Money Saving Mom®

Yesterday started bright and early. I’d planned to get up, run, take a shower, and get dressed for the day first thing in the morning. But some unexpected things came up needing my immediate attention and that got pushed to the back burner.

I finished those pressing things and my morning blogging and while Kaitlynn made eggs for breakfast and I started the laundry.

Kathrynne had made a pan of Energy Bars this weekend, so she opted to have that for breakfast instead. She made a case for why it was a healthy way to start the day and the nutrition that was in this recipe and her case was so solid that I gave in and let her eat “dessert” for breakfast.

{Considering that I eat Chocolate Cake for breakfast sometimes, I can’t really protest too much!}

While the kids finished breakfast, I cleaned up the messy kitchen (you can’t see it from this vantage point, but there were some pots and pans in the sink with crusted on food… just lovely! :)) and went over our plans for the day with the kids.

Silas couldn’t WAIT to start in on his math. He’s been itching to do the Monarch Online School that the girls do, but since he’s still learning to read, it starts at a 3rd grade level, and he’s only 5, we’ve been holding him off. However, recently, we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to let him at least try the math, since that’s such a strong subject for him.

Well, what do you know? The kid is whizzing through the lessons — often doing 8 or 9 a day! And he’s getting an average of 90% to 95% on all of the lessons and quizzes — all with very little help from us!

He absolutely loves it and we just keep laughing at how much he surprises us with his math skills, especially since it’s not something we’ve worked on really hard, just something he’s learned by asking lots of questions from all of us.

We had guessed that he was probably at a 3rd grade level in math, but we didn’t really think he could actually do the 3rd grade computer school lessons without a lot of help from us. Clearly, he has proven us wrong! We’re curious to see how long this pace and enthusiasm keeps up!

Now, if he could just learn how to read well, he’d really be whizzing through lessons! 🙂

These flowers on my kitchen table brightened up my morning! Such a fun and cheery color!

While Silas was working on math and the girls were working on their Daily Lists, I tackled the fridge. Yup, it looks like it needed some help!

When I actually dove in, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. About 10 minutes later, it was squeaky clean!

I finished up the last of the dishes and wiped down the counter tops and smiled to see a clean kitchen. I love a clean kitchen. Even if the rest of the house is messy, having the kitchen clean makes me feel like half the house is clean!

While I was finishing up the kitchen, the girls came back down and we got engrossed in an in-depth conversation about business ideas they had and how to best launch them. I love seizing these everyday opportunities to teach and talk through real-life stuff, to weigh pros and cons, to ask them questions, to help them think through outcomes, and to inspire them to exercising their entrepreneurial muscles.

We came up with some new ideas today that I’m actually thinking they might carry out. We’ll see, but I love to see them thinking and pondering and asking questions with long-term goals and dreams in mind.

As we were finishing up our conversation on business ideas, Jesse came home bringing this for me. Yes, folks, with much reluctance, I finally upgraded.

I have been due for a free upgrade for quite some time, but I always hold out as long as I possibly can. But because I’d been having some issues with my phone and because Jesse was really anxious to go ahead and upgrade, I finally bit the bullet and said, “Go for it!”

I feel like my new phone is some foreign object invading my life, but I’m sure I’ll get over it soon enough. 🙂

Jesse also came home bringing the mail… which had some fun surprises for me — including my new She Reads Truth study pack and some goodies I bought for myself off of Amazon using my free gift cards from Swagbucks. I can’t wait to watch Habits Workshop with Jesse and try out the Sweet Blend that I’ve heard so many rave reviews of!

These fun review products also showed up in the mail… look for some great giveaways coming soon! I love getting to offers giveaways for great (and useful!) products.

After we went through the mail and got things put away, the girls told Jesse all about their new business ideas and then we sat down to finally have Morning Time. We’re going through this Holy Week devotional from our church this week.

By the way, have I mentioned how much we love our church?? We are so grateful for how intentional they are about encouraging families to spend time in God’s Word together and the practical helps they provide to us parents to help us teach the truths of Scripture to our kids.

After Morning Time, I had planned to leave and head to the office space, but I still hadn’t had a chance to run and take my shower and I really had some pressing projects I needed to finish and I wanted to also take some time to read my Bible and journal.

So instead of leaving, I just made myself a cup of coffee and a snack and spent some time reading and journaling and then headed up to my room to knock out my afternoon blogging list while Jesse oversaw lunch, the rest of the Kid’s Daily Lists, and school work for the day.

After Kathrynne was finished with her list and school, she spent some time working on her latest Lego machines. I’m hoping I can get her to put together some tutorials for me to share on the blog soon as I think some of you might have Lego-lovers in your house who would have fun making the Lego Candy machines and puzzle boxes that she creates.

We got a box of clothes from Schoola with some new-to-us clothes for the kids for the warmer weather.

So Kaitlynn asked Kathrynne if she’d do a photo shoot with one of her new outfits.

I was quite impressed with how the pictures turned out!

Around 5:30 p.m., I finished up my blogging work and we all ate some of the delicious homemade Chicken Nuggets that Jesse made for dinner. And then I — finally! — headed to take a shower and get dressed since friends were coming over for Dessert Night (just keeping it real here!).

There was water in the tub from the kid’s baths much earlier in the day and when I went to pull the plug on that, instead of draining out like usual it backed up into our shower and flooded the shower and the bathroom floor!

As I realized what was happening, I quickly mopped up the water flooded out on the bathroom floor and hollered to Jesse to come figure out how to drain out the shower. He finally got it drained by using a snake down the drain. We hoped we had prevented anything from leaking through the ceiling by catching it quickly enough and mopping it up right away.

Once that crisis was diverted, I finished getting ready — just minutes before our friends arrived.

Shortly after they got to our house, we noticed the ceiling in the living room/kitchen bubbling up. And then it started dripping — right where we were all sitting!

At first it was just a slow drip, but then it started dripping at a faster rate. Pretty soon, we had to get towels and buckets to catch the water. Jesse even stood on a chair and held one up on the ceiling for awhile to catch a lot of the water dripping down.

I just stood there and smiled, laughed, and encouraged Jesse… because what else can you do when your ceiling is raining while you have company over and you’re not handy at all??! (Thanks to Tam Hodge for documenting some of the crazy of the evening in pictures for us!)

Gratefully, there was a handy woman in our midst. For those of you who don’t know, Jenny Acuff not only helps Jon write amazing books, she’s also incredibly handy. She climbed up and ripped down the tape on the sheet rock to let the water drain out more quickly. 🙂

We eventually got it to stop dripping and then went back to our chatting, laughing, and dessert-eating. 🙂

And now today, in addition to our A/C not working upstairs and our hot water tank going out (nothing like ice-cold showers to wake you up in the morning!), we need to figure out what this plumbing issue is.

The good news? This house has given us lots of opportunities to learn patience, flexibility, and adaptability. Plus, there’s rarely a dull moment around here or a few weeks that go by where we don’t have some kind of repairmen in our home working on some new problem. 😉

How was YOUR day yesterday? Tell us about it in the comments.