Link

Vance has been very into watching Stephen play The Legend of Zelda especially on the Wii. He can play a little himself on our DS, but he doesn't actually know what he is doing. Anyway, he likes to help Stephen play as well. He also likes to get dressed in his "Link" clothes. I think he improvises nicely. My flip flop is definitely a great shield, right? He likes to act out what Link is doing on the screen, unless he is totally zoning out watching it which happens at times too.

Tanner's Animal Noises

I can entertain myself for a long time with making Tanner do animal noises. Here is a taste...

New Bed

Vance has been sleeping on a crib sized mattress until about a week ago when we bought him a twin mattress. On Saturday my parents came up to watch the boys for us and they brought my little sister's old bed. My Dad even put it together for us. Vance loves his new bed so much! Tanner loves it too, he is definintely jealous of Vance's cool new bed. I am hoping this means I will be finding Vance in his bed in the morning more often than finding him on our bedroom floor.

A Day at Grandma's House

Due to my lack of posts lately I did three today so be sure to scroll down to see them all. Yesterday Stephen had a training in Portland for work all day long. He got up a 4 so he could drive down there and got home around 8 in the evening. I decided to break away from out normal routine and visit my parents. The boys had a great time watering their flowers and plants, playing in the sandbox, playing with toys, playing with Rose, Grandma, Eric, and Grandpa. They also had fun playing in Grandpa's truck after he got home from work too.

Cupcakes

My mother-in-law made me a cute apron that has a cupcake print on it and she gave me an assortment of fun cupcake things while she was here. The boys were so excited for cupcakes! After having them beg for a week to make cupcakes I finally did on Sunday. They helped put some sprinkles on them- in between putting mouthfuls in their mouths. ;) They were a BIG hit!

4th of July Weekend

Our 4th of July weekend in one word- HOT! It was over 100 degrees. Watching a parade in that heat zapped the life out of us all. Stephen's parents and his sister, Kimberly came up for the weekend. On Saturday we went to my parents, saw the parade, and then hung out in their cool basement the rest of the day. We had a fun weekend. Stephen and I are very lucky to have our families get along so well. :)

Couponing

I can't believe I am doing a grocery shopping post. I've done couponing off and off for a few years. About a month ago or so I decided I should really get back to it and see if I could save us some money on our grocery cost. Around that same time my cousin, Melanie started a couponing blog you can check it out here. I've done it three weeks in a row now. I thought I'd share what I bought this week with you with the help of my two cute models. My total for all of this was $17.34. If you can't tell from the picture


I bought
4 bags of Sun Chips,
1 bag of Baked Lays Chips,
2 bags of Jet-Puffed Marshmallows,
4 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and
4 boxes of General Mills Cereal.

I had a coupon for everything, but the two bags of marshmallows that were only $.49 a piece- awesome deal without a coupon. According to Albertsons I saved $32.11 however, I like to figure out how much I saved based on what I would have paid normally, this week I would have bought all this stuff at Wal-Mart and it saved me $13.89 by going to Albertsons, buying what was on sale and using coupons. I won't bore you anymore with all the details, but I will tell you that thanks to a doubler coupon I bought the bag of Baked Lays for $.79. At Wal-Mart today the cost for the same item was $3.28.

I think there are two reasons I've given up couponing in the past.

1. I would go to Wal-Mart look at the price of the name brand and even with the coupon discount the store brand would be cheaper. I wasn't hunting out the best deals.

2. I'd use coupons for items we don't normally buy just because I had a coupon for it. Now I'm going to stick with just using coupons for things we already buy.... well, unless I can get something I'm interested in trying for real cheap!

It may not seem like much, but if you were to save $10 on groceries each week that'd be $520 in a year. It adds up.

There you go- one way I am attempting to save some money.

Reading Scriptures

Vance enjoys reading the "pictures" (as he calls them. In fact, if I have forgotten to have us read he will remind me. I videotaped him "reading" all by himself.

Did you catch him saying, "And it came to pass" at the beginning? He is so funny sometimes!