Another week flew by

Where do these weeks go? Last week was busy as usual. I was so tired all week and couldn't seem to get a good solid night sleep, which made for even more tiring days so full of "busy". I fell asleep on the couch Monday evening and Tuesday ended up staying late at work. I had to run to pick Hannah up at daycare and then took her back to the office with me. I had intended on only being there a short while, but ended up staying until almost 7:00! She was really good for me, she colored at a table in the office I was in and she also sang many songs! I'm not so certain my boss, Tony, enjoyed the seranade, but I thought it was cute!!

Not sure what we did Wednesday and Thursday, but I know one of those nights I ended up on my computer trying to do some work. I had it in our bedroom while Hannah watched Backyardagains and Wonder Pets. She also "worked" on her computer next to me!

Friday night, Tony went to a concert and Hannah and I stayed home. We played outside for a little while. She's into riding her train that she got from Grandma and Grandpa K on her first Christmas. It has a track that goes with it, but she has a blast just riding it around the driveway!

Then we went in to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. I was SO impressed!! Those Chinese people are something else. The news was hyping up the event, but it really was so fantastic - I was so entertained. Hannah liked watching the fireworks and reminded me about being afraid of them at the party (on the 4th of July). I wasn't able to stay awake for the entire thing - I fell asleep some time about 1/2 way through all the countries marching in. I didn't see the US team, but that's OK. I think the best part was the show before that whole part started. I keep asking Tony to look it up on the internet to see it, but he just doesn't seem that interested? That's OK, he's actually been watching it with me and he wasn't so into it before they started.

Oh, so as I was typing this, I thought of some funny things Hannah has said lately. Last week in the car, I called her "dude" - not really sure why, but it sounded funny so I did it. She responded by saying, "I'm not dude. I'm Hannah Grace" When I kept saying it, she said (in such a proper tone) "Are you Kidding me?" I say that quite often and I realized it even more when I heard my little one saying it just like I do!!! It was funny. Then tonight, I was teasing her - I forget what I said to her, but she said, "Mommy, you're drivng me crazy!"

Ok, on to Saturday. We were sort of lazy in the morning, but then I cleaned the house and did laundry and Tony did yardwork and cut the grass. Hannah stayed in PJ's all morning and even played out on her slide in them! After she napped, we got her dressed and got ready to go to the county fair. We call it the "big fair" so not to confuse her with the one we had on the square here in town last month. We got Hannah a wristband to ride the rides, which ended up not being the best deal since she only rode about 6 or 7 rides. We let her ride a couple, then got her something to eat. We went to see the animals after that. My family is such city-slickers! Tony thought all the animals were being abused and hated that some of them were going to market after the fair and Hannah was afraid to pet the baby cow! We all did pet the goats and thought the baby pigs were really cute! But the tour of the animals didn't last too long.

Tony and I grabbed a bite to eat and then Hannah rode a few more rides. I got her to ride the airplane ride which goes in circles, then goes in the air and back down again. She was Ok until just before it went down, the hydraulic thing let out the big sound of air, which scare her to pieces and ruined the rest of the ride. She cried until it stopped and said she didn't like riding the plane! I didn't get a picture of her crying because I had to "console" her each time it went around telling her it was almost over! But here she is when it was still a fun ride!

Sunday, I was bound and determined to find some good shopping deals - and I did!! I hit Rite Aid, CVS (twice), BJ's, Marcs, Giant Eagle and Walgreens. I got quite a bit of groceries and did some stocking up with things on sale and used several coupons. I ended up spending $119 and saved an additional $49.12 - that's 41%! Ah, I felt so much better now that the deals returned! And then I did one more big bonus buy! I was online at http://couponmom.com which has a link to http://restaurant.com and I bought a $25.00 gift certificate for an Italian restaurant, Bucci's Brick Oven, that we like here in town - for (drum roll......) TWO DOLLARS!!!!! You can go directly to restaurant.com and get $25 gift certificates for $10, but if you go through couponmom.com, there are often even better specials and this one was 80% off (look for the promotion code). Now, some of the rules that go around the use of these have a bit of a catch to them, but their all very ligitimate and it's still a heck of a deal! Our catch was that you had to spend $35 minimum, which meant I had to spend $10.00 above my gift certificate amount, but it's not difficult to get to $35 there and really, spending $12.00 for a $35 meal - GOOD DEAL to me!! Check it out ~ the only thing I had an issue with was that the restaurant.com site took forever to load, but you get the certificates emailed to you and you just print them off! Pretty cool stuff!

