well it seems like another week has come and gone, Meeka is very much into cooking and crafts these days! I try and get her something structured to do every day to help her. we've been painting halloween crafts, and I picked up some really cool animals to paint at target clearanced out :) I painted some babyfood jars orange and then put black smiles on them to make them look like jack-o-lanterns :) they turned out pretty good. I'm not done I still need to get some stringy stuff to put on top and then candles to put in them :) I noticed when I was doing them I was really happy. It's been far too long since I've actually done crafts and I forgot how much I enjoy doing them. We've also been doing a lot of baking. Now with the cold weather here it helps heat up the house, and plus I love to always have something yummy and sweet around to munch on :) so we've made brownies and cupcakes this week. I got this great recipe for these yummy halloween pudding cup things to do on Saturday!

This week I also re-listed all of our craigs list stuff, I have someone today coming over to look at the co-sleeper, hopefully it'll sell!! ON monday someone is coming over to buy the diapers, I'm still debating on whether or not to sell the swing. I absolutely love that swing!! We need to sell the camera, diaper pail, directv box, and Nixon has some other miscelaneous electric things that need to be sold that he has to take pictures of and post. Or he can take the pics and I'll post. We need to make some money for christmas!!! Last year I think we spent waay too much money. I really couldn't control myself! We got ourselves an ipad, and nixon got a game and many many other gifts, Meeka got so many I couldn't even tell you everything. This year is going to be simple, they get 1 big gifts from Santa, in their stockings they get underwear, goodies, and socks, and then a couple of little gifts from Nixon and I. Meeka's gift I think I'm going to get her the Princess collection from Target. I know that she really loves it and every time we go to the store she stares at it and wants it. There is a coupon for $5 off so I'll have to talk to Nixon. For Niko I still don't really know. I did get him this hotwheels race track for really cheap, but I think I might get him a cool dump truck or something like that. and then maybe some other little things. Both kids are good for clothes and winter gear so I'm very lucky there, we might need to buy Meeka some snow boots, she has nice boots for winter, but they're not snow boots. We'll see what winter has in store for us this year. Last year we set a record for how much snow we had, it was crazy how often Nixon was shoveling the drive way. and ABSURD!!! I participated in a fieldworks study this week also (trying to make some extra $$) it was boring, and a little upseting the government is maybe thinking of doing a tax this april a 1 time tax to make better equipment for oil wells drilled in the gulf of mexico, our tax would be $750. That is too much for our family to do. especially with me not working anymore it would hurt us a lot. I was going to try to get out of debt this year not get into debt!! and we can't take out another extention for our taxes because we already have one, so we would have to pay it in full this year. which would really hurt us. Nixon was talking though and most likely he will be working Saturdays at least until the end of this year, so 2 more months, until the new guy is completely trained in, which is great because it is a lot of extra money for us a month and it helps me not feel so stressed out about everything!! plus it will help come christmas time. Then in the beginning of the year he should have a review and get a raise which will help out too!! HOpefully this year he'll get a really good one, he's learned a lot and has been doing extrememly well in machining. Anyway Meeka monster is getting antsy to decorate the cupcakes.