My First Blog Post as a 30 - something

30. Well, it hit me like a semi-truck. Not sure why, but still setting into being 30 with a bit of apprehension. Sure, everyone tells me 30 is GREAT! 30 is NO BIG DEAL! Well, it fits a little funny in my mouth to say I am 30 and then I just LOVE, LOVE, SARCASTICALLY LOVE when people say to me "You're only 30?". Gee thanks people. You just know how to make me feel good.

The upside, I have experienced a ton of awesome stuff in my 30 years and can't wait to see what is coming next. Downside, I still feel like a kid, yet the teenagers at Sonic are now calling me Mam. And I have three gray hairs, three for sure, maybe more.

It's a good thing that my best friend from high school Jessica flew down and surprised me in the cafeteria where I teach on my last day of being 29 so that I did not totally lose my sanity over losing my twenties. She was the best present I have gotten in a long time. (Much better than the temporal lobe epilepsy diagnosis I got a couple weeks before. Epilepsy totally sucks. I think I could devote an entire blog to how one manages to be a wife, mother, friend, employee, HERSELF, etc. dealing with this crap. Anywho, I digress, it is my TOTALLY wonderful friend Jessica that surprised me and made me laugh and made me cry and took me back to a normal place where I was just me, without all this other crap. I love you Jessica. I love you, I love you, I love you and I miss you so!) How to explain Jessica? Well, she is hilarious and so genuine. What you see is what you get. Pure comfort in her own skin. Always teaching you a life lesson but never in a pushy way. Always making you feel better about yourself and somehow making you seem like a person with so many gifts and the best spirit. No wonder she has been one of my favorite people for almost 15 years. If this helps, we are like 2 of the Golden Girls, and we are ok with that! I have no doubt that our far off future contains each other and supermarket runs for poli-grip and poise pads. We are just that kind of friends. The kind that you can just pick right back up as if 5 minutes went by no matter how long. When the moments you share are the memories you make, you know you've lucked out.

I had such a nice birthday thanks to my family and friends and despite me wanting it to pass be by, 30 is settling over me ok. Nothing too traumatic so far! :-) My parents came up too and we hit up Reata, one of my favorite places. I was surprised with flowers and balloons. I got a beautiful new watch. We ate delicious food. We spent too much. We had this pedicure that was unbelievable. We laughed, we hung out, we stayed in our pjs and talked until the sun went down. We left the boys with a babysitter (gasp! that is a BIG deal for me!). But the VERY.BEST.PRESENT. of all was Jessica.

Testing, Testing, is this thing on?

Having some blog issues. PLEASE comment if you see this!!! THANK YOU!

Bonnaman

Bonnaman, Bonnaman, where are you? I love you!

This is a typical little song you might here around our house. Why? Well Brendan loves songs and Brendan has lots of nicknames. BrenderBear. Bonnie. LonieBon. Bonnaman. And of course, B.

We love him so much. You can't help but fall in love with him. He is irresistible.

Here is my B bringing a smile to my face.





In the first and last picture, he is eating a Cadbury Egg. It was mine, but he looked at me with those big brown eyes, and well....he soon was enjoying his first Cadbury Egg! :-)

Over Halfway there!!!

We are over halfway to our summer vacation fund goal!

I am excited about the amount of money we have saved in a short time and some of the ways we have come up with the money. This is fun!

This is our test drive for saving vacation money to next year's big trip to DISNEY WORLD!!!

One of our best hauls yet!

Some of it.....

the rest of it....

We went to Kroger today as a family. I usually do the shopping alone or with just the little one, but since I can't drive we all had to go. Thanks to Kroger and their cute kid car carts, it wasn't bad. We split up and got so much done so quickly! James and Daniel were a team with part of the list. B and I tackled the rest. Finally after learning the store and getting back in the swing of "The Grocery Game", it goes pretty fast. We spent $116. We saved $109.70. That is a 48% savings! Our stockpile is growing and growing. Nice to go out to our own little "store" in our garage and see what we have in the deep freeze and on the shelves.

Number of Coupons Used: 32
Items Purchased: 87
Items Bought at Regular Price (No Coupon or Not on Sale) = 6, excluding produce

Freebies we snagged today:
*Coffee Mate Creme Brulee Creamer
*2 Michelena's frozen dinners
*Aloutte Baby Bree Cheese Wheel
*Aquafresh Toothpaste
Yakisoba Noodles
Right Guard
Dial Handsoap
Sunny D
Airwick Air Freshener

TOTAL OF FREE ITEMS: $17.22 (many of these were on sale and then with the coupons they became free because of doubling or tripling coupons so the real savings exceeds $17.22) *These items were free due to coupons received directly from manufacturer through the "5 a Day" at Couponing to Disney site, my favorite money saving site.

It is a little hard to tell from the picture, but we got a huge pot roast and a pound of ground sirloin. I put a gallon of Bluebell in the freezer before this picture. We also found some great produce but didn't have to buy some that we usually do, thanks to our new garden! :-) More on that later....

And how does Brendan feel about shopping with mommy???