To start off, this is *not* a sponsored post. This is a program that I use many times a day that I’ve had great results with.

It’s called Swagbucks. It’s a search engine that rewards you for using it. You can easily download a toolbar to make it even more convenient to use. Then every few searches, you’ll be rewarded with swagbucks (usually 1-3). The swagbucks build up and you can trade them in for gift cards or other prizes.

I’ve only been using it for a few weeks and I already have 87 swagbucks. It only takes 45 to get a $5 Amazon gift card, so I have almost enough for $10 in gift cards. You can get gift cards for other places, too, of course…Target, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and Victoria’s Secret to name a few.

You can also make extra swagbucks by referring friends. Whenever your friends earn swagbucks, you earn the same number they do, up to 100. If you sign up, please go through the links in this post!

It’s so easy and you don’t have to do anything that you wouldn’t normally be doing. I highly recommend swagbucks as a way to make a little extra spending money!

ETA: Right after I published this post, I used the swagbucks toolbar to go to another site and earned 3 swagbucks, giving me exactly enough for my $10 worth of Amazon gift cards! See how easy it is? It’s almost sinful that you get “paid” for doing something this easy!

Posted: March 10th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 5

We just finished Day 11 and will be reading Day 12 tonight. I’ll admit there have been a couple of days where I just want to say, “This was a dumb idea I had. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Not really because of anything the book wanted us to do, but because of how overwhelmed I feel reading about things that I should be doing better. But we’re still plugging along day by day.

Sometimes I think the author ran out of ideas for some of the days because it seems like the “Do something nice for your spouse today” theme runs through a lot of the chapters. Just an observation…it’s not a bad thing or anything. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say and I didn’t think the post was long enough yet.

We’d love to hear what all of you think of the book so far!

Posted: March 9th, 2009 under The Love Dare.
Comments: 2

I definitely needed that weekend blogging break! I had a lot of things I needed to get done without pressuring myself to get blog posts up. I think I might need to make that a weekly thing. It gets the week off to a great start when I can use the Sunday naptime to get all of the Aire-Master stuff done for the week!

I started Kelvin on solids this weekend. I’ve been considering it for awhile and I knew he was very close to being ready, but he was definitely ready on Friday night! He’d been nursing like crazy for the past few days and at bedtime he wouldn’t settle down because he kept waking up to nurse every 5 minutes (literally). So I took him downstairs and gave him his very first bowl of rice cereal! The first picture was taken as he took his first bite and the other two were taken when he was almost done. It’s so cute watching him eat meals with the rest of us now…that’s what he’s been wanting for a couple of months now! For right now, I just feed him cereal for breakfast and dinner and he nurses the rest of the time.

Kelvin also began sitting on his own this weekend! He’s been able to sit leaning forward a little bit, but this weekend he started sitting straight up on his own. Of course, he can only do it for 10-15 seconds, but that will change as he gets stronger.

Today Chad is staying home from work so that we can get our cars fixed. We had mine done this morning (just an oil change and checking a tire) and we left Chad’s there (I’m not even sure what needs to be done on his). After we had mine done, we did the grocery shopping and ended up getting home WELL after the kids should have been down for their naps. They’re both sleeping still (3:00), which does not bode well for tonight! Maybe I’ll still be able to get them in bed on time as long as they don’t peek at a Chanel watch! LOL

P.S. I was going to get a Love Dare post up right now, but Ava just woke up, so I’ll have to do that tonight.

Posted: March 9th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 6

The good weather continues today!! Even though it’s not as warm (only 71*), it’s still sunny and great playing-outside-weather! Yesterday Ava spent nearly every waking minute outside. We went to the zoo in the morning, came home, ate lunch and she took her nap. She went straight back outside after her nap, came in for dinner, went back outside until it was dark, took her bath and went to bed! She slept so good (and so did Kelvin, since I had him out there with her)!! We’re enjoying this awesome weather while it lasts because tomorrow it’s supposed to storm all day and then after that, it’s only supposed to be around 60 for a few days.

