Slacker Mom

Sunday was Carter's 6th birthday! Happy Birthday Carter, even if I am a slacker mom and I didn't blog about it then. . . even worse I don't have any pictures to post from it. We took him and the other kids to Chuck E. Cheese's on Friday and his Grandma Kristi and Grandpa Brent came down to celebrate with us. Sunday we made him a cake and let him blow out the candles. He tells me he loves being 6.

Yesterday we had our Thanksgiving dinner. We had to have it early since Jaron works on Thursday. We had our friends Nicole and Kurt and their kids come over to share the dinner with us and then we played Settlers of Catan while the kids ran around the house. It was by far the most simple Thanksgiving dinner we have ever had, but it was fun and amazingly we didn't use every dish in our kitchen!

I saw the Twilight movie with Jaron and his mom last Friday and Jaron and I both liked it. I don't know if seeing the movie without reading the books first would have sold me on the Twilight series, but I did enjoy the movie after reading the books.

This is Funny!

This is a funny spoof on the twin-tween-obsessions of Twilight and High School Musical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv4SCfEuYqg

Lilly trying to walk. . .

I haven't blogged for awhile and I haven't posted on Lilly for even longer. Here are a few pictures of her. In the first ones she was so tried that she would crawl a few feet, then lay down, then crawl a little more etc. The video is her trying to walk, she has managed to take about 5 steps to make it to the couch. Emmy and Carter are so excited for her to really start walking.

Random thoughts about racoon survival

It seems that modern day racoons are facing a conundrum when it comes to survival. These nocturnal bandits are known for eating our garbage and making lovely messes everywhere they go (they remind me of my kids). I am thinking that if our diets are causing coronary problems and heart disease in us, it must be affecting these creatures in the same way. Has anyone ever run blood tests and checked their blood pressure to see just how unhealthy they are because of their newly (as in the last hundred years or so) acquired diet?

It is not actually the diet that really concerns me, it is the obesity problem. I know, I know, racoons are SUPPOSED to get all fat and stuff to make it through the winter, but I have noticed on my paper route that the really fat ones waddle across the road at a much slower pace than their thinner counterparts. The ratio of fat dead racoons on the road vs. the skinny ones is skewed heavily toward the fat ones (and yes, I am taking into account bloating). It is ironic that the ones that manage to eat more garbage than the others would typically survive longer, but in our urbanized environment, they are dying earlier deaths and therefore maybe not passing on the superior genetic material that results in fat, happy racoons.

No, I don't have an answer to this problem for racoons, except to maybe use sidewalks and crosswalks vs. playing chicken with cars that are out at 3 in the morning delivering newspapers. Lucky for all the racoons that I have met, I have quick reflexes and manage to avoid sending them to an early grave. For all those to have been so unfortunate as to have lost the chicken war with the cars they were playing with, a moment of silence please.

Christmas Tag

If I could have a wish for Christmas that was priceless, what would it be?

Our whole family would have all of our dental work done, and I would have a maid and someone to do the laundry! Oh, and to wake up and miraculously have lost 60 lbs. would be nice too =0)

What would I ask Santa for if money were no object?

A brand new, paid for house!

What are 5 things I would like for Christmas?

1. A karoke machine
2. shelfreliance canned goods storage found here http://www.shelfreliance.com/shop/listing/50
3. new jeans (I am down to one pair that is way too big)
4. a nice relaxing massage
5. new music for my computer or my ipod shuffle thingy

GrocerySmarts!!!

I have made a new discovery that I am so excited about! With the economy going the way it is and having to tighten our belts a little I have become more aware of ways to save money that I would never have considered before. Coupon-ing is my new thing and I LOVE IT! I started out by trying to cut out coupons and use them the way I thought people did, but I quickly discovered that I was wasting my time trying to figure out which products I wanted, cutting the coupons, holding up the line at the store and then really not saving any money. In short I HATED it and decided it was not worth my time and effort just to save 30 cents on a product.

A few days after giving up the coupon thing I was at the newspaper depot folding my papers when the ladies were around me started talking about a website they used that helped them save a ton of money on groceries. I told them I hated coupons and they assured me that this was so easy that even I would like it. They gave me the website address and the passport code to get in. http://www.grocerysmarts.com/ passport# g84cht . My friend Sara also told me that they give free classes to learn how to do it. When she started telling me that she was saving about 80% on her grocery bill I got interested. I looked at the website and didn't really get what I was looking at so then asked Sara about the class and she told me she would have one at her house so I could come learn. THANK YOU SARA!!!

I was blown away by the class! I was taught the easiest way to use coupons in conjunction with the free website and I am so excited by the results that I just had to share. Unfortunately grocerysmarts is only in Utah and Las Vegas for the time being, but they are planning on expanding in the future. At any rate, this method allows me to not only buy name brand food at a fraction of the cost, but for the first time in my adult life I am building a food storage! This is absolutely thrilling to me! I have never managed to build a food storage because of the cost, sometimes we barely had enough money to eat as it was. The way this works, it will take me about 3 to 4 months to build a comprehensive base for my food storage that has everything we need in it, (this is because all the items in a grocery store go on sale in a 3 to 4 month cycle and you only buy things on sale and with a coupon) and then it will just grow from there. OK, so enough story, I want to share the results of my last shopping trip!

This is what is in the picture above:

29 Cans of Progresso Soup
12 boxes of Hamburger Helper
7 boxes of cereal (the good kind my kids love)
7 cans of Betty Crocker frosting
5 boxes of cake
4 boxes of brownies
4 large cans of Carnation evaporated milk
3 boxes of Progresso chicken broth
2 boxes of Culinary Circle entertainment crackers (vegetable)
2 bottles of All Small & Mighty detergent (32 loads per bottle)
2 Digiorno Stuffed crust pizzas

Grand Total before coupons: $276.40
What I actually PAID: $48.88
TOTAL SAVINGS: $227.52

AMAZING!! And this is all stuff I actually use! This was actually my third shopping trip using grocerysmarts so I had Emmy run downstairs to the pantry to count up some of the things we are starting to build in our storage. So far we have over 20 boxes of cereal, over 30 jars of baby food, 10 liters of pop, tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes galore, over 30 cans of vegetables, several bags of frozen vegetables and frozen skillet meals, a growing supply of flour and sugar, and all of this for less than $150.00 total. My food storage was completely non-existent just 2 weeks ago. Also, it takes all of 2 minutes to file my coupons and about 20 minutes to get ready for a shopping trip, including cutting the coupons.

WOOHOO!!!