Cheap and Productive...with some pictures

So Evye's looking a little elfish and orphanage worthy but they'd been hard at play all day long so at least there's just cause. Other than elf girl and deer-in-the-headlight boy it's a pretty good spontaneous pic.

Keeping it fun....apparently Ivye wasn't clued in on this fact.

Tractor loving boys.

Grayson keeping everybody entertained with obnoxious skits between action figures.

His only birthday request was a cake with sprinkles. A man so entirely easy to please. Some girl is going to be very happy someday.

Lots of eager help opening up boxes and freeing toys from their confines.

Sweet sweet Ivye-girl. Little girls just don't get any cuter than this.

The children rescued this bad boy from the cat's mouth. The same cat that the boys saw fit to bathe and the very same one that kept us busy boomeranging back into the house with the bird.

Ivye's gotten old enough to make fake picture smiles. She can now successfully say "cheese" along with many other words in her broad vocabulary....and when saying cheese she does this. It's about as fake as it gets but pretty entertaining to everyone watching her.

Bibleman in his new role as tractor operator. Not sure he ever bargained for this job when he signed up for his foe defeating career. But so far he seems to be enjoying it since the only reason he ever abandons his behind the wheel status is to sword fight a few bad guys and then promptly returns to his, apparently more enjoyable, farming career.

So it is no real secret I love productivity and cheap. In fact, I love both so much that it is very hard to decide which one would rate first in my book of appreciated things in life. The only thing better is free. But since I've gotten myself into trouble with free I tend to honor city council member husband's reputation and only do free when it's legal. But cheap is the next best thing. When both productivity and cheap are accomplished in one week life just doesn't get much better than that.....the pinnacle of mastering it all. It doesn't exactly help that we are being forced to live out of the change jar due to being more than a little broke until the next pay check comes rolling in. The moral, cheap is no longer really even an option. Oh...the joys of large family living. But... bluntly stated, I'd rather be surrounded by a lively, active house filled to the brim with happy kids...most days....than sitting out in a boat on a lake with my more "affordable" 2 children. So we choose to live in a very broke fashion knowing that we have been amazingly, entirely, extravagantly blessed with these children and God has not ever once ceased to provide for each and every one He has given us....except for a few times. Alright, so not entirely true. We have learned to decipher between needs and wants....one of the major keys to success in a large family life. We may live in a 3 bedroom house and stack them like cord wood against every wall we've got and they may eat beans and rice fore every meal and be 20 pounds underweight and drool and lust over every restaurant we pass...but hey, they're pretty much happy on any given day. And that's what counts.


So, in all reality we seriously are living from a change jar til the 15th. But we have never done without and never gone lacking for anything...except for maybe a Sonic coke here or there. So, this evil Sonic craving did eventually get the best of me. As we made our egg route this past Friday the van, seemingly on it's own, drove itself to Sonic. Having dug every penny, nickel, dime and quarter out of both couches and every van seat that exists we came up with 4.00. Not bad. But in all of my eagerness...and guilt for indulging in front of my children....I ordered not just myself but Grayson and Evye one too. I figure a 2.00 coke for me and 1.00 for each of them. We could swing it. Maybe dig a few more pennies out and cover tax. And buying for 2 kids helps ease the guilt, as only 6 of them are screaming and not all 8. My enthusiasm and excitement over my coke proved to do more harm than good as Sonic personnel quoted back the order and then gave a total of 6.14. Ummmm.....what the crap, people??? I just ordered cokes..not the entire menu...and I don't HAVE 6.14. I have 4 dollars and 11 cents. Knowing the van held 4 little money loving boys that are convinced they are the richest men in the world when carrying 1 dime and 30 pennies in their pocket I quickly ordered every kid in the van to start dumping pockets. Uncoordinated little hands are not so entirely adept at rummaging through pockets maxed out with dull pocket knives, die cast cars, rocks, roly polies, dead butterflies, 1/2 eaten peanut butter sandwiches, and a few chicken feathers to reach bottom where dimes, nickels, quarters and pennies exist. Not so amused window waitress now stands by waiting...and not so patiently. At this point I could only laugh as the van grew louder and louder with "I got a penny", "HEY!!! I got a quarter!!!" and "I got 2 dimes, Mama!!" and Gavin's 2 year old, "I got 2 money's!!" since everything in his life now revolves around the number 2. 2 pennies, 2 tractors, 2 balls, 2 trains, 2 babies. So, not surprising that he had 2 "money's"..which totaled 5 pennies, no less. As little hands passed change from row to row until it reached its destination of the front seat Sonic girl grew more and more irritable. It didn't exactly help that it was lunch hour at the only restaurant in all of town....seriously. The town..population 2,000...sports a Sonic and a Pizza Inn. So, 98% of the population chose the quick drive-in over the sit down pizza bar. This bigger little town is so forsaken that even Dairy Queen went out of business. That's pretty pathetic.


