Allergies

Thanks for all of your votes. Hannah came in 3rd place. There's supposed to be another contest later this month so I'm sure I'll be by shamelessly begging for your help again.

In other news, I'm drowning in what appears to be allergies. Seems to be an annual event here in the states. I had the same thing last year a month earlier in Alabama. Anyone have any allergy relief/prevention ideas?

Yet Another

This would be a fun prize to win! Check out the details at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Vote for Hannah!

UPDATE!! Hannah is ONE vote shy of being tied for first place. Please vote now!

Hannah has entered a photography contest. You can see her entry here. Voting takes place TODAY ONLY over at Are We There Yet. In the little poll box, scroll down until you find An American Girl. Thanks so much!

Always Exciting Contests

5 Minutes for Mom gives away the greatest prizes. Click on over to see what they're doing now!

Cleaning Up

Don't you love all the e-mails giving you new things to worry about? Like don't let your child play in the ball pit. Or call an environmental clean up crew if you break a compact florescent lightbulb. I've gotten those and bunches more. I usually check them out at Snopes before I become too concerned. I hadn't checked out the light bulb one until tonight. I needed to get a new battery for our thermometer. We've been bitten by a stomach bug and Gabriel felt feverish. So I went to the pantry and pulled the box off the shelf where the batteries are kept and one of those lovely bulbs came crashing down. Oh great. Now I had to go check out Snopes. I remembered something about never using a vacuum cleaner and calling a haz mat crew. Thankfully the haz mat crew is an unnecessary step although it would have been nice to have someone else deal with the mess seeing as how I have felt horrible all day. But sure enough, the vacuum cleaner is a huge no-no. Snopes had a link to a government page on CFL clean up and hopefully I have done the job sufficiently. Now I can go back to being sick. Thankfully we caught the bug before I broke the bulb or I would be worried all over again.

Learning Something New

Gabriel and Hannah were able to take a drama class this year. They both had a great time with it. I thought we were done until the fall after their performance last week and final class this past Monday. Yesterday morning I received a call from their drama teacher. She wanted to know if Gabriel would be willing and able to learn something new and help her out with the production she is currently doing. To make a long story short, (maybe) , the man who is doing the lights won't be able to make it to one of the performances and needs someone to take his place. Gabriel has never done anything with stage lighting before but he is fairly good with computers (everything's computerized these days) and he learns fast. He went to the dress rehearsal last night and really enjoyed learning this new skill. Tonight was another dress rehearsal and he was able to do everything by himself. Hooray! I am hoping to attend one of the performances. I will probably pay more attention to lighting than I ever have before!


I had to wonder if Gabriel was among the first of the teacher's students to be called or was he towards the end of a long list. After all, she has a lot of students and many of them have been doing drama for years. She told him tonight that he was the first one she called. She was really impressed with all that he had done over the year, especially for a first year student.


Thanks for listening to me shamelessly brag about my son. I am blessed with 3 amazing kids.

News

The weather here in Virginia can be so fickle. One day it's summer and the next you need a winter coat. Friday was nice and I decided to wear my sandals to school. It didn't take me too long to remember why I never wore them to school before. I was in a kindergarten class and had my toes stepped on at least a dozen times. Today and yesterday have been filled with April showers.

The more exciting news of the week is that my daughter Hannah got her learner's permit today. I now have 2 teenagers with their learner's permit. Oh help! Gabriel will be getting his license soon and Holly has another 5 1/2 years before she'll be old enough to drive. Maybe they'll raise the driving age by then!

In the cyber world, there's a great birthday party going on. Marsha is having a bloggy birthday bash and giving away gifts. So click on over there and wish her a happy birthday.

I've got to finish up lesson plans for tomorrow and run Gabe and Hannah to their final drama class for the year. Their performance was last Thursday and they did an awesome job. Tonight's class is the end of the year celebration. That's about it for my busy day. How's your day been?

More Deals at CVS

I am sure that I have mentioned before that I dislike shopping very much. This feeling that sometimes comes close to loathing does not come without reason. I do not like spending money, especially money that I don't have or that I might need for something else later. Being in the ministry, we've always been on a tight budget. We have never gone without things that we need. We've been able to include some wants here and there. But it's always been tight. I must admit that I didn't really like shopping before that anyway. I guess it's in my blood. Who can fight circumstances and DNA?

While I would still rather scrub the bathroom than take a trip to the mall, I have found a new love - shopping at CVS! I learned from Crystal over at Money Saving Mom about an unadvertised special. The 18 oz Softsoap SPA shower gel is $5.49 and you get back $5.49 in ECB's! I also learned from a couponing friend of mine that CVS takes competitors coupons. I had a Target coupon for $1 off. So I paid $4.49 and got $5.49 back. Even a tightwad like me has to like that kind of a deal! Now I need to go and make some space to put everything I have recently bought.

Here's what I got today:

18 oz Softsoap SPA shower gel - $5.49
VO5 shampoo - .66
VO5 conditioner - .66
Nuetrogena eye makeup remover 7.49
Total = $14.30 plus tax

$1.00 Target coupon
9.99 Extra Care bucks
Total out of pocket = $3.53

Extra Care Bucks earned - $10.49

Contest at 5 Minutes for Mom

Two Weeks of Toys is just about over at 5 Minutes for Mom. I haven't entered any of them because so far, they've all been toys for children younger than mine. But I do have a little girl who would love to win this one!

