Brand Name vs Generic

So this is a poll for all you mom's out there. As my clothes get dingier and my floor is harder to clean, I keep wondering if it's worth it to pay for the more expensive things in life, ie Clorox and Mr. Clean. What brands do you guys think it's worth paying full price for? I general buy store brand food, and I don't notice a big difference in that most of the time, but I'm wondering if cleaning products, especially detergent, would be worth paying full price for. So chime in, I need my clothes to last!!

Meet Me in St. Louis

It's Spring Break! and here in MO that's a WHOLE WEEK! We wanted to go to Nauvoo, but the timing just didn't work out. It's about a 7 hour drive, and we could only be gone 2-3 days, Chris has a ton of assignments to do for school and his boss needed him to work some extra hours this week as well. So we decided to do Nauvoo another time, and just take a short trip up to St. Louis. We stayed at a nice hotel, swam twice in the pool, went to the St. Louis Zoo, which is FREE! :) and went to the Gateway Arch in Downtown. We also walked down to the mighty Mississippi, Maci was quite impressed. We ate lots of yummy food, and had a great time as a family. Here's some pics of our adventure.







Maci is out the rest of this week, we're hoping to go to Silver Dollar City if the weather will cooperate. It's supposed to be rainy the rest of the week. Maci was sick 3 days last week with a really nasty virus, so she's going to have a hard time going back to school next week after so much time off! It's been fun to have her home for a while.

Life flashing before my eyes

So I got this new computer and I just transfered all my stuff from my old one. I just did my pictures, and it needs to upload them to your new iPhoto. So I'm sitting here staring at all these pictures of my life from the last 7 years. In fast forward motion, from start to finish. What a great life I have! What wonderful friends, family, husband, and kids. We've all grown up so much, not just the kids but Chris and I too. It makes me proud to look back at where we've come from to where we are now. And I love seeing all those familiar faces, sisters, best friends, grandma's and grandpa's, little babies. This is the stuff that matters, and I'm glad I have so much of it. Anyway, at 2 in the morning, this is what I'm thinking about :) Life is good.

Lion's, Tigers, and Soccer, Oh My

We had a fun week last week, BUSY! but fun. I'm trying to get caught up on my craft stuff, I think I'm finally there, but got a couple orders yesterday and have an enrichment for my ward next week. Just when I think I'm caught up! I've sent out 15 boxes in the last 6 days, not too shabby! It's really blessing our family, so I can't complain about the time. Lots of late nights, but sometimes I can't sleep anyway so might as well get some painting done, right?

So besides painting stuff, Gavy and I went to the Dickerson Park Zoo with some friends last week. We had gorgeous weather last week, in the 70s mostly! but it's plummeted back down this week back into the 30s, rgggh Spring. The Zoo was pretty good, the kids had a great time and the mom's had fun chatting. Gavin really wanted to see a lion with "big hair", but they only had mommy lions. He was kind of disappointed, but still had a fun time with his girlfriends. He's one of 2 boys in his sunbeam class, seems like all our little friends his age are girls! He keeps saying he wants a friend that's a boy :( He's already working the ladies at this young age!

Who knew Iron Man visited the zoo so often?!

Maci also had an exciting thing. On Monday she started soccer! We'd decided to take her out of dance, seemed like they were doing the same thing week after week and it was about 20 min. away, and to be in the recital was 130$???? and none of her little friends were doing the recital either because it was too expensive, so we decided to try something new. She was so excited to start practice, her coach called and let us know when it would be and she could not stop talking about it. We got her a little ball and cool tall socks, a neighbor let us borrow some shin guards. She looked so cute all dressed in her garb! She was a little nervous for her first practice but did a great job! Her coach was really great at motivating the kids and showing them how to do it right if they were a little lost, but in a very positive way. She made great improvements just during the 1hr practice. She's very excited about her first game on the 28th. I'm proud of her for trying something new and trying her best. Way to go, soccer chick!!