Summer

Summer is here and it is going to be awesome in KIDOLOGY!
There’s a lot going on so keep an eye on this blog for details about upcoming events.
We’ve got a family cookout, water park night, and several other crazy events that you won’t want to miss out on!

CCWC, You and Your Kids Are…

AWESOME!

We collected 98 coats to give out to kids living in the Refuge Apartments. We’re meeting at the WH at 10:30am on Saturday to go deliver them. Your kids will benefit so much more if they actually get to meet and play with the kids who they collected coats for! I’m just saying, if you want your kids to be generous givers then you MUST provide them with opportunities to give, not just their coats or school supplies or Christmas presents, but their time!!!

What better way is there to kick off the holiday spirit than to give to people who have less, and some close to nothing. Leave a comment, email Nicole , send us a smoke signal. Just let us know that there are people willing to give up their Saturday afternoon and come with us! We’ll stop for lunch on the way home 🙂

Great Giving Challenge Contest Entry: Hannah and Her Mommy

Great Giving Challenge Contest Entry: Hannah and Her Mommy.

Hey Families,

Here is another opportunity to help get coats for the Refugee Camp.  Hannah and I have entered Dave Ramsey’s Great Giving Challenge for an opportunity to get $5000 to give away.  You can view the video by clicking on the link above and you can vote once a day.  Please help us change the lives of the kids at the Refugee Camp!

~Nicole Huff

Preschool Resources

Hey Preschool Parents,

Just a few quick things.  First, below are the Parent Talk and Small Talk pages for this month.  Parent Talk is a page for parents of preschoolers under 2 just to read.  It normally includes a devotional thought as well as a little discussion about something parents of babies and toddlers deal with on a regular basis.  Small Talk is designed for parents of 2 to 5 year olds.  It includes four practical ways that you can reinforce the items your kids are learning on Sundays.  I would highly recommend using these on a daily basis.  🙂  Also, just a quick reminder for parents of our older preschoolers.  Don’t forget to have your child wear the cape we made last week all month long on Sundays.  We are focusing on Super Heros and this is a great way to get them involved in what were are learning starting when they are getting ready at home before heading off to the school on Sunday!  Also, you may have noticed the post below about our Coats for Kids.  Start getting your preschoolers involved now in looking for/buying coats for the kids at the Refugee Camp.  We’ll be collecting on November 7th and  14th. 

October Small Talk

October Parent Talk

A lazy blogger and the neglected blog…

Okay, so sometimes I’m lazy about updating the blog and sometimes I’m just too busy. For the past two to three weeks it’s been a mixture of the two that kept me from updating. I would be sitting on the couch thinking, “I really need to update the Home Depot blog,” and then I would just continue sitting there playing with my new puppy. Then there have been the times when I go days without checking my Facebook or our bank activity on Wachovia online because I’m so busy. That should tell you a lot because those are my two most-visited websites!

I have a few things to post about, but of course, no time to do it right now. It’s 5am and time for me to go get ready for work. I just wanted to let the Home Depot blog and it’s readers know that I am still alive and kicking and so is the blog! Don’t give up on us!!

BYBC- Takin’ VBS to the (neighbor)HOOD

This week is our Back Yard Bible Club! I’m super excited because it’s only a little bit about a production and a lot about building relationships and teaching the kids about Jesus! That is so my cup of tea 🙂

So our BYBC won’t look like a VBS at the first baptist church by any means. Not to knock the VBS because VBS is cool, but we’re doing this for outreach reasons and taking VBS to the neighborhood. We have our volunteers set up but PLEASE come to hang out with us even if you’re not signed up, and bring your kids to participate! It’s our goal to be present in this neighborhood a lot more in the future! The neighborhood is off George Washington Carver in Monroe. Everyone will be meeting at the WH at 2:30 to drive over there on Monday.

It really will be a lot of fun! We’ll have a Bible story, some small group time, GAMES, crafts, WATER GAMES, worship, snacks, and we’ll probably end with a few fun GAMES!

We’ll be there all week, Monday-Friday from 3:30-5:30pm. Remember to meet @ the WH at 2:30 if you want to carpool and serve.

On Friday after we wrap up the BYBC we plan to have a cook out so that we can get to know the parents and share Jesus with them too. Our families are definitely welcome to come hang out because you’re the ones who we need talking and sharing with the parents!

BOGO @ Publix

So, I said in a post last week that Publix has two BOGO sales a week, one from Sunday-Wednesday and one from Thursday-Saturday. Well I was wrong. I don’t really know their schedule but what I do know is that the sales I talked about in that post are still good and will be good until Saturday. I was able to buy a lot with my coupons. So if you were disappointed thinking that you missed all of those great BOGO’s,  you didn’t!

BOGO!

So last week I mentioned that I would post deals I found when shopping for the food pantry. Well here it goes! First of all I always shop at Publix because they have great BOGO sales. Then I always make sure to buy a Sunday paper. Inside the Sunday paper are two really helpful coupon books, Red Plum and Smart Source. Coupons.com is also a good place to find printable coupons. Publix has two BOGO sales a week. One is from Sunday through Wednesday and the other is Thursday through Saturday. I do my shopping on Saturday so I wait until Thursday to check the Publix weekly ad for their BOGO sales. Once I know what non-perishable items are on sale I look through the coupon books for coupons for those items. With the BOGO sales alone I end up saving an amount equal to what I spend and when I add coupons to the mix I end up saving MORE than I spend.

