Adventures with the Ross Family

I find it interesting that
everyone is into “Going Green” and yet I have a million pieces of
cardstock paper in my mailbox about the candidates each day(even from
the candidates that are conservation of the earth)!   Do they really
need to send those out?  Do I read them?  Nope.  I say, if you are a
candidate that is all about the Earth, then stop wasting trees.

Jax's two top teeth finally came through!  He is so weirded out by them too.  He keeps touching them and wondering what is in his mouth.  But now he should start feeling better.  Last night he woke and wanted to be cuddle and rocked by me for an hours.  I'm tired today, but definately don't mind cuddling with him anytime of the day!

I cleaned today.  I mean a
serious clean.  I think I got every dust bunny in this house.  And I
did see some that were almost as big as Jax so that tells you the last
time I had done a cleaning like that.

Check out Jaxson in his cute little hat!  Jax and I went shopping in Bellingham on Friday and really had fun.  And we got some really great deals.  I got it for $4 at Baby Gap.  People loved his hat at church today.

Tonight we were over at a friend's house and Jax was being held and loved.  Our friend mentioned "pattycake" and Jax started clapping!  I assumed it was a fluke but when we said it later on, he started clapping again!  I had no idea he knew what Pattycake was.  It is amazing how much information he is learning each day.  I heard that you could teach babies sign language so they could communicate with you and now I totally believe it!

This morning our church had a
Ministry 301 class called, Discovering My Ministry.  The basis on this
class is discovering our unique S.H.A.P.E.  (Spirtual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiencing).
Dave, Justin, and Kurt each presented these topics to help us discover
what our gifts are and how we could use these in the different
ministries of the church.  It’s interesting to think that God gave each
one of us different gifts and no one has the same exact gifts.  When we
had time for reflections, I thought that was easy because I pretty much
knew what catergory I fell into.  But, because this class is only four
hours long, I thought it could have been longer.  We had a lot of
information given to us in a short amount of time.  I plan to go back
through the information and fill out some stuff I didn’t have time to
fill out during the class.  I highly recommend going to this class,
though.  It was interesting and fun to reflect on what God has given
you.

As you can see above, Jaxson wore himself out today.  He took a very small nap this afternoon and was set on not taking a second nap.  And as you can see, he finally caved into his second nap at 7:30pm!  How cute is this?  He fell asleep with his toys and bottle around him!

Jax is now 9 months old.  It has flown by.  It's hard to believe that I was pregnant for 9 month too.  Because that felt way longer!  Jax is now army crawling everywhere.  And he is fast.  The kitties were a bit surprised by this at first, but are now used to being the target of his destination.  He's teething again.  This time it is his top teeth and he isn't having as bad of a time as he did with the bottom ones.  He also likes to stand up and hold on to everything.  Right now, he has gotten very confident about it and has been going back and forth between the couch and ottoman.  He still says "bye bye" to everyone and waves.  He babbles all the time so I am just waiting to hear what else he has to say!

Today I woke up tired.  And to
top it off, the weather was gloomy and rainy.  I had a list of stuff to
do.  You know, mop the floors, vacuum, dust, etc.  But I decided to
just relax today and play with Jaxson.  And I even got to take a nap!
It was so nice. 
After
my rejuvinating nap, I made some garlic cheese dinner rolls from
scratch to go with our dinner tonight.  Now I am looking forward to
watching TV and relaxing tonight.
Tomorrow
I am going to work.  Yup, I said work!  But not really to work, just to
visit.  I need my former boss to fill out a form and everyone wants to
see Jaxson.  It will be nice to see everyone.

I am here now.  I had to take
an unexpected break from the internet due to Justin’s MacBook having to
go into the shop.  The battery wouldn’t charge anymore and it was
slowly draining!  Oh, and when Justin plugged it into the charger, it
started smoking.  So, when it was down in Lynnwood getting worked on,
Justin and I had to use my old desktop PC to check our emails, blogs,
facebook, etc.  It is a very slow computer and I pretty much gave up
after the second day.  But I am now happy to say that we are looking at
buying Justin a new MacBook with more memory and I can get his old
computer.  That would be great!  I think I will take my desktop out to
the field and beat it up with a bat just like what they do to the fax
machine in Office Space.  (Oh, I love that movie!)

I did an experiment this last week.
Since I have been couponing and have gotten great deals at Walgreens
and Rite Aid, I wondered if I could really save money at Walmart
anymore?  They advertise that they have the lowest price, but do they?

On
Friday, we decided to go down to Lynnwood.  Justin needed his computer
fixed at the Apple Store and I just wanted to get out of the house.  A
Super Center Walmart is about an hour away from the island, and we
would be driving right by it.  So I decided to go grocery shopping
there just to see.

I learned that
Walmart is not any cheaper than a grocery store.  Sure, items could be
a couple of cents cheaper, but as a whole, I wasn’t saving a lot of
money on any name brand grocery items.  But if you were to buy the
Walmart brand items (Great Value or Equate) you save a lot of money!  I
couldn’t believe how much groceries we got for the amount we spent.
And I haven’t noticed a difference in quality between the Walmart brand
vs the brand names. 

Our freezer,
fridge, and cabinets are full of food for the next couple of weeks.
And my grocery budget is happy.  But in the end, I won’t be making any
special trips just to head to the Walmart Super Center.  But if we end
up making day trips off the island, then I will be stopping by there
and stocking up!