Easter Update and Dairy Farm Field Trip

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. We started celebrating a little early on Friday with an Easter egg hunt at my sister-in-law's house with Granny and Grandpa too. Daniel quickly got the hang of the hunt and ended up with lots of great treats and sweets! Then Sunday we had a beautiful spring day and spent most of it outdoors. In the afternoon Troy, Daniel and I headed out to the park to try Daniel's new bubble blaster, courtesy of the Easter bunny. We had so much fun!

Then today I chaperoned Daniel's daycare field trip to a local dairy farm. It had been cleaned spotless and while I was sad we didn't get to see a cow being milked, we did get to see all equipment. The best part was the calf barn where we got to pet all the calves. They loved licking our hands and arms and sucking on our fingers. They are a little skittish so you have to be gentle but boy are they cute!!

Without further ado - photos from our weekend and the field trip.

Big Cousin, Trip to the Local Park, Sentences and Tagged

This is going to be an all in one post!


Last Friday night I hosted game night at our house for my side of the family. Both of my sisters came, my mother, my two neices, one of the boyfriends, and of course Daniel was here as was the infamous Baby Eli and my grand niece Karmen! We had a house full! We played lots of Boggle and cooked dinner and had a great time. I took this photo as Daniel has expressed a real interest in holding Eli recently. We tried it once before using a pillow, but Daniel didn't seem very thrilled about it. However, this time, he loved holding his little cousin!


Aren't they adorable!!

Then this past Sunday Troy, Daniel and I headed to our local park to feed the ducks and have some play time. Funny how I was just posting about our lazy winter days and then we have some oddly warm weather. Of course last night and tonight we have had 60 mph wind gusts which always make for a pleasant driving experience to and from work! At the park we fed the ducks, walked acrosse the big bridge over the water and because Papa was around got to play in the big boy section of the playground while Mommy had multiple heart attacks!! It was a great day!

Lately Daniel has started putting together more and more sentences. It seemed to almost happen overnight. I am thrilled, but let me tell you...that boy can babble up a storm. I love every minute of it! Some of his newest phrases are "I'll be right back", finger in the air to show the one minute sign; then the other day while I was putting on my shoes, he came over, pulled the tongue of the shoe up and shook his head up and down and said "all set Mommy"; and lastly (my personal favorite) we were rocking two nights ago and he starts fingering my necklace. I asked him if he liked it and he replies "way cool Mommy". Obviously I need to update my vocabulary!

Finally, I have been tagged several time lately from several different people on a couple of different topics.

The first:

I was tagged by Chris and Danica and then by Jill, who by the way adopted the cutest little girl from Ethiopia, lives down the road from us, used the same agency we did and we went to high school together! The rules were:

1. Open the 4th picture folder on your computer.2. Choose the 4th picture and post it on your blog.3. Explain the picture.4. Tag 4 people to do the same

Well, our laptop blew up that had all our pictures neatly in folders and thankfully I had stored most of them on disk, but for the purpose of this, I am using the 4th picture from the 4th folder of our office computer. Ironically it's one of a series I took (not the best one as I posted the best one in a previous post) in which Jill recognized the background and realized we really did know each other and then contacted me! The folder was entitled Stuff (I'm so creative) and the photo was Stuff004! Without further ado...

I am not going to tag anyone else since it has been a while since my tag.

I was also tagged by someone else to do a book tag, but I can't remember, so I apologize for not doing that one.

Wow - I think I'm all caught up now. I'm exhausted!!

Vaccines, Park & Frugality

**Referral Photo added to sidebar**

Today Daniel received his first two vaccines. We have decided only to do two shots at each visit. We don't want to overload his system and the doctor agreed after talking with him. So early this morning we headed out and we survived (yes - that includes me because I was so nervous about taking him by myself to have shots!) It was easy. He only cried for a second and then was "all done" and off we went to the park. Today we swang and met another mother with two children. One was a little girl only a month younger than Daniel. We fed ducks together and the kids threw the bread as far as they could. It was fun! (Note to self - when cutting off the crust of Daniel's sandwhiches - save it for the ducks!)


My mother "Grandma" came over for lunch today and we had a nice visit. Daniel loves to play with his Grandma and always waves "bye" to her and blows her kisses when she leaves. It's the cutest darn thing.


I thought he would go right down for a nap because of all the playtime and the vaccines, but he played in his crib for half and hour before falling asleep!! I'm so thankful that he plays. I rock him as long as I can but generally he will get really wiggly toward the end and I put him in his crib. Sometimes I'll get a cry or two (all of 30 seconds) upon leaving the room and then we hear him pushing his glo-worm a thousand and one times. I kid you not. He LOVES his glo-worm. We also keep a music box that he can wind up and a book in his crib. Some nights I'll check on him and have to pry the book out of his sleeping little fingers. It also is great because in the morning after he wakes up he will generally play for half an hour also. He sounds so adorable over the monitor. Troy and I get a big kick out him some mornings as the book is filled with animals and he will make all the animal sounds. The other morning Troy was sure Daniel thought he was a dog.


The following are photos from two separate trips to the park followed by my blurb on frugality:

Are we there yet?

Here I come, ready or not!!

Check me out - I'm in the tunnel!Of course I have to go down the biggest slide!

Lastly, many of you have read Chris and Jackie's adoption blog. Did you know that Jackie also has a blog about living frugaly called Coins in the Couch? Once I started reading her blog and then picking up a few others I have been learning a lot about the art of coupon cutting and taking advantage of the different stores and their different offerings. One of the biggest, most interesting stores everyone talks about is CVS with the Extra bucks. I vowed when I started reading that I wasn't going to buy 20 tubes of toothpaste to make a deal, but that if I saw some things I needed I would try it. Well today I made my first winning transaction!! I had $5.00 in Extra bucks already earned (they work like cash) and a $4.00 off $20.00 transaction coupon from CVS and a few other coupons. I desparately needed conditioner and CVS was on the way back from the doctor's office so this is what I got and I actually made money (breakdown of cost follows)!!





Herbal Essence Conditioner $5.99
Tums QuickPack $4.69
2 Airwick refills $2.99 each
1 Airwick Warmer $1.99
CVS moist towlettes for car $0.99


I used the following coupons:


$4.00 off $20.00 purchase
$1.00 off Herbal Essense
$1.00 off Tum QuikPak
$1.00 off 2 Airwick refills
$1.99 free warmer with purchase of 2 Airwick refills
$5.00 Extra Bucks


I only paid $5.83 for the whole purchase - that's less than the cost of the conditioner, BUT that's not even the best part - I receive back $6.49 in Extrabucks and another $4.00 off $20.00 transaction AND there was a rebate on the Tums for the full price (minus the coupon). So I will get a check back for $3.69. If you add all that up I actually made money - $4.35 to be exact!! I'm so proud of myself!!! After the adoption and higher insurance bills and upcoming child care every penny counts!!! YAY!!