4th of July pics

Our neighbors that were in the parade.
Our neighborhood catered barbecue that had a good view of the fireworks.

Logan and his string cheese...the food of choice in our household.

Enjoying his snow cone.

also enjoying his first snow cone.

The 4th was a hot day in TX and the snow cones were very refreshing.

Swim lesson pics

Logan really enjoyed his swim lessons. He never missed a class. I think he made good progress and seems much more comfortable in the water than he was previously. His teacher, Ms. Abby was great with the kids. Logan has the skills to swim by himself now but he just needs a little more confidence.

Christmas shopping in July?

YES, I AM! Wooo hooo! This is the earliest I have ever shopped and it feels great! I found some great deals at Target because of some recent blogs I have been reading. This one is the one that gave me the great advice It's Hip 2 Save!.

I have always been pretty frugal and love a great deal but after a recent experienced coupon shopper in our neighborhood gave a lesson to us last week I have been so obsessed. I got all of our coupons organized in the baseball card holders that I have had for months and organized them by category in my three ring binder. I got an organizer for all of my restaurant, fast food, department store, fun kid activities and local establishment coupons that were previously messy in a large zip lock bag. I have also been signing up for every free coupon and gift online that I can find. Just the other day I got a cute envelope in the mail that started singing a song to me after I opened it. It had a coupon for a free box of Rice Krispies in it with several more for $1.00 off. I subscribed to a magazine called All You for 0.67 an issue that seems to be popular with the thrifty bloggers. "They say" that there are $30-$60 worth of coupons in each issue.

Now back to my great finds at Target today. I got $496.42 worth of toys for $121.82!!!!

Most things were between 2-5 dollars. I got 9 gifts for Logan and 4 gifts for Lucas. I am so excited to be well on my way for Christmas. Logan is getting Indiana Jones Legos set, a roller coaster marble run, two Magnetx sets, pirate moon sand kit with 5 lbs of extra moon sand, a Pixos set with a Pixos carrier and a hyper jump game. Lucas is getting some fisher price toys by Imaginex...the dragon, dinosaur and gorilla as well as a cute stuffed baby grizzly bear by national geographic.

I also got 11 other gifts to stash away for friends and family for Christmas/birthday presents. My best deal was a Cranium game whose original cost was $28.89 for $2.22 (with a $5.00 off coupon)! Don't be offended if you get it for Christmas. It is really nice with 660 new cards included.

"There's no math at math camp"

Logan has had three days at math camp now and continues to say "there is no math at math camp". What the heck are they doing for 3 hours every day then?? Call me unreasonable but wouldn't you expect math if you sent your child to math camp?

On brighter news, Lucas has been back to his old self for days now. I am so thankful he is feeling better. So we could decrease the chance of the kids getting sick for vacation I decided to stay away from public places before our vacation. I couldn't resist going to the gym yesterday morning and of course the child care area was full to capacity. I guess I will keep my fingers crossed that we didn't catch something else.

Summer illness

Just a few days ago I was thinking how nice it is in the summer time that we rarely get sick. So of course yesterday Lucas woke up with a temperature after his nap. I dosed him with Motrin and Tylenol and we took every one to the Cheesecake factory as we had planned. We have gotten to the point of being able to take them to restaurants with cloth napkins and no children's menu. Most of the time the kids have good "restaurant behaviour" as we call it.

Lucas slept fine with his dose of Motrin on board then woke up with a fever of 102.5. He threw up at the house and I looked in his mouth with a flashlight to find it looking infected.

We went in to see the nurse practitioner and she swabbed his throat. She got his gag reflex and he proceeded to throw up all over the exam table over and over again. It was lots of fun for all. The rapid strep test said it was negative and the nurse told me that what Lucas has is viral. Lucas drank juice when he got home and threw up again then took a 5 hour nap. He only ate a bowl of oatmeal all day and had a few Popsicles. I hope that the throat swab that she did was also cultured because as I know from working in the lab that false negatives are possible. His temp. spiked to 103.5 and his little heart was just racing. If his fever is this high tomorrow I am planning on bringing him back in again.

I am so thankful that neither of my kids have been very ill in the past. It sure does bring out my mothering instincts when my babies are sick. I want to just sit with them all day. I made E go grocery shopping tonight with the coupons because I didn't want to leave Lucas. If we had to get sick I hope we get it all out of our system before our vacation in a week and a half.

Cow day at Chick fil-A '09

I wish I had a picture of all of us but couldn't find the camera this morning. I video taped everyone instead. We love cow appreciation day at Chick fil a. I spent the morning before swim lessons getting our costumes ready. The chick fil a website had the links to print off the accessories to look like a cow and I cut them out. We wore cow ears around a paper head band, cow noses, spotted shirts, tails and eat more chicken signs. All three of us got combo meals/kids meals with drinks. The kids traded in their toys and got free ice cream. They also got cow stuffed animals, yo-yos, tattoos and coupons to various stores in the shopping center. It was a great time. We went with friends and the kids got to play after they ate. The prices at Chick fil a are higher than most fast food places but it helps offset the cost when they do fun things like this. It was a really fun, free lunch!

Too many changes, I can't handle it!

These are all good changes but it seems like my kids are doing new things daily.

Lucas is completely potty trained at 25 months old. No pull ups, just hand me down underwear that is too big and lets all of his boy parts hang out the leg holes. He is so little and it is hard to find decent underwear for his size without all of those characters all over them. So, whatever, he gets used underwear for now. He is so stinkin' cute running around in underwear or bare bottomed. I have seen my fair share of naked tushies this past week and we have gone through a whole bag of dum dums. Whatever works is what I always say!

Today was the first day that Logan jumped off of the side of the pool to his swim teacher without holding her hand. Then she got him in the freestyle position and he swam by himself about 6 feet or so to the stairs on the side of the pool. It was so thrilling to see him doing this especially since about a month ago he wouldn't even put his head under water. Yay! (I was watching 4 kids at the pool today so no time for pictures. I hope to take some good one's on Friday and post them)

Logan has been wearing a pull up to sleep every night. Since I am in the mind set of getting all of the diapers out of the house and I only had two pull ups left, I decided he would sleep in underwear. He always wakes up with a wet pull up so I figured that once he woke up dry for a few days in a row we would get rid of them. That day has never come. I told him if he had dry underwear when he woke up I would get him a prize a Target. It has been two days now and we are going to Target this afternoon. I am so excited about this as well!!

This is not a change, but I have been going to a Latin fusion class at the gym and love every second of it. It is a masculine male teacher that teaches the class. He does a variety of different genres of dance including Indian, Latin, African, and hip hop. I get such a great workout and am covered with sweat when I am done. Even though I might look ridiculous and I am not good by any means, I have realized that dancing makes me happy. I would love to learn how to partner Latin dance. I am thinking about looking for some real classes to take. Do you think I am too old to learn?