Earrings and e-coupons

Last night I am at my Singing Hands class and Daryl calls, the first thing that goes through my head when I saw the call was from home was oh great, who's throwing up! Thank goodness that wasn't the issue. Meghan had come down and asked Daryl to take her earrings out because they were bothering her, but he couldn't find the backs, he calls to tell me that the skin has grown over the back of the earring! Yikes, but I'm figuring that maybe there are some crusties back there from soap and shampoo not getting rinsed out properly, not really skin. I told him to get some alcohol and a cotton ball and try and clean it up a little, we determine she is fine until morning, but I had to go and take a peek last night when I got home. Sure enough, the skin had grown over the earring back on her left ear, you could see about 1/2 of the back and that's it and you could not see a back at all on the right ear. I looked at it better this morning and I could probably work out the left ear, but I couldn't see anything in the right ear, I was hoping that maybe the right backing had just come off, but then I thought I could feel something in there.

I got her into the doctors this afternoon and he refers her to a Pediatric Ear Nose & Throat doctor and then over to get x-rays to determine exactly what was going on.

(I love having my iphone camera with me at all times and ready for any adventure we may encounter!)

The x-ray techs asked many questions about exactly what they were supposed to be x-raying because they had never seen anything like this before ~ and thank goodness the x-ray did not show a back on the right ear!!! I guess that must have fallen out at some point. So we now just have to deal with the left ear. I'll let you know how that goes, we have an appointment tomorrow afternoon.

E -Coupons

I have completely ignored e-coupons until recently, I won't be ignoring them anymore. I haven't saved tons of $$$ using them yet, but when you look at individual items, I'm getting great deals, making some items free and even making a little bit on the item.

You see the great thing about these e-coupons, which currently tie to your Safeway Club Card only, is that you can stack a Safeway coupon, a manufacturer coupon and then the e-coupons will come off, and depending on how many you have loaded on your account, multiples may come off, even if you only bought 1 item. Here is an example ~ at Safeway today Meghan wanted a Kids Cuisine TV Dinner, they were on sale for $1.99 each if you bought 3 of them and I only had 1 manufacturer coupon for $1.00 off of 2 dinners. So I'm figuring $5 buck for 3 is an ok price at $1.66 each, not great but ok. At this point I have forgotten that I have several of these coupons loaded from Shortcuts.com, when I look at my receipt I realize that I had 4 of them loaded! So, my TV dinners went from $1.66 each to .33 each, now that's a good deal!

I also did this with some of my new favorite snacks last week ~ here is what that looked like

On sale at Safeway for $2.50 each. If you buy 4 or more then you get $4.00 off.

2.50 x 4 = $10.00
- $ 4.00 Mix & Match Savings
- $ 1.60 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ 1.00 e-coupon
_________
Total + .40 I love when I make money buying stuff.

At this point Safeway is the only store this will work at, but check out Shortcuts.com and also cellfire.com, when you register for this one you use your cell phone number and also your Safeway Card number. Between the 2 I've probably saved at least $15.00 in only 3 shopping trips. The cool thing with shortcuts is that by the time you get home from shopping you have an e-mail showing which coupons were applied to you shopping trip.

And since I'm talking coupons, I'm happy to report that I made my goal to save at least 70% in August coming in at 70.1%. Working towards 72% or 73% for September.

Where did I leave off?

It's been awhile! Things have been a bit crazy around here the last few weeks, in a good way. Daryl didn't go to work on that Wednesday two weeks ago, which was good because the painting was not finished! But just as he was wrapping up the last bit of touch up Thursday evening he got the call that all of the paperwork was complete and he could start on Friday! Good timing if you ask me!!! The bathroom/retreat area turned out awesome, I love it. Still need to do a bit of "accessorizing" but I'm looking for some specific things that I will probably be looking for for awhile, but meanwhile it's looking good!

Here is a before as you walk into the bathroom ~


This now contains most of the stuff that was on the floor, you can barely see the pile of stuff on the floor in the top photo.and the little desk we found - now if we can find a smaller couch or chair and get the treadmill fixed, it will be just about done!

We also celebrated our 18th Wedding Anniversary, seriously, I can't be old enough to be married for 18 years? Can I???? Well, looking at the then and now, I guess I have aged just a little bit!!!

Trev took this one, should have switched it over to auto mode for him to avoid the blurriness, but hey, this is my life, we stopped painting long enough to go have dinner and snap a quick picture!

