{Hello 2014}

One of the things on my list of things to accomplish this year is to dust off this ol' blog.  To say I was sad when I logged on and saw that I had ONE, just one, blog post for 2013, was an understatement.  I want this blog to be another way to document our everyday life and when I read through all of the old posts I love love love going back and reliving the stories and looking at the photos.  So why is it I can't keep it up?!  But this is a new year, a time to set new goals and have a fresh start. I'm totally just going to jump in where we are now and start documenting our life and quit thinking about it and making it more difficult than it really is!

This goes hand in hand with my Word for this year, which is DO, as in quit procrastinating, quit over thinking it, thinking it all has to be perfect, and just DO it!  So I'm taking baby steps to work on the things that I want to DO this year . . . blogging, being more creative, doing Project Life and actively working more on my photography business.  I think I'm feeling more capable of DOing these these things since I recently changed jobs, still working at the hospital, just in a different, much less stressful, department.  I seriously feel like a new person, I didn't realize until I was out of the old job how stressed it was making me

So I'm hopeful that now that I'm not bringing that stress home with me everyday I can focus more on the things I want to do for me and my family.

Just a little recap of 2013, for the sake of documentation! 2013 was a good year!  Trevor finished up 10th grade and started 11th, Meghan finished 3rd grade and is in 4th grade, they both are doing great in school.  Trevor got his drivers license!  Kinda was scary but I'm actually really enjoying having an errand boy!  He is very into his airsofting and video games, some things never change!  I can't believe he will be 17 in a few weeks.  Meghan is still in to many many things, Monster High Dolls, American Girl Dolls, Rainbow Loomb, One Direction . . . . and I could go on.  She makes us laugh and makes us frustrated all at the same time.  We work daily on trying to keep her and her "stuff" neat and tidy, losing the battle most days.

I'm sad that I don't have a currently photo of all of us . . . we never found a time to get out and get that done this fall, I'm still hoping to go out and get one of all of us together, soon!

Can I brag for a moment?

yep, it's my blog, so if you don't want to hear me brag on my kiddos for a minute, stop reading now!

Trevor came home last week with the results of his Pre-Algebra assessment test. He's always been a math whiz, but this is ALGEBRA, yes I know it's just pre-algebra, but still, I was a bit nervous, not to mention that it is his 1st period class. Well, I'm not going to worry quite as hard now, he got 40/45 on the test, the highest score in his class, most of the others were in the 20's.


I was talking to Meghan on the phone after school on Friday and she told me she got an award at school, and that she was the only one in the class to get this award. She didn't know what it said, so I tell her great job and I'll see it when I get home. I was half thinking she was making it up! I know, that's bad. But we had just been telling Trev how great he was doing the night before, so I thought maybe, just maybe she was a bit jealous and was making up the little award. Well, boy was I wrong! She had made a picture for her teacher the night before, colored it and then wrote some words on it that she knows how to spell. So she got a "You did a Super Job" award for doing "kid art". She was very proud of herself! And so are we!



Then today Trevor came home with this letter ~


Although I'm not exactly sure what this program is, Trevor says that it's like the GATE Program in elementary school. Needless to say, we are very proud of him for earning this!

In other news, Daryl had a productive weekend doing a little backyard project. It started by getting rid of the wasp nest ~

Then he did a little concrete painting, it looks much better than this in person, and it's not spotty looking, we were going for the "rustic" look!

And then we added a little more seating ~

and a new table, chairs & umbrella ~

I think he did a great job! Thanks honey, I LOVE it!

Bad blogger this week . . .

Not sure why . . . getting into the routine of being back to school, been to 2 back to school nights, Trev already had school pictures on Thrusday, Meghans are on Monday. Meghan is still loving school, Trev still wishes he was off for a little longer! Meghan loves buying her lunch and asks everyday if she can . . . the answer is usually no, I figure they can each buy once or twice a week, the pantry is stuffed with yummy lunch stuff for so much cheaper than the school lunch, Trevor's is $2.75 and Meghan's is $2.50.

I spent too much time clipping/organizing coupons this week, lots of good ones in the paper and all of the internet printable reset. But it has been worth it. My goal this month is to have an average savings of at least 70%, I ended last month at a 62% savings, so now that I can be even pickier I'm working towards being at 70%, so far this month (I do realize that we are only one week in) I'm at 78%, that is for 2 trips to Safeway, 1 trip to CVS and a few stops into Wal-Greens, they had some great Register Reward deals this week, I'll post my weeks worth of bargains after my final stop tomorrow.

