Coupons and Giveaways

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. I've been having too much fun saving money and entering contests. Here are some of the deals I've found this past week:

Rite Aid today: out of pocket= $3.60 (Sorry for the background mess - I had one of the kids take the picture). I can't find the exact site that showed me how to do this one, but here's another site that breaks it down for you if you are interested: cuckoo for coupon deals. I wish I could remember where I first saw the deal described. It was a lot clearer than that post.


Walgreen's last week: out of pocket=$1.00


Kohl's last week: out of pocket= $2.36 (Christmas gifts for the girls)

I've also entered and won a few contests lately. One of the blogs I follow and enter contests on is Mrs. Nespy's Frugal World. She had a great back to school giveaway event. I won three of the prizes. There are still a few giveaways left on her blog and she told me she's doing it again in November for the holidays. Here's what I won:


A wii remote soap (I can't wait for this one to arrive. It's going to be a Christmas gift for Addison) from Digital Soaps. (These pictures are from her blog).

A set of cleaning supplies from Conserve.


And a $10 credit to Dodeline Design etsy store. I chose this cute set of thank you notes (picture from her store).

Anyway, take a look at her site if you want to try your luck. :) I even helped my mom enter a few contests online and she won a cool science kit for the grandkids.

If you are interested in winning books, you can check out Hachette Books Giveaway page. You can look through the titles of the books they are promoting (if you click on the title it tells you what the book is about) and go to each blog listed under the title for a chance to win it. I think the Achoo! and Glamour of Grammar books look great.

I promise the next post will be more about what the family is up to and less about coupons and giveaways.

Family Reunion

We just got back from our family reunion out by Altamont this past week. My parents rented this cabin for the reunion. It was beautiful. There were five bedrooms and six bathrooms.

This was our view from the cabin. We had the first two lakes to ourselves (they come with renting the cabins). Bret is in the boat with Jenna and Andrew in this picture.


An unexpected bonus was all the crawdad fishing the kids were able to do. Addison was in heaven. His uncles loved it too. Here is one of the little guys we caught. They cooked up a crawdad feast on two of the evenings. I didn't participate, but they assured me it was delicious.




Our 91 year old grandma with her newest great-grandchild.



We had a lot of fun activities. One of the funnest was a shaving cream hair design compliments of the kids and moms. Jeff ended up with a completely covered face. I'm not sure how he could breathe under all that shaving cream. He did say sound was muffled and he couldn't really hear us.
We had a ton of fun. I may post more pictures later.

Anna Update

Since it was Anna's birthday last month and I didn't post in June, I thought I would do a little "Anna" post. For her 6th birthday we took her to get her ears pierced. She wanted the cute little pink gemstones. Since they are $10 at Wal-mart and $37 at Claires, we chose to go to Wal-Mart. Not a great choice. The lady pierced her ears on an angle so the earring on her left had the back coming out the base of her earlobe. After about three hours I decided they needed to be re-pierced. I didn't want her to go through life with such a ridiculous ear piercing. We took them out that night. She was so sad. She's been asking for years to get her ears pierced, but we had told her she had to wait until after kindergarten, because that's how old her sisters were when they got theirs pierced. Now she's too afraid of the pain and doesn't want to get them re-pierced. Twice she asked me to take her in, and twice we went to the mall to Claire's and then she'd change her mind. I told her it was fine and she could wait as long as she wants to or not even get them pierced if that's what she wants.


Her birthday party was fun. We had 5 girls over to play water games in the back yard. She was a little exuberant with the water balloon toss.



Anna and her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McGarry. Her teacher was wonderful. Anna preformed gymnastics at the kindergarten talent show on this day.


I don't have a picture for the last news about Anna. On Saturday she was playing in the back yard going down the slide - with water on it. She hit the ground hard on her shoulder and complained that it hurt. When I got home from work she was still complaining so I took her in to see a doctor. We got there at 7:30 p.m. and waited until 8:00 to see a P.A. The office closes at 8 so they were starting to lock the doors and turn off the lights. The PA really didn't think anything was wrong and said he didn't feel like we needed to x-ray it. He did send us home with a sling and said she'd probably just bruised her shoulder.

The next morning she was still complaining that it hurt and it looked swollen to me. I called my friend who is a nurse to come and see it and she said to give her motrin and keep it in the sling as there's really nothing they can do if it is broken. This morning Anna woke up at 4:30 crying in pain. I decided this was definitely more than a bruised shoulder. My favorite doctor couldn't see us until 5 p.m. so we kept her arm in the sling and went in at 5. The doctor looked at her, felt her clavicle with her fingers "walking" up the bone and found a fracture. She x-rayed it to be sure and it's definitely broken clear through her clavicle. The break looks like this ">" through the bone. Luckily the two sides are lined up correctly. We have to keep her in the sling for 3-6 weeks depending on how it heals. She's a pretty miserable little girl right now.