Work was just plain old busy today, nothing exciting or really noteworth. Tony had softball and Hannah and I just hung out. I painted her toenails tonight which she thinks is so cool! She's such a great kid!!

A good weekend

So the garage sale wasn't so worth it. I think it was a lot of work preparing and spending 2-1/2 days sitting to only make $230. Although, I did get rid of a lot of stuff and it was $230 that I didn't have before, so I guess I'm glad I did it, but even more glad it's over! We threw out just about everything that didn't sell and a garbage picker just loaded up his truck about 10 minutes ago!!! What do those people do with all that stuff???

Hannah turned 2-1/2 this past week. Here's what she does now when I try to take her picture.

I told her she could have some animal crackers if she took one nice one, so I got this.

And then we took her to Portrait Innovations Saturday to get "professional pics" and she was so not cooperative that the best we got was this. It made choosing one easy since none were that great. I'll be sending copies to everyone, but this time, you only get this one pose - we didn't spend a lot on pictures this time. Anyone interested in the 10x13 size???

Friday night we went over to Dawn's house for Kendal's 13th birthday. I can't believe how much of a young lady she is getting to be! Krista was home from school so it was good to see her too. Jack's sister Tracy had her American bull dog puppy over - she is SO cute!!! Hannah answered my question about whether or now she'd want to go swimming in their big pool when she came running in from outside crying after John was pushed into the pool by Krista. She did NOT want to go in the pool!

And today we woke up and I just wanted to have a nice family day so I suggested we got to breakfast and the zoo. It was such a GREAT day together! And it was a great day to go to the zoo. We got there early so there weren't a ton of people and the weather was sunny and warm, but not hot. Hannah was finally at the age that she could really enjoy some of what she saw. Here we are with her as we went in.

And here she is jumping like a kangaroo

And then we stopped for a treat

We stayed until a little after 2 and Hannah was out within minutes of getting back in the car. She had a tiring day and it was a fantastic day together as a family!! We need to do that more often! Wonder if busy can stay out the way for a while???

Busy, that's all I can say (now w/ pics)

OK, so I fell off the face of the blogging world for a couple of weeks - no surprises from anyone I'm sure! But here I am and all I can say is I'm so busy!! It's really not a cop-out either, I'm truly so busy that I get up each day, go, go, go until I crash at night! I never seem to have enough time to get what needs to be done at work and then we come home, make dinner, eat and do a little this or that and we even seem to struggle to get bathtime in for Hannah often enough! It's terrible! But it's a good terrible - life is pretty good to us right now! Sure there could be better things going on right now, but I have very few complaints and it does make things much easier that way!
So on to where I've been and what's we've been doing..........

Well I'll start with recent and work my way back until I can't remember (which will only be a few days ago!!!)

I took some vacation days today and yesterday to have a garage sale. I couldn't have been any LESS enthused about doing it! I've been trying all summer to get the house cleaned out room by room to get rid of stuff we don't use (or forgot we even had). I did well early in the summer, but then busy got in the way again and I crammed all the work into the last week. It is nice though to have my sewing room back to some order!!! I may even look real hard to find some time to start another quilt!! I have some new babies that don't have a Mary's Makings quilt and they surely deserve one!!! I gave Hannah my first one the other day - she thought it was great. I would still like to make one that's really just for her! She uses the one Maggie made her, but I would like to make one for her too - we'll see about that!

