Thursday, March 31, 2011

March in Review

Blogging: I actually have improved with this in the month on March. I am currently on my 14th post but I have to admit that I did post 4-5 of just pictures from Haley's birthday party. I am going to set my goal at 3 a week or 15 plus a month. I honestly don't think that I will ever be able to post daily but I want to keep trying to keep up with the blog to document life if nothing else. Devotions: I am trying but I still have not met consistently 3x a week with a higher goal of 5 times a week. I have to design a time and stick to it. Couponing/Grocery Budgeting: This has been an awesome month in this regard. I checked the Grocery spending for the month and it is 800.35!! This includes the food for Haley's party and quite a bit of stockpiling especially of drinks and diapers. The plan for April is that we cut the budget in half to $400 but not include the money we spend on food in Florida. In case you are wondering, I have budgeted $100 a day in addition to $150 for each of the 2 special meal that we have reservation for. I have already paid for the most expensive meal at "The Royal Table." My plan is to take in one soda a day for each of us and the water bottles. I honestly don't think the food budget will be a problem on the trip but of course I can alway be very wrong. Financially: We did okay this month. My car ended up with some major repairs during the month of February and March. We ended up spending almost 300 in March alone for repairs. However with that begin said, it is running awesome, I am hoping to get at least 300000 out of it. We also are spending around a thousand dollars on our septic system. Hopefully this will solve or at least move the problem so that we don't have to replace it yet again. We did not pay off any extra debit but after looking over our spending for last month, we had around 300 additional in medical expenses and we have been eating out ALOT. Matt and I talked and this is going to change we have decided to limit eating out to 50 a week or 200 for April. We are not including our trip in any aspect of the budget this month. Hopefully we will have an awesome time and still stay on track! Weight- A big ole ZERO, nothing..I am disappointed......any suggestions?

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Haley's Sweet Sixteen Party-Random Pictures





Haley's Sweet Sixteen Party- Friends





Haley's Sweet Sixteen Party-Family Pictures






All of the in town family was able to come to Haley party!!

Haley's Sweet Sixteen Party- Haley Pictures





Haley's Sweet Sixteen Party

The focus of this past weekend has been Haley's birthday party. I spent most of the day Saturday decorating the fire station for the party. The party was from 7 till 11pm. We arrived home around midnight thanks to the help of some great friends who not only helped decorate but also helped clean up! I really enjoyed this party because I have seen most of these kids from the time she started school and it had been cool to watch them grow -up. Haley also a group from the youth group come. You hear alot about how bad the kids are but this group is definitely different. We had not one problem and everything we have heard is that EVERYONE had an awesome time. Sunday has been spent sleep and shopping. My plan over the next couple of days/post is to share Haley's party in pictures and then to share about my awesome shopping day. We are also now shifting focus to start counting down the days until our trip to DISNEY!!!! I am so excited! But first Haley's party pictures......the decorations........






Friday, March 25, 2011

Harris Teeter Super Doubles

I did find time on Haley's birthday to make a trip to Harris Teeter. The reason of course is the fact that they are having their "Super Doubles" event which means they will double any coupon up to $1.98. I was able to grab a lot of stuff for free. In total I spent $24 and saved $114 or 82%. I am REALLY pleased with this for a couple of reason. I purchased 6 containers of strawberries and 2 bags of Doritos for Haley's party this Saturday without coupons. They both were a decent price but still NO coupons. I also got a 6 pack of Pedisure for Zach that after coupon doubling to $3 the price for 6 was around 7.50. I couple of items I got for free included bandaids, creamer and milk. I am planning to return on Sunday to finish using my 22 coupons that are left! Of course that depends on how well I survive Haley's party on Saturday!

Monday, March 21, 2011

CVS- The Rain check Trip

CVS has also been running a good sale on Coke products, which is $1 each with 5 ECB when you buy $15, making them 0.66 a piece for 2 Liter Diet Cokes. At this point I have a stockpile of around 45 Diet Cokes and did get a rain check today for another 15. I am hoping to return once more this week to get another second rain check. My reasoning for 2 rain checks is that rain checks never expire so if prices rise as everything is saying they are going to, I can plan to have Diet Coke at least once a day for a long time!

