Deal Days

Apparently July brings some wonderful deals in the world of shopping. I have been slowly but surely learning about couponing and when stores tend to put their goodies on the best sales from some great couponing blogs. My three favorites are: thecoupongoddess.blogspot.com, hookedonbargains.blogspot.com, and totallytarget.com. These three amazing ladies score incredible deals with their coupons and are nice enough to share them! I would be lost (haha...still am a lot of the time) without their coupon and product pairing!

Seeing as I am still a newbie to the coupon game, I was pretty excited to get some good deals a couple of weeks ago without any coupons. I'm sure my coupon gals could have gotten even better deals, but I was happy with what I got at Kroger's 75% of summer clearance sale!

All these goodies cost me ....

less than $13!

Here's the breakdown of the markdowns:
5 sundae glasses: $0.37 each (I only pulled out one for the picture!)
1 tea jar (that I have been wanting all summer but didn't want to pay full price for!): $1.50
4 small bottles of push-n-pop bubbles: $0.50 each
Large bubble bucket with 4 wands and bubble solution: $1.75
4 small plastic cups: $0.50 for all
8 plastic plates: $0.25 each
8 plastic bowls: $0.25 each
Pretty awesome, huh?

About the same time, I happened to wander by the dollar section at Target and found all of these great boy dress-up items for a dollar each (except the cowboy hat - that was $2 at Mardel). Ian loves hats and I have been wanting to get him some for a while, but couldn't afford regular dress up price. These hats are super sturdy and many come with matching vests for a complete outfit. I also couldn't resist the little chef hats...adorable!!

Close up of the fireman helmet, chef's hats, and construction hard hat and vest.

Close up of the army helmet and vest, police hat and guard, and cowboy hat.

Hehe - my little soldier making a run for it!

Okay, Mom. Your turn!! (What Ian loves most about hats is taking them off and putting them on us.)

This time though, he just took of his army helmet and stood there holding it in front of his heart. Made my heart melt. There are so many people who sacrifice so much for our freedom and we are very thankful for that. I don't even want to think about Ian being one of those soldiers right now...

Sniff, sniff. Anyways...on to a more fun topic. 75% of toys at Target!! In mid-July, my lovely couponing ladies informed me that Target would soon be having its semi-annual toy clearance sale. I had no idea such a thing existed. Reports began creeping in from around the country that toys were going down to 30% and 50% off though, which meant the 75% signs were soon to follow. And indeedy-do, the day they showed up, my faithful coupon pros immediately had news of it on their blogs. So Ian and I packed up early that morning and headed over to Target to see what deals we could find. I was pretty excited because we had the extra 10% off of everything team member card AND an additional 10% off of everything coupon! So we were gonna get these 75% off sales at almost 20% off!

We ended up doing Christmas in July and getting all of this for less than $25!

Breakdown of the markdowns from left to right (that's just fun to say!):

Top row:
Cool roaring dinosaur: $4.97 (regularly $19.88)
Music parade (Ian is always getting into James' tambourines and such!): $3.74 (reg $14.96)
Fun in a drum: $7.48 (regularly $29.92)

Bottom row:
Dump truck and excavator: $1.38 each (regularly $1.99)
Cement mixer, firetruck, and ambulance: $1.74 each (regularly $6.96)

Now for the cousins! This was a great deal.

2 Cool School Computers: $14.99 each (regularly $54.99)
2 Paperonis: $2.52 each (regularly $9.99)
Pictureka: $3.74 (regularly $14.96)
2 Monopoly on the Go: $1.98 each (regularly $7.92)

After thinking about it, I ended up taking the Pictureka and the Monopoly back, as well as a few other toys not pictured here. We didn't really need them for anyone on our Christmas list and while getting deals was fun, we didn't want to spend too much extra!

I was also able to get Ian a kite that I had been eyeing for a while. Again, it wasn't something I was willing to pay full price for, but for $1.51, I couldn't pass it up! He's had a blast running around the house with it lately and we haven't even pulled it out of the package!

Cool kite, Mom. Thanks! (It looks like this is the beginning of the "mine" stage, but he was just having fun peering over the top of it in this picture. I'm sure that "mine" thing isn't too far off though!)

In any case, we had fun getting such great deals! When money is tight, it's nice to have some super-duper couponers on duty to help the rest of us out!

