacific time.

Please, please, please comment with your list, so I'm not the one left eating this near-pound of chocolate!

Now, it's time to go get the kitchen ready for the onslaught of baking tomorrow!

inflatable fun and other stuff

and no, we're not talking about some bad movie...
Yesterday, Daniel and Kelly volunteered at a local Albertsons store to collect money for needy families for Thanksgiving dinner. While they were there, Josh, Lilly, and Maggie got to go to a gymnastics event at a Wenatchee school. Inflatables all over the gym.
Another mom agreed with me, that it would be so nice to have a velcro wall.

Lilly's sticky position

Josh got caught even higher later in the day.

Maggie sliding down just lovely

Some of the baby shower invites I made this weekend. My friend is having a baby any time now!

Friday night, the children put a movie on, but Daniel, Kelly, and Lilly chose to do other stuff while the movie played.

Maggie and Josh watched, but didn't look too thrilled.

We have a lot more fun when we do game nights instead...

Rachelle just moved this weekend and brought this awesome ride-on toy for the youngest. The youngest loves it, but not nearly as much as the older children. :) They must be toy deprived or something.

An addition to the large family statistic post several weeks ago. This was part of the table after a Costco trip. The cream of mushroom was from a different store. At Costco, we bought meat, broccoli, cheese, and more. I can't stand meat, and only like to eat meat bought from Costco and Fred Meyer.

Nothing excited to post this time, but the Christmas shopping has BEGUN!! Can't wait to post about the fun things we are getting for gifts this year.

family pictures!!

Lauren in Spokane was so wonderful to do a photo session with our family in Spokane a few weeks ago. We were so excited to get the cd today!

I've updated the blog with just a few of the pictures. I still have to wait to have the family picture and some of the boy pictures on the blog until things are final adoption-wise. That'll still be in the spring, at the earliest.

Thank you Lauren!!

New looks

Daniel finally got his hair cut this week!

Here are the girls, with their new cuts from Lisa.

Lilly
Maggie

Kelly

Big family statistics

This is our family before the little one.

Our family has 80 toes, 16 hands, 8 belly buttons (with one HUGE outie :), and one ugly calendar of appointments, activities, birthdays, holidays, and other stuff on it.

We go through 8 packages of Costco toilet paper each year (love that stuff).

Our summer grocery bill is dramatically higher than during the school year.

We fill up a large Suburban, with no room to spare, except for the cargo area.

The last layer of apples in the 2nd box we've consumed in the past 3 1/2 weeks.

(Daniel can eat 6-8 in a day)

We are toast people.

I love eggs on toast, tomatoes on toast, toasted sandwiches, toast with butter, toast with butter and peanut butter, toast with jam, toast with butter and honey, and toast with tomato juice on the side. Vit-a-bee bread is best for toast. I used to love white bread for toast, but can't stand that so much anymore...it's gotta have some real oomph to it now.

Kelly had some toast a few days ago and wrote this random fact on our fridge.
"730 pieces of toast, on average, are eaten by any one person in this family a year."

This will hopefully prove to be a year's supply of peanut butter for our family.

It's about 50 jars. It was on sale, and the employees all thought I was nuts buying that much, but they know I buy everything in massive amounts when it's on sale.

Our upright freezer downstairs is always full. I especially love to fill it with bread when bread is just barely marked down at the store. I only like to buy the healthier, heavier loaves. They freeze well and are eaten so fast when thawed, they don't have time to go bad!

Autumn pictures

Sorry for the date stamps...still taking nightly pictures. I tried to crop some of these so the date wouldn't mar the finished product.

Kelly didn't want to go outside for pictures

ENJOY!!

I can't post the picture of the boys.