I got the attic cleaned out Wednesday night too. I was a disgusting sweaty mess after that! It's hot up there, but it's sort of "organized" now, so that's good. As for the garage sale, Thursday was what I'd say fairly successful. I got rid of most of my "better" things. No baby clothes though, which is OK because I'll either take some of the name brand stuff to second hand stores or just donate to Salvation Army. I only put out stuff that I probably wouldn't want if there is ever a baby #2. So far today, only two browsers and I've been here over an hour already. Not looking too promising! I have quite the set up though. I'm sitting in the corner of my garage in front of a fan with my laptop - I love wireless technology!!! I actually did quite a bit of work stuff yesterday and today I can do whatever I want - although I'm still connected to work stuff (what a vacation day!!!)

Tuesday was my dad's 60th birthday!!! Happy Birthday DAD!!! We met them for dinner at Longhorn that evening. Hannah had a meltdown about going potty there. She told me she had to go, but didn't want to go on the public toilet. We went in there 3 or 4 times before I finally got her to go. I bribed her by telling her she could have a lovey in the car if she just went. (I didn't go through with it, but only because she didn't ask!!) I think she was tramatized by public toilets from the mall - those automatic flushers don't see her because she's too small, so it flushed while she was on the potty and it's a really loud flush. Poor thing!!! She'll hold it though until we get home.

Monday night was pricing stuff out for the garage sale. Same goes for Sunday night. Sunday during the day, we stopped over at my neighbors to play in the pool and slip-n-slide and then I did my shopping (by the way - worst bargain shopping day in weeks).

Saturday, Tony left for a golf outing in Columbus and Hannah and I cleaned the house, which included garage sale clean up stuff and then went to the library and mall that afternoon/evening.

Last Friday we went to Jerry & Shelly's after work. I haven't seen baby Reese since the 4th of july. We had dinner and played a couple rounds of corn hole and Hannah and Maci played together.

That's about all I remember except I stressed out last week one day and ended up in tears, which made me even more mad because I don't let myself get like that there too often. We're all so busy and tasked to do so much that I pretty much lost it when I had to do this completely non-productive report that served no purpose. Sounds stupid, but after I tried pushing back on my Region Management about how counter-productive it was and that to do it meant that I wasn't going to be able to do the things that were important, I just lost it. The good thing was that on Thursday, my Region Manager was in our office and apologized to me about the whole ordeal becuase he FINALLY realized after hearing from everyone else in our region that I was right and he shouldn't have asked us to do it. Oh well - work is stressful and busy and I just hope one day it's all worth it!!

Weekly Recap

OK, so I think I got it right to name this blog "how I keep in touch" because unfortunately, it's very like me to be absent for a week or so at a time due to my very busy life and then sort of "catch up" with a seemingly recap of what happened.

So here goes my attempt to recap this past week:

Work - BUSY beyond words! The atmosphere there is so much better since the termination Friday, but now there's an empty seat, so naturally we're all even busier than usual. I'm also going through a pretty large restructuring of my Admin group, so that' a lot to deal with. I seem to have meeting after meeting and one this past week started at 7 am, so that was a 5:00 morning for me - so NOT fun!!

Our baby sitter's mom passed away last week, so Hannah didn't go Thursday and Friday since they had to get down to 6 kids. My mom came over Thursday and then Tony drover her out to their house Friday morning to spend the day and night. By the time Friday got here, I was running on fumes and somehow did manage to make it through the workday.

We went to Mike's house, one of the owner's of Tony's company, on Friday night to play poker. It was nice to get a night out to play cards and hang out. We got home pretty late so by that time I was near exhaustion!

I got up around 9 Saturday morning and made a curtain for my Grandma's place. She gave me 2 pillow cases that match her bedding to make her a curtain out of. I've had it for a couple months now, but since I seldom have time to sew, I just hadn't done anything with it. I threw it together quickly Saturday morning and then ran out the door to drive over to her Retirement Community's Family picnic. Mom brought Hannah and I met them there. I hung the curtain, which actually looked pretty good and then it dawned on me that I forgot my camera!

