Fun Before Christmas

We had a great time yesterday hanging out with family and lauging.
Da girls went shopping:


Caleb opened 1 present. (Dad made the wagons in his woodshop, and mom made the "hey" by sewing them.)


We goofed off a bunch, and Caleb proved he knew our names.




If that doesnt work, click HERE to see us having fun.

John tought us some tricks from when he worked at a camp as a kid, and Kyle tried them out:

pictures from my day Sunday

Today we...
Went to Heritage Square (Denver) and saw a show. It was hilarious.


Here we are after the show:


Then we came home to a deer eating the Shaler's grass.


We opened presents:


We picked up Chad:

Presents!!

As I was wrapping presents today, I ran out of sticky tags. Since there is no way I'm paying regular price for them...my next best idea for labeling presents with the the letter stickers from my scrapbook collection. See...

Lights

I had a great time last night at a Christmas party with girls from church. I forgot to take pictures at the party, but I did manage to take a picture of the beautiful lit-up trees by the shopping mall area. Hmmmph.

Finals (for my advisement kiddos)

As an advisor for the 8th graders, I thought it would be nice to help them out on finals week with a study session.
They said Science was going to be a hard final, so I held a Science study session.. (intending to give them tricks, hints, visual and audio cues to help them remember the material). When I got the review packet the day before the study session I was shocked. It was 20 pages long, and it was HARD. SO...I spent 2 hours looking over SOME of the review packet, so I could lead the study session.
The session went great. I gave the kids food, and they learned a lot (which hopefully helped them on their final today:)

Getting in the Holiday Mood...

This past weekend I had a blast finishing my Christmas shopping, making cookies, and watching Christmas shows on T.V.
I also had a great time at church being reminded about the things that get in the way of Christmas.

I think I have pretty good balance this year. I LOVE giving...and I am not as greedy as I thought I would be. Unless you count my "free" deals. Then maybe my "Reason for the Season" report card wouldn't be as good.
Here are some cookie bundles I made for school people.


And I will admit...I used SOME cookies I got during this shopping trip, and made the rest:)

DPP day 14

This ornament is John's from when he was growing up. I put all the ornaments on the tree except the important ones of his. He put this ornament front and center on our tree. He told me this was always the second one on thier tree when he was growing up. Gotta love Charlie Brown.

My Deals..

For my deals from today (which I am pretty proud of) check my other blog:
http://beingdutchgetsyoumuch.blogspot.com/

DPP day 13

John and I have never been morning beverage people until about 3 weeks ago. He started getting more into coffee (with a little bit of creamer)...and now he makes it once a day.

I recently took up drinking hot apple cider every school morning in my mug. It is EASY to make (especially because I use apple juice and red hots), it is fairly cheap, and it tastes good even when it gets cold:)

TGIF

I'm so glad it's Friday.
The week has been great...but very busy.
I don't have any pictures to show today because, although I took some, I'm not using the computer with the card reader.

Here are some pictures I took a while back. It is how I make one of our favorite meals in a VERY short amount of time, for pretty cheap.
Pasta Sides Alfredo (I had coupons for these a while back)
(Sometimes I add additional pasta too)

Vegetables (these are the frozen Walmart kind)

More vegetables (Green Giant Steamers which were .27 each after coupons)

I also add frozen (already cooked) chicken.

WALA:


(I already ate some before I took the picture:)

In my mailbox...

on Tuesday I found this:

Two freebies I signed up for:
Huggies and Clean and Clear
One mail-in freebie: A Charlie Brown Christmas
(I bought 3 bags of Viola freezer meals and sent the UPC's with the form and they sent me the movie!)
And, a $5 gift card from Best Buy (for allowing them to send me 8 free issues to People). I plan on canceling immediately, never getting the free issues (or allowing them to charge my credit card) and I get to keep the $5 gift card.
I usually only sign up for free samples that come from Walmart, or the company website. I find I minimize junk mail that way.
Sometimes I find the freebies at MoneySavingMom

my 1/2 birthday

I might be one of the only people I know that celebrates my 1/2 birthday, but it is well worth it. When I was younger, I got to choose what we ate for supper, and I brought my birthday treats to school on my 1/2 birthday.
I put up all the teachers June birthdays (on the BB in the staff lounge) as December 1/2 birthdays so they would get some recognition too. I made a big deal out of another teacher's 1/2 birthday, so I think they tried to get me back today:)
There were many 1/2 gifts presented to me...
These... plus 1/2 a donut, 1/2 a hostess cupcake, and 1/2 a twizzlers.

This morning the other MS teachers made the kids sing happy 1/2 b-day to me, and they gave me a present. I opened one box, to find many smaller and smaller wrapped boxes. The kids had a lot of fun with it too. In that present I got 1/2 a candy bar.

