Holli's Birthday at the Zoo

For Holli's birthday we went to the zoo. It was a lot of fun. Here are some of the pictures we took. It's so great to be with family.

I'm such a cute little cow girl. Zach was so excited to have her wear this outfit.
Camille and Eric(her boyfriend) and of course Anna!
Zach and Grandpa Murphy



Anna was surrounded by all our stuff, poor girl.

Wedding and Thanksgiving

My cousin Rebecca got married on the 20th and we had the opportunity to be there for all the fun. This is a picture of her and Chris, he Husband. Weddings are so much fun!
After the craziness of the wedding Zach went back on Sunday evening to his busy life with school and work and I stayed with my Mom. On Monday I bottle apple sauce about 17 or 18 bottles, half quarts and half pints. 40 lbs worth of apple. Tuesday I taught my Mom's Relief Society how to make bows. Not very many showed up like signed up but it was fun being able to share what I've learned about making bows. The rest of the days we full of running around and getting ready for Thanksgiving. Zach came Wednesday night and then Thursday morning we played soccer inside the church before we ate Thanksgiving lunch. Zach was more excited about playing soccer than eating I'm pretty sure. Friday we went and got Christmas trees in the woods, a fun family tradition.

Check out those 4 trees behind us. We drove to the valley with all 4, good times.
This is Anna with her 1st experience of a cat. She thought it was pretty cool. This cat actually got inside my Dad's truck and road with him for about 1/2 hour to his work and then when it finally got home later that night the Mom didn't want anything to do with it. My Mom told Amber(my little sister) that she could bring it inside and feed it everyday, so she did and now it's old enough to eat cat food and is doing very well. My Mom usually doesn't let cats inside.

Request

So I have a request about how I use coupons and things like that. Well it all started with my sister Andrea, who is probably better than me at it but I'm getting there. There is a blog that we really like called moneysavingmom.com. On there she has lot of great ideas about how to save money and the deals of the week at pretty much any store you can find. My favorite store to buy things like diapers, make up, and bathroom supplies is CVS. I get a lot of stuff free. I use to just use the print out coupons but I finally gave in and decided to get the Sunday and Wednesday paper because I got a really good deal. It has a lot of coupons and I can get more stuff free. I would start off slow if you haven't done any couponing and really look around for the best deals on the things you buy the most like milk, eggs, cheese and meat. When things are a good deal I stock up. For instance last week at Frys they had cream of chicken on sale for .49 cents. Well I bought quite a few and used some coupons to make them even cheaper knowing that they probably won't go on that kind of a sale again for a long time. The other thing I really look for is good prices on meat. When meat is a good deal I try and stock up and sometimes I can things like chicken and pork with my sister. Canning can be a very long process yet if you learn you will save a lot of money and it tastes better in my opinion. Next week I believe I'm going to be doing apple sauce because apples are on sale this week at sprouts for 49 cents a pound. That is about as cheap as they ever get. All this may seem kind of time consuming yes but I have the time and it's like my job, save money(or in a sense make money) for my family by doing it. I kind of think of it as my small job. Besides I think it is fun.

Anna is 1!

We gave Anna this helmet for her b-day because we like to go on bike rides as a family. It's still a little too big for her but she'll grow into it.
Grandma and Grandpa with Anna
This is Anna after the party with her cute cowgirl boots and her cool ballons!


yumm...sugar!

These are the cakes I made. The butterfly one was a lot of fun, and the flowers are pull apart cakes, made out of cupcakes. Those are super easy and super fun.
My birthday outfit!
These two are 2nd cousins born only 5 days apart. Addyson and Anna.
My cute cowgirl boots! The funny story behind these boots are that when Zach turned one his Uncle gave him cowboy boots, he couldn't quite figure out how to walk in them, it was hilarious(I've seen it on tape). Because of that Zach's Grandma decided to Anna some for her 1st birthday as well. They are so cute. I'll have to put her in the whole outfit and take a picture sometime.

