Quick weigh in

Just a quick weigh in post. It's our last week for this challenge at The Sisterhood. I'm down just under 1 lb...not much, but not bad considering for the past few weeks I've had no motivation. Thankfully, I got my motivation back - I started the Couch 2 5K program on Monday. I was too out of shape to really do it completely, but today I did it because I just jogged instead of worrying about my pace. I feel great! Hopefully, this is something I can stick with. Talk to you later!

100 Posts!!!!

Wow! I was just checking out my blogger to see what's new on the blogs I follow(gotta great diaper deal if you are in need of diapers...more later) when I see that Dave's post made it our 100th post! Can you believe it?! In a way that sounds like so many, but in another way it sounds like we've hardly done any. So I have a lot of miscellaneous things to say, so if you are looking for a special post because we made it to 100, look elsewhere (just kidding - I hope you don't!). Seeing 100 posts reminded me of why we started this blog...to share our exciting news of being pregnant. I can't believe she is going to be 8 months old in a couple of days. She is growing so fast! She's 16 lbs. now...never thought we'd see the day. Of course, formula will make any baby grow, not my choice, but oh well. She scoots around and rolls back and forth. She tries to crawl, but only moves a little tiny bit. She actually prefers to stand and hold hands and walk...she might be the kind of baby that skips crawling. Thankfully, my mom had a baby gate that we can use for when she does start moving so I can keep her out in the living room area without having to chase her down the hall. Anyway, I was getting on here to post a video of her signing "more"..it's so cute. She signs "milk" and "more" now. She knows "eat" and "all done". We're going to start working on "sleep" next. Also, we're in for another busy week: getting a family picture done today, Dave has a softball game tonight, we have people coming for dinner tomorrow and possibly another softball game, Wednesday is our last time at the library program for the summer (Karissa has read enough to get 2 free books!!! She could have gotten more had I signed her up at the beginning of the summer reading program instead of halfway through it), Thursday is our 4th anniversary, Friday is scrapbooking. Hopefully we'll be getting to the beach somewhere in there too. And next week we leave to take the teens to TLC. Back to our anniversary though - I can't believe we've been married for 4 years!!! Time goes too fast. Dave asked me what I wanted to do and I decided we are too overdue for a NYC trip...it's been almost a year! So he started checking out the hotels, but then we decided since we are going for a game in August, we'd just make that an overnight. So for our actual anniversary we will probably be hanging out at the beach and going to dinner...relaxing and enjoyable. Then we'll go to NYC to celebrate later...and we splurged and are staying IN the city this time! :) (Not that I don't love going to our Hyatt in Jersey with the view of the city, but it will be cool to actually stay in the city for once.) Back to the deal I mentioned earlier - My sister showed me some money saving blogs a few months ago and Dave and I are always checking them. We've gotten printer paper and photo paper and many other things practically for free and some other things real cheap, but last Friday I scored the ultimate deal thanks to those blogs. I usually buy diapers at BJ's because they have the best prices and I can use a BJ's Luvs coupon and a manufacturer's Luvs coupon, but this month BJ's only had Pampers coupons and they are way too expensive. So, Rite Aid is having a thing when you buy $50 worth of participating products, you get a $25 gift card (Rite Aid is where we buy a lot of our toiletries because of their Single Check Rebates...our July check is up to $21 already). Huggies were listed as participating products. There is also a rebate for a free package of Huggies when you buy 5 and a $2 rebate on a mega package. SOOOO...I learned to do certain coupons and two separate transactions. I spent $37.24 out of pocket. I will get back a $25 gift card, a coupon for free diapers up to $11.49 and a $2.00 rebate. I basically got paid $1.25 to buy 2 mega packs of diapers, 3 packs of Little Swimmers, a gallon of milk, a box of Qtips...and I can't remember if there was anything else. I was SOOO excited, but I wanted to wait until my rebates got approved to get too excited. I was worried I did something wrong, but all the rebates were approved yesterday! :) Anyway, most of you are yawning now so sorry I rambled and bored you. Have a great week!

