Saturday is Stamp Out Hunger day. To contribute, simply leave your donations at your mailbox for the carrier to pick up during his or her regular rounds.  They suggest canned soup, meats and fish, vegetables, fruits and juices. Boxed cereal, pasta and rice are also welcome

This is the LARGEST food drive in the country! Want to know more? Go HERE.

Beyond the Call of Duty…

The Stamp Out Hunger food drive is a nationwide effort that provides food to local food banks and pantries that would otherwise be faced with depleted stocks during the summer months. Food banks across the country continue to experience record demand for emergency food assistance.

The nation’s 210,000 letter carriers will collect food donations left at the mailboxes of generous Americans in more than 10,000 communities and deliver them to food banks and other hunger relief organizations.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Stamp Out Hunger food drive is the nation’s largest single- day food drive, having collected more than one billion pounds of food since its inception in 1993. In 2011, generous Americans donated 70.2 million pounds of food, which marked the eighth consecutive year that at least 70 million pounds were collected.

Campbell Soup Company will kick off this year’s food drive with a pledge to donate one million pounds of food to Feeding America.

You know all those cute pictures of stuff that dogs do while you are gone??

Well, this is my dog yesterday, and it isn’t that cute when it happens to you! 🙂

We ride our bikes just about everywhere that we can. Our dog Miller always comes with us. Always. He can keep up, and  really actually go a long ways. He just LOVES it!

Anyway, we got a new puppy and he obviously can’t keep up, and never will, he will be small. The puppy Eleanor, is really cramping his style.

Yesterday we were going pretty far, and I didn’t want to leave the puppy, and we were not taking the bike trailer so I couldn’t put her in that, so I left them home. I felt bad, because the entire time we were pulling the bikes out of the garage, I would hear Miller freaking out a little that he wasn’t out in the mix. When we left, I swear he was even crying. It was really sad. I kept telling him we would be right back….

Well, when we got back, this is what we found. Apparently Miller thought he would throw a temper tantrum and let us know how he felt about being left behind!

I wanted to stop everything tonight and take a quick second to write up this post so that I can always remember the program that we went to tonight.

My daughter Storie “adopted” a friend at a senior center this year through her school. Her friend Anna, comes weekly to her school and they read together.

Storie comes home and tells me about Anna and the books they read. At Christmas she got a beautifully hand written card from Anna, in handwriting that we just don’t see anymore. It was so beautiful, and real penmanship.

Tonight was their end of the year program where we went to the senior center to meet their adopted friends and the kids had a chance to read aloud to the room.

I couldn’t help but be filled with emotion as we walked in the room to see these beautiful seniors all dressed up and eagerly waiting for their student to arrive. My heart broke as some kept looking and looking for their little friends and they were not able to make it.

Anna is 92, beautiful, smart, and loves my little girl. She shared with me so many of the funny things Storie had told her over the year about her family and the things that she likes to do. Anna told me about all the books they read together and how much it made her entire day to see Storie. She asked us to please come visit her this summer and let Storie read to her. I couldn’t say YES fast enough!

What an amazing program they have created for kids all from volunteers. I am touched by all the time and effort generous people put into volunteering, they touch all of our lives. From scouts, to educational programs and even things like the Houston Rodeo people who give their time and talents in service to others have no idea how they bless the lives of those around them.

I am so grateful for all the people who serve and for the times I have been blessed to volunteer as well. Often I have found that I was expecting to do service and found that in doing the service I was the one who was served.

I can’t wait to bring all the kids back to read to Anna this summer and for them to meet Stories adopted friend!

In case some of you were wondering or were concerned… this is my almost 3 year old at the ballpark the other night. I have not been posting as much about our family life as I used to and I kinda miss it. I am sure you don’t it is a little like watching someone’s home movies, but since I am a slacker this is really my scrapbook. 🙂

Often I wonder in posts about how this little one is going to make it to a teen. She is completely crazy, acts like she is a teenager, talks back already and is COMPLETELY fearless. I constantly worry about her.

She has 8 people who dote on her all day long, who cater to her every need and who love her to pieces. But she has never really acted like a baby or little kid. She just has too many older people to hang out with.

For example…. my post from EXACTLY a year ago today and then below that one, the follow up from the next week…

This morning while working just on the other side of the wall, I heard the glass top of the candy jar. Teasing Paul who is trying to lose weight, I say…

“Thought you were staying out of the candy?!” I teased.

“I am.” He says from a different direction.

I heard his voice from the office which is on the other side of the house. It confused me for a second and then as it does for Mom’s, it ALL COMES TOGETHER! It could have only been the 4 year old, I thought! I sprang out of my seat and ran into the kitchen expecting to bust the little guy!

As I came around the corner what I saw took my breath away!

It was the baby! Well, our baby, she is 20 months. The 4 year old was upstairs playing in his room, where I thought she was with him.

She had managed to come downstairs, pull the stool over to the counter and climb up on it without either of us hearing her. We didn’t have a TV or radio on either. I snapped a picture quick, to show her when she was a teenager to explain why she was already grounded…

As I looked closer, she had taken her baggie of goldfish and dumped them into the jar of chocolate eggs.

