Just a cute pic

Found this adorable picture of my babies from a summer time trip to the zoo...I thought it was so cute that I would post it on here for all to see!






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

A whole lot a nothing.....

Emily at her cousin's birthday party tonight. Drew turned 3!!!!

Emily in her boots this morning...love this!!!!

Luke and Emily playing "sleigh rides" with an end table turned upside down...

Since we are back from "the sick", life is going better! After my last post, I ended up in the hospital for a few hours with breathing problems, and severe nausea. After I was all better, Emily came down with it and Mick got it again! It was a complete mess in my house for 2 weeks! It was the longest 2 weeks of my life!

The kids had a blast on Halloween, I will post those pics next. Emily was Minnie Mouse and Luke was Spiderman. They got tons of candy and were on sugar hi's for like 10 days! Life is back to normal here, I was back to Jazzercise this week, went to Beth Moore with my gal pals last weekend, had my mom's b-day party on Wednesday and then our nephew's party tonight. Mick and I teach Sunday school tomorrow, so that will be fun! Nothing too exciting, although we are in the midst of planning a super cool birthday party for a pretty neat 4 year old that lives here! ;0)






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

sick, sick and more sick....

Our household has been sick for 6 days now! Luke came down with a fever on Friday and since then Mick, and I have also gotten sick! Emily is the only one that seems to be unaffected by all the acky germs in our house right now. She is also the only one that was able to get a flu shot a few weeks ago...coincidence? I don't think so!

Luke was the first to get sick, fever, chills, body aches, runny nose, lack of energy and appetite....my poor little boy! He was doing better on Monday, but seemed worse again on Tuesday, so I took him to the doc this morning as he still had a slight fever. Come to find out, he has an ear infection and fluid in his other ear. Hopefully, once he gets some doses of his antibiotic in him, he will be more himself!!

Mick and I were both in a wedding on Saturday night, so we had Mick's parent come to the house to watch the sick one and his little sister. Mick performed the ceremony and I was a bridesmaid. Beautiful wedding, but we left by 7pm to come home and help our sick little guy....Mick and I both started feeling sick about 8pm Saturday night. Body aches, runny nose, exhaustion...the list goes on and on..

Sunday 3 of us are sick, little Em is still good as can be tho! Mick is starting to feel a little bit better by Sunday night, but not 100% by far.

Monday Mick stayed home from work, I was sicker than Sunday and Luke seemed better. Mick was still coughing a ton and I was just wiped out. Luke seemed much better and his temp was back down to 99.5..that is good considering the 2 previous days it was 103.3!!

Tuesday I get up and feel okay, Mick goes to work and Luke seems pretty good too, Emily was fine as well. 10:30 AM and I get sick! Oh so sick, I cant walk, I cant eat, I need help..Mick comes home from work and I sleep the rest of the day away. By last night I was feeling alot better...not sure what happened to me, I am usually the healthiest one in my family! Guess Emily wins that prize now! LOL

Wednesday (today) Luke's fever is back this morning so I take him to the doc and learn about his ear infection and fluid on the other....get antibiotics, grab lunch and now Luke and Em are asleep. I am feeling much better, but still have this cough in my chest, it hurts, but I think it is better than yesterday and as long as I do not talk too much, it doesn't seem to bother me that much! Bet Mick is happy about that! And that is why I am blogging right now, rather than talking on the phone ;0)

Hopefully we are on the mend, Mick is doing good today, I feel good, and Luke has his meds now....Emily seems fine still!





{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

my loves

Here are Mick, Luke and Em at a bonfire on Saturday night...how cute is this pic???





{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

1/2 WAY THERE...

I am so excited to announce that I am 1/2 way to my 30 before 30 goal now!! I got on the scale today and am officially down 15 lbs since I started on May 25th! It is coming off S.L.O.W.L.Y, but hey, its coming off!



{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Batman!

We practiced our Halloween costumes this morning a bit-Luke made the decision (finally!!) to be Batman! Here he is...I think I will need some of the black face paint tho for his face mask....the black eye lines pencil is not quite dark enough....

I think he had the face down! LOL And he will be in black sweats, not blue firetruck jammies! ;0)






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Tent Fun

We had fun making a tent this evening using the kitchen chairs, and spare blankets from around the house. The kids are having so much fun with it! Emily can stand up in her tent and LOVES it! Luke likes pretending to mow "his" lawn around the tent i.e. the hard wood floors.

