My Ebenezer

I popped in to Office Depot on a whim today just to see if they happened to have any Christmas letter stationery on sale. Boy did they ever! I got all this stationery--totaling 550 sheets of pretty Christmas paper and 300 envelopes-- for $2.68 !!! This should last me at least 6 years. :) All their paper and envelopes were marked down to a dollar each, but the register was taking an additional 75% off of that!! The cashier called the manager over, and he basically said, "Merry Christmas! We're just trying to get rid of it." Get thee to Office Depot and see if you can find this deal! P.S. I am having serious technical difficulty with the photo above. On my computer, the pic is right side up, but every time I try to load it, it turns on its side. Weird. Maybe my next investment should be a Computer Applications class. Right, Josh?

Growing up, my Christmas mornings were filled with anticipation. I never slept in. There was the excitement of the gifts, yes, but there was also the thrill of spending time with family and sharing the special day with everyone. Somehow I thought I'd outgrow my childish eagerness and at least be able to sleep past 7am. Folks, I'm 29 years old and I think it's only getting worse. Christmas morning I woke up at 2:30, 3:30, and 5am. I could not go back to sleep after my 5am wake-up. WHY? I was just excited! Excited to make a special breakfast for my family, to watch Noah and Josh open their gifts, to spend the day remembering the best gift of all, given to us by Christ. I made a pull-apart coffee cake and an omelet for our breakfast. Despite my promises to let Josh sleep til at least 9am, I was up there shaking him awake by 8:20. I simply Could. Not. Wait. :) Thankfully he had a good spirit and humored me, and he came downstairs a few minutes later. By 9am we were reading the

To my family and friends: I diligently wrote our Christmas letter and got a Christmas picture taken in plenty of time, but for whatever reason, procrastinated on the stuffing and mailing of them. SO, if you haven't gotten our letter yet, you should receive it in the next few days. If you're the type that prefers to hold a letter in your hand, don't read this post because it will ruin the letter for you. :) If you don't get a letter from us this Christmas, and want to be on our mailing list, let me know in the comments section of this post. So here, without further ado and ON TIME for that matter, is our Christmas letter for 2009. The Christmas season has crept up on us once again. I feel as though I just wrote last year’s letter the other day! I suppose I say that every year, but I find every year that it’s more and more true. This Christmas we find ourselves rejoicing in the goodness of our Savior, who came to this earth to die in our place, and thanking Him for his un

Josh came home with a skateboard for Noah last night. Instead of saving it for Christmas, he gave it to Noah right away. Of course, Noah was ecstatic!! This is a boy who talks about skateboards All The Time, so for him to get one of his own...well....he hasn't let it out of his sight since Josh gave it to him. :) Today we just had to go to the park for a test-drive! That, and we have temps in the 70's out there, folks, so we just HAD to enjoy the beautiful day too. (I don't miss the snow one little bit!) Sorry about this video being sideways. In a momentary brain freeze, I forgot to turn it right-side-up. Just tilt your head. :)

Josh surprised me last night by coming home extra early (4pm!!) and bearing gifts; a dozen red roses and a beautiful card celebrating our anniversary. Tears came to my eyes in utter appreciation and speechlessness, especially considering we had "already" celebrated last Friday night! If you know the Rowley men at all (well, mainly my Rowley man), you will know that celebrating something one time is sufficient and, having already celebrated, would now be considered checked off the list of To Do's. Just being real, folks!..... Anyway, my point is, I wasn't expecting this and it made me SO HAPPY!!! Josh, you made my day! :)

Today Josh and I celebrate 8 years of marriage! Well, we really celebrated last Friday night, which was when our loyal babysitters, Matt and Jen, could watch Noah for us. We went out to eat at P. F. Chang's, a high-end China bistro, and then shopping and talking afterward. Josh will probably have to work late again tonight, so it's a very good thing we already celebrated or I'd probably be bummed. :) Happy 8th Anniversary, Honeybear! P.S. I hate the "wrinkly neck" thing that happens when you take your own pictures. Confession: 90% of my self-shots never make it into public viewing because I always think I look weird in them. Some people hire chauffers to drive them around--I'd hire a photographer to come with me everywhere if I could!

Josh has been working a lot of later hours lately, forcing Noah and me to find things to occupy our evenings while we wait for him to come home. Being that it gets dark so early these days, going outside usually isn't an option. Several weeks ago I bought Chutes and Ladders (and Candyland) at a yard sale for Noah, intending to save them til he was three. No go. He found them, and LOVES to play. Note, "play" is used in the loosest form possible. Noah doesn't quite understand the fundamental concepts of either game; how many spaces you can move and when, what a chute does to your game position, what a ladder does, what winning means.... You know--the details! In one sense it's bliss to play with a kid who doesn't bellow when he has to go backwards in the game. He happily puts his piece where I tell him it needs to go, even if he's just had to ride the humongous chute all the way back to the beginning (I can remember crying over such a turn when I was littl

