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Long time no typie! It's been forever since i updated my blog. This blog in particular is mostly therapy for myself. I get to get stuff inside me out and just pretend i'm chatting with my closest friend.

SURPRISE! I'm prego with baby Risch #4! This pic was taken about 10 days ago. I'm not a day away from 17wks along.

This surprise has really throw me off whack. First three months were terrible, i practically lived on the couch... i was much of a mother... definitely not doing good with homeschooling (so we are quite a bit behind the schedule i had all set up *tear*) Because of that lovely first three months everything around me fell to shambles. You know (ok you might now) but i'm not the greatest house keeper.... just ask my husband >_< and since becoming pregnant well.... it's bad. Now that i am over the 24/7 morning sickness and starting to get a little energy back i am trying my best to get the house under control. Little by little. I take two steps forward and then three back it feels.

Lately i've been trying to downsize a little. I went through my sons toys which are currently all being kept in the living room since his actual bedroom is upstairs. Having them in the living room can drive me nuts some times but their really isn't a better place.
Today i focused on the girls room. We use to have a system in the girls room. I organized all the toys in clear plastic bins and put them on a high shelf in the girls 'toy closet' which also had a door on it. They were allowed to get 1 bin each to play with but if they wanted another toy they had to pick up all the toys from their current bin before they were allowed to get another one. That worked great until i we did some changing after Christmas of last year. We made them a kitchen set and it had all the dishes and food.... that was in their main room and not where it could be shut away. Also we brought out the barbies in a special compartment. That sounds all fine and dandy right? Well when you end up having barbies, barbie cloths, play food and tiny play kitchen utensils EVERYWHERE you no longer have a clean room LOL
On top of that my dear husband opened the toy closet one day during my sick months and the girls ended up climbing up and getting every plastic toy bin off of the toy shelf and dumping it into the floor..... it took until today for me to finally get it put up. FINALLY.... after a couple months >_<

Today i downsized their toys.... i do try to do this about this time every year in preparation of the Christmas season and knowing they are about to get a bunch more stuff. I usually have to do this again after Christmas because family tends to spoil them lol

Their 'toy closet' is quite large and bright... they like to play in it, so i decided to do some rearranging. I moved their kitchen set into the closet and also hung their barbie storage in there on the wall so i could get both of those out of the main area. I moved out the book shelf that was in the closet before and put that in their room, that way they would still have some storage and places to set things. By putting the kitchen set in the closet i had to bring out their storage bins with their dress up cloths. I figured this was a better switch off because they love to dress up the best (they live in their dress up dresses) Now everything is tucked away nice and neat and i am going to go back to our normal rule about the toys. I will open the closet and let them play with kitchen set but they need to clean up when they are done and they need to make sure everything is put away before they are allowed to get out any bins. I'm crossing my fingers this will help us.

I had no idea at the time that this was considered a Montessori method, to only let your kids have limited amounts of toys and put up the other toys up, out of the away. I know this was a great thing for my 18m old. I thinned out his toys and he actually spend more time playing with the toys i left them he normally would do before. He spent forever working on putting his train tracks together which before he never really attempted. So it was quite nice.


I have been sooooo excited for Christmas season! I wanted to decorate for Christmas right after halloween but my hubby stopped me. He made a good point and said i should start that till the house is clean >_< ugh! He also added that i had to wait for the week before Thanksgiving even if the house was clean. Boo on him! I've been trying to get the house clean so i can decorate. I've got some great ideas this year i am hoping i can pull off >_<

There for awhile i was stressing out about how we were going to pay for Christmas gifts period. A lot of unexpected things popped up and i was super stressed out. Then God provided! Hubby won some logo design contests on 99designs.com and got some extra cash for us and then i found surveys! LOL sounds stupid but i found this great survey site where you can earn cash quick. I've been doing surveys a couple days over a week now and earned $25 dollars on one site.

So far i have been able to buy 7 gifts for $6 dollars, thanks to my amazon points we earn from paying our bills with our amazon credit card and also the survey money.

We have a chase amazon credit card where you earn points. We use that card fro everything we can, bills, food ect. Then every month on pay day we pay off the card. When you pay off the card you earn points. We earn $20-$40 dollars a month buy using our card to pay for our bills and it also had made our credit very nice! Total our 7 gifts should have been $83.27 but only paid exactly $6 for them. Isn't that awesome? So exciting! Plus i was able to win a Kiinde breast bump kits for free (normally about $40 i think) through this awesome page i found on facebook that tells you all the recent giveaways and drawings you can enter.

What is even more great is i was able to share this survey site with my friends and family and one of my friends that is having it rough to this year has been able to earn money to buy presents for her kids, I almost cried when i read that! Makes me so happy!