New Design

Hope you enjoy the new look for the blog. I found a site with free templates and could not resist the change. I hope you enjoy it and if you are looking for a new look for your own blog, I highly recommend LeeLou designs.

More pictures

I thought I'd post a few more pictures from this past weekend. These are all of the kids with my parents and grandmother.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great Labor Day weekend, complete with a family birthday party for Noah. My parents arrived on Friday afternoon and fun started. On Friday night after dinner Jared and I took Noah on a special outing with us by himself; if you know our family dynamics, you know it is a very rare occasion when 1 child gets to go with both parents by themselves. On our outing we took Noah to pick out his Scooter, the birthday present from Jared and myself. We had a lot of fun at Toys R' Us letting him try out a couple of different styles of Scooters until he decided on which one he wanted. He did stay true to the last month of asking and picked out the Spiderman scooter.

Saturday was mainly spent in the driveway riding his scooter while Seth and Riley rode their tricycles or big wheels. On Sunday we went to Jared's parents house to swim and enjoy a cookout for Noah's family party. He received many great gifts of which his parents at least are very grateful including clothes for this fall, I know the gift every 4 year old wants more than anything. While I enjoyed the clothes, Noah enjoyed getting a helmet and knee and elbow pads from Jared's parents and Candyland and Hungry Hungry Hippo from my parents.

Needless to say, since Sunday we have played multiple games of Candyland and Hungry, Hungry Hippo and he has ridden his scooter every chance he gets. On Monday night, after it had cooled down to 90 degrees, we all went to the park to ride the scooter, tricycle and walk, it was a great night.

Flipping

The kids are obsessed with flipping. This is a skill they all discovered taking a Parent and Tot gymnastics class at the Y. The Parent and Tot class is something I do with all of the kids when they are around 2. Riley has not yet taken this class, but has learned all about it watching the boys. Flipping is something that Seth is a master of, he loves to flip and will flip anytime anywhere, all he needs is something to hold onto. He no longer needs to even "climb" up to flip over, just something to grab, ie your hands, a bar, the ropes on the hammock, anything. Lately, every night before bed we have 15 minutes of flipping, it's exhausting for us, but they love every second of it.

I thought you might enjoy seeing some pictures of everyone flipping. And in case you can not tell who they are upside down, they are in order Seth, Noah, and lastly Riley.

More Vacation Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Oklahoma. Hope you enjoy.


Noah(sad to be leaving) and Lane


Seth and Noah at the OKC zoo

Seth trying out an airplane cockpit at the Children's Science Museum in OKC

You Know Your Child is Tired When....

This is how I found Seth when I went to check on him at nap time. He was supposed to be upstairs asleep in his bed, but with Seth you never know. Don't worry after taking a quick picture I carried him to his bed where he slept for 2 more hours.

Money Saving......

For several months now I have been reading a blog almost daily that helps me the saving my family lots of money. This blog lets me know about good/great deals at stores of all kinds, with links to coupons, and other money saving ideas. It has been a huge blessing for my family and has helped me cut our grocery spending cost significantly. I don't think I will ever be as good as she is, but I am doing better, both at saving money and finding the deals myself.

I have also learned there are ways to getting some items for free or almost free by using CVS and their Extra Care Bucks program. While I have struggled in figuring this out and have made many mistakes in trying to get it to work for us, it is finally starting to make sense. This week I was able to work this system and get a ton of expensive, read diapers, items at CVS for (are you ready?).....$1.70 cash. I was so proud of finally getting the CVS deals to work for me that I took a picture of all of my items to show the world.

My $1.70 purchase


I also went grocery shopping on Sunday and while my trip to Publix cost more than my trip to CVS I still think I did pretty good. I spent $77.00 on everything seen in the picture below and saved $50.00. This will feed my family of 5 for about 10 days, of course some of the things like the hand soap will last us months, especially since I have a full bottle in all of the bathrooms already.



For those of you curious the blog I have been reading is called Money Saving Mom and the address is moneysavingmom.com. It has helped me save in all kinds of ways and get a lot of freebies over the past 7-8 months.

I am also putting a link to the site on the sidebar that will link you to the site.