Sorry for lack of posting.

**UPDATE: Pics are in a slideshow below. Scroll over the pic to see the caption.** I have been so busy with softball that I never get on here to post anymore. Megan mentioned yesterday posting about King's Fest so I figured I would go ahead. So we were thankful to have the Pilot to take to King's Fest. There is absolutely no way we would have packed everything into the Accord. Not to mention having a beautiful girl sitting in a car seat and all her stuff packed in. Anyway, we had a pretty good drive there and Karissa was a very good girl. She didn't enjoy the traffic backed up around DC but none of us did. It took us close to 4 hours to get there. We immediately got unpacked and Megan and I put up both tents and got all of our stuff unpacked in record time. We went to the store and got groceries and enjoyed the rest of our first evening. Thursday, we went to King's Dominion and had a great time riding rides and watching Karissa ride the rides she could ride. Her favorite was the Scooby Doo ride. She was so wide eyed looking at everything as we rode through. (I will have Megan post all the pictures in another post because I am at work and don't have access to the pictures here.) We all took turns babysitting so others could ride rides and it worked out great. (Megan's mom, Cathy, went to help out with Karissa and it was great having her there.) Karissa was such a good girl and seemed to enjoy KD just like she did Cedar Point. On Friday Megan and I went into the park alone and rode rides and were disappointed because many were shut down and others didn't run all the time and we didn't get to ride much. Overall we had a great time and enjoyed all the concerts we went to and Karissa slept awesome even though we had some loud neighbors and she was very good with her mom-mom watching her. I would say our first camping trip with a baby was a big time success and we look forward to many more to come. We didn't come home saying we definitely will be back next year because the music just wasn't up to the level it usually is. They had two borderline Christian groups this year (Switchfoot and Relient K) and they brought a different type of people that weren't enjoyable to be around a lot of the time. That said, Switchfoot did a really good show and we enjoyed all the other concerts. We didn't really care for Relient K and I wouldn't go out of my way to see them again. I'm sure we will go back next year though, because of groups like David Crowder Band, Skillet, and Jeremy Camp. Our next trip will begin Monday, July 27 when we take 3 of our teens to Teen Leadership Conference in PA for a week. We are nervous about it because we aren't sure how Karissa will be and we aren't sure we want to leave her in daycare with people we don't know. Please pray everything will work out and we will get an awesome blessing out of this week. Please leave comments!! We haven't heard from many of you lately. I know it's our fault since we haven't posted much but still....

Anyone there?

Sorry it has been so long. We have been SUPER busy. We got back from Ohio and Dave's sister, Melinda, was visiting so we were busy with getting unpacked and cleaned up from our mini-vacation and then visiting with her and then went to PA for a couple of days. Then had a couple really busy days here (Sunday was church and a friend's party, Monday was laundry, packing, and a softball game, and yesterday was a couple of meetings and more packing). Whew! There are just a few pics below of the time we spent with family. This morning Karissa and I are going to our library program, then to pick up my mom, home, and then leave for King's Dominion. Even though we are thoroughly exhausted and I'm a little worried about Karissa camping, we're looking forward to this year's King's Fest. Switchfoot will be there this year so I'm looking forward to seeing them again (they've never been to King's Fest that I know of). Of course there's the usual Jeremy Camp and David Crowder Band that we always look forward to also. So...it is Wednesday...last week I didn't even post it because we were so busy and I had gained a couple pounds (gulp). I know why I did though and I won't get into that...besides Cheryl's good cooking and the ice cream. I'm down 1 lb this week, but the challenge ends in 2 weeks so there's no way I'm meeting my original goal and had to adjust. I'm going to try for 4 more lbs. before the end. We'll see. Next week, hopefully I'll be back into posting more regularly. Have a great weekend everyone!