Emily

Luke and Emily

Miss Emily

Luke with his new gun, aiming his darts into the kitchen. He loves it and did great aiming it thru the doorway!






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

My week...

We have had a rough week in our household to say the least!

Monday was good, I babysat, made some money and it was a beautiful day out!

Tuesday, started out good, I babysat again, made more $$ and was going along fine, until about noon. I started sneezing, and coughing and feeling sick, my nose was dripping none stop too (gross, I know!). By 3 pm I called Mick to reschedule something he had that night, so he could get home and help me out. I crashed in recliner at 6 and woke at 7 to move to our room and watched Biggest Loser, then crashed again until the next morning.

Wednesday, I had to cancel a play date I was having at our house, as we did not want to spread the lovely bug around town that I had. By noon on Wednesday I was feeling better and the day was going better! We had a pajama day at the house, until it was time to get Luke ready for AWANA. After we dropped Luke at AWANA, we stopped at Verizon to cancel my cell phone and drop the other one to the minimum amount of minutes for emergencies only. Earlier in the day Mick closed a credit card account for us, (we are attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and trying to get out of debt and stay out of debt) so that was exciting for us to take the first step and close the account! I dropped Mick and Emily off at home and went back to get Luke from AWANA and help out with MOPS set up for a bit. On the way home tho, Luke and I were hit by a drunk driver! The jerk sped off after he hit us too! It was 8:40 at night, so it was too dark to see him or his plates. We have a $500 deductible, so we are out that unless we find the guy! The good news, Luke and I are just fine, and the van is drivable! PTL!!! So, we will live with the damage for a but, until we get our $500 saved up and then fix it.

Thursday was good, considering all that had happened, we went to Financial Peace University that night, it was fun and educational as always.

Friday I had MOPS in the morning, but was called out about a 1/2 hour into our meeting...Emily has a fever of 100.9...oh boy...what a way to start a weekend! Lucky me.




{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Wow!

We had craft time this afternoon...now I remember why we do not do this very often...it gives me a headache looking at the mess!! But look at the concentration on Luke's face! That is totally awesome!

{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Candy Bouquet

Seriously, how cute is this??!! We made them at MOPS this morning and I am totally going to do this as the kids little party favors from now on at Birthday Parties for my babies! I love this, and it was super easy and it is actually pretty cheap to make! A lot cheaper than some of the previous gifts bags we have sent home from other parties we have thrown! What do you think?

Luke likes them!!!






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Guess who just pee-peed in the potty????!!!

THAT'S RIGHT!!! Little Miss Emily just peed on the potty for the first time!!





{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Our $42.00 shopping trip

Here is what we did on our Friday night (lucky us, huh?). We went grocery shopping and some great deals at Krogers (2 boxes of free Ziploc Bags and Bounty Paper Towels for .50 cents each!). Wish I had a coupon for the Kroger brand diapers I had to get, but oh well....I can complain too much as my total was still less that the original price of the diapers!!)

Schnucks was attacked by the Dobra clan next! We bought everything that you see at Schnucks (minus the paper towels, diapers and Ziploc bags). The veggies were .50 cents each after coupons, the 2 small deodorants were FREE!!, the waffles were a buck a box, and the mac and cheese was .76 cents a box. The cereal was all on sale and I used a bunch of different coupons, but paid no more than $1.00 a box. We LOVE cereal in the house and eat is every morning for breakfast, so this will last awhile, which is nice! I did have to pay full price for the milk, bread and Mick's deodorant tho, that alone was over $10.00! My orginal total at Schnuck's was $51.31 and after coupons it was $34.81~I LOVE COUPONS!!!!!!!






{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

AWANA

Luke started AWANA at Bethany Baptist on Wednesday night. They meet weekly on Wednesdays for about 2 hours. It is like a combination of Boy Scouts and Bible School. Luke absolutely LOVES it, and has his bible verse memorized already for next weeks class. They earn patches for their vest for memorization and attendance and a few other things. He was pretty excited when we picked him up as he was the teachers helper with the flag while the class said The Pledge on Wednesday night! It was odd dropping him off somewhere, away from family, and actually leaving the building for awhile! But he did excellent and loved every minute of it and can not wait to go back! And seriously, how cute does he look in his little uniform with his bag and all??!! Oh and check out my mad sewing skills: I had to sew on the troop # today during nap time "2312" and it only took me an hour and a 1/2 and that is with my sewing machine! Oh and he popped a button off his vest the other night, so I had to fix that too. Oh and the kicker about that troop number? I talked to a friend today and was mentioning how I sewed on his troop number, and she says: "Oh, we just iron ours on, don't they have the little sticky on the back??" Um, yea they did, but I did not know what that was! Oh well, live and learn! We are signed up to bring snacks next week to his class, talk about feeling like a "real" mom now!
So here is a picture of my little man in his uniform (the pirate patch is not part of the uniform ;0)

And- of course, this is Emily, being Emily!





