Deals and Dentists

Yesterday afternoon I spent almost 2 hours mapping out my grocery shopping plan of attack. It is so fun to me to figure out where the best deals are and go grab them up. Thanks, Maria, for getting me started! There are so many things I didn't know about saving money. For example, you can download coupons onto your Kroger Plus card. There are several different sites to do this and they have different coupons. How fun is that? I hit 2 stores today. I did really good at Publix. I think my favorite deal there was getting vanilla wafers for 1 cent! I also signed up for Extra Cash Back at CVS today. After getting really good deals anyway and using several coupons there, I earned 12 dollars in cash back and used it all to get C school supplies for free!

But, our day wasn't all fun and games. The kiddos had their 6 month teeth cleaning this morning. C, as always, loved it! It doesn't bother him a bit and he thinks the dentist is his friend. AP, on the other hand, remembers her filling from last time and that it hurt. She threw the mother of all fits as soon as she saw the chair. She screamed hysterically. At that point, I wasn't sure what to do. Force her to lay there, leave the room, try to get her to calm down. I went with staying by her at first, but after it was apparent that that was not going to work, I left the room. They cleaned as fast as they could and she screamed the entire time. AND she has 4 cavities! Grrrr. The cavities are in her 2 year molars that just came in! Can they come in with cavities? I sort of got an uneasy feeling about the whole visit. Anyway, here is a pic of the kiddos at the dentist office before the chaos set in :) You can read the emotion on their faces. C is thinking "This is awesome!" AP is thinking "Get me out of here!"



And just because it's cute, I have to add this pic of AP before we left the house this morning. She had on an adorable head scarf with her dress, but only kept it on for about 2.5 seconds. Good thing I snapped a pic when I did!

Friends and Fishin

This morning the kiddos and I went to meet up with some of my previous coworkers. We all worked together about 5 years ago and have enjoyed staying in touch. This was the first time we had gotten to meet my friend K's newest son from Haiti. After seeing pictures of him over their two year referral process it was exciting to finally get to meet him in person! It's amazing how much he is like his older brother who was adopted domestically in the US. They were like two peas in a pod! Here are some of the kiddos helping to fill up the bird feeder at K's house.

AP had fun playing with little D from Haiti.

We picnicked with our friends before we left.

Then we headed to the marina to hang out with Boompa and Baba on their boat. C got his very first fishing pole and tackle box a few weeks ago and he has been really excited about getting to learn to fish. The worms were very interesting!

Daddy showed C how bait the hook and cast the line. Then they waited...

and waited....

and waited...

and looked a little closer to see what was going wrong...

and waited some more...

and finally caught a fish!

Then another!

The kiddos got in a little swim time while we were there, too.

We topped it off with dinner at the marina. It was a great afternoon with Boompa and Baba!

Day of Deals

Maria has been teaching me how to use coupons more efficiently. We had been using coupons occassionally (not so much me, more Hubs believe it or not), but apparently not using them to the best of our ability. I've read Maria's posts about her amazing deals and Hubs and I have read articles where women say that they get $200 dollars worth of groceries for something like $2 (I am exxagerating a bit). But, we, for the life of us, didn't see how that was possible. BUT, with guidance from Maria, I set out on my maiden couponing voyage today. My coupon inventory is very low (I have heard it can take 4-6 weeks to build up your supply), so I only went to get a very few things and practice my newly learned skills. So, here's what I got :

At Kroger-
Colgate Total
normally 3.49
on sale for 2.81
I had a coupon for $1.00 off Colgate Total
I had another coupon for $1.50 off my next Kroger purchase
making the price of the toothpaste .31 !!!

Also, Kroger was having their buy ten participating items and get $5 off your total. Hubs and I both really like Life Water, but it normally costs $1.49 a bottle. BUT, I got 9 bottles (the toothpaste was also one of the participating items and was my tenth item) that were on sale for .99. After the $5 off, I got $13.50 worth of Life Water for.......$3.91!!!

Then I went to Publix. The BIG boxes of General Mills cereal that are normally 4.99 a box were on sale for BOGOF. I also had a coupon for $1 off. So I got $9.98 worth of cereal for $3.99.

I'm still learning, but I thought I did pretty good! For me, it's just as much about the challenge as it is the money saving. After we were done grocery shopping we went to Toys R Us to find C a backpack for kindergarten. He really likes Transformers and BumbleBee is his favorite. He found the backpack he wanted and they were having a sale so we got a Transformer lunchbox for free!

Then for lunch, we went through the Little Ceasars (my favorite pizza) drive thru and got a $5 large pizza for the three of us and guess what... it came with a free Diet Coke! I texted Hubs after we left there and said I can't stop saving money today :)

Generations of Friends

This morning we met up with three of my oldest (not old as in age, but old as in we've been friends forever) friends. I've blogged about these friends several times before. We went to school together kindergarten through college. Two of the girls were my roommates at different times in college. Suffice it to say, we go WAY back. We love watching our children develop relationships with each other that we hope will last as long as ours have.

Here are all of our kiddos, except for new little baby K who was inside napping.

And the hot mommas :)

My kiddos loved playing with noodles today. AP was doing great swimming with only a noodle. She really wants to be able to swim independently like her brother. I have a feeling it won't be long!

After we were done swimming, baby K was the hit of the show. My kiddos were all over her.

Her mom said that we needed a baby for the kiddos to love on. I think we'll just love on hers for now!

Fountain Friends

Today we took advantage of another free summer movie. We saw Dougal and it was weird. The kiddos seemed to like it, but I'm glad I didn't spend any money to see it. After the movie we played again in the fountains near the theater. Let me tell you, that was the place to be seen today! There were two of my friends from high school, a friend from church, and two fellow blogging adoptive mommas there! The kiddos loved having so many friends to play with.

(in the background you can see fellow bloggin' mamas Maria and Lala)

Most of the time these two played in their own little world. C thinks that he is going to marry her and I heard her refer to him as her husband today!

After the fountains we walked to a nearby ice cream store for a treat. We had a great day with our friends today!

We also had other big news today. C finally got a letter from his kindergarten teacher! We found out that he will be in the same class as two of his friends from church. He is very excited and ready to go by his school supplies!