We are still working on figuring out the paid website and trying to finishing the Housekeeping and Organizing book.

It’s taking a lot longer than we had thought. We have had major computer problems, set backs, sickness etc.

I think we are going to put the Housekeeping book on the paid site and in e-book form before print form. That way we can get enough money together first so we don’t have to take out another loan for printing costs.

I’m not sure how much longer it will be but I just wanted to let everyone know that we are still working on it.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

I thought everyone would like to know some things about me. Just kind of a get to know you type of fun post.

After high school I went to be an exchange student to Sweeden. I spent the summer in Germany and Holland with friends and then was going to go to college in Sweden with no plans to come back to the States. My CFS relapsed so I had to come home early. I’ve also been to Switzerland, Austria and Germany when I was 14.

I LOVE Gnomes! I am sure they exist somewhere!

I have always wanted to own an herb farm. (Still hope to someday!) Gardening is my true passion!

English was my worst subject in school and I hated writing! Sometimes my spelling is so bad it takes me 10 minutes to go through words until the spell check finally knows what I’m saying!

I wanted 6 kids before I had them! Wanted 4 after the first two were born and now that #3 is here I’m sure he’s trying to kill us! LOL (He sure is cute though!)

I grew up here but I hate Kansas. The people are nice but the weather is horrible! I consider myself a missionary from Colorado. Besides, it’s too hot for me to garden here.

All my kids have J middle names and they are all named after family members.

I prefer to be called Tawra Jean or TJ but most people just call me Tawra.

Mike and I were married 6 months after we met.

I am about as Type A as they get! But….. I have learned to just “let it go” for a lot of things!

What I think should be a must read (other than the Bible) Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend.

My Mom and Dad are divorced but Dad lives in Ohio. I love him but haven’t seen in years. (yes, there are “issues” he)

I have one brother and yes, we are close. Never, wanted any sisters. That may explain that fact that I always had to be the “Queen” when playing English Royalty imaginary games with my cousins.

My favorite place on Earth. Estes Park, Colorado.

I love to bake AND eat it!

Even though I am working a Housekeeping book with mom I am “housekeeping challenged”! I have had to train myself to keep things picked up.

That’s just a few. I will post more another time.
Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

I really appreciate everyone helping me out with David’s chewing habit. I don’t think he has low iron but I got some vitamins and started giving them to him just in case. They have a small amount of iron in them and I will have him tested as soon as we get the medical coverage going. (see below)

I also found him a teething ring and he just loves it! I am pretty sure it’s just a habit since I have the same problem.

Now……….

How do you get them to go poop? He is potty trained, still wets the bed, but is trained during the day. He just refuses to poop in the toilet. I don’t think it ever hurt since he only went twice when we started potty training last Sept and was very excited when he did. He will go in his diaper either during nap or at night so he doesn’t have to go in the toilet.

I have let him sleep in his underwear for nap and just wet the bed for the last 4 days. He has pooped since then. We keep putting him on the toilet and he just won’t go.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again for taking the time to help!

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

We were able to find health insurance. We were denied the first time because I have CFS and FM. This time we went through the corporation. Since we are incorporated now they can’t deny us. The problem was we thought it was going to be $1500 a month! That was 2/3 of our income!

Well, the guy got back to us this week and it is going to be $389 for Mike and I with a $2500 hospital deductible. We can handle that. There is a program through the state where you can pay lower prices that we are going to put the kids on until we get an income coming in from the business. Then it will be another $400-$500 to add the kids when we add them to ours.

The good thing is that we will have prescription coverage which we didn’t have before. We are on $400 worth of prescriptions a month which we have been getting from Canada and samples from the doc.

I am so glad! Even though Mike has been working hard on the website and finishing up his video project we have had major computer problems, sickness etc. and sales have been way down. We were thinking of just waiting on Mike and I for a while but kept seeing things about making sure you have health coverage so I thought maybe God was telling us to go ahead and do it and he will send the money. With me being sick and the “you never know what could happen factor” I think it’s a wise choice.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

My kids are always supposed to clean their room. The problem is, their definition of clean and mine are two different things. They do it so so but every couple of months it would get out of control and I would go in and do some deep cleaning. (Like clear out all their “cleaning” under the bed and put it in it’s right spot! LOL)

Well, I get so tired of seeing the mess and I know that I could close the door but I hate having doors closed during the day. We have so little light in this house as it is that I don’t want to cut out more.

I finally figured out a system to teach them to clean their room.

I wrote it down. Duh!

I was proofreading this organizing and cleaning book by this lady I know (my mom :-), and she told a story about how her son did fine when he had a chore list but then when he was a teenager she didn’t do the list any longer. She just figured he knew what to do. When she finally started the list again, she didn’t have to fight him doing his chores.

I wrote a very specific list of how I wanted their room cleaned. I also put labels on some of the containers that things go in.
Ex.
Elly’s Coloring Books
Elly’s Crayons
Elly’s Reading Books
Elly’s Make-up

Bj’s Electrical
Bj’s Coloring Books
Bj’s Crayons
Bj’s Reading Books

For the cleaning list I put:

put up pj’s
make bed
hang up clothes
pick up trash
laundry
pick up books
pick up coloring
pick up dolls
pick up electrical
pick up knex

That way they can look at each thing and see exactly what needs to be done. We have been doing this for 2 weeks now and it’s working very well. They have to do their list in the morning before they eat or do anything else.

Tawra

I know I’ve been asking for advice a lot lately but we need some ideas and I knew I could count on my faithful readers to help me come up with something.