I guess she was making a trade! 

:: THIS IS THE POST FROM 1 WEEK LATER::

Tonight I had a coupon class about an hour away from home without traffic, with traffic at 5:30 it took me a fun 2 hours to get there. But my little sister is in town and came with me, so we had a chance to chat.

The coupon class was a lot of fun and there were some awesome ladies and the food was great! They were really nice even though I was 15 minutes late and started talking while I was still setting up! Thanks Ladies in Katy TX, you guys ROCK!

When I left home, I left the older children in charge, you know, the responsible ones. The one/s that in a very short time will be driving… Paul was at another child’s baseball practice and would be home shortly. The coupon class was a blast and we closed the place down, they actually kicked us out!

As we got into the car and I turned it on, the gas light came on. I said to my sister, “oh I guess I need gas.” I was driving my husbands car (which I NEVER drive) and was not familiar with all the controls. I quickly checked my email as we were getting ready to pull out and saw this picture below from my husband with the following caption…

Why you don’t leave kids in charge… 

As Paul walked into the house, this is what he saw.

The baby is completely naked and apparently trying to repeat her death defying feat from the other day! As any parent would do, the first thing he does is snaps a picture, saves the baby, and then yells at older children!!

THIS is an EVERYDAY thing at my house. I hope that some of you can relate!

My Sister Anna & I this weekend

This past week I was gone for 5 days at a conference for bloggers called Blissdom. I have been to this conference in the past and we decided to go again this year. At the last minute we lost our babysitter and Paul ended up staying home with the kids.

Bloggers go to conferences for many reasons. Personally I attend to connect with other bloggers, learn something from the speakers and build relationships with brands. It can be quite a sacrifice to go. Ticket costs are around $300, hotel $500, travel, food etc. I pick and choose carefully which ones I attend because it involves time away from my family and money.

I will not be attending Blissdom again. It was poorly organized and the speakers were HORRIBLE. So bad in fact, I walked out of 3 of the 6 classes I had. The speakers were unprepared (they admitted it) the content in some cases was completely different then the class description, one class was an hour long and lasted 20 minutes, there was no actual INFORMATION shared, in a few cases just a slide show about how great the speaker was…. The other bloggers were AWESOME as usual, and the brands were great! Just a heads up if you were considering attending this conference in the future.

On that note… I drove home Sunday from Dallas with Heather H. from Freebies4Mom, one of my very favorite bloggers! When I got home my sweet husband was at church with the kids and had dinner in the oven #rockstar! The house was a little trashed but kids were alive and well. 🙂

Right before I left I had gotten a package in the mail from DoggyLoot. I had ordered some nice dog treats for the dogs, much nicer then we normally get them. With free shipping I splurged a little. The package came as I was leaving and I told them to go ahead and open it.

As I was waiting for the family to get home I noticed the big dog playing with a kinda large chew toy. He LOVED it! I was so glad he was so happy and glad I had ordered it! Later after the kids were home, I saw the little dog playing with the same toy and trying to hide it from the big dog. “How cute” I thought. Then again, I noticed them from across the room each chewing on one end. THEY WERE SHARING! I was shocked!

Wow! I was even considering writing a letter to DoggyLoot telling them what a great product they had and how amazing it was with my dogs. They usually fight over toys, but they were actually sharing it. Awesome.

As the day got later I saw the little dog struggling to pull the chew toy up the stairs. I jumped up to help him as first, dogs are not allowed upstairs, and second, he looked like he might fall off the steps.

I ran halfway up the stairs and grabbed the toy from the dog. We fought over it a little… I won. 🙂 As I held it up to look at it before I shooed the dog downstairs, it had a really weird texture. I turned it over a few times and before I could catch myself I even smelled it.

Then. I. SCREAMED.

And screamed and screamed and threw the “chew toy” across the banister and down into the living room.

It wasn’t a “chew toy” it was FREAKING SQUIRREL JERKEY!! Like a REAL, once live, run over in the street, dried DEAD squirrel that my dogs had been chewing on ALL DAY in my HOUSE!

I screamed and ran, and screamed some more trying to shake the imaginary squirrel jerky off my hands as I bolted to the kitchen sink, and scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands were red. I think I was even crying.

Worse then any cockroach or spider I have had to bravely step on or scream for my husband from a chair, I had to get a dust pan and scoop up the squirrel jerky. Fighting off the dogs, I managed to get it outside and into the trash, the entire time hyperventilating and shaking.

My dogs sat dejected by the back door all night, looking longingly at the trash (more so then normal). I tried to emotionally recover and not gag from all the bleach I was using.

Miraculously, I had forgotten to tell my husband about the “incident” when he walked in the door and was telling him how much I had missed him and how good dinner smelled. As he was recounting the past few days he walked over to grab something out of the little dogs mouth she was trying to hide in the corner. He picked up it and looked at it… IT WAS THE SQUIRRELS TAIL!!!!

I don’t remember much after that.