Super Savings Saturday

I know I'm posting this on Sunday, but here are my great buys for this week. I did great at garage sales....here are my best finds.

This is hard to see, but these are all Gymboree, brand new with the tags. The dress and hat retails for $50, the overalls and sweater for $32 each. I also got an adidas outfit, a penelope mack outfit, several osh gosh shirts, and a not so cute cinderalla outfit that Gracie LOVED. I paid $22.00 for all of it! I couldn't believe what good deals I got! I also got a huge tub of wooden blocks that probably retail for over $50, for $7.00! Gracie and her daddy had a great time playing with the blocks yesterday. Two year olds never seem to tire of knocking down towers of blocks.

I also went to Walgreens and bought alot of the rebate items....with my $10.00 off of $40.00 coupon. I figured I spent about $9.00 out of pocket for about $60.00 worth of merchandise. I credit Moneysavingmom.com for all of my saving. This is an incredible website that will save you tons of money. I know we have saved close to a thousand dollars since I discovered the website in March! Check out this website.....it's awesome.

I also lost another 1.6 pounds for a total of 31.6. Only 6.4 pounds from my goal, and then Weight Watcher's is free!

Henderson Happenin's

Gracie's outfit for most days......

We have had a crazy, but fun week. Steven's truck is getting fixed, so I have had to drop him off and pick him up from work every day.....so we were up early running earrands, which is nice to get them over with. Monday, we checked out the gym on base and loved it! The playroom is awesome, it reminds me of a little preschool with different centers. Gracie had a blast, and Emma was well taken care of since there are only two baby spots. We only had to wait about 5 minutes for a spot in the play room to open up. The gym is incredible, all of the treadmills and elipticals have personal built in TVs, and I am meeting with a personal trainer next week.....and all for free! The child care costs $2.00 per kid, but since the gym is free, its well worth it!


We usually go to the park tues, wed, and friday and walk 3 miles. They have a great park, so while the mommies are doing crunches, pushups and lunges, Gracie gets to play. We only made it one day, because I was sick this week...but we are hoping to go more next week. Steven had duty Thursday and Friday until late so we didn't do much those days.

Gracie has been is destructive mode this week. Her favorite thing to do is empty out all of her dressers or playroom drawers. She literally did this in about 90 seconds..... I feel like all we do is pick up her messes!

Here is a cute pic of Gracie in a boutique outfit I bought for her a few weeks ago at a yardsale. I paid $10.00, which is alot for a yardsale, but it retails for $65.00. She looked pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

Here are some pics of the girls when we went shopping this week at Target. Gracie was singing at the top of her lungs in the dressing room, and Emma kept crawling under the door trying to escape. I spent 30 minutes trying on 5 items.....By the way, Emma is now wearing all of Gracie's old clothes which is great because I won't have to buy her any new clothes for the fall/winter.

Video of Gracie climbing

This is how Gracie climbs into the crib to play with/wake Emma. We are going to move the changing table when we finish painting the room.....It's a work in progress!

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great time over the long weekend. Our friends Adam and Natina Gardner from TBS came to visit from Virginia Beach where Adam is at the F-18 RAG. We were hoping to go up there, but Steven supposedly had to work, but at the last minute got canceled. We had fun just hanging out and watching football, the OSU game was showing here, which was awesome. Steven and Adam decided to do a garage project, and they built shelving for the garage, which gives us more space. It looks great!

Monday, we went to Wilmington for some family fun time and some shopping! We first had to stop by Chick-fil-a for our free chicken strips if you wear collegiate logo.

Here are some pics:








We also went to Jungle Rapids. It was a fun arcade/water park that has a super cool indoor play area. The play area is huge, and the girls had so much fun playing together. Gracie kept getting stuck in the mazes of tunnels and Steven had to go get her. We don't know why she is such a scaredy cat of slides. She cried and cried when we left, she was having such a good time. Emma loved the big ball pit. She kept sinking lower and lower until she was almost covered!






In the afternoon, we went to TJ Maxx and bought a beautiful painting for our living room. I'll post pics later.....We then ate dinner at Dockside, a seafood restaurant right on Cape Fear river. It was really good, but pricey. Every time we spend more than $50.00 on dinner, we always regret it. It's just food....we would have rather spent that money on stuff for our house. It was fun though, the girls did really good....and big news.....Gracie went on the potty three times while we were out. She usually is terrified of the big potties, but she did great! Gracie was cracking us up....she was so hungry at dinner, she kept stealing food off Steven's plate. She loved his clam chowder and corn on the cob. She ate both of his pieces.






We had such a great weekend, and some great family fun time. We are treasuring these moments because it won't be long until Steven is deployed. Will post more later....

Emma Crawling!

Emma started crawling really good last week. I'm finally putting a video on the blog. We have had a crazy couple of days. I think we are going to break down and buy a new computer. Everyday it seems something goes wrong with our gateway laptop, so I think I talked Steven into getting a Mac! Yeah! I'm really excited, especially since the exchange carries them for a great price, with no tax, and 10 coupons for free childcare. That gives us at least 5 date nights coming up! Gracie has figured out how to climb the changing table. I walked into the playroom yesterday and discovered baby powder all over Emma's crib and a footprint in a mound of baby powder on the changing table. Gracie was just playing nicely on the floor reading books with an innocent look on her face. She is getting more challenging but fun everyday. Her vocabulary is exploding with new words, she is a nonstop chatterbox! By the way, the estimate on Steven's car was $5, 250.00! Too bad it didn't get totalled and we could get a more gas efficient car. We should get reimbursed for all of our out of pocket expense, which is great! Will update more later and will add some pics of the girls!

Henderson Family Life

I've finally decided to create a blog. This is going to be such a great way for our family and friends to see into our lives. We love being a military family, and Steven thinks he has the greatest job ever. We are sad to be so far away from our family and friends in OK, but are excited about this next chapter in our life. Since my husband was commissioned in March 2004, we have lived in Virginia, Florida, California, and finally here in Jacksonville, North Carolina.


Our life has been so busy lately, but we are excited that we are finally starting to get involved in our church and OCF, and have been able to make friends! God is so good. We are loving it here, especially our new house. I have spent all week painting the girl's play room, jalepeno jelly. It sounds gross, but the room is going to be super cute once we finish decorating. This was my first experience painting by myself....and I think it turned out pretty good. I'll post pics later.

Emma has started crawling this week and follows me all over the house. I walked into her room a few minutes ago, and she was standing in her crib! I can't believe how big she is getting....almost 9 months!

We had family pictures made today at Chandler studio in Richlands. It was hard for us to get pictures with somebody other than Sunny Kersh. She's the greatest, but hopefully at Christmas she can take our pics before Steven deploys. We really liked the owners at Chandler's studio. They were super sweet and patient with our girls. Gracie was terrible, refused to smile, or she would just sit in my lap with her eyes closed. I think the dark studio reminded her of the rides at Disneyland which totally traumatized her. I think we were able to get maybe two good shots of all four of us, but we got some incredible shots of Emma. She was absolutely beautiful! The shoot was a fun, but Gracie had me stressed out. We miss Sunny.....

Steven turned 27 yesterday! He went rock climbing with his buddies, and tonight we are going out without the kids. Yeah! The best part of his birthday was finding the guy that hit his car. We are so glad that we aren't going to be out $500, and we are praying the insurance doesn't go up!

That's about it for now, I'll figure out how to post pictures and videos...and I'm hoping to keep this updated on regular basis!