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?

What's going on at our house....

Haven't been blogging lately..just seems like there is a lot going on here.
Working on trying to get this guy

potty trained.
It's sure a bummer of a job.
It also seems like the kids have been sick for the last 3 weeks.
Brooklyn still has a cough that just WON'T.GO.AWAY!

And...my brother Derek and his wife Jennie just had another baby.
She is just the cutest thing ever!
Hallie Jane.
I'm excited to be able to hold her and cuddle and ignore my own kids
because they don't let me hold them and cuddle them anymore.
Then...when the baby has had enough of me...
i'll just give her back to mom and dad...
because that's what happens when it's not YOUR baby!

Everything else here is fine.
Just trying to figure out how to
budget money better,
get more organized...as always...
still working on my chore chart for the kids,
and work on building our food storage.
Hope all is well with you guys!

Valentine's Day...family style

It's hard to celebrate Valentine's Day

when you have 2 little kids.

It's even harder when you really don't want to pay a babysitter

to go out and spend even more money on dinner AND a movie...

when you have spent WAYYYYY too much money on flowers.

BESIDES

we don't really worry about doing any of those things in our house.

We have found that we have just as much fun cooking dinner at home

as we would having a night out.

It's usually too busy and crowded at restaurants anyway!

So, this year, Brian was in charge.

He made steak, wrapped in bacon...

garlic mashed potatoes,

asparagus

and garlic cheese rolls.

(yep, that's a lot of garlic!)

The kids got a delicious serving of

MAC AND CHEESE

and for their dessert.....

popsicles.

Our dessert....

creme bruele!

Brian makes the best creme bruele....

and it's my ABSOLUTE favorite EVER!!!

After dinner, the kids went down stairs with us

and were showing off with their jungle gym acrobatics!

Those kids can JUMP!!!

the cutest little 4 eyes around!

I have the opportunity once a month to "assist" in Brooklyn's preschool class.
I guess volunteer is the correct word.
I like to call it "spying"
I just get to play with the kids and watch Brooklyn...
I like to see how she interacts with other kids..it's fun!
Anyhooo...the 2nd time I was there...
The school nurse (I think) came in and did an eye test on all the kids.
Brooklyn didn't pass.
The nurse said, "Let's do it again in a minute..maybe when she's not so distracted."
Yeah right, I thought...that child is the poster child for A.D.D.!
So, when she was done with all the other kids, she took Brooklyn out in the hall and tried again.
She was the nicest lady...trying so hard to get her to tell her what was on the cards.
We were in a seperate class room, one that wasn't occupied at the time.
I felt so bad for her, she just really couldn't see the cards!
I told Brooklyn to walk forward and stop once she could read the cards...
so she did. She stoped and read 2 of the 4 and the asked me if she could move forward again.
I knew I had let her watch too much T.V.!
I felt so bad.
So, at the beginning of the year..once the new insurance kicked in... off to the Dr. we went!

Look at her in this pictures. Her body kinda just looks stiff and scared.
I really wish they had eye clinics that were geared towards little kids,
kinda like a pediatric dentist office or something.
This Dr., you could tell, just hadn't been around kids for a LONG time and
had NO idea how to talk to them.
He stuck this machine in front of her and just said..
"What was is this pointing?"
He didn't really explain the E to her or anything.
I tried to cut in where I thought I could without being an 'annoying' parent.
He dialated her eyes and said he got a pretty good reading of what her prescription should be.
Then we went out and looked for frames.
The girl was SO excited.
We tried some on...and hurried and put them back on the shelf...
WHO THE HECK CHARGES $250.00 FOR KIDS FRAMES!!
We ended up finding some that she liked...and that were in my price range.

This is her in the store...(notice the sticker is still on the plastic lense?)
She put them on and said "Mom, i'm all better now! I can see great!"
Yeah, right!
We waited our week for the "real" glasses to come in...
She put them on and carried her case around ALL afternoon.
She would keep saying..."Oh, they are dirty. I have to clean them."
and she would...about every 5 minutes!
I think Brison bent the frames on day 2!
We will see how long this lasts...so far so good!
I think she's ADORABLE!

Oh, did I mention that while we were at the Dr's office,
I decided to update my prescription.
Now we are twinners!