That's not a very happy note to end on. Here's a picture of her at a picnic at Snowbird with her cousins, family, and grandparents. I'm sure it won't be too long until she's smiling again.

Good Deals!

I hope this isn't too obnoxious. I just had so much fun getting good deals today. I went to Walgreens and bought some of the things recommended on this post. Here's a picture of what I came home with. My total was about $21. These deals are good until 5/29, but this website updates the deals every week.

Piano, Zoo and Derby

Here are some of the things we've been doing lately.


Our kids started taking piano lessons from Grandma Judy in February. We are loving it. She's an amazing teacher and the kids are making tons of progress. They had their first recital this past week. Three of their cousins are also taking lessons from grandma. (Tara must have the picture with everyone looking at her - I don't know how I ended up with this picture being the best of the 6 pics I took).


Pinewood Derby time! Addison's car is the red one. His car came in first or second in the first four races . He won enough races to make it to the finals, but then came in sixth place (out of six in the finals). It was an interesting night. The meeting started late, they did the scouting awards and flag ceremony, then the man who came and set up the track talked for 30 minutes about the rules and having fun and being good sports. He went on and on and on. I'm sure he's seen it all (and he told us about a lot of it), but I couldn't wait for him to start. We arrived at 7:00 and they started racing the cars at 8:15. They weren't done until nearly 9:00 p.m.



Kindergarten field trip to the zoo. It was miserable. We went on Tuesday and it was raining (pouring buckets) the entire 2 1/2 hours while we were there. It was also 40 degrees, so it was cold and wet. All the covered pavilions were taken so we ended up setting up our picnic under the awning for the elephant exhibit. The kids were ready to go home an hour before it was over. Here are a few pictures of the animals we saw.


Anna is in the teal colored jacket. She loved having her hand on the glass while the leopard paced back and forth on the other side of the glass. It was crazy to be within inches of him.



Andrew and the giraffe.



The tigers were very active. That's one good thing about going on a rainy day - some of the animals were more active. However, a lot of the animals were not out. There weren't any animals in the zebra enclosure. The bear and cougar enclosures were also empty. I guess schools can't reschedule field trips. The kids seemed to have fun despite the lousy weather.

Wordless Wednesday

I read a blog where the woman does a "Wordless Wednesday" and posts pictures of her kids. Since I really don't have much to say about this, here's Andrew.


In my defense--- I was sewing a baby quilt and had checked on him only a few minutes earlier. He's handy with a screw driver. He took his two story fire house toy apart with an allen wrench a month after getting it for Christmas. It took my dad about an hour to build it and it took Andrew less than 10 minutes to take it apart. But no worries, he put it back together again by himself.


Both doors were attached and functioning well this morning. I have no idea what goes through this kid's mind.

My Brother's Farm

My brother Jacob lives in a city, really. He has a mini farm on his property. We went out to visit his baby lambs and I snapped some pictures of his other animals while we were there.


Three of the mama sheep with their babies. One ewe had triplets, one had twins and the one on the far left had a single baby.

Yolanda the Yak with the ram and one of the one-year old ewes.

Nine ducklings

This white peacock adopted Jake and Edie. He shows up each day to visit. Jake wonders how peacock tastes.... just kidding.

Sarah holding one of the baby bunnies.

Jenna holding one of the baby lambs. The mama was not happy and she let us know! We put the baby back pretty fast.

Jacob came home from work last week and found one of the babies nearly frozen. This baby lamb is one of the triplets and the mama could only feed two of the babies so we think she hadn't been nursing this one. Jake brought her into the house and put her under a heat lamp. He tried feeding her electrolytes (the orange stuff in the rootbeer bottle) from his lamb rescue kit. Even after three hours under the heat lamp she was still freezing (her legs and gums were so cold.) Jake hesitated to warm her up in water because once you do that there is no chance that the mama ewe will take the baby back. After a few hours he felt like he was losing her, so we helped him warm her up in a hot bath. It was amazing to see how fast she recovered. She was able to drink the electrolytes and then the colostrum replacement. By the time we left she looked like she was going to make it.


Now they have a bottle fed lamb. She has to be fed every 2 hours (even at night!) for the first week, then every three hours for the next week, then ever fours the next week, and then you can go every 6 hours until she's weaned (which is probably in 2 months).


Since Jake and Edie work all day, my mom has been taking care of the baby lamb during the day. Jenna decided to name the lamb "Hope", but Jake isn't sure he wants to call her that. Jake and Edie haven't chosen a name for their baby girl that is going to be born in April, so my dad calls their baby girl "Faith". That's why Jenna thought it would be good to name the lamb "Hope".

Hope is doing much better now and was following my mom around the kitchen the other day.