{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Woo-Hoo!

I have lost my 1st 10 pounds!!!! That means I am 1/3 of the way there for my 30 before 30 goal!! The first 10 have been hard to get rid of too. I have been doing Jazzercise since May 23, so about 3 1/2 months, I go 5 times a week (except this week! oops!) It is alot harder for me to get up at 5am to be there for class, so I prefer to take the kids with me to the 8 or 9:15 class. This week we had stuff going on and I am babysitting more often, so I needed to go to the 5:30am class M,W and Friday of this week. Made it Monday, but not today! GRRR! Hopefully I will have better luck on Friday morning ;0)


{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Brown's zoo

I took the kids to a zoo today in Smithfield, IL called Brown's Oakridge Zoo. We went with a playgroup that we are involved in. While there you are able to pet the tiger and lion cubs as long as they are under 12 weeks old. The cub in the middle picture on the left is the one that the kids got to pet, play with, and feed a bottle too! It was pretty amazing! We plan on going back in the spring when they have bear cubs to play with! Can't wait!!

{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }

Sol U Mel to the rescue!!!

So far this week I have rescued 3 items and saved the day with Sol-U-Mel!

The first was on Monday morning, after Janelle and Matt's wedding. Apparently a child got ahold of the pen that was placed for people to sign a framed photo of Matt and Janelle. The picture was a beautiful, huge, black and white picture of Matt and Janelle holding hands while walking down a trail. Once the child(ren) got ahold of the pen tho, it made this beautiful picture look horrific! I was literally sick to my stomach when looking at it after the child(ren) drew all over Matt and Janelle's arms, faces, necks and legs with black ink. Janelle's mother was planning on calling the photographer to see about having them cut the picture from the border it was on and replacing it with a new picture (can you say big bucks???).

I asked them to bring the picture over and let us see what we could do with Sol-U-Mel and a few q-tips. Sure enough, the minute I applied the Sol-U-Mel covered q-tip to the picture, the ink started to fade!!! It was as if the Sol-U-Mel was sucking the ink from the photo! We were able to remove all of the ink marks! In fact, after we were done, I asked if there were any signatures they wanted removed, from people they were not too fond of! LOL (Of course they said NO!) I was at Janelle's house this afternoon and saw the picture and it looks absolutely wonderful, you can not even tell that it was covered in scribble marks at one point!

**disclaimer- I know for a 100% fact that it was not my child that scribbled on the picture*** ;0)

Learn more about healthy, environmentally safe, and awesome products like this!


Another wonderful Sol-U-Mel save.....yesterday afternoon I was sorting Luke's baby clothes for a friend to borrow and realized that all of my favorites were covered in yellow stains from when he was little pukie-Lukie! I soaked them overnight in a Sol-U-Mel mixture and sure enough today, they look brand new!

Finally- tonight for dessert I made chocolate pudding, as Luke was eating his in the living room on the beige area rug, the bowl spilled and the pudding ended up all over the rug. The dog, of course, licked up what he could (good 'ol Sarge!). And then I was left with a huge brown stain! After a few squirts of Sol-U-Mel and a few rubs with a paper towel and wash cloth, the carpet looks great and you can not tell anything was spilled there!

I LOVE SOL-U-MEL!!!

One more- sorry!! Yesterday after cleaning the baby clothes with the Sol-U-Mel, I left the squirt bottle sitting out on the table and my little monkey girl, Emily, climbed up and sprayed herself in the eyes with it. Of course, I was nervous and washed her eyes out, she seemed fine, but I wanted to be sure, so I called poison control, told them what happened and they informed me that she would be fine since there are no harsh chemicals in the cleaner! It is such a relief to not have to worry about her getting into something that is harmful to her! With my Melaleuca products, I know that my children, pets, carpet(!) and clothes(!) are safe!


{ Jessica Dobra, Independent Marketing Executive }