Uncle Mike Comes to Town

This past week has gone by so quickly! Can't believe that it is almost the weekend once again and I haven't even posted about last weekend! Uncle Mike came to town for the whole weekend. We don't get to see him very often, so we were glad to get to spend some time just hanging out. (Click here if you missed the post about how awesome my older brother is and why I love hanging out with him!)

Uncle Mike brought Ian toys (thanks Aunt Lissie!), so that helped break the ice. As soon as toys were opened, it was time for lunch. Ian chowed down while sitting on Uncle Mike's lap.

After lunch, we headed over to a car museum in Dallas. Of course, Mr. Frank and Uncle Mike were totally in their element their! Ian and I learned a lot.

Looking at an old police paddy-wagon.

So different from police cars now!

We would have let Ian take a ride to the slammer if it hadn't been for the "Don't Touch" signs.

Some sweet cars! I texted my sis and sis-in-law to let them know my sweet brother was going to be buying me the one on the right. Of course, I had to text Mike too since he didn't know anything about this little transaction. :-)

More cool (and very expensive!) cars.

After the car museum, we headed over to Tutti Frutti for some yummy frozen yogurt. A friend of mine had heard about our adventure to Yogurtland and was sweet enough to let me know that there is a place just like it much closer to home!

I think this weekend must have been the most time we've had to hang out with Uncle Mike in quite a while (and it still wasn't long enough!). We enjoyed every moment of it! Thanks for being such an awesome big brother, Mike!

Fried Gecko

Sounds tasty, huh? Well, rest assured that we were not eating fried gecko around here. We were, however, experiencing extremely warm conditions that geckos seem to like. That wouldn't have been a problem, except the warm temperatures were inside our apartment while the AC was blowing.

Early Monday morning - about 4am when Ian woke up - I noticed the apartment seemed a bit warm, but didn't think too much about it. We often keep the AC close to 80 overnight and if the humidity rises, it can start to feel warm. We just knock down the temp a few degrees and are good to go. I was too tired to do that so early in the morning though, so I fell right back asleep and didn't think about it until we were up and going at 7am. We'd actually been up for a little while at that point and I realized I hadn't turned down the AC yet. So, I pushed the little bar over a few notches and waited for cool air.

The cool air was being awfully shy, so I pushed the bar over a bit more. It didn't take long for me to realize we weren't going to be getting any cool air. The apartment office didn't open until 9am, so Ian and I went outside for a walk where it was just as stuffy and humid (although overcast). Ian was happy to be outside though. As soon as the office opened, we called to let them know. Our awesome maintenance guy got right on the problem (this place has the best staff we have ever seen at any apartment complex!!) and even waited until nap time was over to get started.

It wasn't long before he found the problem.

Yup. Fried gecko. Apparently that little guy used to be much bigger (that's a zoomed in picture of him on an outdoor canvas camp chair). He somehow got in the ac unit and tangled with the wiring, which dehydrated him and shorted out the unit. Being the great maintenance guy that he is, Carlos got right on it and got us a new unit in that day.

Ian had a blast! He got to go in and out of the apartment all day. We don't normally let him keep the back door open because we lose the wonderful air conditioning, but it didn't matter yesterday!

He went in and out for hours! In fact, he wore himself out so much that he slept til 9am today. I'm thinking I ought to let him do that more often.

Our upstairs neighbor, who is also fantastic (how did we get so lucky?!), looked over his balcony and saw poor Carlos sweating in the heat changing out our AC unit. So he brought down some lemonade. After a little while, we noticed the clouds gathering and he was nice enough to go back upstairs and check on the weather to make sure we wouldn't get rained out during all of this. He then came back down with lemonade for all of us. What a great neighbor!

It wasn't long before Carlos had the new AC unit in and running perfectly. We feel badly for the poor gecko - he gave his life for our new unit! Thanks to Carlos and Naybah C for making the afternoon go so quickly and the non-AC time so much more bearable!

Pump It!

This past Wednesday, we had a play date that we were very much looking forward to. Libby, whose blog I love and adore (and whose friendship I treasure!) and a new friend Lindsey were meeting us at Pump It Up with their boys. Libby and her son, Noah, had recently discovered this awesome place and invited us all to go. Even better, they had just found out that kiddos under two are free!