I was disappointed today(Sunday) , to find that most of the items I intended to buy were out of stock already. In fact I only bought one item on my list, contact lens solution. I had 5 ECB from last week and I had received a coupon from the Redbox for 3 off a $10 diaper purchase. I have learned and always carry Diaper coupons with me! Today, I checked and Huggies were 8.99 a pack using the overage from the Contact lens solution, the store coupon and 2 $2.50 coupons I had I purchased a bottle of Contact lens solution, 2 packes of Diaper and a bottle of Hair Spray for $7.01 a savings of 81% or $37. I also used my green bag and received an additional 1ECB!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Food Lion

Life is in full swing around here and this week I have been able to do something fun. I have been doing a lot of coupon shopping this past week as well as making plans for at least one trip to Harris Teeter next week for Super Doubles starting on Wednesday.

One of the reasons that it can be a challenge to shop and save lots of money in Lexington is the fact that Food Lion is one of 3 "chain" grocery stores; Walmart and Aldi are the others. Food Lion does except coupons but never a double or triple. Most of the time I try to only go to Food Lion once a month or if we need staples without time for a trip to Costco. However, this changed this week, I have made 4 separate trips to Food Lion this week making multiple transactions each time. This week, Food Lion has several deals going on at one time. They have 2 promotions for money off. The first is the store brand promotion in which you receive a coupon for x amount off your next order. The second is called "Big Deal" in which you get 5,10 or 15 off instantly. Finally, like several other stores I have heard they have a buy 3 boxes of cereal and get a free gallon of milk. On Thursday, I took all three kids and spent around a hundred dollars. This does include alot of the food for Haley's party this week. Matt and I returned Thursday afternoon using his MVP card. We stocked up on bagged Chex mix which was on clearance for 1.25 with 50/2 coupons. I have been using these sales to buy some staples I would normal go to Costco for, buying the store brand and receiving 0.25 off each item. I have stockpiled BBQ sauce and sodas this week as well. I returned to Food Lion on Friday at lunch to grab bread and things needed for dinner. Today, I made a final trip to get milk. My saving today, the only trip I can find all my receipt for was around a 52% savings but the things I purchased today were all things we were out of so I am not too disappointed.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Crazy Life

Just when I think that we settling in to routine, something changes and it gets crazier. Because of space issues in February, all our church events/activies are moved from Wednesday to Tuesday nights. I realized that this made it possible f0r Lily to start cheerleading. Am I crazy? yeap. We deciced to start this new adventure in March. One of the major changes that this involved was figuring out how to eat on Wednesdays. I finish working no earlier than 5pm so that leaves less than an hour for us to eat and get to the cheer gym. We have started meeting for dinner and then I bring Lily to the gym. Matt heads home to get the little ones to bed. So far this is working out but it makes my weekly schedule a little more crazier.
To add to the confusion, Amanda's car is finally dead. So until she is able to find and afford a car, I am driving her to college and arrange to have her picked up. This week was an awful week to start that. It makes it really hard with the time change or as Lily said today, "It is all the farmer's fault for messing with our daylight. Another addition to this week is the fact we have our last Bible quiz of the year on Saturday so I am trying to get that all together. Here is what my crazy schedule looks like this week.
Monday-
Tuesday- Church activities for Lily, Haley and Matt. I stayed home with Kendall and Zach and tried to work on quizzing.
Wednesday- Lily at cheerleading til 8
Thursday- Off of work but hair appointment, car to be worked on, 31 party, tutoring.
Friday- Small group from 7pm till 10pm
Saturday- Quiz starting at 10am.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Saturday Recap

NEWS FLASH...................... I am tired. Ok so it was not really a news flash but it is the truth and it sums up the entire week. I am tired. Want more details. I am going to share because 10 years from now maybe I will laugh and say man how did I do it? At least that is my goal.

Work- 5 days no break. I ended up covering for Debbie on Thursday because she was sick. So total I get paid for around 33 hours not counting drive time.

