March 27th Track Meet

Noah received a medal in each of his 3 running events. Eli received a medal in long jump. Zeke received medals in long jump and 50 m. They all did great and had a lot of fun!

Vocalpoint

If you are not a member of Vocalpoint, you should be! I get emails and homemailers with coupons quite frequently. Today I received an email with a link for $1.00 off 1 Kellogg's Fruit Flavored snacks. These are $1.88 at Target this week and if you buy 4 you get a free item (Yogo's, I think).

Go here to try to print the coupon: http://www.redplum.com/pages/ViewOffer.aspx?id=1521611&frm=0&pl=true

If you aren't a member, it may not let you print it.

But definetly go to http://www.vocalpoint.com/ and sign up to become a member to take advantage of future offers!

Earn Rebates when you shop online!

Through Ebates.com!

This is a great little program which gives you cash back when you order from participating online retailers! When you need to shop, just log in to Ebates.com first to see if the retailer participates and shop like you normally would! Any rebate amount will be added to your account and a check will be sent out to you once per quarter or you can choose to receive your money via paypal!

If you sign up now they are offering a $5 bonus into your account! Here is a link to get you started:

http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=kQtD7JqFYuQsgXJ3BFwvnw%3D%3D

Eating Green for St. Patrick's Day!

We ate pistachio pudding for snack and had lime jello for our dessert on Wednesday night!

Wednesday at McWane

N and E took a class at McWane and Z and I spent the day "playing".

St. Patrick's Day Cookies

I have planned for a few weeks that we would make Shamrock cookies today. Tomorrow N and E are each taking a class at McWane so I wanted to make these today. This morning I got out my kitchen step stool and pulled out my huge bag of cookie cutters and dug around until I found my shamrock. Then after lunch when we got ready to make the cookies I couldn't find it anywhere! I searched the kitchen, drawers etc. then wondered if maybe I'd accidentally took it off to the computer or carried it with me around to another room so I looked all over the house. Then I wondered if maybe the dog drug it off to her fav hiding place, so I checked under the bed! No cookie cutter. Then I asked the kids if one of them maybe picked it up playing and took it off, or thought it went with the playdough stuff and put it away. No luck. I was getting really frustrated by this point, Z was trying to stir the dough but kept spilling it on the floor and I still couldn't find the cookie cutter. E suggested we just make a different kind and I said, "No, I want shamrock cookies! I've been planning to make green shamrock cookies." Can you sense the ridiculousness of the moment??? Finally I climbed back up the step stool so I could get my large wooden board down to roll the dough out and guess what? The cookie cutter was sitting on top of it. Makes perfect sense to put it there and I'm sure I did it intentionally at that time, but I absolutely couldn't remember doing it and really lost my cool.

We still made the cookies and enjoyed them!

Noah didn't help but he did enjoy eating one of the cookies!

World of Coca Cola

We headed over to Atlanta for the day on Monday since it is Spring Break. We wanted to take the kids to the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola!Trying 60 kids of Coca-Cola beverages from around the world was EVERYONE's favorite part of this stop!

Georgia Aquarium

We had a lot of fun seeing all the animals at the Georgia Aquarium. Eli's favorite was the Otters, Zeke's favorite was "all the fish" and Noah's favorite was the sharks.

Target Shopping

I did not take a picture of all of my items:

5 Goldfish Crackers, on sale for $1.66 each
- 5 $.95/1 internet printables
$.75 each

4 Trix Yogurt - on sale for $2.29 each (this is not the best price, but we were out)
- 2 $.75/2 Q's
$1.92 each


From the picture:
6 Poptarts $2.50 each
-2 1.50/3 Q (from the back of some of the boxes of Pop-tarts when I did this deal 2 weeks ago)
$2 each plus earned a $5 GC (for buying 5), bringing final total down to $1.17 each
**Note: we do not eat these for breakfasts, but I do let my kids eat them for snack occasionally. Right now they eat them after school on days we have track practice, since it pushes our dinner time back to around 6:30.

2 gallons of milk $3.39 each
-2 $1.50/1 milk WYB 2 Pop-tarts (from the back of some of the poptart boxes)
$1.89 each

4 Gillette Body Wash 8 oz $1.79 each
- 2 $4/2 Body wash or deodorant
FREE, actually an overage of $.21 each!

2 Lindt chocolate bars $2.29 each
Tony and I try to eat one square each per day. Great for antioxidants! Also, if you only eat this instead of a dessert, a really good choice. Yes, I have problems with that part about "instead" of a dessert! ha, ha!

Pretty good shopping trip!

Tony Medals!

Tony ran in a 5k this morning and did it in 21:35! He placed 3rd in his age group. So proud of him!

February Grocery Budget

Well, I'm happy to report that I was able to bring our grocery expenses down for February! I only spent $468 for the month! I'm very happy with this! Part of my strategy this month was simply that I didn't have to take advantage of every deal. I just stayed out of the stores! I did miss out on a few deals, but I also spent less money, which is the primary goal!

So far for 2009:

January $550
February $468

Let's see how I can do for March!