No more babies :(

No more babies in my house!! Addison is ALMOST officially walking! She did a lot of walking on her own today! We have been working with her, holding her hands while she walks, and she has been using the walker more. Today she kept letting go of the walker and would take a good 10-15 steps on her own, walking toward Ben! Soo cute!! I am so excited because we have been waiting for this milestone for quite some time. She'll be 17 months next week!
Even though this is an exciting time, it is a little sad as well. This means that I will no longer have any more babies around! Of course they will always be my babies, but they are growing up too fast!
Addison is on her way to 2 years old and becoming a toddler now that she's walking, and Aiden is starting kindergarten in August! Where does the time go?

My sister's pregnant!

So my baby sister (even if she is 25) is having a baby of her own! She found out last week and is due sometime in February! So excited to be an Auntie!! She's now able to understand why I always told her she couldn't pay me enough to carry her children! She used to try to tell me she was going to pay me $1 million to carry her children...all I ever did was laugh! I hated being pregnant! Twice was enough for me! ;)
She's really hoping for a girl, so we'll see! I can't wait for Aiden and Addison to have a cousin!!

My cooking day!

So I did it! :) I spent the whole morning cooking this morning!
I started by chopping up all the onions and bell peppers I needed. Then I divided the ground beef up for all the meals I was making.
I started with the roast first because I needed to get that in the crock pot. That is going to become shredded beef for 2 different meals, BBQ Beef Sandwiches, and burritos.
Then I started on the chili. While I was sauteing the veggies and ground beef for the chili I started browning the ground beef for the taco meat. While all of that was cooking I separated the last of the ground beef into 2 different bowls for my meatloaf and meatballs.
I seasoned both batches of the ground beef, molded one into the meatloaf, and then made the balls and threw it all in the oven!
Then I finished off the chili to let that simmer for awhile and finished the taco meat.
Finally I chopped all the chicken I needed for the spicy chicken recipe and the fajitas and got it cooking.
I let everything cool before packaging it up to put in the freezer!
Tomorrow I'm going to put a pork roast in the crock pot to shred for carnitas for another meal!
So excited to see if everything freezes okay when we start taking the meals out!

Freezer Cooking

I've started my planning for my big day of cooking to stock my freezer!
I have written out the recipes I want to cook and made a list of ingredients I already have on hand. Then I wrote my list of ingredients I need to buy, I was going to go to the grocery store today, but didn't get over there...what else is new right?!?! So I'm going to the store tomorrow!
My goal is to start cooking on Wednesday and finish up on Thursday! I'm so excited to have meals on hand to make night time easier! :)
My recipes:
Meatloaf
Meatballs
seasoned ground beef for tacos
Shredded beef- enough for BBQ sandwiches one night, and shredded beef burritos another night
Shredded pork for carnitas
Spicy Chicken
Cooked chicken strips for stir fry
Cooked strips of steak for fajitas
chili
So that's 10 dinners to hold me over for about 2 weeks! We'll probably do some left overs and going out or take out for a few other nights. I'm so excited!
This will be my trial run. If everything works out well my plan is to do this once a month to keep work nights easy! Wish me luck!
If you like this idea and would like the planning pages I used check out Money Saving Mom's blog!

The Rule of Three

I saw this on another friend's blog and thought it looked fun! :) I'm going to tag 3 friends, but if you want to post on your blog too, go ahead! It's fun! :)

Three names I go by:
Mommy
Jules
Oolie

Three jobs I have had:
Teacher
Girl Scout Camp Counselor
Target Cashier

Three places I have lived:
Tucson, Az
Flagstaff, Az
I haven't lived anywhere else...I know, I'm lame! :(

Three favorite drinks:
Diet Coke
Raspberry Lemonade
White Wine Spritzers

Three TV shows I watch:
Grey's Anatomy
One Tree Hill
Private Practice

Three places I have been:
Italy
Mexico
California

Three places I would like to visit:
Want to take the kids to Disneyland
Seattle
New England

Three favorite dishes:
Chicken Parmigiana
Chicken LoMein (from PF Cheng's)
Steak and baked potatoes

Three things I'm looking forward to:
Aiden starting kindergarten in August
My foot to be healed ;)
Seeing my kids grow up!

Three people I'm tagging:
Leslie of Waiting for Daisies
Nicole of A Day in the Life of Nicole!
Kendra of Forgacs Family Fun!

Thanks Chelsea of Vicarious Chelsea for this post idea! :)

So I've decided I want to try this whole freezer cooking idea! Most blogs I've read talk about getting meals ready for the freezer with a months worth of meals. I don't know if I could do that much at once so I'm thinking of starting smaller, like meals for 2 weeks. Has anyone else done this? How'd it go?
I'd like to start with seeing what's on sale and what coupons I have to determine my meals and obviously will use what I already have. I wonder if I could use up my 6 bottles of BBQ sauce, or my 4 bottles of mustard doing this?? J/K I'm not going to make condiment soup!!
I'm thinking I'm going to use this week to start my planning. Here are my goals for this week and next weekend. I hope to spend all of next Sunday cooking and prepping and getting everything ready to cook and freeze! This will be my trial run to see if I can handle it! If it works out I hope to be able to get this done again the weekend before I go back to work in July so we can have meals ready when I'm not going to want to cook after working all day!
So here's my plan:
1. Come up with ideas and recipes I'd like to make
2. Look through my pantry to see what ingredients I already have
3. Match up my stockpile items to the recipes and start a grocery list for what I will need to finish the ingredient list for each recipe
4. Match up all the prep work for each recipe (browning all the ground beef for a few of the recipes, chopping all onions needed for all recipes, etc.)
5. Get everything all ready to go by next weekend for the big cooking day!
Can you tell I'm getting really excited about this? Does anyone else have any suggestions? Who else does this?
I'm becoming such a "mom" and "housewife" lately! I'm all into couponing and saving at the grocery store and planning out menus to cook with all the food I've gotten with my savings, now I want to do big batches of cooking. It's kinda nice, I feel like I'm really taking care of my family! :)
Anyway, thanks for reading! :)

