The New Orleans Snoball

David and I were introduced to snoballs on the day we arrived in New Orleans, exactly three years ago today.  Our landlord arranged for some people from his church to help us move in.  It was a huge blessing, since Mary was two and I was 35 weeks pregnant with Maggie. Before Jason offered to provide this service to us, we planned on hiring people to help, since I really couldn't carry anything and David certainly couldn't move everything himself!  Well, the moving truck couldn't park in front of our house (he brought down a telephone line trying to!) Instead, he had to park two blocks away.  The guys had to unload all our belongings from the moving truck into pickup trucks and drive everything over to our place and unload again!  And did I mention that New Orleans in July is like unbearably HOT?

Afterwards, some of the guys that helped us moved said that they were going out for snoballs.  We had no idea what they were talking about, so we decided to tag along!  What a wonderful introduction to a New Orleans summertime treat!  A snoball is like a cross between a snocone and an icee: shaved ice with flavored syrup that you can drink with a straw or eat with a spoon.  Even better than the snocone or icee, that have very limited flavor options, the snoball comes in just about any flavor imaginable, traditional flavors like strawberry or raspberry, richer flavors like chocolate or chocolate malt, and local flavors like king cake or hurricane!  They are sold at stands, little shacks really, which are just as prevalent as Walgreen's.  You definitely should know exactly what you want before you get to the window, though!  The snoball stand is about the only place in New Orleans where you'll find quick service and if you're too slow, they'll get upset with you!

This week, I have been on my deathbed.  Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I have been ill.  David's job and I really have a love-hate relationship.  I don't like that he has to work so much, but I love the flexibility that he has.  He was able to work from home all week, so that I could rest in between feeding the hungry boys!  Everyone took wonderful care of me.  Mary had the brilliant idea that a snoball would really help my throat feel better.  The budding thrifty shopper even showed David where I had stored a B1G1 coupon.  So, David and the girls went out to get snoballs for Mama.  Mary chose cotton candy. David and Maggie shared pink lemonade.  I had clear strawberry.  YUM!  It did help my throat feel better for a little while at least.  (I think Mary enjoyed hers, too!)

Homeschool Resources We Love - Pattern Blocks

Another resource that is well loved in the Mobley home is this set of pattern blocks.  Just like the teddy bear counters, this set came with the Saxon  K-3 manipulatives kit.  It includes 250 1 cm thick plastic shapes in six colors:

• yellow hexagon
• blue parallelogram
• green triangle
• orange square
• red trapezoid
• tan rhombus

This set is a very tangible way to teach your children their shapes. I have found it to be far more meaningful for my children to actually hold and explore a triangle with their hands than to just look at a triangle drawn on a piece of paper.  You could achieve the same effect by cutting out different shapes with construction or card stock paper (the important thing is having something tangible).  In our house, though, even the laminated pretend money for the cash register gets bent pretty easily and can be nightmarish to clean up.  These pattern blocks, on the other hand, are easy for little hands to pick up.  This is yet another manipulative that Maggie plays with while I am working with Mary on her math lesson. 

Beyond just a basic understanding of the different shapes, the Saxon Math program uses these pattern blocks to teach children patterns.  For example, you ask the child to place a stuffed animal on the floor.  Then, you make a fence out of two different pattern blocks to teach an AB pattern.  From that starting point, you can proceed to teach more complicated patterns.  Similar to with the Mighty Mind shapes you can also teach the beginnings of geometry by having children cover designs with these pattern blocks.  As children become more proficient, you can challenge them to cover a design with as few shapes as possible or to cover one design in two or three different ways.  Just exploring these on her own, Maggie has learned that she can make a hexagon with two trapezoids.  She doesn't necessarily know that a hexagon is a hexagon or a trapezoid is a trapezoid, but she is beginning to learn that two equal parts make up a whole.  (And in adorable fashion, she can identify a "parawelogwam.")  As you can see from the picture, the girls also enjoy making their own designs: faces, kitty cats, trees, houses, cookies!  I love their imagination! 

This Week's Frugal Failure

Guess what I stocked up on this week?  Rite Aid had cereal on sale for $1.88 a box, plus I had coupons which brought them down to 88 cents a box, so I bought 10 boxes! You detail people who are counting the boxes in the picture, you're right, there are only eight.  Just keep reading.  Ten boxes of cereal for under $10 after tax!  Awesome deal, don't ya think?  I thought so.  The kids were super-duper-excited because I had not bought cold cereal in a very, very, very long time (not since those Kellogg's Special K coupons in December or January). 

