a blessed March 2013...

(photos courtesy of Dad B)

We were excited to start off the month with a date night to our school's gala and auction which they hold every other year.  Mom and Dad B came up to watch the kids and we headed out for a night of fun with a silent auction, followed by a fabulous dinner, entertainment from Ken Davis and a live auction where I may or may not have poked S to bid on the bulldog puppy that went for over $1,000 (SO CUTE!).  Great night and a lot of money was raised for our school which we love.  And the kids of course had so much fun with Papa and Aahma B!
 

March is the month where spring officially starts, but you couldn't tell it here.  We were still officially entrenched in winter and snow, all. month. long.  March 5 even brought us a snowday!  Those are few and far between here in the cities, so I actually was just as excited as the kids were.  We planned the entire day out including in no particular order: cocoa wheats, pj day, playing in the snow (twice if possible), hot cocoa, baking something, mac and cheese, tv, games (had to be Monopoly as I have many fond memories of playing that game on snowdays growing up =) , knitting for G, and playing playing playing...it was such a wonderful day.  You can see photos of all the snow we got on that week's fun friday post.

H started coloring this month, which was beyond cute!  

And it was just in time to make cards for cousin E, who turned 2 mid-month.  Thought I would include a photo of their cards as it is a good snapshot of how each of them are drawing and coloring at this point!   (G-fancy letters and smiley faces, W- words spanning 2 lines, and swirls, C-birthday octopus, and H-scribbles!)

I used the kids' thumb prints to help me make S's and my card for E.  =)  Our cards made it in time and we had a lot of fun FaceTiming E on her birthday!

visiting friends who have all girls and having fun with their jewelry

(yep, he's gonna hate this photo when he is older!  but oh so cute, can't not share it!)

I had big flashbacks to childhood when I caught her doing this one night after coming home from school as i remember doing this a lot as a kid...

 boys having fun!!!

these girls...

As for some news on the kids, H is growing like a weed and is getting to the point where he can start to really play with his brothers when all the stars line up right.  He also is enjoying playing with friends and cousins and gets so excited when we go to J&C's house or M&A's house.  C is LOVING Doodlebugs.  He likes that W goes with him, but holds his own in telling us all about the activities and kids in their class as well as their beloved teacher David.  W is doing great in Kindergarten.  He is really doing well with writing, and that has just come in the past month or so.  Fun to see that progress for him.  G loves her teacher in 2nd grade and is having a good time.  She has been struggling with time tests in Math a bit, so we have given her a bit of incentive - if she can pass the next level, we will take her out for ice cream!  That has seemed to light a fire under her, or at least give her a great goal to strive for and make it interesting again.  Both G & W did great memorizing poems and performing them at CE night this month too!  And we are so blessed that all of our kids love to read.  That G & W are proficient readers, C asks for us to read books to him all the time, and H is even starting to bring us his favorite books and plop down in our laps.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention another side project I attempted this month.  I joined my sister-in-law A in a no-spend month.  The goal is to try to cut back on spending so much, and focus on the essentials and what we really need to live on.  The rules are set a scaled down budget for food, clothes, gas, household items and entertainment for the month.  Ours was $600, with $60 built in for grace money.  And whatever grace money was left would be used at the end of the month to treat ourselves to dinner out!  All in all it was a very good experience.  I used up a lot of pantry and freezer items, did not buy ANY kids clothes the whole month, and made pizza rather than ordered it most weeks.  I found it easy to say "no" to buying many things because "it is no spend month" - I just need to have that attitude all the time!  I also ended our month a bit early being that we were leaving on a major trip for spring break - I also did not include any expenses for that trip like food bought ahead of time or that last tank of gas filling up (we would have made it until the end of the month if we wouldn't have had to travel!)  Here is where we came out:

Gas = 234.70

Clothes = 32.19

Household = 37.49

Meals out = 59.08

Groceries = 302.41

TOTAL = 665.87

 

So needed the grace and then some, but for the first time doing something like this for a family of 6, and being that gas is so stinking expensive, we were happy with where we ended up.  And we didn't need to take A up on her offer to mail us food!!!