Family Movie Night

Trevor and I have tried to raise our girls the best way we know how.  Most of this comes from being raised by excellent parents ourselves.  Among the good values we took from our childhoods are eating as a family at the table, playing together as a family, and a fun family movie night here and there.  Tonight was our movie night, and we had a blast!  We rented Night at the Museum, which none of us have seen yet, go figure.  We made popcorn with peanut butter M&M's and had a few donuts.  We all really had a good time.  It's night's like these that make me think that maybe we are doing something right with our kids.  I guess only time will tell for sure. 

Tomorrow is Saturday and most of the time that means a day and/or night with our great friends Paul and Allesha.  We'll hang out, eat well, watch the UFC fight and relax in the hot tub (no worries for the concerned out there, we keep Brooklyn out of the hot tub--she sleeps in a crib while we use the hot tub and keep a monitor close by).

Since our home preschool animal of the week was the cow, after church Sunday we will track down those Texas long horn cows that are here in La Grande somewhere to show Hailey.  Now if we could just find her a horse to ride around here, we'd probably complete her tiny world. : )  We'll save that for another weekend I suppose. 

This should be a fun weekend!  Hope you enjoy yours...

Christian PreSchool at Home

We have found that preschool is ridiculously expensive.  Who would have thought that teaching/entertaining 3 and 4 year olds for a few hours a day could cost more than our truck payment?  Anyway, I am no dummy, I graduated high school with honors, graduated from Chaffey Community College, and finished trade school, seriously, how hard can it be to teach a 4 year old shapes, colors, letters, numbers, and simple vocabulary?  As it turns out, not hard at all with Hailey as a student.  Granted, Hailey has known most of this stuff since she was 2, so we are just raising her awareness of these things in her world.  But with the help of a few homeschooling blogs (Our Preschool Home school & Christian Preschool Printables) I was able to put together a pretty fun and educational curriculum for Hailey.  Since we are Christian and regularly attend church I figured, why not add a biblical element to our studies?  This made our home preschool into a Christian home school preschool. WOW!  I've added an element to our school that she wouldn't be able to receive at most of our local preschools.  And as an added bonus I don't feel lazy for putting my kid in preschool while I am a stay-at-home-mom, I get to spend quality time with my little girl, and I truly become a mentor to her, all for the cost of some paper and printer ink.  This is great!  Sure my house suffers here and there, I have less time to fold laundry, clean my kitchen and just pick up in general, but our kids will be little only once.  And when it comes down to it, our kids ALWAYS come before chores.  The way we see it, the house is clean and mostly picked up, but there will be plenty of time later on to have a clean house, there will be only one chance to watch our children grow up, only one chance to enjoy this time of their lives.  They've already grown so much in such a short time. 

So you ask, will we home school our kids for all of their schooling?  Who knows... we just started preschool this week, in fact today is only day 2.  Kindergarten is a whole year and a half away.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a better answer for that, but for now we are just enjoying preschool. : )

Our New Life...

As of June 2010, I am a stay-at-home-mom.  I was fortunate enough to spend the last trimester of my pregnancy at home with Hailey.  That gave Hailey and I time to get used to the idea of a new person joining our family.  While this time has been difficult for us financially.  It has blessed us in many other aspects. 

Being at home has caused me to REALLY understand the value of the dollar.  And saving dollars has become one of my top priorities.  One of the ways we save money is by eating all of our meals at home.  All of them.  We spend $0 a month on eating out.  This puts more on my plate, but is healthier and saves us a ton of money every month.  In order to keep our meals interesting I have turned to the Internet.  I use blogs and websites of all kinds to get new and fresh ideas for meals.  And I thought it might be fun to share some of those websites with you.

Won in the Oven
Handle the Heat
Budget101
AllRecipes
Campbell's Kitchen
Food Network

Those are a few of my "go to" websites that rarely let me down in the dinner department. We eat well, and most often have a variety of meals each month.  Budget101 is a wonderful resource for using coupons, making your own cleaning products, recipes and a ton more.  It is one of my most used websites for being on a budget and not losing my mind.

Anyway, some of you are probably completely uninterested in any of these websites, however, I use them all on a weekly basis and thought it might be helpful for someone, somewhere.

Well, there have been a few changes.  Brooklyn Reese Winder was born since I last posted on this blog.  She arrived via c-section on Monday, September 20, 2010.  She was 7 pounds, 13 ounces, 20 1/4 inches long and born at 9:17AM.  She is awesome!  What more can we say?  She is a beautiful little girl and fits in with all of our family so wonderfully.  Is our family complete???  For now we are unsure... ; )

It's 11PM on a Wednesday, so I will update more to this blog this week and weekend, so much has happened and there are so many new things to update the family with. 

Good night, and God bless!

05\02\10, by Christina Winder

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Easter Day 2010

We had a good Easter morning. Easter bunny brought Hailey a good set of gifts. We had a fun little egg hunt, and then read about Jesus' death and resurrection. Hailey learned about Easter, and that the Easter bunny is not the center of the holiday. We headed to Nana and Papa's house for more egg hunts and dinner. While Hailey napped we played a couple games of Jenga. So fun. All in all a good day. Back to the grind again tomorrow. YAY!














See my belly starting to grow... here comes another big ol baby!

New Baby Winder--09/27/2010

Baby Winder... this is at 10 weeks, just a little peanut then. But we are at week 15 now, and we'll be getting another ultrasound at about 21 weeks (Mid May) and we'll find out the sex of the baby then too. So exciting. Just thought maybe some of you haven't seen our ultrasound photo, so here it is. YAY!!!