Great Find at Target!

If you have a baby, little kids, know anyone who has a baby or little kids, or is pregnant, or might possibly have a baby, you should check out this deal at Target! Our Target had their blanket sleepers on clearance for 75% off!! I'm not sure if all of the Targets have them on clearance, but it's definitely worth checking! They are Just One Year, which is made by Carter's, so the quality is good. They come in sets of 2, and at 75% off cost only $3.98!!! That's less than $2 per sleeper! They have some really cute designs, too, but they're going FAST, so if this is something you're interested in, you may want to head out soon! I was there a couple of days ago and they had 2 full racks of them at 50% off. Today, they're down to 75% and there was only 1 rack left!

My Dad's Going to Need Another Pumpkin

As I said before, my dad carves a pumpkin of each of his grandkids every year. Next year, he's going to need one more! BUT before you get too excited, it's not us (don't worry, family, I don't think we'd choose to announce a pregnancy over a public blog...or would we???). :P My sister is pregnant with her 4th baby and is due sometime in July!!! We're so excited to have another niecephew on the way. This little blessing brings Hannah's cousin count up to ELEVEN! And I'm guessing that the number will just continue to rise in the coming years. :) Yay! We're praying that God will keep this little one safe until my sister's appointment on the 23rd, when she'll be able to start her blood thinners. We are so excited and can't wait to have another little one in the family! Maybe this one will take on the characteristics of the Fujita side of the family, but judging by the four that are already here, the chances of that are slim to none. :)

The Lessons Our 13-Month-Old Doesn't Even Know She's Teaching Us

Hannah has taught us so many spiritual lessons over the last year; however, the way this one played out made it pretty funny. James has been really excited about Tim Keller's new book, Counterfeit Gods. It basically deals with the idolatry of our hearts. The things that we worship aren't usually bad things. In fact, they're often good things - marriage, children, church - but when they become more important to us than Christ, they have become our idol. I think we often try to simply get rid of our idols, without replacing them with Christ. What we often forget is that we were created to worship. Therefore, we will always be worshiping something. If Christ doesn't become the focus of our worship, we will just find something else - some other "good" thing - to worship in His place. Well, Hannah gave us a nice visual of this the other day.

As you probably know, James loves candy! He has worked to make it so that it isn't an idol in his life, but we were laughing because we looked in his candy jar, and all the candy had been pulled out and in its place was a little New Testament. I knew Hannah was carrying the Bible around that day, but I had no idea what she had done with it! We both laughed as we thought about the lesson she was trying to teach her daddy! :)

On a side note, Hannah apparently missed the memo about the time change and was up at 6:30 this morning and James has come down with the flu. :( I've been loading him up with Chicken Noodle Soup today and he's just been resting. Praying for a quick recovery so that he can get back to being himself!

Hannahkin

As most of your know, my dad carves AMAZING pumpkins! Each year he carves one of each of his grandchildren, which means he has four pumpkins to carve this year. Here is my personal favorite from this year - Hannah! :)

Bargain Grocery Shopping

So I've really gotten into bargain and coupon grocery shopping recently. I've been using coupons (here and there) pretty much since we got married over 3 years ago, but I guess you can say I've become a coupon psychopath as of late. :) I even have a coupon binder chock full of hundreds of coupons. Anyway, I've decided to try The Grocery Game to see how it is. I've heard some good things about it, and since they offer a month free, I figured there's nothing to lose. I've only been using it a couple of days, but so far I haven't found anything special about it that I can't get for free from other websites. We'll see if I find out what's so great about it in the next few weeks to see if it might actually be worth paying for. So far, I'm not convinced, but only time will tell. After testing it out, I'll let you all know what I've determined. :)

Great Deal on Ziploc Bags!!!

