Wisconsin Fun!!!

The kids I went to Minocqua WI for a few days of fun in the sun with my mom, sister and Aunt and Uncle and cousins. We had a wonderful time, but missed daddy quite a bit. Luke really enjoyed fishing and playing with the worms as seen in the first photo. Jamie's fiance' was great with Luke and Luke loved rough housing with him all 5 days! Between boating, swimming, fishing, jet skiing and "peeing on fish" Luke had a blast and was exhausted when we headed home on Wednesday. Luke thought it was so neat that he could pee in the water, especially when we told him that fish live in the water, so that is where "peeing on fish" came from! Emily enjoyed hanging out in her swing in the shade on the dock while we swam. She didn't dig wearing her life jacket at all, but who can blame her?? She looked so funny in it, as it was as big as her and she could not move her arms at all. She stayed back on shore aloft of the time with one of the adults when we went boating-maybe she will like it better next year? Luke and I went on the tube also, but that didn't turn out so well....we started taking on water so I had to roll the 2 of us off into the water and it was pretty chilly at 10 in the morning! Luke did not go back in the water the rest of the day. All in all the children did really well with having schedules messed up, a 6 1/2 hour car ride and being away from daddy for so long. I am very proud of my 2 little troopers! Here are some more pics from our trip!

CVS this week...

Here is my CVS trip from this week...I just got back into town last night so I didn't make it to CVS until tonight...but boy did I do good!!! I did 2 transactions tonight and I had both children with me! The first transaction was the Olay deal they have going this week. If you spend $20 get $10 ECB's back. I bought 3 Olay bodywashes and 1 Gillette bodywash (those were in on this deal too!) I had my $4 off of $20 coupon ready this week, and I had $6.98 in ECB's from my last trip that I used. After my coupons and ECB's I was down to oweing $5.38 out of pocket. And I earned $10.00 for my next transaction! Not too bad for my orginal total being $23 something! Transaction #2 went super smooth as well! 4 bottles of Dawn dish soap on sale 2 for $2.00 and giving back 1 ECB for every 2 bottles you purchase and Febreeze products which have a deal going of spend $10 earn 5 ECB's. My total was just shy of $20, so I couldn't use another $4 off of $20 coupon. But I used my 10 ECB's from the previous transaction and I had $6.00 in coupons for the Febreeze products. After all my coupons and ECB's I owed $2.88. I earned another $7.00 ECB's for next time too! The Hershey bar was for Luke since he was so good while I ran thru CVS with him and Emily. ;0)

4 short months

What a difference 4 short months make! Emily is getting so big and as you can see she is doing wonderful holding her head up! She loves to smile and "talk" to her big brother and gives her daddy the best smiles ever! She has her 4 month check-up today and that means she gets a few immunizations ;( I am excited to see how much she weighs now. And can I just say that having a little girl is so much fun! Dressing her up in her little dresses with all of her matching hairbows is the best ever! I love you Emily!

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Church Picnic

Richwoods Christian Church had their annual church picnic today at Three Sisters Park. It was a awesome time and so great to see everyone from all 3 services together for one family style worship service & meal. The food was delicious and the service was awesome! Of course the children had a wonderful time too! They loved the face painting (well Emily didnt really care for it too much!) and the big bouncy house and slide! Luke & mommy really liked the cupcake making station as well! Actually so did Luke & daddy!! We had a scare in the beginning of the meal though- Luke got ahold of something that made him break out and start to swell up. As most of you know he is serverly allergic to peanuts, and he must have gotten ahold of something containing them. Thankfully he only broke out slightly and after about 15 minutes his hives had gone down in size and he had stopped coughing. He never turned blue like the time before & his face never swelled up as severly as the time before. We are still not sure what he got ahold of. The only thing we can thing of is that the bread we had for communion may have contained trace amounts of peanut....but we will never know for sure.

Here is my CVS trip for today. After a few weeks of pretty lame deals this week rocked! I was a bit nervous walking in today as I only had $2.00 in Extra Care Bucks and .77 cents left on my gift card. I did have a coupon for $4.00 off of $20.00 purchase (which I forgot to use in the end though!). I scanned my card at their coupon scanner when I walked into CVS and it printed out a coupon for $10.00 off a $50.00 purchase and also one for $3.00 off of a skin care purchase. The sun screen I bought counted towards that! Rock on!!! So my total before coupons and discounts was $57.52 & after my coupons and discounts my out of pocket was $30.37. Diffently not my best, but I did leave with $18.00 in Extra Care Bucks for next time! My total savings was still about 50%, so I can't complain too much and if I had remembered to use my $4 off of $20 coupon it would have been even better!

Playing is such hard work....

Here are Luke and Em this morning...Luke was being a "giant" and Emily played so hard she just passed out!

One more of hard work

As I said in my post below- this is what Luke was doing while I was playing with Emily...."hard work"

Big girl and hard work

Emily is old enough to be in the Jumperoo now! She looks so small in it, but she loves it! Right now she is still to small to bounce in it, but Luke helps her out with that! LOL. She is growing up so fast and her little personality is starting to develop and shine thru so much more! She is smiling more and loves to watch her big brother play and run thru the house.

While I was snapping some pictures of Em, Luke took off to his room. I went to check on him and the pictures of him are what I found. He was wearing his painting smock, with his head thru an arm hole and he had on one work glove and was doing "hard work". He was concentrating so hard! He was working with his tools and fixing stuff. He had dumped out all of his toy baskets and was just having fun. It was too sweet!