BOGO sales work well when buying for the food pantry because the pantry needs several of the same items. Publix has a lot of good items for our food pantry on sale this week. Here are the ones I found at the Loganville Publix, plus coupons I’ve clipped from Sunday’s paper that can be used in addition to the BOGO sales.

New Publix BOGO sales…

General Mills Cereal + there are a few printable coupons for specific GM cereals at smartsource.com, coupons.com has a couple for GM cereals also.

Classico Pasta Sauce + a coupon for $1.50 off, it’s actually a coupon from the 3/14 paper so you may not have it. I label and save my coupon inserts in a drawer to glance through each week until they expire.

Del Monte Canned Vegetables + a coupon in the Red Plum insert from 3/21 for $1.00 off when you buy 8, but you will actually be getting 16. That’s like $4.50 for 16 cans!

Mott’s Apple Sauce, Ronzoni Pasta, Kellog’s Nutri-Grain Bars, Lipton Tea Bags, Ocean Spray Juice Coctail, Quaker Instant Grits, Quaker Cereal, and Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese Dinner are some of the other items on sale BOGO this week. There are no coupons to accompany these items but the fact that they’re BOGO makes them a good deal.

If you’re just not a Publix shopper, Kroger also has a cool sale going on right now called March to Savings. When you buy $8 worth of certain items you get $4 back. You can mix and match these items and there are several to choose from. Just check the weekly ad here. Now this is only for Kroger Plus Card holders, which I hope you are because otherwise you’re getting ripped off! And don’t forget to browse the coupon books I told you about for additional coupons and additional savings!

Oh wait, one more thing. There are a few digital coupon sites linked to the Kroger website. At these websites you can register your Kroger Plus Card and then you can download coupons straight to it. The coupons are then automatically deducted at check out. No clipping required! I’ve found that these websites tend to have the same coupons as coupons.com, but it’s nice not having to clip and sort them 🙂

Hope this helps! And I hope you will donate some of the deals you snag to our food pantry! Try to find a way to include your kids so they can see you serving and learn to do the same!!

Family Tithing Habits…

Ryan & I have been married for six months now. Yay! I love being married to him! He is my favorite person!

Normally I am the one who does most of our budgetting and bill pay. Ryan knows how, and he’s good at it. But I tend to be the one who spends the money most, so I like knowing where our money goes. I am also the one to write the tithe checks on Sunday mornings, usually during tear down when Chuck is already well into counting the money 🙂

One Sunday morning I asked Ryan how much he made that week so that I could quickly figure our tithe and he gave me a number that I knew sounded kinda high. Surprised, I told him that I did not normally tithe that much and he said that we needed to be tithing our Gross Pay. Well that makes perfect sense, God gets His before the government gets theirs, but I had never thought about it. I just look at the automatic deposit on our online bank statement and then tithe 10% of that. I don’t even pay attention to the amount in the “Gross Pay” column. It would just make me sad to know how much we didn’t get of our pay.

After Ryan said that I was convicted. I thought about it for a while and talked to him about it. We decided that we would continue tithing our net pay and then spend another agreed upon amount on groceries to donate to our church’s food pantry each week.

I’m learning to shop using coupons. It’s my goal to make the amount we have decided to spend on the groceries to donate go as far as possible by using coupons. Trust me, the amount is not large. But it will be my aim to donate a trunk full of groceries each week.

I wanted to share this with you because I know there are several moms out there who are VERY good at couponing. What a cool thing this would be to do with your family each week. Or once a month. Or whenever you have free time and money 🙂 Plus, our food pantry would never be empty again! You and your family would literally be providing food for families who are having a hard time finding money for groceries during these tough economic times. Explain that to your children and they’re sure to get on board!

I will try to post deals that I find when shopping for you to see periodically, although know that I am simply using the couponmom or hip2save website.

For all your moms who are coupon pros, please feel free to post the deals you find in the comment section anytime!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Trapping the Leprachaun by Jose Marillo, 4th grade

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a leprechaun picking shamrocks in the field next to my house. Everybody knows that the leprechauns will tell you where a pot of gold is hidden if you catch them and let them go. So all I had to do was to catch this leprechaun and then I’d be rich! So here is how I trapped the leprechaun:

“Do you want to know how I katched caught the leprechaun? Well I can’t tell you! Fine, but don’t laugh at me. Ok, once there was a leprechaun on in my yard. It was just as big as a kitten that was just born. So he was about 4 inches long and like 2 pounds. He was very hungry. I told him he’s ugly and then he got so mad. He punched me in the eye. He slapped me silly. Then a kick to the jaw. I was knocked out with a black eye and my two red cheeks. So all I did was left a ham sandwich outside. I heard my dog barking. I saw a small leprechaun . I got a cage and caught it and that is how I caught the leprechaun and got a black eye and red cheeks and a broken jaw.”

And now that I have my pot o’ gold, here is how I’m going to spend it: First I’m going to…

“I’m going to buy a lot of cages. I’m going to make a party for the leprechauns and pot a hole bafey buffet in each cage. I covered up the cages. Then they all came. I acted nice and unsupicious unsuspicious and put on a song. Actually they put it on. At first they were doing the stank leg. I catched caught the leprechauns and got all the gold. I will give a pot to charaty charity, actually I’ll give them two pots. That is how I will spend my money.”