Colette's 6 Weeks Awards (In other words, I'm super behind...)

Six weeks ago, we went to Colette's 6 weeks awards ceremony. She got all A's!

Gavin's Birthday

My son, Gavin, turned four on 11/7. We had a small get together for him at his Meme's house. We had a moonbounce, pinata, and BBQ (we live in south Texas, so it was still 80 degrees out). We had a lot of fun, but we did miss Daddy (he is in Florida at tech school).

My not really an advent calendar...

I made a special calendar for the kids today. It's sort of an advent calendar, but not really. Like most kids, mine are very visual. They like to look at the calendar every day, and count down the days to whatever event is coming up next (currently our trip to Florida to see Daddy).

So I wanted to have a calendar that had the months of November & December all together, so we don't have to flip any pages. And I wanted it to be big, and easy to read.

What I ended up with is a simple calendar, but the kids love it. They looked over every day, and Colette read all the events to me. We are going to cross off every day with a sharpie.

Way behind (4th of July)

I have a bunch of pictures, but I haven't had a chance to post any of them in a long time. We have been so busy, it's insane.

Jeremy & I have 12 days before we leave for boot camp. We have been packing our things & moving them into storage. We also had to deep clean the house we were renting before we moved out. Add a bunch of errands on top of that, and it's been pretty hectic!

Now we are trying to spend as much time with our kids as we can. We are staying with my stepdad & his girlfriend, in a small town outside San Antonio. It's a little different for us, but we're having fun.

These pictures are from the Fourth of July. We went to my cousin Daniel's house. He lives on Medina Lake, and the neighbors always have an awesome fireworks show.

The kids had fun hanging out & playing with sparklers.





Daniel & Carrie of course made funny faces when I took a picture of them.



The boys had to game it up for a little bit:



I got a pretty good picture of Angela, Katie & Cade.



The sunset on the lake was beautiful.









And I got a good picture of Kris & Morgan too.

So Behind...

So, I know I am super behind on posting pictures. Life is crazy!

On Father's Day (yes, I know that was forever ago!) we went to Matt & Dara's new house for some hamburgers. The food was delicious (Matt cooked on his new grill) and their house was beautiful and huge.

I didn't get too many pictures (I was eating!) but here are some.

The dogs playing:



Shannon with the kitten:



Eating!





Colette insisted on wearing her winter hat:



She loved playing with the kitten:



And Poopie with his puppy, Schatzi:

Pedernales Falls, Part 2

Today I have the rest of the pics I took at Pedernales Falls - these are the scenic ones. I thought the park was gorgeous, and could not stop taking pictures!

These were taken at the Falls part of the park.















And these were taken downstream, by our campsite.

Couponing, Part 1

Someone told me I should do a post on my coupon usage. I started to think about it, and realized that there is way too much info for just one post. So today I will post the first part of my coupon series.

First, an explanation. I am by no means an expert, but I use coupons all the time. I am always on the lookout for more ways to save money, and people ask me about how I do it all the time.

The most common type of coupon I use is the one everyone thinks of when you say coupon: cut from the newspaper or printed from the internet, a manufacturer's coupon for a retail product. Most people know about the coupons in the paper, but don't bother cutting them out, because they think that they won't save that much money, so why bother? Also, a lot of people don't know that you can print these coupons off of the internet.

The place I find most of my internet coupons is Hot Coupon World. If you sign up for the mailing list, they send you an email once a week, telling you what new coupons have been posted. I highly recommend checking out that site.

Also on that site, you will find Target coupons. These are awesome! If you have a manufacturer's coupon for a product, and a target coupon for the same product, you can use them together! CVS is the only other store in our area that will allow that. I have gotten so many really good deals at Target because of their policy.

I plan to explain CVS couponing in another post, so check back.

One mistake people make when they use coupons is buying a product they never intended to buy, just because they have a coupon. That is a good idea if it's something you've been wanting to try, but in general I try to avoid this. When I look at the coupons available online, I don't even print out the coupon if the product isn't something that I need. I save myself paper, ink, and time that way.

I will post more about my coupon usage later - I plan to make this a little series.

What coupons do you use? Do you have any tips? Let me know!

Pedernales Falls

This past weekend, we took the kids (and Jeremy's sister Nichole) camping at Pedernales Falls State Park. We had a pretty good time, even though it was really hot there.

The park was beautiful! (I have many more pictures of all the scenery, but I will post them tomorrow).

When we were loading things up, Colette & Gavin really wanted to help.



It was a pretty ride up 281.





We played in the river twice on Saturday. The kids had a blast both times!







After the first time playing in the river, we went to the Falls part of the park. You aren't allowed to swim there, but you can walk around. It was so pretty there.



We got pretty hot (and both the kids get really red when they get hot), so we sat down and just enjoyed the view for a while...





Gavin somehow convinced Nichole to carry him back to the truck.



We went against all that is camping - we went out to eat! We went to Dairy Queen. I don't have those pics loaded to my computer yet. After that, we just hung out at our campsite for a little bit. The kids kept asking Nichole to spin them.







And I had to take a picture of our truck. It just looked so nice in the evening sun, lol.



And then we got bored, and went back down to the river. It was a pretty good little hike down there (it was pretty steep)











The next morning, we broke rules again - we ate burgers for breakfast! they were good, though.

We came home kind of early, because everyone was so hot & sticky. Nichole took the kids back down to the river while Jeremy & I packed up all the stuff.