With kids clubs and Matt's small group moving to Tuesday nights then we stay busy. Tuesday is church, I stay home with the little ones. Wednesday night are cheerleading for Lily so we met for dinner and I arrived home around 8:15pm. Thursday- we grabbed a bite to eat and then try to go to bed early because Zach and Kendall have been awake several times a night EACH. Last night (Friday) we spent some time as a couple after the little ones went to bed. We needed it!

Today has been busy with house cleaning and planting. We went up town and welcome home a friend and a solider who has been in Afghanistan since last May. Dinner with the Pierce was a great and fun end to the day. The fact we lose an hour of sleep tonight is going to make things rough in the morning as well

SO GOOD NIGHT!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Expectations

Expectation-is what is considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment. If something happens that is not at all expected it is a surprise. An expectation about the behavior or performance of another person, expressed to that person, may have the nature of a strong request, or an order.

The above definition is from Wikipedia. I have been thinking alot about this word this evening. I consider myself a realist. I don't like doing things like making a 5 year plan or even a 3 year plan. The reason, I am not in control God is...so why waste time and energy with a plan that I have no control over if it works or not? But expectations-yes I definitely have some of those. In fact, you may even can make a case that I have more of these expectations then most people. So what are some of the expectation I have?

First, when Matt became unemployed last July, I had a couple of expectations. I knew this would be a long term situation. I expected it to be very difficulty for all of us to adjust and I even realized that my expectations of what should/would get done during the day may be unachievable. After six months, we are starting to settle into a routine. It is VERY hard for me to go to work and come home each day. I am learning that I just have to let some thing go and that it is okay that some things are running more smoothly without me doing them. I NEVER expected that we would be in the best financial situation of our married life after only six months, nor would I have consider that we are taking most likely 2 major family vacations this year. My expectation of how well the kids are all adjusting has been exceeded, as well as the fact that homeschooling with Lily is more consistent than before. My expectations of what house work/chores should get done each week is evolving.

Next on my list of expectations would be those involving the kids. To protect the guilty, I am going to refer to the definition above "about the behavior or performance of another person, expressed to that person, may have the nature of a strong request, or an order. " Maybe I need to change my wording and just say this is a strong request or an order?

Expectations.......................... that is a mouthful!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Z's first Haircut!





I intended to post these on Wednesday but I didn't get the chance because of Lily starting cheerleading so I am going to post them today!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Divorce

DISCLAIMER: I am writing this as my own opinion/thoughts/experience. If think you are going to be offended or disagree (my daughters) stop reading now! You can Never use this post as part of an arguement!

That being said I have been struggling with several idea/comments that I really want to vent about. I hope you can laugh, agree, or learn from them.

I will never be the "FUN" parent. I am much too busy trying to teach all my children to be responsible adults. So therefore, I will alway have to say No to some things.

I have struggled for years to follow the simple sounding guide line of "Never talk negative or badly about your ex." What good has it done me....nothing so far. As the kids have gotten older it continues to get hard to keep my mouth shut on a regular basis. I am finding that in some cases the opposite is true. Neither one of the girls realize how much I have struggled or how much I have chosen to not involve them it.

If someone else wants to be consider one of my children's mother then they should be required to provide support and discipline otherwise it is totally unacceptable and very hurtful to me to hear of any of my children call another woman any form of mother. I gave birth to them and have known them every day of their lives who else can say that??

Divorce is not fair or good. I have made all my choices with my children's best interest at heart. I can't say that all my choices are correct. But they were made at the time and I will continue to stand by and defend them.

Divorce is about the money. Finding the money to survive and to provide for the child. No matter what is said remember these decision will affect the rest of your life.

I am going to end with one decision/way of life that I will recommend and say to date is probable one of the best thing I did as a single woman. I chose to date during the time that the kids were
with their father. I did not want them to be exposed to the "flavor of the week." And yes I wanted to date alot of people. They were only allowed to meet 3 or 4 guys that I dated the entire 5 years I was single. I still think this is the best plan. I had a life of dating while the kids were with their father, the rest of the time. I was a mother only.