So, how could this possibly be a frugal failure, you ask?  In two days, David and Mooter-Tooter (a.k.a. Maggie) ate an entire box of Raisin Bran!  Yep, you read that right.  An entire box.  Two days.  My husband and a not yet three-year old!  (Mary chose to stick with raisinless Corn Flakes, so those lasted until this morning.)  Next time, I think I'll stick with our standard fare: good old fashioned oatmeal!  It only costs $1.99 for a container that feeds our family for at least two weeks (and it's probably better for us anyways).  Oh well, I guess it's good to throw some variety in the mix every once in a while!

Here she is, our Raisin Bran fan!

Picture Books We Love-Chrysanthemum

My girls love Chrysanthemum and other titles by Kevin Henkes.  Chrysanthemum is a little girl, well a mouse actually, who is super-excited to go to school for the first time.  Until she gets there, that is.  At school, Chrysanthemum's classmates (classmice?) make fun of her name.  It's too long.  It doesn't fit on a name tag.  It's the name of a flower.  Up to this time, Chrysanthemum loved her name.  You can imagine the devastation!  Her parents are able to cheer her up at home, but then every day she goes back to school and the teasing continues.  Each day, Chrysanthemum wilts more and more until the students learn that their favorite music teacher, Mrs. Twinkle, also has a long name, one that will not fit on a name tag, and is the name of a flower.  Suddenly, all the other girls want to be named after flowers, too!  Chrysanthemum BLOOMS!

Some books/characters are so treasured in our home that they are given the honor of having a stuffed animal named after them.  You guessed it. We have a Chrysanthemum.  It's actually the Think from Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Thinks You Can Think, but we have imagination around here!


We really enjoy many books by Kevin Henkes.  He has a witty writing style accompanied by humorous illustrations.  Below are a few that we have checked out of our local library, which you also may enjoy:

A Netflix-Free Existence?

After Mary was born, our evenings changed dramatically!  Homebound after 8pm, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves at first.  So, we subscribed to Netflix.  For five years now, we have been on the unlimited DVDs, one at a time plan.  Because we could only watch a little bit of a movie each night before I would conk out, it would take us several days to finish even one movie, so it didn't really seem like we were watching very much tv!  Plus, there was the break between when we would mail movies back to Netflix and when we would receive the next one. 

When Netflix started offering the streaming capabilities, we started watching more and more movies online.  Still, for the girls watching a movie was definitely a treat reserved for special occasions.  Even so, when we would watch a movie with the girls we tried to select ones that were educational (there are so many great documentaries available on Netflix)!  But, this year with a twin pregnancy, I went through several periods of different forms of bedrest, so much that I think I spent more of the pregnancy on bedrest than not.  Being able to put on a short movie for Mary and Maggie to watch was definitely beneficial for all parties concerned!  It kept them occupied and gave me a chance to put my feet up, which was good for the babies (and me)!  After Matthew and Jonathan were born, I continued to allow them to watch one video after their quiet time.  The rare occasion had become a daily routine.  We exhausted the Blues Clues library on Netflix. Thank you, Steve, my girls now think that any paw print is a clue!  We also exhausted the Dora library on Netflix, but the girls CAN count in Spanish!  So why end such a symbiotic relationship?

On July 12, we received an email that the cost for our current level of service would increase from $9.99 to $15.98, effective September 1.  YIKES, that's a 60 percent increase!  Such a big increase caused us to reconsider how much we value Netflix.  I want to encourage my children to engage in activities that require them to use their imagination and creativity, like reading, playing dress-up, making birthday cakes out of sand, coloring.  How does Netflix fit in with that goal?  We concluded not very well.  Plus, David and I each have growing "to read" piles and really want to spend more time reading.  Not having Netflix is going to encourage us to choose to read rather than watch a movie.  By canceling our Netflix subscription, am I saying movies are bad and we will never watch one again?  No, not at all.  We'll probably occasionally borrow movies from the library or use free Redbox or Blockbuster codes.  What I am saying, though, is that for our family a movie will definitely be more of a rare occasion than part of our everyday routine.

MacArthur on Perseverance

 As a recovering quitter, I was encouraged by this quote by John MacArthur in The Quest for Character:

Perseverance clearly doesn't mean that we will never fail; it means that when we do fail, we should seek the Lord's promised forgiveness, learn from our failures, and persevere anyways...[Peter] did not succumb to discouragement; he did not abandon the faith; and he did not repeat the same mistakes over and over.  He learned from each mistake and thus drew strength even from his failures.

An Extra Special Celebration

Yay for Mary!  She lost her first tooth this morning!  Ever since we read One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey, she has been eager for this moment to come.  I offered to pull the loose tooth out with pliers.  She said no.  I offered to do the string tied to a doorknob trick.  She said no to that, too.  She did what every reasonable and sensible five-year old would do.  She just waited for the tooth to be ready to come out.  (Where did she come from, really?)    So, it actually was pretty uneventful.  No pain.  No blood.  No swallowed tooth.

