What the Hail???

I love TULIPS.

Absolutely love them!

When we first moved in, I planted over 300 in my yard.

They were AWESOME the first year they came up.

The next year, MOST of them had died?!?

I was so bummed...and then I thought about planting more that fall,

and I didn't, because I had Brooklyn.

Then the next fall, Brian planted a few more.

They were ok, but I knew I wanted more.

We kinda slacked the following year, because I had Brison.

BUT, last fall, Brian planted a bunch more.

(not sure how many)

But I was loving my yard and all the tulips!

I went around on Monday taking pictures of the flowers...

I realize these aren't tulips...sorry.

But they are pretty don't ya think?

The LONE pink tulip in our bag of Red, Yellow and Red/Yellow tulips!

This is my favorite, when they are closed like this!

Brian was so excited about his yard, and the way the flowers were looking

that on sunday, he invited his parents over for Wednesday

for dinner so they could see all his hard work.

I was busily preparing dinner and playing with my nieces

when this happened!

That 3 minute hail storm has single-handedly

DESTROYED

ALL

MY

TULIPS!

His parents still came up for dinner,

and they walked around accessing the damage!

It's a good thing I still have a patch in the back yard

that hasn't begun to bloom yet.

It's so not fair!

HI

Just a little about our month....

Have you ever seen a girl that is 44 inches tall ride a 12 inch bike?

NO....?

Well, you won't see it around here either!

I decided to get Brooklyn a new bike...

ESPECIALLY since she has TOTALLY outgrown her other one.

She is a little intimidated by this new one.

I totally skipped over the 16 inch and got the 18 inch one.

She needed it....

The other one is SO SMALL for her now.

But it will be great for Brison next year...or by the end of this summer....maybe.

We'll just have to spray paint it blue or something...

gotta get rid of the pink!

She was so excited for her helmet too!

It's also that time of year for Brian a.k.a. "green thumb" to get to work

growing his massive flower garden.

We (oh who am I kidding...)

HE decided to buy seeds at $1.00 a package for like 50 seeds

rather than $4.99 for 4 plants....he's so frugal!

Speaking of frugal:

Guess how much all this cost me!

If you guess $2.23 in cash with a $5.00 gift card left over....you are

CORRECT!

I decided at the first of the year that I was going to try and use coupons to my advantage.

Gotta figure out a way to save money and build up our food storage...

besides, in case you haven't noticed...we are in the middle of a recession!

Anyway...with lots of patience and web surfing...I was able to score all this stuff!

Just an example:

The razors were on sale for $7.00 and if you bought 2 you got a $5.00 gift card to Target.

I then had 2/$4.00 coupons that I used towards the razors which made them

$6.00 for 2...and then with the gift cards...they were $.50 cents each!

I had $20.00 in Target gift cards from previous perscription filling incentives...

so it was a great deal!

The site that I love to "stalk" is

www.hip2save.com

She does a great job of updating ALL DAY LONG

(how does she do it?)

and listing all the good deals.

It has taken about 2/3 months for my coupons to stack up enough to get these deals

and I get 5 papers every sunday...but with the amount of money I saved on just this trip...

it paid for the monthly subscription.

Anyway...if you have any other questions about that, you can sure ask!

Oh....and remember the naked bum?....

Well,

It's covered now.

He's done.

He's trained.

He's not had more than 5 accidents.

He's such a cute kid!

and he's SO obsessed with CARS!

What have I created?