Also, wanted to give credit to a wonderful lady to writes her own blog, fishmama. I have found a lot of wonderful tips on how to do this method of cooking! Check her out, she's amazing!!

Bountiful Baskets!

So I have always wanted to try Bountiful Baskets and today I did! :)
If you don't know what Bountiful Baskets is, go here to check it out!
Bountiful Baskets is a food co-op where you can get a lot of great fruits and vegetables for a great price! I wasn't sure if we would use all of the produce in time so for my first time I split a basket with a friend. I got the normal basket full of wonderful goodies as well as the Mexican Pack! Since I split everything with a friend it only cost me $12!! Can't get this much produce for that price anywhere!
I'm so excited to try a few new recipes with all of my wonderful goodies! The mexican pack had tomatillos, yellow onion, cilantro, cerrano peppers, avocados, limes, and garlic. I'll be making some salsa and guacomole today for sure!
Check it out!! I'm excited for next week!

Great deal on kids shoes!!

If you like Crocs, check out this awesome deal on kids shoes! I got a pair of CUTE pink slip-ons for Addison and a new pair of flip flops for Aiden, $8.49 each!! Cheaper than Target shoes! :)



To get the above shoes follow these steps!
Go to the crocs website.
In the search bar type gabby.
Choose the black pair (you can choose a different color).
To get kids sizes click on children on the right and choose your child's size.
Use the following coupon codes (yes use both!)
GABBY999, and STACK15
Then shipping is free! :)

I got these flip flops for Aiden:



For these again go to the crocs website.
Search for kids wave.
Coupon Codes:
WAVE999 and STACK15

Thanks to Frugal Girls for this deal! :)

Coupons!

I went to Safeway yesterday and saved $113, which was more than I spent!!
I am absolutely addicted to couponing and hunting for deals! I used to make a list of foods and things that I needed, and if I had a coupon or it was on sale, great! I don't do it that way anymore! I have joined several free blogs and websites to keep an eye on all the deals!
Most people use a binder to keep all of their coupons organized, but I honestly don't have the time to keep up with that. What I do, is have a file box and organize my coupons by date. Most coupon sites will give the date of the newspaper the coupons came in when they match sales with coupons, so then I can just go to that file in my box! I don't clip all the coupons when I get them, because I usually use maybe 40% of the coupons in each of the inserts. I rely mainly on online coupons to save money.
Something I learned when starting to coupon is that you can use a store coupon AND a manufacturer coupon on the same item! This is also true for a paper coupon and an ecoupon! This is the biggest way I save money!
The main stores I shop at are Albertson's and Safeway. Safeway has been having a lot of great deals lately, and Albertson's always has great deals on meats!
My favorite coupon sites:

KrazyCouponLady
Frugal Girls
Hot Coupon World
Just Frugalicious

And sites that have coupons:

Coupons
Redplum
Cellfire
Shortcuts


If you're into couponing, what organizational method do you use? What are your favorite stores? How do you save the most money? I'm always into seeing what others do!

Foot surgery

So today was the day for my foot surgery.
We arrived at the Camp Lowell Surgery Center at 6:00 am this morning. I tried to convince Ben to ditch the surgery and get breakfast with me! Kinda felt like old times! My senior year of high school, I would ditch school and meet him at JB's for breakfast! Remember that restaurant? They had the best breakfast buffet!
Anyway, he wouldn't budge, so to check in we went. Everyone at the center was so nice and explained everything really well! Didn't help to calm my nerves though. After checking in, we waited about 30 minutes before they called me back, where they checked my vitals, had me sign paperwork and started an IV. I tend to have uncooperative veins so the nurse had to start the IV twice :( I don't do well with IV's and needles so I almost fainted after the 2nd one! After saying goodbye to Ben, they wheeled me back to the operating room.
I was "put to sleep" for a few minutes while they numbed my foot. Then they woke me up and I was awake for the whole surgery! I downloaded Pandora to my phone to listen to so I didn't hear any of the surgery. Unfortunately only one of the earphones was working so I heard everything! I heard the electric saw being used and everything! Ugh :(
The surgery lasted about an hour and we were home by 10:30 am. Where I then took a nap. When I woke up the numbing medicine started wearing off and man was there pain! My doctor was surprised to hear it became un-numb so quickly! Apparently I have a fast metabolism when it comes to medicine! The viccodin is not helping hardly at all so the doctor plans to write me a prescription for demoral in the morning! Man I hope it helps!
The plan was to do this foot today and then do the right foot in a few years. After all this I really don't think that is happening! Everyone told me it was going to be painful but I was never prepared for this!
Luckily my wonderful mother is watching my kids, but I really miss them! Can't wait to see them tomorrow!