While Off Track . . .

Boy, I haven't been on here for a long time. I have a lot to follow up on. I'll work on that over time, but for now, I'll just talk about the past 4 weeks, while the kids have been off track!

We have done quite a bit this past month. I worked the fair September 11 - 20th. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to going back. I worked in the Concession Settlement Office with a wonderful lady named Shelly. We had a lot of fun. Since I worked at the fair, the kids wanted to go a couple of times, so we did! We attended the Rodeo one night. It was so much fun. The kids had never been to a rodeo, so it was FUN.
Another day we went on a rainy afternoon, walked around, and Sami participated in the Ringling Brothers Funniest Kids Contest. Although she didn't win, she did pick our family up 5 free tickets to the Circus!
The third time we went, the kids wanted to rid all of the carnival rides. They had so much fun, it was like being at Lagoon!!!
During this time when I worked, the kids were able to spend time with their Aunt Lindsay (thanks Linds), attend the Kids Fun at Gene Fullmer, and play with cousins. It worked out great for all of us!

Because Sami got us tickets for the Circus, we attended it on Friday, September 25th. What a BLAST! It was great. So much fun for our entire family.

This past week, we've spent a lot of time together, more at home. We were able to get all the kids halloween costumes. Sami is going to be a vampire, Jaren the devil, and Justin a Joker. Holiday's are so much fun!
As a family, we also made cotton candy to sell. A friend of my cousin's has a machine that she rents out to us, and we decided while we had it we'd sell cotton candy and try to raise spending money for Disneyland. We've had a lot of fun selling this to the kids in the neighborhood!

On Thursday, October 1 we took a trip up to Layton. Monica Butcher and her family has moved back from Henderson Nevada, so we went to see their new house and to visit. We're going to miss the Henderson vacation, but we're so excited to have them here in Utah, closer than 8 hours away. We visited with them and then went to Classic Skating to play and eat lunch.

We were there till just after 5 pm, and as I was driving home realized there wasn't enough time to go home and come back to Centerville to watch the play Evita at Rogers Memorial Theater. Tara and Kiki are cast members in this play, so we went to watch. It was amazing! They did so good. I am glad we were able to support them.

Now it's conference weekend! I love this time of year. The weather is turning colder, the leaves are changing, soccer games are coming to an end. To me, the fall weather brings our family closer together. Although I enjoy the times we are out enjoying the sun, friends, and being busy, I enjoy the weather changing and bringing us into our home, therefore spending more time together.

I feel so blessed to be where I am today. I have a wonderful husband, 3 delightful children, a wonderful home to live in, family, friends, neighbors, and the gospel all around me.

Disney's The Jungle Book Kids

On Wed. May 20th, 2009, our 3 kids performed in their school Harmony Performance, Disney's The Jungle Book Kids. It was so much fun! They've really had a great time getting ready for this performance, and can't wait to do another one on Wed. May 27th!

Thank you to everyone who has come or is coming to watch them. They get so excited to share their talents with all of you!

Samantha performs as Kaa the snake (with 4 coils).

Jaren performs as the Baby Elephant. (He really is having fun)!!!!

Justin performs as one of the Monkeys.

Kiki (our adopted child!!!) is one of the Bees!

We are really looking forward to another GREAT performance. If I can figure out how to load the slideshow, I'll put more pictures on, and then, post the video as well as soon as we record it!!!

Samantha's Enchanted -- Up With Kids

Sami has been working all year long with the Up With Kids Peformers and had her performance on May 9th. She's had so much fun working with Mrs. Nancy, and all of the kids in her class.
They performed the play Enchanted, and Sami played the part of Beetlejuice, a mouse, and a bride! She was AMAZING!!! Way to go Sami!

Here she receives her "oscar" and a bouquet of flowers!!! We love you Sami!
Thank you Mrs. Nancy!!!

Our Vacation

Journaling still to come !!!

