Shopping with coupons

I have been using coupons since around January. I have really liked doing it and have gotten a sense of security from it. I have never had as big of a food storage (non-food and food) as I do now and I haven't had to go over on my budget to do it.

Here is my latest shopping trip to smith in Provo:

This was taken with my phone because we broke our camera. This is a list of everything that I bought.

*Jello/Pudding (large box): 8 boxes
*American Beauty Spaghetti: 6 bags

*Nestle Cocoa (individual packets, 10 in a box): 6 boxes

*Captain Crunch crunch berry cereal: 4 boxes

*Stove top stuffing: 2 boxes

*Stewed Tomatoes: 19 cans

* Carnation Evaporated milk: 8 cans

*Campbells cream of mushroom soup: 25 cans

*Swansons Chicken Broth: 10 cans

*Gatorade: 30 bottles

*Powerade: 1 bottle

*Ricola Cough drops: 8 bags

*Pringles Chips: 4

*Land-o-frost lunch meat: 2

Total Items: 127

Here is the BEST part. I only spent $15.52!!!! It was a savings of 93%.

If you were wondering about the experation date on these items most of them don't expire until sometime in the year 2012 some of them do expire around this time next year. Not every shopping trip is like this. Ones like this come ever month or every couple of months.Just depends on the kinds of sales that are going on at the time. The rest aren't so big but I still do save a lot of money.

I just wanted to share how you really can save money using coupons and build your food storage at the same time. I have had serveral people ask me if I was going to have another coupon class at my home so if you are intersted let me know. I am thinking of having one in a couple of weeks.

Girl or Boy

I am way late posting this, mostly because I just forgot to do it. We found out on September 10th that we are having a BOY!! I was so convinced that we were having a girl. This pregnancy has been so similar to when i was pregnant with Andie so i just made myself think it was a girl. On top of that Andie woudn't stop calling the baby a girl and she wanted a baby sister so bad. I thought she was going to get what she wanted. At the ultrasound I could clearly see that it was a boy and I was shocked. When we told Andie she said, " I don't want a boy." After it sunk in that it really was a boy and not a girl I got really excited. Logan and his little brother are going to have so much fun and be so close together in age. I am 25 weeks right now so we still have a ways to go but it has gone by really fast.

5 Year Anniversary

Landen and I had our 5 year anniversary on July 29th. We decided to go down to Vegas and St. George to celebrate. We left Wed. morning and got to Vegas in the afternoon. We stayed at the Excalibur. After we checked in we did some shopping around on the strip and ate dinner and then we headed off to see The Phantom of the Opera. It was SO GOOD. I had seen it once before at the capitol theater and it was so much better in vegas. We loved it. Thursday we went out to breakfast with Landen's friend and his wife. We spent the rest of the day shopping around and walking the strip. We love to shop and I am not lieing when I say WE. Landen likes it more than I do. Which is really good because I know there will always be time for that anywhere we go, Landen makes sure of it. That night we went and saw The Lion King. It was a really good show. I thought it was better when I saw it in NYC but it was still really good. On Friday we checked out of our hotel and did some more last minute shopping and then we went to the wax museum. Tickets to the wax museum came with our tickets to the Lion King. After the Wax museum we left vegas (which I was so ready to do) and headed to St. George. When we got to St. George we had just enough time to check into our hotel and go look for a place to eat before we headed up to the Tuacahn. We couldn't find anywhere that was fast enough and that sounded good so we skipped dinner and decided to eat after the show. Little did we know was that the power was out at the Tuacahn because of a wind storm and the show wouldn't even start until after 10. We ended up just eating snacks from the show for dinner and called it good. Saturday we went and did sealings at the St. George Temple. I love that Temple. It was so nice to go there and spend some time with Landen doing sealings to celebrate our anniversary. After the Temple we went and visited with Landen's friend and his wife for a couple of hours. It was so nice to site and talk with them. Before we headed home we decided to go do more shopping at the outlet stores. We found lots of great stuff there.

This is me and Landen on a Gondola ride. Our guide was awesome and sang really well too. (Landen looks a little freaked out)
This was made out of Jelly Belly's.

This was on of the costumes they wore in the Lion King

Babe Ruth at the wax museum

Wax Museum

John Wayne at the wax museum. We got this one for my Dad.

We got this one for Andie. When we showed her she loved it.

We had so much fun and it was nice to get away for a couple of days. I was in the sick stage of being pregnant but as long as I ate a good breakfast I felt pretty good.

