Judah's Song - God is Powerful!

Judah has often blessed us with spontaneous songs at prayer time.  He really does have a worshipful heart.  Some of what he sings is precious and profound, and some of it is just kiddie drivel (much like our grown up songs if I'm to be honest) but it just about brings me to tears every time.  Anyway, now he's learning to write (he's in the very early stages, so what's in the picture is probably the most he's written at one time) and while Ange and I were preparing dinner tonight he announced that he was writing a song. I helped him with the spelling of "hallelujah" (which I think I got wrong anyway!).  Here's the translation:

God is our fun

He's our King

He's our Lord

For the Lord is our heart.

I love You Lord.

Hallelujah

God is powerful...

OK, so its a first draft, but the kid's 5!  Yes, I'm a real proud dad, and super-blessed by the wonderful kids that God has given me. 

Happy 4th Birthday Nathan

Last week we celebrated Nathan's 4th birthday. We had what he described as being "the best birthday party in his whole life". And it was. We played lots of fun games including a good ol' fashioned egg and spoon race - with real raw eggs! Here are a few photos from the party. Thanks again to family for the gifts you gave, and for those that we were able to get him on your behalf. He is enjoying his new clothes and a Playmobil Knights play set and just loves singing and dancing to his new Colin Buchanan cd.

The Chicago Air Show - view from Lake Michigan

Some good friends of ours Bonnie and Reid Bristow invited us out on their sailing boat to watch the Chicago Air Show. Apart from the sea sickness, we had a wonderful day and some spectacular views of jets and planes that soared above us. Reid a commercial pilot, who once served in the air-force, was able to tell us about each aircraft as it flew by, and tell us what it is like to fly many of them. Here are a few shots from the day. Unfortunately, it was a rather hazy (foggy) day, so none of the shots were particularly good of the city.

My Frugal Adventures

A friend of ours recently got us into game of "coupon clipping". To explain what I mean by this; manufacturers will often advertise with coupons, offering a discount to encourage shoppers to purchase their products. So the game, is then to cut out coupons from the newspaper or print them from the internet and work them in such a way that you leverage an already good retail promotion, by working them both together. I've only been doing it for a week or so now, and here are today's purchases.

At Target, we spent $10.41 for all of the the products pictured below!

Here's how it all worked:

Target was running a store promotion where if you bought 4 Special K items, that you would get a $5 gift card. We also had two "Save $1 off 1 box of cereal" coupons and one "buy 2, get $1 off" cereal bars coupons, so the net result was

2 boxes of Special K Blueberry Cereal for $2.78

2 boxes of Special K breakfast bars for $3.78

Total: $6.56 

With the $5 gift card, we put it towards our ice-cream bargain extravaganza:

Target had a promotion where by if you bought 5 Edy's (aka Dreyer's) ice-cream tubs or Frozen fruit bars, you would get yes, another $5 Target gift card. To add to this, we also had five "$1 off" coupons for these products that are usually $3.99 but were on sale for $2.50.

It worked out as follows:

4 tubs of premium ice-cream @ $1.50 each

1 box of all natural frozen fruit bars @ $1.50

Total: $7.50, less the $5 gift card from the Special K promo =  net total of $2.50!!!!)

Then, we had a coupon for "save $4 off a participating Schick shaving product". Clayton happens to use the Schick Quattro razor (4 blades), and had been putting off buying refill blades due their expense. With this $4 off coupon, and the $5 Target gift card from the ice-cream transaction, we paid just 35 cents for a 4 pack of Titanium blades, a product that is usually $9.94!!!!

At Dominic's (aka Safeway), we bought the following for just $7.95 with $18.29 in total savings derived from manufacturer coupons and a great store promotion on cereal.

At K-Mart they were doubling coupons, so this meant that a $2 off coupon became a $4 saving! Here, the following products pictured below were purchased for just under $30. Doesn't sound quite as outrageous as my other purchases above, but actually, some of the items purchased are typically very expensive. Some highlights include: Jumbo pack of Huggies for $2.26, 3 FREE liquid hand soap pumps, and Scotch pop-up tape with dispenser for 19 cents.

Thank you LORD!!!