Takin' on Michaelangelo...

Jack came home from daycare Tuesday with his first art project!! He fingerpainted and the teacher drew "legs" on it and called it a bug! It got a little cruppled along the way, but I think that only adds Jack's special touch. I love Jack's daycare! He goes outside once or twice a day and goes to the indoor playground once or twice a day. They also do crafts and games and music!

Today I walked up to the room and Jack was lying on the floor in the corner all by himself. His face was very red, so I figured he had been crying. The teacher said "Oh no! He has been outside playing and he played so hard he needed to lie down!" HA!

Pooh Bear

When I was pregnant with Jack, Mrs. DeDe gave me a precious gift - a Winnie the Pooh that Clint loved when he was young. Clint's name is even written across Pooh's bottom with a magic marker. Jack has not shown much interest in stuffed animals until very recently. Clint started giving Jack the Pooh bear every night when he lay him down to sleep. Tonight I snuck into Jack's room after he fell asleep to put away some toys, and this is what I found....

Water Baby

I went over to Uncle Bill and Aunt Budda's house for supper tonight. Clint has been out of town working for the past couple of weeks and the walls in this little apartment were starting to close in on me! I'm so thankful that I have family here in town who are also wonderful friends.

Uncle Bill and Jack are great buddies. They both love to be outside and play! Uncle Bill has always been special to me and it's such a blessing to see him share a fun relationship with my son. Tonight after supper they went outside to play with the water hose and Alice' captured this great picture. Enjoy!

Bonus Buy!!

I don't know about everyone else, but keeping the grocery bill down is the biggest budget struggle in our family! On the nightly news back in the spring, I saw a story about The Grocery Game. This wonderful lady takes all the work out of coupon shopping! All you do is clip coupons from the paper on Sundays and file them away. She pairs the store sale items with the coupon to get you a rock-bottom price! I've gotten our grocery bill down to about $100 a week (which includes toiletries, diapers, cleaning products, etc). It's lots of fun and I always get a thrill when the cashier says "You saved 20% with your Kroger card today!"

Still don't believe me? I got two 100 oz. bottles of Tide liquid laundry detergent for 8.99 a piece! That (hopefully) should get us through 12 weeks of laundry! Also, I got ribs for $1.74 a pound - ribs for four people were only 6.73. Two weeks ago I got 116 diapers for $13.80!!

I also got a beautiful bunch of gladiolus for $2.50!

Well, for any of you who are interested, the website is:

www.thegrocerygame.com

Night, Night Jack!

Clint put Jack down the other night while I went to the grocery store. They made me a video of Jack saying his favorite words. Precious!!
Jack now says:
Puppy (his favorite)
Bye Bye
Bird (and he always points up when he says it!)
Wa (for water)
Thank You
Amen
Hey!
Eat (when he's hungry he goes to the pantry door and says "eat eat")

We have really enjoyed teaching him new words and seeing him figure out what they mean!

Duck for Cover!!

Jack and I are soaking up the last bits of summer!! Next week I am starting full-time and starting Jack in daycare full-time. I don't have to start until Aug 6th, but I feel overwhelmed with all the planning I need to do and it's hard to get anything done with Jack running around :) So, this week we are doing everything fun we can find in Alexandria!! Monday Laura and Bob came up for the day. Laura gave me a fabulous new haircut and Bob was so great playing with Jack! Yesterday we went to Petsmart and looked at all the birds, fish, and kittens and then went to McDonald's for an ice cream cone and the playland.

Today on our "fun list" was to go to the Horseshoe Baptist Church parking lot. Why? They have ducks everywhere!! There's a pond that runs in front of some really nice houses and I guess the residents enjoy looking out of their homes and seeing the ducks peacefully swimming in the water.

Well, there is nothing peaceful about these ducks!! They RAN to the car to greet us because they knew we had bread. Most of the ducks were as tall as Jack and were really mean! Jack got the hang of throwing bread to them and they would all crowd around and fight over the bread. It really was hilarious.

Sorry the pictures aren't that great. Every time I let go of Jack's hand he would run to the water to try to swim with the ducks!

Fun with Daddy

Clint and Jack spent Sunday afternoon together. They had a great "Dad and Son" day! They watched a little baseball and went to the mall to the baby playland. When I came home from grocery shopping, I found that they had taken the leaves to the kitchen table and propped them up with a chair and were letting cars and trucks fly down into the fireplace! Jack thought this was SO much fun. Clint is such a great dad. Jack always has fun when Clint's around!