We went to the picnic and Hannah saw a clown, which she wasn't so sure of at first, but then warmed up a bit. She sat in the driver's seat of the fire engine (again, so aggravated I forgot my camera) and she had cotton candy for the first time! She wasn't sold on that, but ate a little.

We left there around 1:30 and headed back home. She fell asleep in the car, but luckily went in to her bed and napped for another 2 hours (so did I). We got up and got showered and went to our city's Home Day's Fair.

It was Hannah's first experience at a fair - her first carnival rides! Last year, she cried the entire time because of the noise and we weren't quite sure how she'd react to the rides, so we were leery to buy the $15 wristband....instead we bought the $1 tickets 2 at a time, which I think ended up being the right thing to do. Her first ride was on the go around in circles in a car ride. The Carney seriously let the ride go for almost 10 minutes!!! Hannah had a great time, but the kids were getting bored! Here she is:

Next we tried the mini-roller coaster. She sat in a seat next to a girl a little older than she was and all seemed fine at first. The first lap around, she sort of freaked a little as she was coming down the "hill" and was being tossed about a little - she tried grabbing onto the sides of the car to hold herself down - unsuccessfully. As they went around again, she seemed to be a mixed between scared to death and having fun - just what a roller coaster is supposed to do I guess. On lap 3, the guy stopped the ride to removed the TERRIFIED kid (that wasn't Hannah), but he also asked some of the not-so-sure kids (including Hannah) if they wanted off. She opted to get off. I think she'd have been OK, but he asked and she said she was done, so maybe next year??

This was the before the ride started picture:

Here is the video...it's hard to keep track of where she is, but she's sort of in the middle in the white shirt - trying to hold on for dear life!

Next was the safe ride on the carousel - we did this twice, once with daddy and once with mommy.

And finally after mommy was reminded that even the easiest ride that goes in circles isn't my thing, daddy took her for a ride in the dizzy dragons - she liked it fairly well. Daddy, not as much since it was sweltering hot in there!!

It was a fun experience with Hannah who got me all teary when I realized we don't have a baby anymore!!!

Sunday was cleaning, shopping and trying to prepare for my garage sale day. Oh, yeah, and going to bed at 9:30!!! I realized I had run myself completely down these past couple weeks!!!

I am happy to report that after 4 long awaited years, my wedding flowers that I planted the summer of our wedding have finally bloomed!!! Our florist had a great idea to use perennial plants as wedding flowers so that we could replant them and watch them bloom each year. The only problem was that I think I got reject hydrangea's that went dormant for 3 summers, but alas they finally have a bloom this year - yes I said A bloom - ONE on each plant! Maybe by the time we reach our silver anniversary they will be full of blooms!!!

Hannah had her first popcicle last week down the street at our neighbor's house, so I bought some this week. (by the way, I didn't do as well shopping this week either - spent $95 and only saved about $7. No one is probably interested in the entire low-down on that, but I did buy a lot of meat which made the price of my bill higher, and there just weren't that many deals to be found this week). So anyway, Hannah isn't so sure about biting the cold popcicle. She instead lets it melt all over the place as she takes little licks or small sucks at a time! She is funny though because after this taste, she said, "mommy, it's spicy!!" (she says spicy when she means sour!!)

And lastly, I share this gross but true story about Hannah's discovery tonight. We were playing outside and she said she had to go potty (by the way, she's doing great, I'd say fully trained) and so we went. After she was done, she took a look and said, "mommy, there's corn in that poopy" So now yo uall know what we had for dinner last night!!! Gross, I know, but it's a fact (I threw that in there for you, Susan!!!)

Menu Planning Monday

I haven't done a menu planning Monday post in several weeks, but since Maggie wondered "how I do it", I thought I'd share my secret.

First, the biggest key is to plan your menu. Must happen!!

Next is to make a real grocery list and stick to it when you go shopping.

I try to plan the menu around at least one dinner that we have stuff at home already for - or at least most of the stuff needed. So stocking up when there's a good deal is key. We still eat out at least one night a week, but we've been using coupons or we share a meal - especially at Mexican.

