I gave up soda

I am on day 6 of giving up soda. Last Thursday Feb. 18th 2010 I decided that I needed to overcome my addiction to soda. If I can get over that I can do ANYTHING. There have been LOTS of days that I drank a glass of milk for breakfast and then drank nothing but soda the rest of the day. I would make special stops to get soda. I spent LOTS of money on soda. I thought about soda all the time. Not like dreamed about it, but I was always trying to remember if I had some at home, or if I needed to stop and get some. I would ask Nick to bring some home on his way from work. You get the idea. An addiction. So I gave it up.

It hasn't been easy. I get tired of drinking water, and I don't really want to add in artificially sweetened drink mixes because that's not good for me either. A friend gave me some ideas to add fruit (not a fan of lemons), to see if that would be better. So I am going to give that a try. I do like unsweetened ice tea, and when I get settled in the new house I will make more of that. But until then I will carry my reusable bottle of water with me everywhere I go and hopefully my cravings for soda will lesson with time, and I'll learn to like plain water better.

10 days to go......

We close on our house in 10 days. 1 week from today (Tuesday) we have our first walk through at the house. However the days seem to be crawling. For our room we have a new bed, new bedding, new bath towels and mats. For Capri's room we got all new bedding, for her queen size bed that she will move into after she moves out of the crib. The girls have new bedding for their bunk beds. They also have new stuff for their bathroom. We got new lighting, and ceiling fans, for every room of the house, and a new rug for the livingroom. I have all my paint color picked out for the walls. In other words.....we are ready!!!! I have had a blast shopping for all this new stuff, but now I am ready to decorate with it all. We are ready to move out of our small rental house and be able to put things away instead of just "somewhere". We are just ready to spread out. It's been a very long time coming.

I am sure I am boring all my friends with the day to day talk about the new house, but I am just so very excited!!!!! So until then I am doing a lot of reading, and we are keeping netflixs busy. :)

Getting excited!

Now that we know that we don't have much longer until our house is done Nick and I are getting super excited (and the girls). We know there are a lot of things that we want to change or add once we move in. Paint, lighting, shelving, new bedding....... So we are having so much fun looking for all of those things. I finally bought some bedding last night after spending lots of time online browsing different websites. Tonight while the girls are at Awana we are going to go to Home Depot and Lowes to look at lighting. We need ceiling fans, overhead lights, bathroom lights, kitchen lights, lamps.... It's really a lot of fun. Unfortanatly with all of that fun shopping comes a large price tag. We are thankful to be getting a decent tax refund this year as well as the government tax credit for buying a new house. I know that overtime we will make this house be perfect for us! After 8 yrs of living in a "fixer upper", and 5 months of living in a small rental house I am VERY ready to move into our new, bigger, house.

It's been a long time.

Since everyone I know is on facebook now I haven't blogged nearly as much. But I really should because it's kind of fun. Although I am not a very talented writer.

A quick update on the house. Our house is about 45 days from being finished. We have had so much fun watching it be built. We got by every single day after school to see what they have done that day. We are also watching all the other houses in the neighborhood go up. Right now there are 8 houses being built. It's amazing how quickly they are being built. They really change from day to day. Up until about a week ago we went inside every day, but now it's all locked up and we can only go inside when someone is there. Otherwise we just have to look in the windows.

The outside is painted and the stone was being put on today. The driveway is ready to be poured but it rained most of the day today so they haven't done it yet. On the inside the walls are painted, the bathroom cabinets are in, as well as the kitchen cabinets and counter tops. They were working on something inside today but I didn't see what that was.

Here are a few current pictures.

We don't "do" Santa

We don't "do" Santa", and what that means is that we don't teach our children that Santa is real. He doesn't come to our house on Christms Eve and deliver presents. To some that is a surprise, they think we are "radical" and some even say we are mean. So let me explain why we choose this and see what you think.

We choose not to belive in Santa at our house, and instead we choose to totally make Christmas about Jesus. We celebrate Christmas because it's the day that Christians have set aside to remember Jesus birth. We bring gifts to each other because the wise men brought gifts to Jesus. We make a cake for Jesus on Christmas Eve, his birthday cake. And we even sing happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas day.

I guess my thinking is that it's his special day, it's birthday, why not give him all the glory at this time of year. I personally don't really remember beliving in Santa so it's not that big of a deal to me. I don't understand why we take our kids to see movies and tell them it's pretend so that they won't be scared, but yet will tell them that a big fat man comes into their house at night....that's just me. :)

We also talk a lot about giving to others at this time of year. God gave us his son, and we can set aside money, toys, and food to give to those who don't have any. God thought of us when he sent his one and only son, and it's important to focus on how we can help others instead of just focusing on what we "want".

We still teach about St. Nicholas, and as the girls get older we will talk about how other countries celebrate during this time of year. But everything will be centered around Jesus' birth. That's the most important thing that I want my kids to remember at this time of year. Plus I get credit for all out gifts. :)

We still do stockings (like St. Nicholas), we still watch Christmas movies about Santa, and read books about Santa, we decorate our house with "Father Christmas" figures, and sing Santa songs. It's just all pretend and fun. But each night before bed we hang an ornament on our advent calendar, and read a story out of an advent book reminding us about God's love and the wonderful gift he gave to us. And that is the trume meaning of Christmas at our house.

Decorating for Christmas

Here are some pictures of us decorating our Christmas tree. I didn't put out a lot of Christmas decorations this year since we are in the rental, but we still made it look festive. The girls had fun hanging the ornaments.

This week

This week has been awesome! Nick took off all week and we have just enjoyed spending time as a family. We went to the Renniger's extraviganza in Mt. Dora and did some shopping. I went to a Girl's Night out and watched New Moon. We took the girls to the Orlando Science Center. We had a cook out with friends. We celebrated my dad's birthday with another cook out and card games. We slept in, watch TV and movies, and just relaxed and had fun.

On Thursday we took a picnic to Highlands Hammoch State Park. Not your traditional Thanksgiving day, but it was so much fun. The weather was perfect, slighly cool but still very comfortable. There were a ton of people there all having fun together. The girls played on the playground while we set up our lunch. Then we took a hike. My grandparents came with us and we enjoyed their company. Then we headed home and played cards at my parents house. It was a really nice day.

Today was Black Friday. I don't like to get up early so my mom and I had plan to leave around 8 a.m. and head to Lakeland to do some shopping. Capri woke me up at 6:30 (which she NEVER does), so I decided to head out early. I went to Toysrus, and the mall before I met up with my mom. Then we went to Kohl's and Micheals. We got some really great deals, and saved lots of money. I am pretty much done shopping for the girls! :) Then tonight we went and got our Christmas tree. It's soaking in water and we will put it up sometime tomorrow.