Christmas Sweater goodbye

Last night we went to a goodbye party for our friends moving back to Iowa. At least they are moving to a GOOD PLACE!
It was also a "dress in your crazy Christmas sweater" party. We didn't get all decked out for the festivities, but I put on some reindeer antlers and called it good. The kids loved the reindeer antlers and they called me a moose!





We have had a blast the last 2 days, but we are both exhaused (and John had to plow at 2am this morning).

Bronco Game

Thanks to John's dad, we got to go to the Broncos vs. Kansas City Chiefs game on Dec. 7. It was awesome...and the temperature was 60 degrees for the first 1/2 of the game. Here are my posts for December Photo Project for Sunday and Monday.

They shot of fireworks when we scored.

We sat in front of the Jumbo screen. This is after Brandon Marshall scored.

We took our friends Andrew and Lindsey along.

here is a preview...

of what I will post about later today or tomorrow:)

What do Raspberries remind you of?

They remind me of summers in Grandma's backyard. We would roam the garden that took over most of the backyard...looking for stray raspberry plants. We would eat them, or bring them inside for raspberry malts. Then we would lay in the hammock and Grandma would push us back and forth. After that we could walk around the outside of the house to find flowers for a bouquet. My favorites were Lily of the Valley.
So today...as I ate the raspberries that were on sale for 1.00 at the grocery store, I savored the taste...and the memories.

"In Iowa..."

The kids hot lunch menu said that they were having chili and cinnamon rolls on Wednesday. "What?" said some of the other teachers? "Who ever heard of those together?" "Seriously?" I said, those are like peanut butter and jelly where I come from." "In fact, I made chili and cinnamon rolls when we had company over last week!"

Less than one minute later, a teacher commented about how her and her boyfriend almost broke down and bought a microwave. "What?" I commented, "You really don't have a microwave in your house?" "Nope" she replied. "Do you know how bad microwaves are for you?" all the other teachers asked? "They kill all the nutrients in your food." Another teacher replied, "we barely ever use ours."
"I probably use mine 3 times a day!" I answered back.

Now, I don't pretend to be a tree hugger, or a Colorado native, but I had no idea my thoughts were so different from the other 6 teachers at the table.
Today I brought in pasta with broccoli and showed them that I was eating broccoli, so I could eat with them again. Little do they know, I used the microwave to heat it up:)
No pictures for DPP today, maybe tomorrow.

DPP day 4

Today I wish I had something cute and smiley to take pictures of. Hmmm...a dog, a cat, a fish, a kid. But, since I have none of these...I took pictures of John and I (him under protest (obviously)). Since it snowed a bunch here, he has been plowing many hours.

December Photo Project Day 3

Today I am using a picture that I took on Sunday. Today, this suitcase should be in Abancy, Peru...making kids happy! (It was kind of hard to get closed:)

I was in charge of gathering things to send to the orphange our church sponsors in Peru. We worked with the church congregation and got a bunch of toys/clothes/hygene items/school supplies/candy. In this picture we are stuffing the suitcase as full as possible...we even vaccum sealed most of the items:)
Here are the kids from the orphanage:

Check out the website to learn more information. http://luz.de.esperanza.abancay.googlepages.com/
I especially like the snapshot stories under "Children of Luz De Esperanza"

December photo project

Since Lori is attempting the December Photo project, I decided to also. (which just means I will post almost every day on my blog, and have pictures.) You can read about it HERE.

Today I decided to post about...you got it... DEALS.
SALE price of all these items would be: 61.69
After coupons/register rewards/store deals, I got all of it for under 8.00.

Walgreens had a lot of Register Rewards deals, and a $5 off $25 coupon for Dec.1&2. I got my total to $25, they took $5 off, and I paid $20 (on a gift card so it doesn't count:). Then I got $16 back in RR. So $4 for most of the stuff.
Victoria's Secret keeps sending me free stuff. In the last month I have gotten 2 $10 off any purchase of $10 or more coupons. So, I got some sweet undies for 10.50, and paid .54 for my purchase. Last but not least Bath and Body works sent me a card for a free item (up to $13) with any purchase. I couldn't resist a cute lamb for $3 and I got a $10 candle for free. Total purchases= under $8.
I usually post my deals on my other blog, Being Dutch Gets You Much. I might post this one over there too. If you want some information on how you can get sweet deals, check out the blogroll on my other blog.

Company and fun with lights

Last week we had company over and we had a blast.
Lindsey and Andrew and thier little guy David came.
He loved to bounce in his bouncer, and John taught him some drumming moves.



I also tried to take a picture of Venus and Jupiter (which made an aperance in the sky tonight)...but it didn't work at all. Although Christmas lights and time exposure was fun:)