It turned out to be a beautiful day to go to the zoo today! A friend, Erin, and I had been planning for weeks to go, and I was a little disappointed to hear the weather report for today; rainy and cold. However, the Lord gave us a fantastic day for our outing! The sun was out and it was really a perfect temperature! The gloomy weather report might have been responsible for the fact that the zoo was almost deserted. We had the place almost completely to ourselves, which can be nice. Jen came along too, and the three of us moms had a great time talking while the kids played and looked at animals. We got to ride the train Brianne and her tongue. She's very expressive with it! ;) She was trying to learn to brush the goats instead of just tap them. These goats are the perfect size! Very. Cute. The man loves gorillas, what can I say? Brianne at the beginning of the ride. Toward the end she wasn't so sure. Erin with her daughter Dinah. Noah and Dinah go way back. They wer

Boys. Never having grown up around boys, I didn't know much what to expect of little boys, but one thing is for certain: I thought their fascination with guns, loud noises, and machinery was taught to them. Not. I'm now absolutely sure it's hard-wired into them from birth. Never in all my childhood was I ever tempted to do this: Line 'em up and.... Shoot 'em down one by one. Boys. There's just not much more to say!

Noah and I made some snowflakes for our windows the other day. We figure if we're not going to have a white Christmas weather-wise, we might as well decorate the inside with snow! (By the way, as I type this it is 82 degrees outside. CrAzY!!!) Not that I'm complaining. I'm not! I vowed never to miss the snow. Sure it's pretty! Until you have to shovel it off your car every morning. I'll stick to the paper variety of snowflakes, thank you! We went over to a family's house last Friday night and took this picture of a house in the neighborhood. Funny thing is, my mom and I used to live next door to people just like this, and all we would put out was a wreath on the door. Made us feel like Scrooge a little bit. :) So even minus the snow and freezing temperatures, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, even in our flip-flops! :)

What a title! I had labeled this Odds And Ends, but that was even too interesting a title for all that I have to say this time. Sorry, but this is pretty much going to be facts and happenings of the last couple weeks, none of which is very entertaining I'm afraid. Some weeks are like that, y'know? And I wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes you need a little run-of-the-mill to keep things normal. I've been working hard on our Christmas letter, trying to get that ready to send later this week. The only thing we're lacking is a family picture to go in them. Must take care of that soon! We've been keeping busy getting ready for Christmas; baking, shopping, decorating, enjoying life as a family, and looking forward to NOT traveling this year. It will be weird not to have bags to pack and a plane to catch. We'll miss those people we would normally see, but I think we'll enjoy our first Christmas home since we've been married. Lord-willing we'll be

We got a real tree this year, and I love the smell of it! Noah and I had fun decorating it on Friday night. Noah asked what we were going to put on the tree, and I told him lots of Christmas balls. Next thing I knew, he was toting armloads of balls--footballs, golf balls, baseballs, bouncy balls--in from his playroom. Amelia Bedelia much?

I took a quick trip to Publix today, but other than that we've been staying indoors! Funny how thinned out your blood can get after living in Florida. It's rainy and COLD! I don't want to check the actual temperature in degrees, because you Northerners would probably laugh at me. So just trust me. It's COLD!! Anyway...this is supposed to be about my Couponing Run, not the weather! So, "What will six dollars buy you," you ask? (Thanks for asking!) It'll buy you this: Okay, so it was actually $6.19, but STILL!! That's 2 jars of Ragu spaghetti sauce 2 packages of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix 2 packs of yogurt, 6 containers each 2 packages of Nestle ready-to-bake cookies (which are ten times more delectable than my own homemade cookies...and they were close to free at 20 cents each!!) I LOVE COUPONING!!!

I told you yesterday we were working on trim/baseboards over at Cellar Circle. Here are some pictures of the work so far. Each step of the process has made me say, "THIS makes it feel more like home!" Trim is no exception. :) The very tricky corner from the foyer into the dining room. Matt saved the day, wouldn't you say?! Thanks, Matt! Foyer. To the left is the living room sans flooring, in the distance is the hall to the dining room and bedrooms. Hallway. Kitchen. The big empty space on the right will house the refrigerator. Living room. Same hallway pictured above. Doors add homey-ness too! 'Course, locks and handles would be nice, but one thing at a time. :)

I've let another week slip by without blogging, which is never good when it comes to rememebering the fine details. Oh well, guess you'll have to get the condensed version of this past week! Here are some photos from Thanksgiving, which you may remember we spent at Matt and Jen's house: We've gotten a fair amount of work done at Cellar over the past week; including crown moulding in the kitchen, putting the countertops in, installing the kitchen sink, painting all the trim, beginning to install the trim throughout the house, having the septic system pumped, putting up a fan, installing the master bath vanity and sink fixtures, and solving some electrical wiring glitches (why won't that light go on when I flip the switch? those kinds of things), and a lot of sweeping and organizing. We've gotten to the point in the project where we don't need a lot of the materials and tools anymore (praise the Lord all the tiling is done! I don't know if I ever need to s