YAY FOR COUPONS!!!!

I usually have great shopping trips, but trips like today make me smile for awhile. My original total was $130.96. After the store's sale and my huge stack of coupons, I got all of this stuff for $25.24. I noted some of the highlights of the trip on the picture.

SNOW!?!

It's snowing! Are you kidding me? I'm not ready for the snow!

First Day At Nursery!!!

Today was Elaina's first day in the nursery. As I suspected, she had no problem with us leaving her. She went straight to the kids and the toys as soon as we got her into the nursery. Adam and I tried to get her to at least wave goodbye to us but there was way too much fun going on to acknowledge us. When Adam went to pick her up he said that she was still playing with toys. Nursery was a hit. I must admit though, I missed her. I kept watching my classroom door to see if she would be brought in to me but she never was. I miss her, but it will be nice to start getting something out of church again.
This is before church. Such a big girl!
Here's after church. She was showing me the drawing that she did in nursery.

Playing in the Leaves

Adam raked the leaves today. There were so many. Elaina thought they were pretty cool and fun until I got out my camera, of course.

She knows what's coming.
Okay, she liked it the first five times, but once the camera came out she was done. Look at all those teeth!

Owee!

Elaina learned the word owee last night. Her favorite cupboard is the canned food one. Last night she dropped a progresso soup can (the big cans) on her toe, which has cause it to turn a nice shade of dark purple :( It was a pretty dramatic experience for her and a pretty rough night for us all. Even though the situation was pretty sad it was still really cute to see her point to her toe and say "owee." Her toe got lots of kissies. It was also sad/cute because she walked around the whole night with a limp. Poor baby.

Elaina's Special!!

I loved this month's relief society message. One quote really hit me harder then the others. I liked President Hinkley's quote where he said: "Never forget that these little ones are the sons and daughter's of God and that yours is a custodial relationship to them, that He was a parent before you were parents and that He has not relinquished His parental rights or interest in these His little ones.."
This really makes me look at my role as a parent in a whole different light. I am taking care of one of Heavenly Father's elect children, and she really is that special. She's so cute! It also makes me look at my relationship to Heavenly Father in a different light, also. "He has not relinquished His parental rights;" I knew that, but hearing it this way makes it feel more powerful. Thank goodness for the gospel which blesses us with the knowledge of our heritage. Such a cute outfit!

Thanksgiving Point

Our family went to Thanksgiving Point tonight with Brooke, Aaron, Jared, Lindsey and Rocky. It was so much fun! They had so many different things to do. It was a little cold but chasing around Elaina really helped warm things up.
There was an area where you could have tracker races. It was a lot harder to get the trackers to move then expected, so this activity was short lived. Here's Elaina being a little farmer. Here's Elaina and Adam on a huge rocking chair. One of Elaina's favorite part of the park was of course the slides! She loved them. They were pretty fast. When she went down by herself she was like a little bullet. The catcher had to react quickly.
The boys really got into this duck race. It was meant for little kids.

The highlight of the evening was the corn maze. It was only suppose to take us 30 minutes but it took us so much longer then that. It was a lot of fun. Elaina had to be the leader for most of the time. She loved it! Here's Adam and I chasing after Elaina in the corn maze. She's such hot stuff. If Elaina felt she had a spare second or two she would start dancing. At this particular moment she had quite the audience watching her dance. She likes to show off her moves. I like to show them off too. Her little wiggle is so cute.

Couponing!!

My newest hobby is couponing. I love it! It is like a game to me; to see how many things I can get for free and how much money I can save my family. I started couponing towards the end of July and since then have easily tripled my food storage, bought mostly namebrand foods, and have made better meals, all while cutting my monthly food budget in half. It's been a lot of fun. I don't normally take pictures of my shopping trips but this was my first shopping trip with coupons and I was so excited about the outcome that I had to document the moment. This particular shopping trip I made money! With all the cereal I bought I was able to send in for a $10 rebate and with my coupons I made $2.32. It was great.
Here's another great shopping trip. I got all of the items below (plus a bag of reese's that didn't make it to the picture) for free (except for tax)! The original total was $31 but after coupons, I only had to pay for the tax which was $1.62.

I've had several other great shopping trips. It's been a lot of fun and truely a blessing for our family. With Adam taking 20 credit hours at school and then working every hour in between to support our family, I often feel bad for not being able to relieve him of some of that burden. Being able to save so much through couponing and budgeting has really helped me feel like I'm helping out our family as well. Thank you to everyone who has donated their coupons to me. I really appreciate them, they really have been a huge blessing to our family.

Dare Devil

Elaina is quite the dare devil. One of her favorite things to do is to climb up on things.Elaina was watching Nemo on the computer. I went into the kitchen to put something away and when I got back this is what I found. I'm not sure how she got up there with the distance between the desk and the chair she was on.

The thing she climb's up on the most, besides the TV stand, is this shelf. She's so fast.

Dress up time!

Elaina recently has become more aware as to what she is wearing. She loves to walk around in my shoes and wear jewelry. That's all great, but this past week we stocked up on winter clothes and shoes. We got her two new pair of shoes. One pair she loves and the other she hates. It is so funny. She kicks and screams whenever I try to put the one pair on. The other pair she gives her "ohhh" of approval. She thinks she's a teenager already.

Elaina's Friends

Elaina has traveled around with quite the entourage today. I tried putting her down for a nap and she wanted to still snuggle with 3 stuffed animals. Needless to say, there was too much going on to take a nap at that time.