Safeway had some awesome coupons this week that matched great with some that I had, today I saved 85%, I did a similar transaction on Sunday and saved 75%. Not to bad, I don't have a picture of Sunday's trip, but it looked a lot like this one. I paid $12.60 for all of this!

Free items are:

4 Twix candy bars
Starbucks ice cream
3 bottles of Marie's salad dressing

Really cheap items are:

Pop-Tarts .49
Tortillas .99
Kraft Cheese slices 1.49
Granola bars .99
Cream Cheese .99
Cantaloupe .77 each
Cookie dough .24
Salad was 1.00/bag
Finish $1.49

For the two visits at Safeway this week I spent $34.11. The total before sales & coupons was $166.80 - for a total savings of 80%.

Since I got 3 newspapers on Sunday I have more coupons so I will make one more trip this weekend to use those coupons too.

So glad it's Friday, need to get to bed, I'm sure Meghan will be up bright and early like always on a Saturday morning, especially she has been promised cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

First Day of School!

It was an exciting day around here, the much anticipated, by Meghan, and the not so anticipate, by Trevor, 1st day of school! I can't believe that my baby started kindergarten today, and she LOVED it!
Meghan did great, she loved it, waved good bye to us with a big smile on her face, made it very easy to leave her without getting to emotional!

Mimi even came out bright and early so she could go with us, and she brought with her "that girl", (wasn't that a TV show a long time ago?) as Meghan refers to her as, for some reason she can't remember that her name is Jennifer. Jennifer is Greg's niece, I think that makes us cousins and maybe Meghan a 2nd cousin? I'm not for sure, but she and her mom and dad are here visiting for 2 weeks and Meghan took to her immediately, she loves being with the big girls and it made her day that she came with Mimi this morning! I think that she even got more hugs than Mimi and I combined!!!


Daryl took Trev to school, without all of the hoopla, that just isn't cool anymore, I was lucky to get him to let me take his picture this morning!

Trevor's favorite thing today was having PE everyday, and Meghan's was recess, hummm, I'm seeing a trend here. But Meghan came out talking about how much she love school and that she wanted to go to kindergarten everyday for the rest of her life! I guess I can't complain.

New clothes, a new do and a wasps nest!

It was a busy week, good thing I took a few days off work! On Tuesday we went out school shopping, that was fun! The kids actually did really good shopping together. Trevor is old enough now to go find things he wants and then bring them to me, which makes it easier for me to get what I need for Meghan. I also gave him a budget, I figure now that he wants $50 pairs of shoes and $45 pairs of skinny jeans, a budget was in order. He then he wanted to add that if he stayed under budget I would give him that amount in cash! yea, whatever!!! But, it really did help us stay on track and I told him that we would be getting ready for fall/winter as we go along. It's so nice that I can still shop on the clearance rack for Meghan and she doesn't care! I think we were pretty successful, I spent almost the exact same amount on both of them, but Meghan got a whole lot more for the buck!

We also went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on some school supplies, I LOVE the school supply isle, I'm sure it will take us a year to go through all of this, Meghan also picked out a new backpack and lunch box, I can't believe that my baby is going to kindergarten! Trev is using his backpack from last year and had decided he doesn't want a lunch box, he wants to use paper bags!

On Wednesday Mimi wanted to get the kids a new outfit for school, so we all went to lunch, went and got Meghan a new, big girl hair cut and then they went shopping.

Meghan got a dress, a pair of pants and a cute shirt, all of which I haven't taken a picture of yet, and these shoesTrevor on the other hand opted out of actual clothing and just wanted shoes! R.E.D. shoes! And I don't know if you can see in the clothing picture above, the jeans he picked out are PURPLE!!! We told him that he couldn't wear them together! Thank you Mimi & Grampie!!!

I am actually afraid that he doesn't realize the brightness of these! He is a bit "color blind" although that is not what they call it, but he can't see a lot of colors, Mom and I were laughing wondering how he sees the jeans and shoes and if he were seeing the colors as they really were, would he still pick them out? Guess we'll never know, and as long as he likes it, that is all that matters!

And then we have this living in the eaves above the little door going out to the backyard

that is Daryls project tomorrow, to get rid of them!!!

