Thursday, December 10, 2009

What you need to do

Is there anyone else out there who loves shopping online as much as Matthew and I?? We honestly do 80%+ of our shopping online. We get better deals, I ALWAYS have coupon codes, and our newest treasures are the cashback programs!! We're hooked!

I've been using shopathome.com and cashbaq.com for a couple of months now, and Matthew just started using mrrebate.com. We've had great success with these sites and are THRILLED with the deals that we've got. Just today, we earned over $20 in cash back from these sites! Not too shabby! You can also combine coupon codes with the cash rebates to make for some really sweet deals.

The other great thing is that you get a percentage of what your referrals spend, plus usually a signup bonus! I pasted Cashbaq and Shopathome's linkies in my sidebar. If you click through one of these to sign up, you'll receive $5, and so will I!! Everyone wins.

Give them a try, we've been super pleased!

Monday, December 7, 2009

St. Nicholas Day

Sunday at church, we celebrated St. Nicolas Day with a pancake breakfast and lots of Christmas activities. It was a really fun morning and Owen enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies, making reindeer food, getting his face painted, and talking with St. Nicholas. When it was Owen's turn to go sit on St. Nicholas's lap, he walked right up there and climbed up. St. Nicholas asked him what he wanted for Christmas, and Owen looked around at the Christmas trees and "gifts" that were being used as the backdrop for the "Santa" pictures, and pointed to the largest gift under the tree and says, "I'd like that one!" St. Nick just laughed, and sent my precocious child on his way! I wish that I had a picture of this event to share, but unfortuately I forgot my camera that day.

During church, my RCIA group was recgonized and introduced to the congregation as Catechumens and Candidates. Our sponsors promised to guide us on our continued faith journey, and made the sign of the cross over various places on our bodies. I nearly had my eye gouged out by Owen "helping" Daddy to make the sign of the cross over my eyes.

I can always count on him to liven up any solemn occasion :)

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with wonderful friends and family! Wednesday night we made the trip down to the Gessner's to spend Thanksgiving Day with them. We had a wonderful meal at Kenny and Ruthie's and really enjoyed spending time with family! Owen and Eli did their jobs charming and entertaining family members!
We were supposed to stay down South Thursday night, but unfortunately, Matthew's work schedule forced us to come home.



Friday night we went downtown for the annual tree lighting. We enjoyed dinner at the Adobo Grille with Chris, Emily, Nathan, and Olive. I don't think that that restaurant sees a lot of the 3 and under crowd in there, because they foolishly set us upstairs next to a balcony overlooking the rest of the restaurant. The balcony rails weren't far enough for a three year old to fall through, but they were far enough apart for a three year to throw things down onto unsuspecting diners below! A busboy even came up the stairs to return some crayons that had been hurled over the precipice! Needless to say, it was a little bit stressful trying to keep these two unruly three year olds under control!!

After dinner, we walked a couple of blocks to the circle downtown, and watched the "tree" light up!

(Check out Baby Olive peeking out of Emily's coat!)




Saturday, I drove to Winchester with my mom and dad for the Toschlog Thanksgiving. We had another wonderful meal, and enjoyed getting to visit with everyone! My cousins are the best, and they all took turns entertaining Owen and Eli. Nathan always brings cars and toys for Owen to play with, and Owen just adores him!




After the reunion, we drove back to Indianapolis, and Owen got to go see Monster Trucks downtown with Grandma and Grandpa. He had a great time, and LOVED those trucks! It was hilarious listening to him tell about his evening. He even got a t-shirt signed by all of the drivers.

It was a busy, busy weekend, but it was really nice to get to spend time with all of our families.

Guess who's walking!

It's Eli!! He started walking the evening before Thanksgiving, Novemeber 25. I had just given him a bath and dressed him in jammies in preparation for our trip to Gessner Thanksgiving. I set him down in the hallway on his feet, and instead of immediately squatting down and crawling away, he walked! He walked all of the way down the hallway and into the living room, like he'd been doing it his whole life! I'm a proud mama!