European (Working) Vacation

Mike went on another business trip two weeks ago and stayed for a week. He went to Lichtenstein again, but this time he also stayed for a few days in Prague. He said it was a beautiful city and really enjoyed seeing the sights. He took a bunch of pictures but he's not in any of them, so I'll post a couple of the sights (even though I don't know what they are). Maybe next time I'll get to go and then I'll be able to caption the pictures.

Teeth... finally

My son got his first teeth the day he turned 9 months old. Yeah, I know. It took forever. And that's all he's had until now. At over 14 months he's finally got number three and four. The only problem is that they're not his front teeth. He's got the front tooth and the one to the side of it. His other front tooth is just about to break through, so hopefully he won't look like a redneck for too long.

Here's his crooked smile.

We've Got To Teach Her To Read...

Last night I put Ally to bed at 8:15 and told her, like every single night of her life, "Good night, we love you, STAY IN YOUR BED." It usually takes her a while to get to sleep, so she gets out of bed when she gets bored. Mike and I went downstairs and heard her singing to herself and kicking the wall for a while. At 9:30 she yelled down the stairs that she needed help getting the lid on her sippy because she filled it up. I put the lid on and told her to GET IN BED AND STAY THERE. She went to her room and all was quiet after that.

When we went to bed at 10:30 I went in to check on her and cover her with a blanket. It took all I had not to burst out laughing while I was in there. She was asleep in her bed, but this is what I found...

Yes, those are socks on her bedposts.

And on the hooks on one side of her dresser.

And on the hooks on the other side.

And on the handles of her closet doors.

When I came to bed, I could barely tell Mike about it because I was laughing so hard. All he could say was, "We've got to teach her to read."

I haven't asked her about this strange sock phenomenon yet, but I'm sure when I do, I'll get a very long explanation.

Coupon Obsession

So, as I mentioned, I have been couponing. It has really been kind of fun to see how much I can get for our dollars. Ally loves Sundays because we get to spend an hour at the kitchen table cutting out our coupons. I give her all the pet supply coupons for Gilbert--have I told you all about Gilbert? I'll have to remember to do that--and we stack and sort our coupons.

Ally is so committed to this that she'll pull paper out of the garbage if she notices a dashed line. She even asks if we have a coupon for something before she asks if we can buy it.

So I planned our trip yesterday and we went to Albertsons this morning (bless them for having racecar carts).

So, in true coupon blog fashion, I photographed our loot.

That's 5 boxes of cereal, 2 boxes of croutons, 2 packages of chocolate chip cookie mix, 4 jars of peanut butter, 1 cake mix, 2 noodle side dishes, 1 tub of butter, 2 jars of frosting, 1 deodorant, 1 bottle of vinegar, and 1 package of raisins. I had a coupon for everything except the raisins--Ally snuck them in the cart, and the vinegar--Mike needed it for his "pickles".

And here's the receipt:
I had $12.59 in coupons and the sale saved us another $31. So I spent $33.01. But here's the best part:

Those are 3 $5 coupons for our next shopping trip. So, essentially, We spent $18 for all our stuff. And neither of my kids threw a tantrum in the store (we did come close in the parking lot, though). I'm not to the point that the checker is giving us cash after ringing us up, but I hope to be there soon. My coupon binder weighs almost as much as my first-born.

By the way, we made one of the cookie mixes today... not so good.

Here's What We've Been Doing...

So it's been a while, but we really have been doing stuff. I don't know if it's really blog-worthy--maybe that's why I haven't posted for a while--but here's what we've been doing:

We got new chairs for our kitchen table last week at Ikea
and put the high chair in the basement.

Ally got a haircut. It's really short and really easy to do.

We bought a shed (thanks to Mike's aunt and uncle who picked it up from Home Depot in their truck). So now all the stuff for the lawn is out of the garage.

With the lawnmower and fertilizer out of his parking spot, Mike cleaned the garage out yesterday and we can fit both cars inside again.

We put up a fan in Ally's room last month. It's not very recent,
but it's so cute I just had to get a picture of it.

We bought a tent like this one. It zips up to the one we bought a few years ago so now all four of us (including Mike's ginormous cot) can all fit inside. He and Ally slept out on Friday to try it out. I think they had a good time. I wouldn't know. Crit and I slept in the house.

Ally also graduated from preschool level swimming lessons. She had a great time--even though she told us she already knew how to swim before we signed her up.

I started couponing a couple of months ago. Partly for something to do and partly for the thrill of saving some money. I went to Smith's last night and even though they were out of a ton of what I wanted, here's how I did:

2 cans Ortega green chiles
2 cans Dole pineapple chunks
1 big bottle Nalley's pickles
1 bottle French's brown mustard
2 boxes Kix cereal
2 2-pound blocks Kroger medium cheddar cheese
2 Old Spice deodorants
2 bottles Suave lotion
1 package M&Ms
1 4-pack Activia yogurt
1 box M&Ms icecream bars
3 small Hagan-Daz icecreams
2 packages Keebler Fudge Shoppe cookies
1 box Special K crackers

So that's 23 items.

Total Spent $26.82
Total Savings $39.69

Just over a dollar a piece. Not too shabby, right?