The Sensible Mom

Works for Me Wednesday: Family Day

October 25, 2011 by Sandra 1 Comment

I had long desired to implement a “Family Night” in our family, and this year, we finally did it. We started out by having our Family Night on Fridays. It usually consisted of some sort of game or movie and maybe a snack. Then around once a month our Family Night would move outside of the house for a fun family outing.

And now our “Family Night” has evolved to a “Family Day”. This is mainly because there are so many budget friendly things to do in our area that I thought making it Family Day would better fit our family in this season of life (It may move back to nights at home after I have baby number 5 in December!). Plus, on Family Nights, sometimes the games we’d play or movies we’d watch would be a good idea for the older kids, but not so much for our 4yr. old and 2yr. old.

On one of our most recent Family Days, we got to build a scarecrow together. It was a lot of fun. Just take a look.

Laugh if you must at our scarecrow. 🙂 I did. This was actually the first time we’ve ever built a scarecrow together as a family. But, I think, overall….he didn’t turn out too bad.

Then again, I think we did go a little overboard in the hip area. You think?

Anyway, Family Day works for us! 🙂

For more WFMW tips and ideas, please visit We are THAT Family.

Tackle It Tuesday: The Kitchen Pantry

October 24, 2011 by Sandra 1 Comment

Oh, the shame. It’s been way too long since I’ve “tackled” our kitchen pantry and as a result, it became quite the disorganized mess. Just take a look….

This is what happens when six people use the pantry and no one organizes it for months. Terrible, I know.

And so in an effort to knock some things off of my to-do list for the week, I decided to clean to the pantry tonight. Just me and the two kids who wanted to help by FIRST opening and then throwing away the items in the pantry that were expired. At least, they were opening and throwing things almost directly into the garbage can.

Anyway, before I show you the AFTER picture of the pantry, I thought I’d share a few things that I found while cleaning:

1. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of boxes of plastic sandwich bags that I found. You can never had too many of those.

2. I found expired food from June 2010. That was right before I found expired yeast from February 2010.

3. I finally decided to take a closer look at our spices, and I found at least 6-7 that were expired…some from 2009. Yikes.

And now for the AFTER picture:

Much better.

To see what others are tackling this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom!

10 Goals to tackle this Week

October 23, 2011 by Sandra 1 Comment

I’ve been inspired the past few months by how Crystal of Money Saving Mom.com has been sharing her weekly goals including whether or not she accomplished the previous week’s goals. I mean what a great idea to write out goals for the upcoming week and then strive to accomplish those goals to be a more productive wife and mom instead of just carrying a to-do list around in your head?

Here are my goals for the week:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Come up with a family activity for us to do for our Family Day on Friday. (Last week, I got a great deal on a pizza/pop/games package at a local pizza & fun center in our area. Not sure if I can top that this week!)

2. Bake with Isaac and David on separate occasions for their “cooking day” with me.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk for 25 minutes every day this week. Walking really helps with my back pain – especially if I do it in the morning.

4. Finish reading One Thousand Gifts by Anne Voskamp and read 4 Chapters from Illustrator CS4 for Dummies (I have to read this book in a bit more slowly than normal because a lot of it is hands-on working with the actual Adobe Illustrator program).

5. Wake up by 7:30am every morning. (I can’t wait to go back to my 5:30am routine after the baby is born. Right now, though, I just don’t have it in me to get up that early. The ambition and strength to get up that early left about 1 month after I found out I was pregnant, and it hasn’t returned! :-))

Home Management Goals:

6. Go through the piles of old children’s clothing in the garage and figure out what I’m going to sell, donate, and keep.

7. Organize the pantry and remove any expired items.

Business Goals:

8. Get business cards made!

9. Send emails.

10. Spend 15 minutes each day improving one thing on my blog design website, Purely Sensible Design.

What are your goals for the week?

Pregnancy Update: 31 weeks

October 23, 2011 by Sandra 1 Comment

I’m just a bit over 31 weeks pregnant at the moment, and I have just under 8 weeks to go before we deliver this baby. Time sure does fly. Here’s what been going on with me and this little baby girl the past few weeks:

:: I had another ultrasound last Wednesday to check on the baby and everything looked good! There was some concern about a small problem with her kidneys early on, but now everything looks “normal” according to the technician. Praise the Lord!

:: The bad news is that being flat on my back for about 45 minutes for the ultrasound totally bothered my back ALL OVER AGAIN. The back pain has never left me, BUT it was getting more and more manageable as the days progressed from my last update to you a few weeks ago. Immediately after I got up from the ultrasound bed, my back started acting up again and by Thursday, it was very painful once again. I’m having quite a bit of pain and discomfort going from a sitting to a standing position today, but hopefully things will get better in the next 4-5 days as they did the last time around.

:: The baby is measured to be 3lbs. 6oz. at this point and is said to be in the 40th percentile.

:: I am seriously lacking motivation to cook anything that requires much effort the last few days, so Ruben has been helping out more often with meals. I write out our weekly menus either Saturday or Sunday, and this week is all about simple, quick, and easy meals.

:: I see my doctor on Tuesday, and after this appointment I should “graduate” to seeing her every 2 weeks instead of every 3.

:: I passed my glucose test.

:: David, our youngest, is still in denial that we are having another baby – even though he’s been to my last two ultrasounds and we talk about the baby often.

:: I’m going to spend some time this week signing up for those sweet baby offers from Similac, Enfamil, Nestle, Huggies, etc….. Signing up for these offers has always resulted in free formula (although I’ll breastfeed, I can always donate or give this away), formula checks (which I can sell on ebay), and GREAT coupons! Oh, and there’s usually a free diaper bag involved, too. Can’t have too many of those! 🙂

All in all, things are going well with this pregnancy other than that pesky back pain that won’t go away.

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