Cruisin'

We're back! We had such a great time on our cruise and we took a TON of pictures, so I'm not going to go through them all right now. If you want to hear all about everything and see some of the pictures, visit my sister, Tami's blog. She did a great job of posting!!

http://nickandtami.blogspot.com/

And we're off....

Happy Birthday to Casey!!!! The big 2-4! I'm so glad I have you. You are such a good dad and husband. I sure love you lots!

Also, we are leaving tonight (at 12:50 am, actually) for our cruise to the bahamas! Benson will spend half of the week at Casey's parents' house and the other half at my parents' house. We are excited to have a week to ourselves, but I know I'm going to miss Benson a lot. Casey keeps reminding me that both of our parents have raised kids and everyone turned out ok (mostly), so a week with his grandparents will probably be good for Benson.... Except that's not what I'm worried about at all, I'm worried about missing him too much! I'm sure we will all be fine!

Wellp, Bon Voyage!

Coupon Chaos!!!

Bless her sweet little heart, my cousin (and good friend) Judi, taught me how to be a coupon queen!

Today was my first time doing coupons for reals and it was so wonderful! Since we are leaving on our cruise in less than a week, my objective today was mostly snacks for us for our trip and non-perishables that will last till we get back. Here are the stats on what I got:

9- cheerios snack mix

6- boxes of fruit snacks (the good kind)

6- boxes of toaster strudels

2- Honey Nut Cheerios

6- boxes of gushers

1- 4 pack of yogurt

3- soups (in the nice microwave container)

2- brocolli

2- cauliflour

6- boxes of fiber one cereal bars

2 pounds of butter

bananas

5 pounds of potatoes

1- gallon of milk

1- loaf of bread

1- syrup

1- baking powder

TOTALS

51 items

$63.76 used in coupons

$56.68 in store savings

Total spent: $43.60 spent (including tax)

Total saved: $120.44

Thanks, Judi, you have officially saved me millions of dollars (hopefully)....

Also, I wanted to make a clarification on a previous post. In the post "a friend for everyone", I posted a picture of the big boys and the little boys, but I didn't post anything about us girls (Chelsey and me). This is because Chelsey and I were the ones taking pictures. She is my very good friend and we all love the Stowers.... So there, I don't want anyone thinking that I have ill feelings, cause I don't (at least not about the Stowers).

Happy New Year!!!

2008 was a good year for us. It was our first full year with Benson. It has been a lot of fun watching him grow and learn. He is such a good little boy. He can follow directions and is learning to talk to us. I feel like we are at a good point with Benson. He is starting to depend on us less, which is sort of sad, but it makes things a lot easier. It's really getting fun to play with him. We play every morning for a long time and then after lunch, he takes a really good, 2 hour nap, so I can get all of my work done while he's asleep. It's nice for me to have some time to get things done and still have time to play with him. It seems like this is a good time for our family. Our favorite thing to do is watch movies together. We love being together and spending time at home.

I really feel blessed in my life right now. Sometimes there are struggles and hard times, and trust me, everything isn't perfect. But we are doing really well. I'm really looking forward to 2009. I hope this will be a good year for us. We leave for our cruise with Tami and Nick in a week and a half, and I'm so excited to spend soem time with Casey, but I know I will miss Benson. He really is the biggest part of my life and I feel so lucky to get to spend all day with him and try to teach him. It seems like he is teaching me more and more each day.

Life is good!