Carnival

Andie LOVES the carnival. Anytime there is one close by we take the kids and let them go on a couple of rides. This is the one in Spanish Fork. They had a really good time even though it was REALLY HOT.

Primary Activity

I always have heard stories of when little primary kids tell their teachers everything about their parents but had never experienced it......until today. I went to go pick Andie up from her primary activity today and a couple of people told me that Andie told them something and they were wondering if it were true. Yes......yes it's true. Andie has had a seceret for a while and she has just started telling people. This is what she usually has been telling people, " My mom has a baby in her tummy and it is a girl." Yes I am expecting baby number 3 but we still don't know what it is. Andie is set on it being a girl and she really thinks it s a girl. I am 3 months so we still need to wait a little longer to find out if Andie will get her wish or not. It is so funny because she has known for weeks but hasn't said a word until this weekend. I was SO ready to tell my family so we decided to do it this weekend but Andie beat us to it. She told my sister but my sister didn't believe her. We decided to tell the family and she has been telling people ever since. I asked her if she was excited and she saiad, "not yet. I will be when your tummy gets big like Lisa's" She makes me laugh. My sister Lisa is about 29 weeks pregnant so her belly is bigger than mine and Andie loves it.

Cabin

Lisa and Garret invited us up to Garrets parents cabin for the weekend. We ended up only going for all day Saturday because Landen was working Friday night and we didn't want to miss church on Sunday. It was so much fun. Their cabin is right by Scofeild Lake. Brandon and Michelle brought their boat up. We spent most the day taking turns on the boat and relaxing at the cabin. This was the day that we told my family we were expecting baby number 3. They were excited. Later in the day we also found out that Anjali was expecting number 2. Yay. Me, Lisa and Anjali are all pregnant at the same time. These are the only pictures I got with my camera.

We had so much fun. Andie loved every minute of it and begged to spend the night. Thanks Lisa and Garret!

Camping

Landen and I decided to take our kids on their first camping trip. We camped at Jolly's ranch up Springville canyon. We went on July 5th, 6th and 7th. Everyone left on the 4th so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. It was fun but kind of stressfull at times. Logan is to little to understand not to do certain things and when your camping their is a lot a little 1 year can't do. We decided to fence him in with some toys in this tent while we were preparing food or doing other things that would keep us from having our full atention on him. At first he didn't like it to well but he got used to it and had fun. Giving him some food to munch helped him be happy.

We took the kids to the creek to do some swimming. Once they felt how cold it was they didn't really want to do much swimming. Logan wanted out as soon as he got it. He didn't like it so much.

Andie didn't like it at first either. She liked walking in it but that was about it. She made Landen hold her hand so she wouldn't fall and get all the way wet. Playing in the water only lasted about 15 minutes but it was still fun.

The nice thing about where we were camping was there was a big play ground just around the corner. Since our kids are so small and Logan could only handle being fenced in and told no so much we took them down to the park several times. They loved going to the park.

I am totally aware of how much my kids look like orphans. I wasn't feeling well at all so I let them be dirty and let them look like no one was taking care of them. That is what camping is all about.....right?

Logan after a long day of playing

Yes...Landen is holding lighter fluid so the fire could be huge when the camera took the picture and yes it was so hot Andie couldn't even look in that direction. Crazy parents.

Roasting marshmellows. Andie was really good at eating them

After eating all the chocolate that she could find.

We had a lot of fun for our little families first camping trip. We learned a lot too. We hopefully will be able to go again before the summer is over.

Art City Days

This year we did more of the kids activities than we had done in the past. It was a lot of fun. They had these blow up slides, popcorn and cotton candy for free right by the Jr. High. The best part was that it was free and Andie LOVES the blow up slides so we let her play there for a little bit and have some cotton candy.

We took Andie and Logan to the childrens art festival. It was raining the whole time but we still had a lot of fun. They had a lot of different things the kids could do. Andie really liked it even though it was raining.

Andie got to ride on the fire truck with her cousins for the parade. She loved it.

We went to the carnival and there was hardly anybody there so we never waited in line and they got to ride the rides twice as long. This is Andie's favorite ride. I was taking her to put her on and some how I ended up on the ride too. I just laughed the whole time and so did Andie. We just kept going and going and going becuase there wasn't anybody in line. Andie sure did like it but I was ready to get off after going in small circles over and over and over again.

Logan, Landen and Andie on the farris wheel. They really liked this one.

Art City days was a lot of fun this year. Next year we will be doing all of the kids activities again.