Their baaaaack!

and it almost seems as if they were never gone! Sounds like they had a great time and Daryl came home with a record breaking 80 photos! He was hoping to get a few more today, but the camera battery ran out and he came home and told me that the back-up battery I sent with him "didn't work". Well, it was user error, but at least he will know for next time! Here are a few of the pictures he, and Meghan got!

I really don't want to know how Trev got up in that tree, with Max, all by himself!

A self-portrait

Alone . . .

My wonderful husband took the kids, the dog and the trailer and went camping, for 4 days, without me! It is VERY quiet around here, other than the sound of Stitch squawking every now and then, and I am enjoying it very much. Don't get me wrong, I do really miss them, and after 4 days I am going to be really excited to see them, but there is something about having time alone, time to not have to do anything for anyone, well, I do have to give the bird fresh water everyday and bring in the newspaper, and I should probably unload the dishwasher that Daryl started before he left, but other than that, I'm pretty much not doing anything I don't want to do, and I'm loving it!

What I have done is gone to K-Mart, hate that store, but they are having double coupons this week so I decided to make a trip. How much would you pay for all of this stuff?

All of this before sale/coupons is $62.04

2 bottles of listerine
2 bottles of Pert Shampoo
2 bottles of Hawaiian Tropic Suntan oil, and yes, mom, one of them even has sunscreen in it!
3 bottles of Hair Gel, for Trev
1 tube of Dora toothpaste for Meg
2 tubes of mascara
2 bottles of hairspray
2 cans of shaving gel
2 bottles of hand soap

I paid $13.40, a savings of about 80%! This is all stuff that we will use, this makes me really happy! I only had time to make it through the toiletries section, I have some cleaning coupons pulled so I need to try and make one more trip before Saturday.

I also went to Wallgreens, they had another $5.00 off a $25.00 purchase, there were a few things I needed, savings not quiet as good as K-Mart, but still not to bad.

I spent $20.87, saved $22.73 and earn $5.00 in Register Rewards. A savings of 52%, both items I need. The M & M's I had to put in at the last minute because my total was at $24.87 and I needed to be at $25.00 for the $5.00 coupon to work. Darn! Mental note, gotta hide those M & M's before the family returns!

The exciting life of a mom, I'm sure years from now I will laugh at all of this coupon shopping, or who knows maybe I'll still be doing it!

Going to head to bed, can't keep my eyes open!

Where did this week go?

Somehow it's already or finally Friday, I'm not sure which. While it seemed like a long week, I don't feel like I was very productive, I hate getting to the end of the week feeling like that. I've gotten out of the habit of making a list daily of the things I need/want to get done, that makes a big difference for me, keeps me focused. And, I did not take one single photo this week! YIKES, I have some making up to do, I think I will go and take care of that right now so I can have some pictures with this post!

One thing I did do this week is dive a little deeper into this couponing stuff ~ can I tell you how addicting it is? There are so so many web-sites that tell you where the best deal are every week. Plus they will link you to some great additional coupons for even better savings. I think my best deal this week was on Got2B hair products. It was on sale 2 for $10.00, it is usually about $6.00 at Wal-Mart, I found a coupon for $2.00 off so I printed 2, and if you bought 2 you got $5.00 Register Reward back, so I ended up paying $1.00 for both of them.

I also reorganized my coupon binder. The more I'm doing this I feel like I can fine tune things a bit, when you first start it is a little overwhelming so I kept the major couponing to Wal-Greens. Now that I think I about have that mastered I realize how many coupons I'm not using when I go and do a large trip to Winco. Because their sales are not published anywhere I didn't take the time to pull coupons before I would go shop. Plus, my binder is 2 inches thick of coupons, it takes awhile to go through those. A few months ago I decided that each week I would go through the packets I got and cut out anything that I knew I would not use at the drug stores, that I would probably only use when I shopped at Winco. I found an old plastic divider and started putting the coupons in there. But, that darn thing drove me nuts! I lid doesn't stay open, I have to dig and can't see what I have, I would pull things out at the store and then they would fall on the ground. Needless to say it didn't work for me! So I decided to get some baseball card holders, some dividers and a binder and put my clipped coupons in those, by isle, so that I could easily find what I needed as I shopped, nothing to fall out or go through, I can see exactly what I have, hopefully Winco doesn't change their store layout anytime soon!!! I also got a small pair of scissors and a small calculator, there are many times I want to do the math to see if a sale item is a good price or not. So, here is my 2nd binder, I plan to try and carry it in the van so that these items are with me for spur of the moment stops too, and for those times, like today when I'm caught in an unexpected traffic jam for 40 minutes, I was able to cut a few coupons and finalize my Wal-Greens & Target stops I was planning on making.