***EDIT: I was mistaken about Food4Less. I was there this week and they DO have catalinas, so this might even work there. The only thing to consider is the fact that they don't double coupons like Ralphs does, so it may not be quite as good of a deal, depending on their price for Ziplocs.***

I read about a great deal on Ziploc bags at Kroger stores here. There is the potential to not only get FREE Ziploc bags, but also to actually make money on them! I've noticed that Southern California's prices are almost always higher than the rest of the country, but I was still able to make a little extra money out of the deal. :) According to the website I got this idea from, the bags cost anywhere from $1.84-$2.19. Ralphs (our Kroger affiliate) had them on sale for $2.50. So I grabbed three boxes for a total of $7.50, used a coupon for $1.50 off 2 and another coupon for $0.40 off 1 (which doubled to $0.80 off). With the coupons, I only spent $5.20 (plus tax) out of pocket, but will submit an SC Johnson rebate for $5, making them only $0.20 total for 3 boxes of Ziplocs!!! On top of that, when you buy Ziplocs at Ralphs, you get a coupon at the register for $2 off your next purchase!!! So, in all reality, I actually got paid $1.80 to buy 150 Ziploc bags! Can't beat that! By the way, if you don't have the coupons, you can go here to print one. This is even a great deal without coupons. If I didn't have the coupons, after the rebate and $2.00 catalina (coupon that prints at the register), it still would have only been $0.50 for 3 boxes of Ziplocs.

On a side note, I don't think this would work at Kroger discount stores, such as Food4Less, since they don't have catalinas. :(

From Baby to Toddler

It's official. Our little Hannah is starting to toddle around the house. On several occasions over the last week, she's taken anywhere from one little step to three or four little steps. Today she decided to try to walk about four feet by herself - and succeeded! She loves to walk around the house while holding onto our hands and gets a good laugh out of falling down, which is a good thing, because there's probably going to be a lot of that going on in the next couple of months! :)

Hannah's language development is also coming along, although it's mostly in her ability to understand language rather than to communicating language. There are a few words she does say. Right now her favorite word is "Bapa," but she also says "Bup," which in Hannah language means "book." She loves to look at "bups," although it's almost impossible to actually READ them to her, because she's mostly interested in turning the pages! I think she's also starting to learn the sign for "milk," because I mentioned something about milk the other day and she started signing it. She understands the names of objects, as we can ask her where a specific toy or object is and she'll either point to it or get it. One of her newest developments is showing us where her head and nose are when we ask her. Now we just have to work on the rest of the body parts! It's definitely a ton of fun to watch how she learns and masters each task. Watching her development has also helped me understand just how much Christ had to humble Himself to become man. He also would have had to learn these things, as Hannah does. Truly amazing!

My parents were down last weekend and my wonderful husband and dad took the glass doors out of the shower and replaced our leaky drain plug in the bathtub, so Hannah can now take baths in the big bathtub! She absolutely loves it, especially the new bath toys with which mama spoiled her! I've also been trying to be better at remembering to brush her teeth every night (I know, I should've started doing that A LONG time ago, but I usually don't remember until after she goes to bed - oops!). Anyway, I bought her a new toothbrush and some Gum and Tooth Cleanser. She thinks brushing her teeth is just the funniest thing ever! I'll have to get a video of it sometime for you.

Last weekend we also turned her around in the car. She loves facing forward, because she can look out the windows and watch Mommy drive the car. She has started babbling a lot, too, and talks my ear off in the car, which I think is so cute. We'll see how I feel about that when she can actually talk! :)

Hannah is also a big social butterfly! She makes friends wherever we go, especially with other little kids and babies. She gets so excited when we see other kids and starts squealing and waving to them. It's so cute to watch!

We've also discovered the joy of a webcam! It's much better than having her talk to people on the phone, because she usually gets distracted by the phone and doesn't talk. With the webcam, however, she gets really excited to see someone and is more interactive. She even got to have a lunch date with her twin cousins in Northern CA, and was also able to talk to her Grandma in Oregon! We were laughing today, because James was watching a Mark Driscoll sermon online. Hannah walked up to the computer, stood in front of it, and got really excited and started talking and pointing to Mark. She thought it was someone on the webcam! :) She'd love to chat with any of you, whenever you have time. Just let us know and we'll schedule it. :) We're looking forward to seeing Papa and Grandma next month in person (we're working on how to say, "Papa."). :)