Ian was soooooooooooooooo excited to get out of the house. He had been going through cousin withdrawal after coming back from Colorado and being the only child again, so he was happy to have his little friends to play with. We had so much fun watching them run around and use up some of that extra toddler energy! Ian was a little scared of the place at first, but warmed up to it fairly quickly.

Libby, being the totally sweet and awesome person she is, sent me several of her pictures that she took. Of course I had taken some, but her photography and photo-editing skills are way beyond mine and she was sweet enough to share her great pictures with me. You'll be able to tell hers from mine by the quality!

The whole gang in the big round jumping arena. From left to right: Laura and Ian (14 months), Lindsey and AJ (22 months), and Libby and Noah (22 months).

Ready for some close-ups of each of our cutie-pies? Libby, with her amazing camera, managed to get this cute one of Ian actually sitting down for half a second!

Noah, the sweetest, most kind-hearted boy you will ever meet!

And AJ - he has such a wonderful disposition! Always attentive and smiling!

The kids had a great time checking out their jumping options. Each of the bounce houses had crawl holes to get into. I couldn't believe the adults had to fit through such small holes, but we managed to follow our little monkeys through. AJ had a great time crawling in and out of the bounce houses!

And he was the friendliest policeman you could ever hope to meet!

And Mr. Noah, well, let's just say the NBA needs to hold a spot for this talented guy!

Busy boy! Having already been to Pump It Up once, he was an old pro and did a great job showing the other two around.

It wasn't long before we found out that AJ was a little mountain goat too. He climbed this super steep ladder up to the slide with very little help!

Weren't those great pictures?! Libby does an awesome job. Here's one last little teaser. She put together this collage. You can click here to see what she said about these adorable policemen and to see more of her great photos.

Here's a few more photos that I took. I love this one of Noah. He is such a relaxed, laid-back guy. You can tell he isn't phased by much!

Policemen Noah and Ian comparing notes and planning a donut run!

Sweet Momma and baby! We just met Lindsey and AJ this last week when we visited Libby's church for the first time. We were glad to get to know them (and glad to finally get to church with Libby...we've been wanting to for a very long time!!).

AJ was all about the action! He wanted to play with the big bumper bar with the big boys.

Ian never really did get to the point where he loved the big slides or bounce houses, but he had a blast running around! It was so hard getting a picture of him - he was a big blur most of the time!

Whew! All that hard play made for some very thirsty boys! Ian was very happy to introduce Noah and AJ to the wonders of a Capri Sun.

Noah and AJ - we had so much fun. Thanks for coming out to play with us! (And a special thanks to their wonderful Mommies for bringing them!) We'll have to do it again soon!

P.S. I have a video of more pictures halfway done, so check back soon to see it!

A Hiking We Will Go!

Thursday was hiking day! We planned a trip up to the Rocky Mountain National Park to hike to Alberta Falls.

Early that morning, I couldn't resist taking a picture of our little bed bugs. Liz and I shared the king size bed and our boys always ended up in bed with us before the night was over. As you can see, neither Ian nor Aiden found covers necessary. It was kind of funny since both Liz and I did!

We started off the morning in the best way possible - with a trip to The Pancake House! That place is absolutely amazing. They give a free dutch apple pancake (it's huge!) to every party of 8 or more. Going there has become a tradition when we visit Grandma Cookie and Grandpa Grape.

Normally I get pancakes, but I decided to try the western omelet this time (and then found out it comes with pancakes anyways!). It was huge!

Misty was waiting patiently for us when we got home.

Before we left on our hike, Auntie Liz and Uncle Russell found some beautiful roses in Grandma Cookie and Grandpa Grape's garden.

Early that afternoon, we headed up the mountain! I absolutely love seeing the running water next to the road on the drive up.

Aaahhh...more of the babbling brook! So peaceful!

Fantastic mountain view! It really doesn't get any better than this!

Our first stop was at Bear Lake. James and I had been there a few years ago with Grandma and Grandpa, so it was nice to be able to bring Ian back to the same place.

Walking from the shuttle drop off to Bear Lake (it wasn't very far at all). Ian wore his little monkey backpack with a tail that I could hold to keep up with him.

Checking out the crystal clear waters at Bear Lake.

After looking our fill at Bear Lake, we headed the other direction towards Alberta Falls. It was only about a mile long hike and a very pleasant day for it!

Aunt Carol was so sweet and took our backpack with the waters, diapers, and snacks so I didn't have to carry it and keep up with Ian. Uncle Kenny, of course, had his own backpack with supplies. The two of them set the pace down the trail.

