Randomly Rambling and Bargainy Bloginess!

I'm soooo behind. I never even blogged about the holidays, ha! Well, all in all we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas, spent with family. We enjoyed Christmas at home this year (we alternate between Christmas here in OK with my family and Christmas in MO with Mike's family). This year my parents came to our house and spent the day, we had a lovely Christmas dinner, relaxed, played games (on the new Wii, ha!) and Mom and I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas night. She and I used to go to the movies on Christmas or New Years night when I was a teenager and we hadn't gone in years. I really enjoyed it.

News Years Eve weekend was a ton of fun, my mom and brothers secretly plotted crashing the big party at Stan and Nan's (my in-laws) and invited the kids and I along. So we showed up and surprised everyone. It was a blast!

Isaac, Nan and Mom. We were playing "Imaginiff". It was fun!



Oh, here's our new calf. She's demented, but cute. Here she is actually at the front of the pasture instead of running up and down the fenceline at the creek from sunup 'til sundown.



Isaac cooking dinner last week. Southwest Chicken Soup. Mmm! He's been helping me cook ever since. He even mixed up my birthday cake this year!


We've even had a ton of cousin fun since my Sis-in-law and nephew have been in town. Here are all the monkey babies.

Yesterday was such a nice day and Mike was off work, so we decided to get out and about. We drove over to Talequah and stopped at Lake Tenkiller and let the kids play. The lake was beautiful, even in the dead of January.

He was a little nervous on the bridge to the dock

Such a sweet pic

Isabel and her daddy

Mommy and Izzy

Our sweet, precious little mack truck :-D

After the lake, we decided to drive 20 miles more over to Muskogee and hit the mall and go out to eat. Isaac spotted the indoor blacklight mini-golf course. We took the kids in to play and the older lady running the desk insisted on letting the kids play for free. Mike and I offered to pay to play along with them, but she would have none of it. It was so sweet and generous of her. Isaac and Izzy had a blast. Isaac looks like a ghost in this pic! He loved counting the holes, from one all the way to 18. For anyone who doesn't know Isaac, he's obsessed with letters and numbers.

Cool aquarium at the mall! Awesome!

Oh, and I am obsessed with the Twilight series. Only one more to go. Just thought you'd like to know while I was thinking of it.

I found some awesome bargains this week! I.am.a.die.hard.bargain.hunter. I refuse to pay full price for anything. If there is a bargain to be found, I will find it. I had some birthday money (I love that my birthday falls with the BEST clearance sales of the year, HA!) so I was so happy to find my little items at the mall. Everything in the pic was $3-$4 each, with the exception of the cute pants. They were $6.25 ;-D Is it tacky for me to tell how much I pay for my clothes? Probably. Do I care? No. I love finding a good bargain. It gives me the warm fuzzies (as my mom says)

More bargainy fun! I L.O.V.E. surplus stores. One of my fav places to go is OOPS in Tontitown. I love all the home decor stuff and the food section. They actually have a great health food/organic selection, dirt cheap. So I got quite a stash last Saturday!! Then, as we were running errands today we decided to stop at the little surplus place that opened up here in town. I was so excited! Here in our dinky little podunk town, I found all this stuff!!! Organic stuff, people. Whole grain stuff. Yummy stuff.

Today is inaguration day and I've been mindful and prayerful of our nation. It doesn't matter which way we voted, we have a responsibility as believers to pray for our nation and our leaders. Romans 13:1 reminds us:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.

I'm so thankful that we have a God who is in control.

I'll admit that I didn't spend anywhere near enough time praying for President Bush over the past eight years. I'm determined to set aside some time each week to pray specifically for our government.

Hmm . . . . I guess that's all I'm thinking of today. Could I be more random?