My 2 1/2 year old is chewing on everything. He is a very oral child, literally! LOL. He first started sucking on his pillow at night. Then it turned into chewing and he literally chewed up half the pillow! After it sewing it several times and him chewing it up again we took that pillow away and now he’s working on another one.

He chewed BJ headphone cord in 1/2, started chewing on his clothes, LOVES gum and last night he was watching the kids play a game on the computer and started chewing on the mouse pad! Mike was there and said “here chew on my finger instead”, just joking around, and he started chewing on his finger!

The funny thing is he doesn’t suck his thumb and hasn’t had a pacifier since he was 4 months old.

He gets it from me. I sucked my thumb for years, chewed my nails until they were raw until I was 19 and if you give me a pen you might as well forget it because the end will gone before you know it! (Drives Michael nuts! He hid pens from me when were first married so he could use some pens that weren’t chewed on! LOL)

I do better now. I do realize now that is part of my weight problem. When I stopped biting my fingernails, I started eating instead.

My dad is the way same. I remember he used to go around chewing on rubber piano tubing all the time, non-stop. (My folks used to make player pianos and piano parts).

Anyway, I know it’s genetic. Any suggestions of what I could give him to chew on but that he won’t choke. I hate to give him a pacifier at 2 1/2. I got a teething ring today but I don’t think it’s going to go over very well. It’s kind of hard and he likes things that are soft and pliable.

I think this is more than just teething for him because he’s been doing it for 6 or 8 months now.

I would appreciate ANY advice you could give me!
Tawra

www.LivingOnADime.com

I know I’m repeating myself but always ask!

My grocery store marks their milk down to $1 a gallon. When I find it, I stock up and fill the freezer. Well, I always knew that if I went on Monday’s it would be marked down but when I went other days, some times it would and some times it wouldn’t.

The dairy guy happened to be restocking when I was there last Monday so I asked him when they mark it down. He said on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and the other days it’s afternoons! He told me that he marks it down at 7a.m. on Monday and Friday but he’s not sure what time the Wednesday morning person gets it done. He said if I wanted to be sure and get it then to come on Monday and Friday mornings. He also said that they mark it down when it’s a week left until the expiration date! That’s a lot of time left!

It’s defiantly worth a trip down there to stock up the freezer and now I know for sure when to go! Even if I didn’t have a freezer it would pay to plan my grocery shopping on those days.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

My brother decided to wait until after Valentine’s Day to get my SIL some flowers. He just couldn’t bring himself to pay $40 for 12 roses! Mom went to the grocery store the morning after and they were putting all their arrangements on sale for $2 each!!!

What a deal! She spent $8 and got her a mini rose bush in a really cute bucket, 3 rose arrangments for SIL and herself in equalling 24 roses and an arrangement of carnations for me. They are all so pretty! Yes, it was a splurge but worth it to have fresh flowers all over the house!

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions on our house.
We do have a CO detector and it hasn’t ever gone off. We can’t find any trace of mold anywhere. Not on the window seals, walls, in the crawl space, no where. The downstairs bathroom does sell moldy so I am thinking it must be hiding under the shower if it’s there. Mike looked on all 3 walls (one is open to the utility room) and couldn’ see any on the inside of the walls.

We lived in one rental house that had horrible mold. When we took off the base molding it was black under it! It was bad!
Anyway…….

We are about to go crazy trying to figure it out. I was down doing and “extra good” cleaning of the kids room and my nose started getting stuffy about 15 minutes after I was in there. I know there is something going on, we just can’t figure out what.

The kids have a 4 inch ledge in their room around the wall. We all sleep in the basement. It’s a bi-level and the basement is half above and half below ground. I tried taking off the molding to see if there was any leakage from the foundation but it was sealed off so I couldn’t see in. We may just cut a hole in the drywall next to get a peek.

I just wanted to update everyone where we are with this.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

We had a nice Valentine’s Day. We started with breakfast with pink pancakes. I was going for red but couldn’t get enough food coloring in to make them that bright. I put the batter in a cleaned out mustard bottle and poured the batter out in the shape of hearts. The kids got a kick out of that.

I cut their pb&j’s for their lunches with a cookie cutter in the shape of a heart and put a little Valentine card in there for them.

After school they came home to an I Love You balloon ($1 from the dollar store), a box of chocolates ($1), a super cute snowman doll (.30) and a bookmark ( $3) .

Mom came over and gave them a cute Valentine’s she made with more candy. She took two white paper heart doilies and put a ribbon through them. Then she put a cute face on the front with some decorations. She filled them with candy and I Love You note.

For the family she got us a box of gummy bears. We all LOVE gummies around here! She got them after Christmas but to hide the Christmas label she cut out a heart and decorated it. Then she glued on top of the Christmas label. I thought that was pretty clever!

Mike bought me 18 multi colored roses at Aldis for $8. They are gorgeous! I had to put them in a vase myself but for the $40 + savings that was fine with me. I don’t need any more vases anyway. With the savings Mike and I went out to lunch for a nice lunch for two. ($20) That way we didn’t have to get a sitter (David was at Mom’s Day Out) and lunch is about 1/2 what the dinner prices are.

I had a really nice dinner planned with sloppy joes cut in heart shapes, red Kool Aid, red applesauce, jello, a yummy heart shaped chocolate dessert and veggies but the kids had their ice cream social at school plus Valentine’s party so they were sick of eating and so were Mike and I from our lunch. We ended up not eating any dinner but that was fine with me, we can eat it tonight.

I just thought I would share our Valentine’s Day.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com