Oh and he has 2 stickers on his sticker chart for keeping his underwear dry all morning and going on the potty each time we tried today. Once he gets 2 rows of stickers (about 2 and a half days worth) he gets to go to the pet store and pick out a fish. He is pretty pumped about it! Wish us luck!

I think we are stocked up part 2

Here is the picture that goes with the post below....I couldnt get the picture to load on the first post....Guess I will have to call some sexy computer guy to come over and take a look! LOL (For those that do not know, my hubby is the computer guy I am talking about)

I think we are stocked up....

Had yet another very productive trip to CVS tonight after dropping off a meal for a friend that just had a baby boy. (Congrats Lauren!)

Again I spent nothing out of pocket, but that will be ending soon ;0( as my gift card only has .77 cents left on it. Oh well, now I know what to ask Santa for! LOL I did 2 transactions today so that I could use my Extra Care Bucks that I earned on transaction #1 to help lower my total for transaction #2. So here is what I bought:
Transaction # 1:
2 packages of Charmin Ultra
1 pkg Bounty Basic
1 pkg Duracell Batteries
My total was $22.98 (or something like that) Minus my coupons for $4/20.00, and $13.49 in ECB's my total was down to $5.13 which I put on my gift card. I earned $10.00 Extra Care Bucks for buying $20 worth of Charmin, Bounty and/ Duracell products.

Transaction # 2
CVS brand bleach cleaner
Colgate
2 bottles of Suave body wash
Centrium Vitamins
My total before coupons was $20 something. Minus 2 manf. coupons for the vitamins $2.00(one was a tear off on the box, which is why I was able to use 2), .50 cents off toothpaste, $10.00 in Extra Care Bucks from last transaction (and I also had a buy one get free coupon for the Suave, but it doesnt look like that cashier rang it up correctly as I do not see it on the receipt) . So my total was down to $7.47 which again I put on the gift card. This time I only earned $2.00 in ECB's though.

My receipt shows that my year to date savings is $417.24 and that my spending is $68.41 (mind you $50.00 of that is on free gift cards!) So if you think about it I have spent $18.41 and gotten $417.24 worth of products that we use everyday so far since I started CVSing a little more than a month ago! Not too bad!!

Here is Mick with his 2 babies on Father's Day! Happy Father's Day Sweetie! You are such an awesome daddy and Luke and Emily love you more than you can ever imagine! They are so blessed to have you as their daddy and as they grow older they will learn so many incredible things from you. You are such an awesome husband and I thank God for you and our children every day! I love you!
Saturday morning Luke was in a parade in Metamora with my mom and one of her friends. He is on the far right in the first picture! He rode his bike so well all morning and was even able to wave at everyone and throw lots of candy to the kids! He loved it and took his duty so serious! Afterwards we went to the park in Metamora where they had a little carnival, but we got there too early as it didnt start until noon-so there were no ride open. Luke was great about just going home and fell asleep in the car in about 30 seconds! He was so tired from riding his bike along the parade route and spending the night at Grandma's the night before!
Emily experienced her first girl's night last night, since daddy and Luke were gone. We went to dinner with Danell and Janelle and watched chick flicks! It was so fun-Emily slept thru most of it, but I was able to snap a good picture of her during the parade! Isn't she just the cutest thing ever??!!

Weekend Fun

We started our weekend with a trip to Emo's for some yummy ice cream before heading over to the lightening bug show at the nature center. We got there about 15 minutes late and missed the PowerPoint in the beginning. Did you know that lightening bugs are actually called lightening beetles- something we missed in the PowerPoint, but some friends caught us up on the correct lingo! After the presentation we went outside for a walk on the trails in the dark, it was really neat! Our guide tried calling for the owls, but they ignored us and wouldn't hoot back. The prairie was about a 5 minute walk up the trail and was filled with lightening beetles. Did you know that the females just hang out in the grass and the males fly around flashing for the females (hahaha, that was funny!) Luke had a wonderful time and Emily slept in her sling the whole time-I think she will participate more next year ;0)
Saturday afternoon we bought Luke a baseball glove since he has wanted one for a long time! He and Mick spent the rest of the evening playing ball outside and I must say that Little Luke is pretty good! Luke was pretty excited that he found a glove with Lightening McQueen on it and it even came with a matching ball!
Mick had a wonderful Father's Day on Sunday, which consisted of more baseball and pretty cool shirt made for Mick by his 2 darling children! I will post a picture of it soon! Marty even made a comment about it in the middle of church while he was speaking!
Now onto more exciting things (at least for the money conscious consumer!) CVS was pretty slow this week for good deals, but I was able to find a few! I bought what you see pictured (2 family size bottles of shampoo, 2 electric toothbrushes, and a bottle of Tylenol). My total before coupons and deals was $29 something and afterwards it was down to $1.00-yes that is right- a buck! It would have been less (free) but my gift card would not scan for the cashier so I had to use actual cash ;0( Oh well- At least I left with another $10.00 in Extra Care Bucks and I can use my gift card next time! I am really starting to stockpile a lot of items and am planning on using some of the toothbrushes and soaps and stuff this Christmas in the shoebox gifts that we put together for Operation Christmas Child.

Thank you...

CVS!!! Today this is what I bought. The total before coupons was $23 something. After coupons it was down to $11.63, which I put on my $25.00 CVS giftcard (that I got for free for transferring a prescription to them) and I earned $13.49 back for my next trip!!! Can't wait to see next weeks ad!!! We are all stocked up on cereal and mouthwash for quite awhile after the last 2 trips!