Tent City

Over Labor Day the Schanz family had an awesome camp-out. What do you call 7 huge tents, 5 crying BABIES, no running water, crawdads, dutch oven cooking, German board games, Justin singing solo's, washing your hair in the stream, a fly swarming outhouse, and Jacob's professional shooting lessons? My kind of fun in Bone, Idaho. I wish I would have taken more pictures....a hint to Tim, the photographer, to make copies for me...because we really did have that much fun. Being dirty is fun momentarily, but when it comes right down to it, I love being clean!
What baby doesn't love to get into everything? He loves anything and everything I have, and I am hoping that he will continue to love to brush his teeth as he gets older too.


I know I have mentioned on here a couple of times how much Porter loves to eat, but he really does love to eat! He now has these really hard teething biscuits that you chew on and they slowly disintegrate. Well Porter devours the biscuits as you can see, and the mess is left behind...He gets a couple of showers a day.

Almost Framed

Updated photos of our new house. We are very excited! Also my friend, Annalisa, has a coupon blog, www.slavetosave.blogspot.com, and they have some giveaways right now if anyone is interested.

Happy 8 Months

8 months old and all ready such a big man! Achievements: crawling super fast, laughing at raspberries on the belly, pulling himself up to everything, getting into the salsa jar and having a very hot mouth, clapping his hands, sleeping through the night, eating anything I put into his mouth, staring at the blow dryer wondering when it would turn on, and loving his mommy (and daddy too). Such a wonderful boy!!!
He couldn't resist the leaves, they looked to good, and he had to try them out.
Porter loved it as much as I did. Well he really likes food, probably his favorite thing, so maybe he liked it even more than I did.


Porter is now 8 months old and we had a great celebration with the mystery melon. We went to Reams a couple of days back and they had a funky melon , we talked to their produce man and he said, "there are so many names for it, we call it a specialty melon." Or in my words, the mystery melon. It looked so intriguing that I just had to buy one, and I am sure glad we did. It was so delish!

The cookie lady

Well my neighbor growing up is known for her amazing cookies and makes them for all occasions. My sister teases me lately and tells me that is who I have become. Justin loves fresh chocolate chip cookies and we almost always have dough in the fridge to make them. I wish Justin would crave something like broccoli instead to help with our overall sugar intake, but what do you do. This is Justin's Mom's recipe, and they are super good. Enjoy!

2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup butter
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 package, 4 cup serving, instant vanilla pudding
2 eggs
1 package, 12 oz size, semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Mix flour and baking soda. Set aside. In a new bowl, cream together butter, sugars, pudding, and vanilla. Add eggs. Blend in flour mixture. Add chips and nuts. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 8-10 min.

We now have a garage

The house is definitely coming along, and the framing is flying by. I am sure this picture is outdated seeing how it was taken 4 days ago. The more I see our house progress, the more excited I get. It will be nice to finally have a place of our own.
Porter loves new feelings, especially on his feet. He was making a funny face when touching the rocks. Amber was telling me today that she thinks her baby is cuter than my baby, but I would have to disagree. I am one of those proud moms that think my baby is the ultimate.

We are definitely getting our use out of our baby hiker. We hiked part of Timp on Saturday. Originally we wanted to go on a short mini hike, seeing how Justin was hiking with 20 extra pounds, but we couldn't find the trailhead of the mini hike so we headed up towards Timp. We hiked up for about an hour and then turned around, but the tour guide at the bottom said we went up about 100 flights of stairs. Not too shabby.

Diaper Duty

It is now a fact that Porter hates having his diaper changed. He is entirely to busy moving, playing, and exploring to have good hygiene. Yesterday after his morning shower I set him down and grabbed behind me to get a diaper and before no time he was up and getting into something. Sorry the picture is so blurry he is just constantly on the move!

At peace with my coupons

If any of you know me, you know how much I love to find a good deal, and thanks to my friend Annalisa I was introduced to couponing. I love to get coupons, organize coupons, read coupon blogs, and plan my shopping trips around coupons! Coupons are pretty much amazing. Well about 7 months ago I bought a huge 3 inch binder to organize everything. My weekly adds, all my rebates, and of course my coupons were stored in the binder. About 3 weeks ago the binder was missing. At first I thought Justin threw it away to free up some of my time, but he promised me he didn't. I back tracked everywhere I went the day it was lost and nothing. I finally started telling everyone it was stollen out of my locked car to help me cope with the lost. Actually, what I think happened was I drove off while it was on top of my car. This has been a huge loss for me and it has made me so so sad, but I am resilient. So over the last week I have made a new binder and put my telephone number on the outside in case it is ever lost. This post sounds a little pathatic, but if you coupon than you know the addiction, and how much of a high you can get from getting an amazing deal.