Happy Valentines :)

Well, I started writing a post but decided that it wasn't the most "uplifting" one, so I chose not to post it over all. I started over, hoping to get more of a "positive" post written :)

Saturday was Valentines Day! Love is in the air --- right! It should be! Everyone should be happy, in love, and life should be fun!

I kind of had the attitude of "feel sorry for myself," because of all that was going on, but looking back tonight, I am grateful for my family and for the great weekend that it was!

Hubby and I started our Valentines on Friday night. I have been craving Rubio's for dinner for quite sime time now, so he took me there. It was nice because we weren't able to get out of the house until after 7:00 pm, and the movie we wanted to go to started at 8:00. I didn't think there was any way we were going to be able to make it and eat, and get there on time, but .... to our surprise, Rubio's wasn't as busy as we thought it would be. We got in, ordered, ate, and had time to get to our movie! We actually got to sit and enjoy each other and eat Yummy food for about 40 min.!!!
After dinner, we took off to the movie theaters and went and saw "Taken." What a GREAT movie! Perfect date night out! We got home and the kids had behaved :) and then we sat and watched a movie with all of them.
Saturday morning, the kids got up early. They were excited to see what the Valentine Cupid had brought them :) (They know the cupid is mom and dad)!!! So dad got up with them and passed out their Valentines. Sami got the movie 13 going on 30, and a palatypus webkinz; Jaren got $5 and a dragon webkinz; and Justin got a puppy webkinz and a fishy lilkinz! They were all so excited.
Jaren had made Valentines for Daddy and I, and Justin gave us his giant Valentine Heart Envelope he made in Kindergarten to carry his Valentines in :) Sami made us breakfast in bed! Yummy waffles and pop tarts :) It was so sweet!
The rest of the day was kind of -- just another busy day. Clean this and that up, play with friends, play on the computer, spend time at the hospital, work on sharing time/baptism stuff, and watch movies. :)
Like I said. I was glad that we celebrated Friday night, since our Sat. got turned up side down and I'm really excited for Feb. 27th, Mark and I get to go do a refresher class on Scuba Diving!!!
Hope you all had a Great Valentines Day!

Couponing!!!

Okay, so here's my excuse for not keeping up with my blog . . . I've been using all my spare time to figure out this coupon business.

Thought I'd share some of my "good buys" with you all :)

This was a couple weeks ago, at K-Mart. They were having a double your coupon, up to 25 coupons. I got all of this for around $30.00, saving about $70.00. I know the toothpaste was free, and the trail mix bars were free. I paid $.49 cents for the razors, $.49 cents for the Halls, and $.49 cents for the Max Factor Lipstick. EVERYTHING on this table was on SALE and bought with a double off coupon.

Albertson's is having a Double Your Coupon (up to 4 coupons) week. So . . .

Dixie napkins, 200 count, are on sale for $1.99. If you have the coupon, it's $1.00 off, plus double, so you get them FREE. That's right FREE!

Kids Loreal Shampoo/Conditioner is $1.99 If you have the coupon, it's $ .75 off, plus double, so you get it for $ .49 cents.

I paid only $1.53 for 2-200 packs of napkins, and 2 kid loreal shampoo's. (A $13.18 savings)

Poptarts are $2.50 for the 12 count. If you have the coupon, it's $ .50 off, plus double, so you pay $1.50 for each of them.

Dannon Fusion Yogurt Shakes are 5 for $5.00, then you get Dannon La Creme (4 count) Free. You use your $1.00 coupon and you get 5 shakes and the Dannon La Creme for $3.00

I bought 8 poptarts (12 count), 2-200 packs of napkins, 10 Yogurt Shakes, and 2-4count La Creme Yogurts for $18.92. (A $36.80 savings)

Chinet paper plates are $2.50 each (2 for $5), the big plates 25 count, and the little plates 35 count. With the $1.00 off coupon, plus double, you pay only $ .50 cents for each of them.

Malt-o-meal cereal was 3 for $7.00, plus an instant $4.50 off when you buy a milk ($2.39).

I paid only $13.62 for those 9 items. (2 big plates, 2 small plates, milk, 3 cereal) (A $21.62 savings)

This is all I've gotten so far, but if you look at their add, there are SEVERAL things you can get.

