five on friday.

1.  As I type this, it is 48 degrees in Kirksville.  FORTY EIGHT!!!!!  And by 4 AM, it will be 37 degrees.  I did not sign up for this.  Where is fall?

2.  My kids were probably the only children in the entire city that wore fleece lined boots, gloves, and toboggans today!  Don't judge us.  We are fragile.

3.  We need a hot tub for survival.  Anybody?

4.  We'd buy our own, but these two are running up our grocery bill.

We are currently going through about $100 worth of formula EVERY WEEK.  Gray and Maggie- you can slow down on the drinking.  You are literally eating us out of house and hot tub.

5.  The good news is we are saving money on this new Walmart Savings Catcher thing.  If you haven't checked it out, you should.  You simply scan the barcode on your receipt and Walmart does the rest.  In a few days, they'll let you know if their competitors have lower prices on your items, and they return the difference to you in a savings card.  Can't beat that!  Now if I can increase my savings from $3.78 to $100 every week, I'll be in business!  Happy Friday!

five on friday.

1.  It's been a LONG week at the Marlin house.  One sick baby is tough.  Two sick babies is complete TORTURE!  We are finally on the up and up, but two nasty colds and a round of Fifths Disease just about did us in.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't a sign of things to come this winter.

2.  We left our army of kids with a babysitter tonight.  She seemed unharmed and still breathing when we returned, but I'm sure this crew left a permanent mark on her!  We made a really uneducated guess on what to pay her, so it's likely we either paid her way too much or way too little.  What is the going rate for babysitting four kids these days?

3.  While the babysitter was wrangling our kids, we were out with some great friends enjoying a fabulous dinner and lots of laughter.  We also enjoyed their hot tub on a cool Missouri night.  This girl could get used to such a thing.  Anybody out there have a hot tub that they wanna send this way? We would take good care of it for you!

4.Tomorrow, our boys play in their first soccer games.  Jason is the coach of Jack's team and the assistant coach of Max's team.  They had ONE practice prior to tomorrow's games, and our little worrier, Jack, is a little apprehensive about the preparedness of his team.  He's been doing lots of extra practice on his own though to "help his team win."  The YMCA doesn't actually keep score, but I know three guys that will be counting goals!  May the best team win...

5.  And last but not least.... I got the bright idea to move some chairs to our front porch this week to make it feel a little more welcoming and home-y.  Today, I received a letter in our mailbox that stated I should "clear the approach to and exit from the mailbox on both sides" so that the carrier does not "fall of injure their self."



I'm D.Y.I.N.G. over this.  I'm generally a rule follower by nature, but I'm struggling with this one.  Is that chair really an "obstacle?"  Could someone really "fall or injure their self" on it?  I'm still on the fence about this.  I haven't decided what my course of action will be.  I like my chairs out there.  So I have three choices:  (1) Move the chairs, (2) move the mailbox, or (3) have my service suspended.   Decisions.  Decisions.

I'm closing this with nine minutes to spare.  The time seems to fly you're putting babies back to sleep a hundred times having fun!  Happy Friday.