I love owning our own home. It's feels good to make changes and decisions and not ask the landlord. We pulled all our carpet out and have nice hardwood floors in the bedrooms but the living room needed new flooring.
We paid quite a bit of money and put in a new floor. Tad did most of the work and I am so happy with the results. We still need to get baseboards and maybe paint down the road. I know that is backwards but oh well. We have other ideas for our house. We are going to get rid of the front fence. Tad has been wanting to do this forever and I didn't want it but he does the mowing so I am letting him decide on this. I put up and ad and had three emails about it.
Enjoy the pictures.

I haven't ever been a fan of canned soup. It just doesn't appeal to me but if you take canned soup and spice it up it can be good. Here is a recipe for cheddar potato soup.

You will need two cans of Campbells cream of cheddar soup.
Milk
celery
potatoes
bacon or bacon bits
Chicken broth

Slice up the potatoes into bite sized chunks and slice up some celery. Cut up as much or as little as you want in your soup. Boil them together until tender.

Pour the cheddar soup in a pan and add to cans of milk. Then, heat up a cup of water and make chicken broth and then throw that in the pot of soup.

Add the potatoes and celery into the pot and cook until it's hot to your liking.

Last throw in the bacon bits but if your really crazy about bacon then you would want to fry up some bacon and throw it in the soup before the end.

This is as good as the soup you can get when you go out to eat and much better than just opening up a can. Enjoy it and remember within a few weeks or so you won't want soup because before you know it you will be bitching that it's too hot!!

Years ago, my Mom used to use this program called share. It was basically food like fruit and veggies at a lower cost. I searched for it but came up with a different program and I gave it a try. You can learn more about it here. Saturday morning, I will pick up the food and I will try to blog about it at a later date to let you all know if it's was a good idea for us.

I am hoping this will help us save money and shop less. I hate grocery shopping everyday. Also, hoping it will increase our fruit and veggies in our diet.

We went to go look at flooring for our living room. Saturday, we are going to look again at two other places and make a decision on what to buy and go ahead and bring it home. I love the cherry look!!! We are going to put it in ourselves to save money. I can't wait. I love owning our own home.

I love that Tyler has actually started to enjoy to read a good book. One of his favorite books is Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. He loved it so much that he wanted me to borrow it from the library so that I could read it.
Yesterday, he told me that I will love the book so much that they will have to pry the book out of my hands. I thought that was so cute!! I love that Tyler is more likely to curl up with a good book than sit and play video games. Also, it's so much easier to feed the need to read than feed the need to play games. So, that makes me very happy.

Yesterday, Tad was petting Ann and said do you ever regret not letting her have puppies? Just look at her face they would have been cute. I said, yea a little but we did the right thing not letting her be a Mommy. He then said, that we could have made some money because there are fools like me that would pay good money for such a face. I thought that was funny. Got to love him.

Have you heard of the no child left behind act? Well, I have but I am not even sure what that really means. Shouldn't some children if they are just having a hard time with the subjects be held back to catch up? We live in a society with all kids of different levels of people. We all can't be a brain surgeon. However, if you borrow me your MD books and some tools, I will be glad to work on the brain of whoever wants a little surgery.
So, Tyler has been doing some tutoring to prepare for the ISAT tests. Do I really care about tests? Teach them not test them all the time.
Well, I get some helpful information on how to make sure that the child gets enough sleep and eats a good breakfast to prepare for the tests.
It basically says that the ISAT tests to to make teachers accountable for their students learning? How are we making them accountable if we don't hold any students back? If the teacher is being forced to pass a student when they are not ready I don't see how they are really being allowed to be looking into the best interest of the child.

I am very tired of all this snow. I just want winter to be over with. I want to be able to go on walks and not freeze. I am ready for spring and to be able to plant flowers and a garden. I want to be able to take Amiah to the park and play. I would love to push her on a baby swing or play on a blanket in the grass or go for long walks when I can come across a deal on a stroller so I can push her without getting a backache. I can just imagine she will be walking and walking around. It's so cute when they first start walking because they wobble like those wobble toys.

On Sunday, my sons met their sister for the first time. It was just amazing to be able to see her and see her with my sons. Adoption affects so many people and it's weird how some people would have zero desires in meeting a brother or sister out there and others do desire to meet them.
Every time, I see my daughter, I can't over how darn cute she is. I hope my sons are able to build a relationship with her. It may never be the same as it would have been if I raised my daughter but hey it's something.
If your friends with me on facebook then you can see the pictures from Sunday.

Does my dog look innocent? Well, she isn't. She is a bad dog! haha. Every night, I bring out two blankets to crash on the couch. One of my blankets is thin and the other is thick. When I wake up to go to the bedroom, my dog is on the floor next to me and guess what? She is laying on my thick blanket? I think she waits until I am sleeping and then steals it from me! That is a naughty dog that steals from her Mommy! I wonder what her punishment should be?