You can end up paying $ .30 cents for 15 count Totino Pizza Pockets. Also you can pay like $1.50 for a Macaroni Grill Dinner kit (buy 2, and get $2.00 off of chicken).

Several great deals out there. I am loving ever minute of it! My kids still aren't out of cereal from the last big trip I did (getting cereal for $ .47 cents a box).

Smiths also had a great deals! I just learned that you can download certain coupons onto your Smiths Values Card, which then, if you have another coupon, it could be double.

They're having a buy 10 certain items, and get $3.00 off instantly. That's saving $.30 cents on each item. I bought 20 items and paid $17.00. I saved $21.00.

That was buying 8 boxes of Ritz Crackers, 6 Banquet Dinners, 4 cans of Ravioli, and 2 boxes of Cherrios. (I paid only $ .19 cents for each box of cereal; only $1.38 for each box of Ritz Crackers).

So there you have it. It does take some time to clip the coupons, to look through the ads, etc. But ... with everyone doing it, we all have a GREAT support group, and everyone helps everyone know about and learn all the great deals.

You should try it! I dare you!!! E-mail me if you're interested or have any questions :)

Long Time No Write!!!

Man, it's been a long time since I've actually taken the time to sit and blog! December was such a busy month! The kids were off track, had vinyl orders galore, and it was just very busy with family, friends, and celebrations! We had a Very Merry Christmas. It seemed almost perfect! The kids had such a fun Christmas, and got EVERYTHING they wanted!
This year, it started snowing on Christmas Eve, and snowed ALL night long, and ALL day long. We woke up to about a foot of snow. Sami actually woke up at 6:00 am. We tried to push her back to a later time, but she had the boys up and awake by 6:30 am. I got up and checked the rolls and sticky buns, an they were ready to cook! At 7:00 am, the kids finally got mom and dad out of bed, and ready to do the Christmas thing. It was fun! We finished up about 7:45 am, and I was tired! Justin had gotten "The Spiderwick Chronicles" in his stocking, so we put it on, while the kids digested all of their new things.
At about 8:30 am, the power went out! It was still kind of dark, so the boys couldn't build their lego's. The movie of course turned off, and playing the wii was out of the question (which is mostly what the boys got for Christmas)! Sami got an IM-Me, which also has to be run by the computer/internet, and it wouldn't work. All three of the kids got Webkinz, and, of course, another thing run by the internet/computer, so .... WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO? We all sat together, listened to my new soundtrack - Mama Mia, and played their new Guess Who, and Domino's. It was nice. It only lasted for an hour, (which I was glad - it was kind of getting cold), and then the power came back on. We continued on with our Christmas Fun, enjoying all of our new things.
At 3:00 (after we DUG our way out of the driveway -- about 15 inches of snow), we headed down to Grandma and Grandpa Lane's house. We stayed there for a couple hours, ate yummy ham, potato's, rolls, etc., visited with family, and of course, opened Christmas!
Sami stayed at Grandma's house, and the boys and I played Mario Kart on the Wii. They all kicked my butt. Then Mark and I watched Mama Mia that night as we went to bed. Perfect!
For New years we had Scott and Heidi, Natalie and Rob and all the kids over. We played games, talked, ate, and had a fun time! At 12:00, we did poppers, silly string, and fireworks! Yeah! We certainly helped bring in the New Year!
Now it's the middle of January, and I can't believe it. Time goes by too fast!
Tonight we celebrated Grandma Lane and Great Grandpa Lane's birthdays.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA AND GREAT GRANDPA!!!
I cooked dinner and invited them and the family to dinner. We had a really good time. Jared and Lindsay came, Grandma and Great Grandpa came, and then the kids and I were here! Mark is working up at the Sundance Screenings, Grandpa Lane was working, and Scott and Marla, and Jeff and Elise had other plans. We missed them all, but still celebrated strong!!!!
Well, that's the most up to date I can get! Happy New Year everyone!