Monday was a good mail day for us, I love happy mail. Meghan has been wanting the "Butterfly Treehouse" for awhile now. We looked at a few stores last week and couldn't find one, so I finally broke down and told her I would order one on-line. In the catalog from her teacher they were $25.00 + shipping, I thought that was a bit pricy so I searched and found the same thing on Amazon.com for $15.00. And with Amazon if you order $25.00 you get free shipping, so I figured it was a good time to order this book I've been wanting, and all for what I would have paid if I had bought from the original source! Now we both win. Anyway, both of those items arrived along with a little package from Papa & Gigi for Meghan. It was the cutest little dress, I was laughing as I took it out because it looked so familiar, it is the exact same dress I bought for Meghan for Easter! They obviously didn't see any Easter pictures, because I didn't take many, and I still can't believe that out of all of the clothes in Target, they picked out the exact same dress I did!!!


Ok, well, I have now blogged, taken my pictures for the week, and started a list of what I want to accompolish tomorrow, it's National Scrapbook Day! Steph and I will spend the day scrapping, I plan to do some paper stuff and some digi stuff, and in general hopefully knock a few things off of my Scrapping "To-Do" list. Crossing my fingers that little Miss Meghan will cooperate with us and not make me crazy! I did a little bit of bribing when we went to Target today (is that bad?) So, Trev should be helping me out and Meghan picked out this little book to she could "scrap" with us. Wish us luck!



Time to go and make Daryl some coffee before he heads off to work, only 5 more weeks at Longs! Exciting and scary, hoping that a new job will come his way very soon and that it will be a day job, will be nice for us to all be on the same schedule again.

A sad state for our schools

I just got home from a budget crisis meeting held at Trevor's school, I don't even know where to begin. The school is in a budget crisis because of our state, nothing that the school had done wrong. I don't follow the news much (I know I should) so while I know that things in general are not good, I did not realize the impact that this unbalanced budget will be having on our schools. Long story short, the Oakley Unified School District needs to reduce their budget by almost 4 million dollars for the next fiscal year. Being new in the district, I have to say that I was very impressed with the Superintendent who did the presentation and feel very confident that our kids are at the top of the priority list as they are making decisions on what cuts need to be made. I guess it will all be public knowledge tomorrow so he did not want to go into details of how many teachers are being told that they will not have jobs for the next school year, and of course this is all based on "proposals" so they were giving us information based on information that could change tomorrow. Nothing is set in stone and the decisions that they have to make on who to give notice to can all be reversed if things to end up better than expected . . . it just makes me sad. Our kids are our future but their education is at the bottom of the list as far as the state is concerned.

Monkey Bread . . .

is it supposed to look like this?


I think that I shouldn't have used the entire bag of rolls! I couldn't find my recipe so I looked up a few on-line and improvised, I cracked up when I looked in the oven and found one had fallen off!

Here is the recipe I used:

Monkey Bread

1 package frozen rolls (24 to be exact)
1 small package of vanilla pudding (not instant)
1 Cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 TBSP cinnamon
1 cube butter, melted

1. Spray the bundt pan with non stick.

2. Mix the cinnamon & sugar together and pour over the rolls while still in the bag, shake to coat.

3. Put rolls around bottom of bundt pan, pour 1/2 the pudding and brown sugar over the rolls, put another layer of rolls in pay and then the rest of the pudding and brown sugar.

4. Pour melted butter over the top. Put a damp cloth over the top and leave overnight to rise.

5. Pre-heat oven to 350 and bake for about 30 minutes.

Even though they looked funny, they were very yummy!

So after breakfast we headed off to the opening of the park by our house, finally, we've been waiting for months for this park to open, so nice that it is walking distance from our house. Trev was so excited because there is also skateboard ramps, so Cole spent the night so he could come with us to the opening too. Well, I think that they boys must have been a little, no, a lot intimidated by all the kids there, they didn't even go near the ramps!


Meghan decided that the washers needed to be tightened while we were walking home, too funny!

And I didn't get any pictures of the boys at the park, I guess I was to busy trying to keep up with Meghan! But here they are cleaning off their shoe because they decided to climb the dirt hill in the BMX area, well, since it's been raining for the last several days it was pretty muddy. Trev wore his brand new "white"shoes . . . ummm . . . yea, he must be 12!