Awesome!

I teach a blogging class to middle schoolers- and this week I gave them each 2 candy hearts, they had to take the line from the candy heart and write a blog post about it. One student got "I love you" and wrote about his top 5 favorite rock love songs. Another got "goodbye" and wrote about the time their dog died. THIS one was also pretty funny. My candy heart said awesome...so here are two things that are "awesome".

1. I have been trying to figure out what appetizer/salad to make for this church group thing I have on Saturday. When I took a look at the grocery ads for this week I had a great idea.
Fruit Pizza.

Strawberries were .99 each at one grocery store and blackberries were .88 at the other. I was also planning on getting .88 blueberries, but they were out...so I got a banana instead. Cream cheese was .79 and I had a .25 (after coupons)sugar cookie mix from a few months ago. YUMM.

Awesome thing #2. An 8th grader whom I teach became my T.A. earlier this year because I was helping him create a video for the Congressional Youth Leadership Council. I gave him some basic direction and pointers along the way, and he created the video. He submitted the video, and waited until Inauguration week when he was in Washington D.C. to see who the winner was. When he came back this week he told us HE WON! Because he won the video contest, he was one of 5 students out of 2,900 middle scholers who got to have lunch with former Vice-President and Noble Peace Prize winner AL GORE.
Today his picture was on the front of the local paper shaking hands with Gore!

How saving rubs off

John has never been a spender...but when he married me, he may have gotten more "frugal dutch" than he bargained for. Nevertheless, now he too is more conscious of saving.

Last week when I asked if he needed anything from the store, he listed a few wishes...and then added "if it's on sale" :) He gets me.

Friday, after a long school week, I was exhausted. I walked in the house and came over to talk to him. He promptly handed me a little black bag and smiled.

I looked inside and found a beautiful necklace. I feel like Valentines Day came early. He was ordering a new wedding ring online earlier this week (the other one has been lost for a while) and got something a little extra for me!

The best part...is that he got it FREE.
I'm pretty into couponing and store deals, but I should really try to the online deals more. His sister is pretty good at the online deals, maybe it runs in the family.
Kudos my man.

The Rodeo

Every January, we go to the National Western Stock Show in Denver with John's family.
This year was no exception. I even got a shirt for the occasion (I know I'm a wannabe).


John took care of Camille most of the time, even holding her while she slept.




JT mostly hung out with Grandpa.







We saw bull riders and lots of other things. I'm not sure where the rider is in this picture.


and horses...(by the way...it was at least 60 degrees outside today!!)


and draft horses..


and these monkey cowboys who rode collies and rounded up longhorn sheep:)
look closely...

The monkeys herded the sheep to the top of the truck!


There were plenty of photo ops:






What a great time! Enjoy the tons of pictures Davina:)

Seeing the Family

This weekend was packed with family events.
On Saturday we went to John's parents and hung out with Davina and the kids and lots of other people. We went sledding in the park:





John and JT made a snow angel.






Cherry built a snowman- which the neighbors friendly dog peed on:)




We also played a lot of drums in the house.




I have a video of JT playing, but I have to edit that one yet.
That night we had supper with the Hills (family friends) and played games with some real cowboys (and cowgirls). We had a great time.

Gogetsome Rhythm

We spent all day Sunday in town, and John spent most of it drumming. He worked up a little diddy to share with his gaming friends. Here it is:

Using coupons for overage

I posted my shopping trip from today on my other blog: http://beingdutchgetsyoumuch.blogspot.com/
..but I wanted to highlight one purchase to encourage coupon use:)
At Target I found some Colgate Total toothpaste on clearance for 1.24.

I had 2-1.00 Target coupons for it from the last time I got it (and made money on it).
I also used 2- 1.00 manufacturers coupons. (after I ran out I used .75 coupons)
Because you can combine Target coupons and Manufacturers coupons I got .50-.75 overage on each tube of toothpaste.
I did 3 different transactions, so I could retrieve more coupons from the tips of the packages, and continue getting overage.
The other items are so they wouldn't owe me money on each transaction:)
(I also used 3- 2.50 manu. coupons for Electrasol dishwashing tabets, a 1.00 Target coupon and 1.00 MC for Curel lotion, and 1.00 Target coupon and .75 MC for the toothbrush)
=total for all items: 2.27
yipee.

Just another day...

I haven't posted for a while...but life isn't that exciting...so I will tell you about my day:)
When I got dressed, I combined a jacket I got this summer (clearance at Target), a pinkish top (clearance 1.50 at Gordmans during Christmas break) and garage sale pants (1.00). I think it turned out pretty nice!

During breakfast I watched the news about the wildfires in Boulder, CO. The news-casters actually called 911, because the flames were getting very close to some houses in an out of view area and there were no firemen around.


Then I went to school and taught my classes, which went fine. (The picture is me at school)
Apparently, it got up to 70 degrees today. Too bad I never saw light outside, except on the ride to school and the ride home.
After school was workout club...but it was "game day" so we played hockey with sticks on the gym floor (along with situps, planks, and other workout stuff).
Then I came home and made pizza. Yum.

Now I will probably cut up my pineapple (that was on sale for 1.00 each last week), and watch some TV online.
Man it is nice to be feeling better!

More pictures from Christmas...

These pictures are from Iowa...
Uncle Chad got cool points when he gave Caleb this hot wheels that make noise. It did require some setup though.



Even though his feet couldn't quite reach the pedals, he had fun dancing with it:)


We had fun with John's hat again...


Here Caleb is playing with the remote car we gave him...although I think the adults had more fun with it than he did.


As always, Caleb's favorite is Grandma.


It was so great to be able to hang out with family this Christmas. Thanks for hanging out with us Feys.


And thanks for all the presents and fun times Mom and Dad and Chad.
Here are some of the awesome Kitchen items I got that I was not expecting:

Pot-holders, dish towels and an apron made by Lori, a Bless this House sign scroll sawed by my dad, A pineapple corer, a can strainer, a ground beef chopper, and a scissors from my mom, and a hot/cold pan carrier from a grabag present.

A quick note...

I apologize for not blogging in such a long time. We got home from Iowa on Monday at 6pm, and by 10pm we were both violently sick. We think it could have been food poisoning from some chicken we ate on the road, but it could have also been the flu. We spent Tues. sick and Wed. recovering, and now it seems like vacation is almost over. On the bright side, I didn't have to take off any time from school to be sick.

In other news, Did you hear they fired Broncos coach Mike Shannahan? John and I watched most of the press conference last night on the news, and it was sad. Wonder what will happen next for the Broncos?

More picts from Christmas to come soon...