Auntie Liz and Grandpa Grape chatting along the trail.

Ian was sooooooooooooooooooooooo happy to have all the trail to walk along! Mr. Monkey was just glad for the free ride.

Rock climbing! Starts young! All four of us kids used to LOVE rock climbing when we were little.

Oh boy!! So much fun, Momma!

Back on the trail hiking, Uncle Kenny was nice enough to walk backwards for a while to video Ian's first hike. Unfortunately, the camera really doesn't show how steep the grade was. Ian was having a blast going downhill though. He giggled every time he stepped on a wooden board (put in place to keep the trail from becoming a mudslide during wet weather).

A hiking we will go! A hiking we will go! Hi ho the dairy-o! A hiking we will go!

A sweet picture with Aunt Carol and Ian. Uncle Kenny looks like their personal bodyguard!

Walk softly and carry a big stick!

Awww...love this! Another great father son moment.

Cheese! Uncle Russell, Allie, Aiden, Sarah, and Ian posing.

How did these silly people get in this picture?!

Sarah and Aiden checking out the mini rapids.

Better view of the rapids. I guess it is really just a bend in the stream, but to us non-Coloradoans, they count as rapids!

Being carried by Mommy warranted big smiles from Ian!

Auntie Liz and Ian posing in front of the biiig tree! Ian loved looking at the rocks.

Haha - Ian's favorite part of the hike was the wooden bridge. He went back and forth...

And back...

And forth for a little while until we decided we should keep hiking!

Beautiful view of the white water below us!

I think that churning water definitely qualifies as rapids, even to the natives.

Doesn't it sound awesome?



After alternating walking and being carried for a while, Ian opted for a piggy back ride. He was so happy to be so close to Mommy's hair and get a chance to mess it all up!

A quiet little waterfall (that we thought might be Alberta Fallas at first).

As we were pondering whether or not this was it, a few hikers came down the path and let us know that the actual falls were just a few hundred yards up. Within a few minutes, we were there!

Beautiful falls!

The air was so clean and the rushing water sounded so peaceful! It was nice to relax and enjoy the falls for a little bit.



Auntie Lizzie and Ian taking a break by the falls. (One of the two was starting to have a gall bladder attack, but was smiling through the pain...can you guess who?)

As soon as she realized it wasn't just back pain and actually a gallbladder attack, Auntie Lizzie started hoofing it down the mountain to get her medicine from the car. Of course, we weren't about to let her walk down by herself. As soon as I realized what was going on, I sent Uncle Kenny to run to the car and Ian and I ran to catch up with Liz. (Aunt Carol so nicely took the backpack again.) Ian thought running down the trail was great fun! At one point, Auntie Liz stopped for half a second and I took the opportunity to take her picture. Mean, I know. But we have to remember this mountain survival story now that it is over!

To be fair, we let Auntie Liz take a picture of Ian and me in our running-down-the-mountain pose. Since we (I) look pretty ridiculous, she decided that we were even for me taking the above picture of her!

Fortunately, we all made it down the mountain okay and Auntie Liz got her medicine. She has got to be one of the bravest, strongest people I know. She made incredible time running down that mountain in the middle of a full-blown, extremely painful gallbladder attack! She really is my hero for so many reasons. Not only does she deal with chronic pain on a regular basis, but she is an amazing wife and mother and always has great insight whenever I need to talk something out. I am so blessed to have her as my sister! And now we have our mountain survival story! (Although we would have been fine living til 100 without one of those!)

Back home, everyone enjoyed a little relaxation time before dinner.

Grandma Cookie had gone grocery shopping while we were out hiking and had this wonderful cake for dessert. It cracked us up when Allie informed us she wanted a slice without "omelets" (almonds).

After dinner, Ian started going back and forth from the kitchen to the front living room. All week, he had been going backwards down that little step like a good little boy. After the hike, he had some extra gusto and got brave enough to try just walking down the step. When he did it without falling over, he started laughing! He repeated this over and over, laughing every time he stepped down without falling. Of course, I didn't get the video camera on him until his last time (he started crawling down after that), but at least I caught it on video once!



Gallbladder attack aside, it was a wonderful hike and we enjoyed our time in the mountains. And, of course, "omelet cake" was the perfect end to such a busy day!