Between all of the change hiding within 2, 4 and 5 year old's pockets we did manage to come up with 6.14...boasting an entire 18 cents left over in pennies. All of that to say....cheap is critical at this point. Cheap is always critical but there are times when it is crucial and takes on a whole new depth. I refuse to buy anything full price. It's just a waste of money to me. Odds are, somebody somewhere in life wanted that same item too and it has now, somewhere along the way, lost the original appeal it used to possess and is being sold for a fraction of the retail price....or, better yet, being given away for free. So, I scavenge. I have been known to be so cheap that I will turn over printer paper and reuse the other side. I think, in a politically correct kind of way, it's known as practicing frugality.


Along the frugal lines, the children were all desperately in need of pasture boots. The hand me down boots are no longer entirely wearable due to the soles having fallen off. Not entirely what you need for snake protection. Just last weekend we managed to stumble upon 4 pair of used children's boots priced at 5.00 each. Today preacher neighbor had a moving sale. The children and I raided change saving husband's jar and came up with 2.00 to bring home a porch swing. It needs a few nails and a coat of red paint but we now have a longed for porch swing. Lover boy's and my date nights consist of grilling steaks..or when we're too broke for steaks just some oven pizzas, sweet potatoes and some rolls or something after children are sleeping soundly. We then gravitate to front porch to watch our lazy world go by, the millions of stars light up the night and the massive moon break over the horizon. Every once in awhile we'll really have some fun and find our way to the highest point of our tin roof, lay on blankets and watch stars twinkle...or even make daring shoots across the sky every once in awhile. After that gets old or the show's over we pile up in bed and watch a movie. The epitome of cheap....but also the epitome of fun and comfortable.


Bunny trails. The point....we now have a porch swing for our date nights. A 2.00 porch swing. We also acquired a 20.00 barnwood gun case, a 20.00 barnwood cabinet for Mother, a 3.00 bread machine...since my ability at bread making is so wonderfully perfected, a 200.00 archery bow and arrow professional hunting set for 10.00 that Grayson bought and paid for and some other general crap for under 2.00...all legitimate stuff, mind you. Excess....sit around and decorate shelf crap....is not really permitted around here, simply for the fact that it lasts all of about 5 minutes...10 max...before being broken. Living proof of this fact....Evye, in all of her girliness, would not leave without a miniature musical snowglobe, angel within, for .10 cents, promising wildly to keep it tucked safely within her cubby. She promptly dug the .10 cents out of her purse..about the only money she possess since she is the world's worst at saving anything and prefers to mail it to sweet best friends in North Carolina....and assured me she could pay for it. I was skeptical but eventually and relunctantly caved. No sooner had they cleared the porch before it got dropped and was shattered. Tears fell in very girly fashion. So...no clutter junk. It just gets broken, stepped on, rained on or generally demolished in some fashion. And it's just more to dust around and clutter the brain if it does manage to survive. If it looks like chaos it creates chaos in the brain...not a very conducive schooling environment, in my opinion.


The winning score.....the very desired, lusted after swingset that sits....never used....in preacher neighbor's front yard. It is a daily battle to keep the children from wandering next door and playing on the metal skeleton of a swingset. They are constantly told no...not to drive the neighbor's crazy by our orphanage like status migrating to the north about 100 feet and taking up residence on their more alluring property. The grass is always greener on the other side, of course...literally, in our case. It helps when you don't have 7 cats, 8 kids, 3 hundred pound dogs and a myriad of chickens stampeding the property. And why the children chose to fall in love with this specific swingset is beyond me. We go out and surprise them with a long since desired wooden swingset, complete with 2 story indoor fort and a slide and they choose to lust after the metal skeleton frame thing of an object that occupies the yard next door. Granted, it does have monkey bars and our's does not , but overall....it pretty much sucks. However, the children are of a very different mindset and have yearned for this thing day after day for no less than a year now. Today it was made available to us at a lovely 25.00. So with an "i.o.u." to preacher friend Brad now has the lovely job of picking it up and moving it the few feet to our backyard....as I am not so redneck yet as to consent to a swingset in our front yard. Give it time and I'm sure I'll get there. Still too much city left in me to do it quite yet though. That happens to be the most exciting news taking place right now. A new ugly swingset.


With morning sickness waning to some extent I finally found the stamina and energy to run most of this past week and tackle the playroom. Woefully neglected 600 sq ft room has weighed on the brain for months now. It goes through stages. It gets trashed and then we do a massive cleanup..then somehow somebody manages to crap it out all over again and then we clean it up all over again....and round and round we go. So with children notified in advance of the project that lay ahead I finally summoned the troops and went to work. With absent husband away spraying trucks it motivated everyone to do it thoroughly and quickly as a surprise when he finally found his way home. The next project is to rip out all glued to the cement carpet..thanks to the previous owner's redneck ways...and spray the entire floor in Vortex, accomplishing the goal of waterproofing and stainproofing it...along with making it friendly for feet, brooms, vacuums and mops alike.


So, we have managed to be not only cheap but productive this past week. I have run, I have dug through van seats for change, I have cleaned and scrubbed and organized, I have accomplished projects, I have robbed young boys of pocket change and I have successfully crossed off 1/2 of the to do list that has existed for 11 wks now. Feels pretty good.