I can't believe that my little girl is one! We had a really fun party for her at my in-laws. It is so crazy thinking that I have a one year old little toddler girl, and yes it finally hit me after she started walking that she isn't my baby anymore. It seems like yesterday that I was giving birth to her. On Thursday night Zach says to me, this time 1 year ago you were in labor with her. So so true, seriously that was one of the hardest days of my life yet I realize how blessed Zach and I are to have such a sweet spirit in our lives and it makes it all better. I know that the Lord gives us challenges in our lives to make us stronger. It has been so much fun to watch Anna learn and grow and I'm sure that the future will only get better and more fun. She is such a special girl, and she teaches me things every day!
Today I took Anna to the Doctor and she is in the 50th percentile for height and the 10th for weight. She is 18.05 pounds and 29inches tall.

What an amazing goal.

So normally I don't write things on here like this but here it goes. So Zach and I try really hard to be frugal with our money. I have gotten into couponing lately and well I think it's great. I don't think it's for everyone but I believe that it truly is a blessing in our lives. I just read a story on moneysavingmom.com about a couple who put the husband through law school debt free and also paid cash for their home seven years after school. Can you believe that? Seriously who does that? That is one amazing task, and such faith. Now it's so easy in the economic times that we live in today to say, I want to buy a house NOW, the prices will never ever be this low. Well that's not to say that Zach and I won't buy a house in the next few years, but this story helped me to realize that it's okay if I buy cheap clothes and have the same car for 10 years. It's okay if I live in a small apartment and don't have everything I ever wished for right now. What matters is the gospel of Jesus Christ and enjoying time with family. I am so blessed to be sealed to Zach forever and that our children will be sealed to us. I like to say if you can't be happy now, then you'll never be happy.

Anna is turning 1, crazy!

Zach is more than half way done with this semester, thank goodness. This semester has not been an easy one on either of us. I am very blessed to be able to stay home with Anna though. It's great to see her progress and I really love being a Mom. Thanksgiving and Christmas are just right around the corner, can you believe it? I'm really looking forward to the Holidays with Anna. She is going to love it! I love this time of year, FINALLY cool enough to go outside for more than 2 seconds. Seriously it's really hard for me here in the summer. Thank goodness for AC!

Here are some recent pictures of Anna, so much fun! She does not like hats on her head but a lady from Zach's old work made this for Anna and it finally fits, I think it's so cute. Such a little girl. I have a feeling that I'm going to have a girly girl on my hands. It will be fun, I just wasn't so much a girly girl so I guess it's time for me to learn. She is such a sweet little girl though. She loves to way hi or good bye to everyone and she has a constant smile on her face. She has her sad moments but for the most part she is a very happy loving girl.

Zach and I love to make Anna laugh. She has a contagious laugh and can get so silly sometimes. My little nephew Caleb was over for a bit the other night and he was pretending to fall and Anna would just laugh and laugh at him. Her whole body was shaking, that's how hard she was laughing. She gets that way when she's tired, super silly.

So I decided to put the picture of Anna the day we took her home from the hospital.

This is her in the same outfit 1 year later. Can you believe that she can even get into it? It was really big on her when we brought her home, but it still can almost cover Anna's feet standing up. She is such a cute litte danty girl. She is growing though, the past few months it seems like she has grown a ton!

Halloween Fun!

I only got a few pictures of Anna, Zach and I on Halloween. It was a very busy day. My Parents came down on Friday for my Brother's stake soccer tournament and then Saturday morning we took pictures of Anna and Jason(my Brother). It was a lot of fun. Then after that I came home and got ready to go to the ASU Football game. Zach's worked paid for us to go, it was a lot of fun. We left during half time, ASU was ahead 28-0. That night we went to our ward's party and also to my In-Laws ward party for a little bit. After that I went and found my family and all the cousins took some fun pictures.