We are not doing the whole tooth fairy bit, but we do want to celebrate the first lost tooth for each of our children.  I asked Mary how we ought to celebrate and she asked for Xtra-Special Celebration Cake.  What a MOBLEY!  I am glad that she understands at such an early age the integral link between chocolate and celebrations!

The recipe comes from the Alpha Bakery Children's Cookbook, which was my husband's when he was a boy.  I ordered one for a birthday gift for a friend a few year's ago, but it doesn't appear that this book is in print any longer.  Wow, we have a collector's item!  The book has a recipe for every letter of the alphabet.  The recipes in this book are actually quite tasty and my kids really enjoy making them.

Xtra-Special Celebration Cake
3 c flour
2 c sugar
1/2 c cocoa
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2/3 c oil
2 t vinegar
1 t vanilla
2 c cold water

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare pans (either two round or one 9x13).
Mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
Mix oil, vinegar and vanilla.  Stir oil mixture and water into flour mixture real hard until well blended.  Immediately pour batter into pans.
Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.  Let cool 10 minutes.
Remove from pans.  Let cake cool completely.  Fill, frost and decorate cake as desired.

My Couponing Adventures Part 3

I want to follow up last week's post about collecting coupons with a few lessons that I have learned in my coupon adventures.

Always take the store's coupon policy with you.  You may be surprised, but sometimes even the managers are not aware of the store's coupon policy.  It is helpful to have their official coupon policy in case there is a dispute regarding the legitimate use of a coupon.

Recently, a clerk at Wal-Mart tried to tell me that I could not use a $1 off coupon for a product because the price of the product was less than $1.  Fortunately, I had the coupon policy with me, which clearly states that when a coupon's value exceeds the cost of the item, the difference should either be refunded to the customer or applied to remaining purchases.  I told the clerk that I knew it didn't really make sense, but it's right there on the coupon policy. 

Below are links to the coupon policies at a few stores that I frequent:

• Wal-Mart Coupon Policy
• Walgreen's Coupon Policy
• Target Coupon Policy
• Rite-Aid Coupon Policy  (You have to download it under Coupon Acceptance Policy)

Remember not all stores accept internet coupons, nor are they required to do so.  Any store may refuse to accept your internet coupon!  Try not get into an argument with the clerk or the manager (unless the coupon policy says that they will accept internet coupons).  Trust me, I know from experience, it's fruitless!  Either politely ask the clerk to remove the item from your order or purchase the item without the coupon.  Make a mental note that xxxx store does not accept internet coupons and save your internet coupon purchases for another store.  For my NOLA friends, the K-Mart on Vets does not accept internet coupons.  I think it's kind of ridiculous, since they post them on their website, but I digress! Rouse's also does not accept internet coupons, but at least they don't post them on their website!

A few points of coupon etiquette:

• Do not photocopy coupons.  This is illegal.
• Do not use coupons past their expiration date. The scanners won't allow you to do this anyways.
• Only use coupons for products authorized on the coupon.
• I know this is going to be controversial, but I would not key in a different zip code in order to find a coupon on a website, such as at coupons.com.  It seems to me that, if a manufacturer restricts a coupon by zip code, it is really only intended for those living in that zip code.  The way I see it, typing in a random zip code to get a coupon is dishonest.

 And one final lesson I have learned is that it's ok to completely let go of couponing from time to time.  Sometimes there are more important things going on in our lives than saving $xx off our grocery budget.  When our twin boys were born, I didn't pay attention to coupons or sales ads or even blogs for a month or so and we still survived.  So, just remember to keep coupons and sales and stockpiles all in perspective!

Nana and Papa's Visit

We recently had Nana and Papa come visit all the way from Redding, CA!  I had a vacation without leaving my own house: I got to go to Wal-Mart all by myself, took a few naps and read a lot!  Here are a few highlights of their time with their four grandchildren and two grandkitties!

Mary and Maggie coloring a car picture that Nana received as a gift from one of her students.

Nana made the girls cinnamon toast.  What a special treat!

Nana and Papa took Mary and Maggie on a cable car ride.  They left from City Park and rode down to the French Quarter and then returned home.  Poor Mary got some grease on her face from the cable car!

Maggie liked the cable car ride!

Nana and Papa brought some books for Matthew and Jonathan from their recent travels to the British Isles.  Mary is reading Paddington to Matthew.

Nana and Papa are reading to Matthew and Jonathan.  And don't miss the cute matching outfits.  Guess who brought those?

Nana and Papa went to watch Mary's swimming lessons.