I also do the majority of my grocery shopping at Marc's. Definitely for my produce - and I do buy fresh fruit and vegetables every week. My local farmer's market is open now I've noticed, so I think next week I'll hit that first. I go to multiple stores to get what's the best deal, and fortunately for me, all of the places I go to are in one giant circle, so I really don't go out of my way for any one store. (I go to CVS, Walgreens, BJ's, Marc's, Giant Eagle and Walmart). Sounds like a lot of running around, but really, I only drive a total of about 10 miles round trip. (my BJ's, Marc's and Giant Eagle are in the same plaza and I drive right past CVS on my way there and past Walgreens & Walmart on my way home)

I clip as many coupons as I can, but I only clip for things I really use. Once in a while I may try a new brand of something, but I generally don't sway a lot from my normal preferences.

Then the thing I've been doing lately that I haven't done before is scour the Sunday ads to see who has what on sale. So I guess the big key to these last two items is that you have to get the Sunday paper.

So this week's menu is this:
Sunday - We ate out at Gran Fiesta and shared fajitas and with drinks, our bill was only $23!

Monday - Chicken Helper (I bought 10 for 10 "Helpers" last week at GE and used 3 coupons totalling $3 off and it generated a $3 off next shopping trip coupon) I had frozen chicken breasts already at home.

Tuesday - Pierogies - bought a box of Mrs. T's this week, but had a coupon.

Wednesday - Fish Fillets - Have a bag of them in the freezer that I got from BJ's a month or so ago.

Thursday - Kilbosa - I bought it this week

Friday - Pizza, we'll either have a frozen one that I have already or use a coupon to order one - depends on our mood!!

Saturday - we'll go to our city's Homecoming Fair - junk food and Hannah's first try at carnival rides!!!

I have gotten a lot of great tips from http://www.moneysavingmom.com/ (I have the link on the side of my blog called savings tips too). The whole CVS thing is thanks to her!

This week's shopping, I got milk & giant box of triscuits at BJ's - milk is only $2.75/gallon (up from $2.50 that it had been). I had a coupon for $1.50 off the triscuits. Spent only $11.
Next was Marc's. I got most of my groceries, although this week was a light trip, used several coupons and spent $26
Next was Giant Eagle. I got strawberries, blueberries, sour cream and spagetti. Used my $3 off coupon from last week and spent only $7
Next stopped at Walgreens. Bought 3 renuzit air fresheners, had instore coupon to make them $0.79/ea and had a mfg coupon as well to combine. I picked up 2 bottles of bubbles for Hannah - not on the list, but only spent $3.50 at Walgreens!!
Last I went to Walmart and got q-tips, jar of prego, Jergens lotion ($1 coupon) and Hannah some underwear and only spent $11.
Total $59 spent for the entire week!
When you add up the coupon savings and the sale savings shown on the receipts, I saved over $15!! So I really got about $75 worth of stuff.
I'm hitting Rite Aid for Buy1 Get1 cereal later this week - that's the only store that isn't in my circle. My nearest store is only about 4 miles away, but it's in the opposite direction, but I do pass it each week day on the way home from picking up Hannah. I may also run into CVS. Savingsmom.com had a coupon for $3 off 2 Sally Hansen nail polish that are on sale for 0.99 this week, so I actually "make a dollar" to buy that - really, you don't get a dollar back, but it can act like another dollar off something else I may really need!! I also have some extra bucks that I can spend.
So you see, it's easy - you need to do a lot of planning and then LOOK for the sales and deals and before you know it, you feed your family, have all the other stuff you need and can spend just a small amount of money. Gone are the days where I buy everything I need from the general supermarket (Giant Eagle). The time I spend out shopping is sort of "my thing to do" each week, but really, I'm generally only gone for about 2 hours during Hannah's nap time on Sunday's.
So maybe this post was a complete bore to you, but maybe you got a few tips! Regardless, saving money is honestly FUN for me these days and the challenge to buy as much as I can for as little as I can is quite entertaining!!! Yeah, I know - I need to get a life, but I love the one I have!!!!