With Daryl working I had to make a few changes to my work schedule and Mimi & Grampie are helping out a lot, it's a crazy schedule and I had to put it all on the calendar in order to keep straight where I need to be and who is doing what each day! Luckily I got this new toy for an anniversay gift! It's been very very fun!!!! And yes, I've been playing on this instead blogging!!! Addicting is all I can say. I'm amazed at what this phone can do, it's like having a computer and the internet at your fingertips, 24/7!


I'm sure there is lots I'm forgetting, but it's now 9:00 on Sunday evening and time for me to head to bed, with my new schedule I have to be at work by 7:00 tomorrow morning, so early to bed for me!

Holiday Weekend

I love 3 day weekends, and I especially love when we can get projects done, like finishing painting the bathroom and retreat area of our bedroom! It's been on the "to-do" list since we moved in, just about the last of things to be painted, just the laundry room and kids bathroom left and we will be 100% painted over here, time to start over now, right? Just kidding, my husband will not go for that.

We had a busy weekend so the painting didn't start until today . . . so Daryl has 1 day to finish up because on Wednesday, he goes to work!!!! Yep, you read it right, he got a job last week and starts on Wednesday. Actually he got 2 job offers last week, when it rains it pours! Both of the jobs had pros and cons and in the end it was a pretty easy decision since one of the jobs hours were 3:00 pm - midnight. Neither of us really want to go back to the crazy off hours, and I think that those would be worse than graveyards, so we opted for the one that pays less and is further from home, but we both feel good about that decision and trying to keep us all on the same schedule, he would just miss to much with the kids working those hours. Needless to say, we are feeling very blessed over here this week, and Daryl is very excited to get to work. Me, while I'm obviously very happy he will be working and gearing up for the crazy schedule of how I will be getting everyone where they need to be everyday. I have been totally spoiled the last few months because Daryl has been getting the kids up and out, lunches made, dropped off, picked up, cooking dinner, cleaning up . . . I've been living the easy life, well, it will be ending on Wednesday!

We made a trip to IKEA on Saturday, needed to get another set of the expedit shelving that I love so much for our bedroom and we also found a little table/desk for up there too. Can't wait for it to all come together. I also bought some new accessories and towels in my favorite colors!

Yesterday we did a little bit of phone upgrading. Daryl has been promising me an iPhone once he got a job, well in celebration of a new job and our 18th anniversary tomorrow I got my iPhone and I LOVE it!!! So cool, so much you can do, LOVE having the internet with me at all times. How did I live without it? Trev also had a little accident with his phone on Friday and the face cracked, of course he isn't ready for an upgrade but another line on our plan was, so he lucked out, he was going to just get mine and he was less than thrilled with that idea! So he got a new cool phone and a hard carrying case so that there are no more little accidents while the phone in is the backpack, otherwise, he WILL be using my old phone. But he is most excited about the unlimited texting we also added to the plan. He has probably already texted me 50 times and we've been in the same house! Meghan is feeling left out and thinks she should also have a phone. uuummmm, no, sorry!!! So she is carrying around my old one and listening to the music on it. Daryl is just shaking his head at all the ring tones that have been going off all day, he doesn't get why we are so happy!!

Looking forward to a new week and finding our new normal and new routines. I'm sure it will take a bit of getting used to but I think we are all ready for this new chapter. Even though he was only out of work for 3 months, we knew it was coming 10 months prior, while that is great to know so far in advance, it also is hard to make decisions to do things knowing that you will be unemployed in a few months, so many little things were put on hold, feels good to get some stuff done!

Happy Labor Day, I'm going to go and try to find my bed, which is a bit buried at the moment!

Another tooth . . . G.O.N.E.

This one was fast, which is good, there is nothing worse than loose teeth, well there's throwing up, but then there is loose, hanging teeth, that they want you to look at every other second, that comes right after throwing up in my book. I have nightmares that all my teeth are loose in my mouth and falling out. Anyway, she mentioned that her tooth was loose, but she's says that all of her teeth are loose, so I didn't give it much thought, until Sunday, she was swimming at the Tidwells's and she gets out of the pool to show me her tooth, which was very bloody. "Uuummmmm, what happened???" I ask, trying to be cool about the fact that there is a lot of blood in her mouth, and she responds "my thoof is loose". I thought that maybe she hit it or something, not sure why it started bleeding so much, but within the hour it was out!

and she was still not to amused with the $2.00 that the thoof fairy left for her.

And this is a picture of her dressed up to go to Kaitlyns Birthday dinner last night. We did showers before we went so she would be ready for bed when we got home. She came out with this little outfit.



When I told her that she looked beautiful she looked at me and said "you can't go like that." I had on shorts and a shirt. She said "we are going to a party and you need to dress up." So I have this little fashion statement telling ME how I should dress, nice!

Gotta love the tiara and the missing tooth, I mean thoof!