This is Mary in the pretty new dress from Nana and Papa.  She made herself very dizzy spinning in this dress!

Nana and Papa also brought each of the girls pretty plaid hairbands from Scotland.  Here, they are actually timing Mary running laps inside the house.  And, yes, she is wearing her brand new dress!!!

This is Maggie in her pretty new dress from Nana and Papa.  Nana brought her new Nook along and let the girls play some games on it.  The girls loved it.

Nana tried out some fancy braids on Mary's hair.  Very pretty!

Nana taught Mary how to braid yarn.  They made thin braids and thick braids.  Mary is setting up a store.  Thin braids are 25 cents and thick braids are 26 cents.  If you'd like to place an order, let me know!

Here's Papa with Jonathan in his new shirt!

And here's Nana carrying Matthew is his new shirt!

Here's a picture of Maggie enjoying the extra hands to push her on the glider!

This is a picture of Mary eating chocolate pudding cake.  Yes, I really do believe that chocolate should be a part of every celebration!

Maggie had so much fun that she fell asleep standing up!!!!

Picture Books We Love-Frances Books

You may have already picked up on this, but we LOVE to read!  Every week, I plan to highlight a book or author that is treasured at our home.  This week, I want to introduce you to the beloved Frances books.

Frances is a little badger with a big imagination!  These stories, written by Russell Hoban, were originally published in the 1960s.  My girls love the rhymes and songs that Frances invents.  Our three favorites are:
 
This is a bedtime story that I think we can all relate to as parents.  In this story, Frances has trouble going to sleep.  She needs a drink.  She needs a piggyback ride.  She needs her teddy bear.  She needs her doll. She needs a kiss.  Once in bed, she imagines a tiger in her room.  She imagines a giant in her room.  She imagines something scary behind the curtains.  Finally, Father tells Frances that she will have to have a spanking if she does not go back to sleep.  (Yes, I myself can see that this book will soon be outlawed!)  Eventually, she goes to sleep and does not get out of bed until Mother calls her for breakfast.


In this story, Frances is disappointed with the state of affairs at home after the arrival of her baby sister, Gloria.  Her blue dress is not ready.  There are no raisins for the oatmeal.  Things are just falling apart in the badger family!  Before she leaves for school, she decides she will run away after dinner.  She packs her knapsack with all the necessities for being on her own and ventures out...under the dining room table!  Before long she telephones Mother and Father and returns "home" to her family, which is celebrated with chocolate cake!


We recently acquired this book as Maggie's reward for the Pottery Barn Kids' Summer Reading Challenge.  Having one eater on the picky side, I appreciate the message of this book to young children!  In this story, Frances refuses to eat anything but bread and jam.  Ingeniously, Mother feeds Frances just that!  Bread and jam for breakfast.  Bread and jam for lunch.  Bread and jam for snack.  Bread and jam for dinner.  Frances becomes FULL OF JAM and concludes that eating different kinds of foods is nice after all!

Don't miss these other Frances books, too:

MacArthur on Sanctification

I came across this quote in The Quest for Character by John MacArthur.  He is discussing 2 Peter 1:5-8.

There is no shortcut to Christlike character.  If virtue could be instantly ours through some sort of passive, instantaneous, supernatural faith experience, Peter would have urged us to seek that experience.  He doesn't.  He commands diligence and describes a process of gradual sanctification whereby we are increasingly conformed to the image of Christ as we exercise diligence in the cultivation of personal virtues.

That's the way the Christian life is supposed to be, as we are gradually changed 'from glory to glory' (2 Corinthians 3:18).  Don't be frustrated with the process.  Embrace it and be diligent to see it through to the end.

I really like this quote because often I wish I could just be instantly transformed to be like Christ, but that is not the reality we see in the Bible.  The reality is that this side of heaven is a continual process of growing in holiness. 

My Next Frugal Adventure--A Clothesline

Once I remember a mom of five telling me that she did a load of laundry every day.  At the time, I didn't have any children and I was horrified!  I couldn't imagine having that much laundry to do.  Well, guess what?  I am now that woman!   I don't even have five kids and I am that woman!  Having one big laundry day is inconceivable for me in this season of life, so I try to do one load per day (Monday through Thursday).  Since we use cloth diapers, I also have diapers to wash every day and half or so.  That's a lot of drier use!  I thought we could save some money and energy by having a clothesline.  I found this clothesline at Wal-Mart for $9.  It actually turned out to be free for us, since we had a gift card from trading in our American Express points!  Plus, to avoid paying for shipping, I had it shipped to the store.  My husband put it up for me yesterday.  Clearly, I am not hanging today's dark wash out on the line because of the thunderstorms.  I admit it was not exactly a brilliant idea to install a clothesline during hurricane season in New Orleans!