I think I’m going to take a break from blogging this weekend. I just need a few days where I don’t have to try to think of ideas for posts and try to find time to write them. That’s mainly for my other blogs because this one is easy to write. Hopefully I’ll be able to come back to it on Monday less stressed!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! There’s a potluck and talent show tomorrow after church, so we’re looking forward to that. We don’t really have any plans for Sunday, other than possibly grocery shopping. Now I need to go try to get Kelvin to go back to sleep so that I can try to get a few things ready for church tomorrow.

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 5

We’re having awesome weather here lately!!! It’s 81 right now and is supposed to get up to 84! Since it’s so nice out, I took the kids to the zoo this morning with the Stay-at-home Moms group I’m part of. We were all in short-sleeves and pants, but we totally could have worn shorts and been perfectly comfortable!! I was also able to take them to the park yesterday. I love being able to get the kids outside…they sleep so well!!

I was pretty disappointed because I forgot my camera when we went to the zoo today. I probably wouldn’t have had any time for snapping pictures anyway, though. I had Kelvin in the Moby Wrap and Ava in the stroller, but she kept wiggling out of the stroller and I’d have to chase her. Sigh.

I’m glad I’ve already started the kids’ summer wardrobes. I didn’t expect it to get warm so quickly, but we’re already using some of the outfits I bought! Old Navy ran a sale a few weeks ago, so I ordered some stuff for both kids from there. Then I also picked up some outfits at Walmart when we did our grocery shopping this week. Since I took pictures of the groceries for Screaming Pennies, I decided to take pictures of the clothes I got at Walmart, too. I’m also planning on taking advantage of some sales at Babies R Us and then finishing up their wardrobes at Mommy & Me. Hopefully I’ll be done before the really hot weather hits!!

P.S. Happy 5 Months, Kelvin!!

Posted: March 5th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 2

Sears FINALLY gave me access to these pictures…nearly a week later! I’m just glad I’ve got them now, though.

Posted: March 4th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 6

We’ve finally started! We watched Fireproof last Wednesday and we both really enjoyed it. We started the Love Dare the next day, so we’re on Day 5 today.

I’m not sure if the book was really intended to do together. For one of the dares, we had to buy something for each other to say that we were thinking about the other person. But since we both know that we’re doing the book, we were expecting it and just didn’t get the effect that I think we would have gotten if only one of us was doing it.

It was kind of funny yesterday. We had to call each other to ask if the other person needed anything. Well, Chad ended up staying home from work to get his van fixed, so while I was driving him back from dropping it off, he got out his phone and I assumed he was calling someone in his family. Then my phone rang and it was him, asking if I needed anything. The big goof. At least he did the dare!

Overall, we’re both enjoying the book a lot. It makes us ensure that we have time together every night to read the chapter for the next day and we end up talking about our feelings and thoughts a lot more. It also gives us ideas of things we should be doing even after we’re done with the book.

What about everyone else? What day are you on? Are you enjoying it so far?

Posted: March 3rd, 2009 under The Love Dare.
Comments: 3

Tanya tagged me for this!

The Rules:
Go to the pictures folder on your computer
Choose your 6th file
Choose your 6th picture
Tell us about it
Tag 6 more people

This is Kelvin under his play gym thing. He was starting to get just a little bit grumpy! LOL

I’m not going to tag anyone. This was kind of fun and super-easy, so if you want to participate, go ahead! Leave me a comment when you’re done so I can look at yours, too!

Posted: March 2nd, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 1

We woke up to snow yesterday!! Being from Wisconsin and not having much snow here in Kansas this year has been rough. If it’s going to be cold, I want to have snow, too!!

We decided when we got up that we wouldn’t go to church because of the snow and because I had a flat tire on top of that. Chad could pump it up, but we didn’t want to run the risk of something happening with it on a 1.5 hours drive in the snow. I was a little disappointed because I’d gotten everything ready for church already. But they ended up canceling church due to the weather, so we couldn’t have gone anyway.

By the way, still no sign of Sears pictures. I called to ask about them and they said they’d send me an email with a new session ID and password and then they’d send me an email with a survey. Well, I got the email with the survey, but not the one with the new information. I’m not happy at all. I’m going to call them first thing on Monday morning and tell them that, too.

Now I need to get off of the blog and get to work. It’s the first of the month, which means I have tons of stuff to do for Aire-Master. I also have a baby on my lap who is eating a coupon….better go get him some toys instead!

Posted: March 1st, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 4