Catching Up

I think I'm in a blogging slump. I don't have time to blog and when I do manage to squeeze some in, I cannot think of anything exciting to say. Here are a few things that have happened in the past few weeks:

• Gabriel turned 17 - He is the most awesome young man in the whole entire world. I am blessed.
• Holly turned 10 - She is turning into a young lady right before my very eyes.
• My parents came up for a visit. They'll be here until Friday.
• Holly had a "Grandma and Me" dinner with her Girl Scout troop. Her leader was kind enough to schedule it when my parents were here.
• They decided to do a 50's theme. Holly wore a dress and sweater that we already had and I spent $1.00 on some ribbon for her hair. She looked really cute.

• She read a poem that we wrote together.
  
• We went shopping in Williamsburg. I found some dishes that I like at the Pfaltzgraph outlet. I bought some shoes.
• I took Hannah to the DMV to get a driving manual. She will be old enough for her learner's permit in only a few days.
  
• My dad and John took the kids on a field trip to the Navy Museum in Washington DC.
  
• My mom and I looked for some more deals at Walgreens and CVS. We found some.
• I'm hoping to mostly stay home tomorrow.
  

Deals at CVS and Walgreens

I've been having fun finding deals at CVS and Walgreens. Here are some things that I bought at CVS earlier this week. I don't remember my exact totals but each time I earned more money in Extra Care Bucks than I spent out of pocket.


I went to Walgreens early yesterday morning. I had a coupon that was only good for the 11th for $5 off on $20. I bought 4 boxes of cereal, 4 Red Baron Pizzas and 2 boxes of ice pops. Between the sales and the coupons my total came to $12.25!

My Wedding Cake

I was fooling about not blogging any more but being too busy was the truth. A week has flown by since my last post. Holly turned 10 and my parents arrived yesterday for a visit. Things won't slow down anytime soon but I am still here.

Kim from The Continuing Adventures of SlugMom requested a picture of my wedding cake so here it is. I couldn't find a cake topper that I like so I settled for the Precious Moments. But what I hated was the tacky blue flowers all over it. The cake decorator told me that she could put some silk flowers around the base and showed me some pictures of other cakes that she had done. They were pretty. Pastel pink and white. She said that she did the blue to match my bridesmaids dresses. Blue is my favorite color, especially navy, royal and sapphire. But it doesn't belong on a wedding cake. I didn't see it until after the wedding, the pictures and the reception line. I was horrified. But what could I do at that point? John liked it. He said it tasted great. I said I didn't care about the taste. It should have been pretty.

Our Anniversary and a Tag

Rebecca from Beautiful Feet has tagged me.

Here are the rules:

1. Link your tagger and list these rules on your blog.



2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.



3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
   


4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Today is our 21st wedding anniversary so I thought I would add a twist to the tag and share 7 random things about our wedding/marriage.

1. I hated Chinese food when we met. John asked me several times if I liked it and even though I continually told him no, he brought me some to work. I liked it!
2. We ate at a Chinese restaurant tonight.
3. We wanted 4 children and we were going to name them Mark, Mitchell, Mandy and Megan. Using all M's was coincidental and now inconsequential because we didn't choose any of those names.
4. I hated my wedding cake. It was ugly and not what I told the cake decorator to make.
5. We went to Williamsburg on our honeymoon.
   
6. For nearly 1/3 of our married life, John was in law enforcement.
7. We spent 1/3 of our married life in the country of Romania.

Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

You have been a huge part of my life but now it is time to say good-bye. I have loved being here, writing down my thoughts, events of the day or just silly memes. I've met many friends, most of them are simply cyber friends. Other's I've been able to meet in real life. I've enjoyed making and especially getting comments. The contests, awards and popularity have been immensely exciting. I'm still one of the top 10 commenters on homeschoolblogger even though it's been more than a year since I left there.


Now it is time to move on. Life has gotten too hectic with homeschool and substitute teaching, trying to spend time with my family and a moment or two on house cleaning. Maybe I'll even find time to read a book now and then. So, I will just say Good-bye dear blog. Thank you for being a fun part of my life.

Please leave me a comment so at least I will know I'll be missed. And I would like to add just one comment here at the very end. April Fool! Have a nice day and leave a comment anyway!

CVS Deals

If you haven't seen me around the blogosphere lately, you might try looking at CVS. A friend of mine clued me in to the great deals there. Here's what I brought home today for $2.43 out of pocket:


2 Kellogg's cereals @ $1.50 each
Irish Spring Soap (3 pack) .97
Cascade dishwasher tablets 3.49
2 Colgate Toothpastes @2.99 each
Excedrin - (Buy 1 Get one free) 4.69

**
$5/$15 CVS coupon
.30 coupon on Irish Spring
.50 coupon on Cascade
9.97 ECB's (Extra Care Bucks)

Tax was a whopping .07. I don't know why I was only charged 2.5% when tax here is 5%. Oh well. I also earned $6.98 in ECB's for my next trip. I can't wait to find out what's on sale in April! Check out Money Saving Mom to learn more.