Tips and a Freebie

It's that time of year, time to get your Christmas cards together, decorate, and find the perfect gifts! We like to keep things pretty simple over here in the Willis household. The kids always get 3 gifts like Jesus did. We make a birthday cake for Jesus and try to make the holidays really about the birth of our Savior. It's funny how that can get lost when that's what the holiday is really for!
This is a great Christmas for us, we'll be celebrating Christmas in our renovated house! We are very excited and Christmas was a finishing point for us in so many ways. And end to our crazy year. A celebration of our year and what we made it through.

Needless to say, we are days away from taking our family picture with the house this year. To keep it simple, I love using Shutterfly for Christmas card photos! They have so many different styles you have tons of options. They also run sales and are shipped straight to your house, which is the best part. We have used Shutterfly for other holiday gifts, our favorite is the calendar. If you love taking pictures, its a perfect gift to display them. Grandparents love these!
Miss Mackenzie will also be turning 2 this month so it makes it even easier that shutterfly has these birthday invitations. They are perfect because you can choose any theme and have them printed and shipped for just as cheap as invitations from the store.

Good luck pulling out all the Christmas decor. Don't forget to keep the main thing, well the main thing!
If you are a blogger, check out Shutterflys 50 FREE CHRISTMAS CARDS! It's a great present from them!

Jens Fall Favorite Things.

To preface this post, I'm not pregnant! One might think that with my current fall favorite things!

Hands down. These 4 things are amazing and are making my fall fantastic. And I had to share.

Coconut M and M's. Grab a bag for 50 cents and they'll change your life.

Maxwell House Mochas. It's $2.50 for a whole tin of instant mochas every morning, all week! They are SO good!

For lunch, I am bored to death eating sandwichs, UNTIL i found this Chipotle Mayo from Kraft!!! Now, I will eat anything if it has this on it. It's $2 at Publix and sometimes it goes for B1G1. YUM.

Okay, last but not least! We aren't big alcohol drinkers, but we love having wine with dinner some nights. We just recently got into Prosecco! It's a carbonated, bubbly wine. Very light and good if you aren't a big wine drinker. A lot of people don't think about Prosecco, but it goes so perfectly with all the heavy holiday meals you'll be having. WE LOVE IT!!

Those are my fall favorites right now! Hope they become yours too =)

Road Trip!

We (me and the kids) took a road trip to see my sis and her fam in Savannah! It was the perfect week because of Tim's crazy schedule and me having the week off from cleaning!

Here are the highlights!

We went to the beach b/c Savannah was almost 80 one day, went picnicking, shopped downtown, and let the kids run wild! Savannah was full of celebrities the week I went. Extreme Home Makeover was there with Ty and his crew, Paula Deen, and Jillian from the Bachelorette. It will air in February.

Like any road trip with toddlers, it was a huge effort to get us all packed and down there, but.... was well worth it! The four of them are almost like siblings, its really sweet. They had such an awesome time together and they were all so good! My sister and I are best friends and we are both cleaning houses on the side. We both are also staying at home w kids until they start school, just like our mom did with us. So it's fun to talk about schoolwork we do at home with them and all the activities we have them in!

I love all 4 of these precious, sweet, angel babies. I can't wait until Thanksgiving to get them all together again!

They might just be the happiest little children on the planet after their week together!

Jonathan- 5, David- 4, Michael- 3, Mackenzie- 2.David and his new best friend toy, "crab". Even though its a lobster.

David took M for a ride in the boys powerwheel

Oh Tim

Tim is a great father. He loves showing David how tools work and what their names are, explaining how engines run, telling him what freon is, and reading him his HVAC textbooks. It's hilarious because David is interested in everything Tim does and says.
Well, the funny part is watching him with Mackenzie. She thinks her daddy hung the moon. Her cuteness level is always knotched up to the max when daddy is around to hear him Oooo and Ahhh over her!

Here has been our past week of the full time job and full time school!!

Tim gets to work at 7am. He finishes whenever he is done installing the system of the day. Sometimes that is 3 pm, sometimes it is 7pm. Whenever he is done, he drives straight to school and stays until 9p. HVAC school is not like a classroom. Its a huge warehouse with massive systems they install, diagnose, service, and learn on. It's "lab time" and he just has to get so many hours in!
On Fridays HVAC school is closed so we see Tim.....
after 5pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. He makes it home most nights to help bathe the kids and put them to bed. I also made dinner every night last week and transported it up to his school and he came out and we all ate together. I'm sure we looked kinda wierd, but my kids loved it! And so did I!

I have 4 current clients I am cleaning for with my house cleaning business, "MaidFaires." I clean one late Tuesday night when Tim gets home, Wednesday at lunch while the kids hang out with Momo (tims mom), and then Saturday mornings I have 2 families. I clean for all of them every other week so it's really not that hard to manage b/c its one week on, one week off...

As crazy as it is, we are grateful. Tim loves his new job and is thriving in school. I love being able to contribute and also having a mini break from the kids since my days are super long now without tim! This is temporary, school will end in Dec. and then tim will ease up on his class load to where he will only go half of what he is doing now. He also has a full scholarship to school, so praise the Lord we are on a good financial path.
I think long term perspective is key to a hard stage of life. Nothing is forever and sometimes to get through a rough patch, you just gotta pull up your bootstraps and press on!

That's are update, now here is what Tim taught little Mackenzie.

"Mackenzie! What does a kitty cat say?" - "Meow, meow"
"Mackenzie! What does a dinosaur say?" - "RARRRR"
"Mackenzie! What does a doggie say?"- " Arf, arf"
"Mackenzie! What does a birdie say?"- "tweet, tweet"
"Mackenzie! What does mommy say?" - "RARRRR"

Oh, Tim.