It's coupon time again! Click on this link for your coupon. The offer is one Free Lip Item (up to $12 value) with any purchase. Good from May 29-31.

http://f.chtah.com/i/34/528207786/20090529_9499_coupon.html

On occasion, I find myself looking through some of the "blogs I like" looking for deals. I guess you could say it's one of my hobbies when I'm not doing laundry, playing in the dirt, making meals, playing with little guy, etc...). I blame it on my friend Gina when she posted on her blog about Pinching Your Pennies, an amazing site for helping you save butt loads of money at Albertsons (and other grocery stores if you live in Utah). Since then, I always save at least, if not more than, 1/2 off on my groceries. The checkers are always amazed at how much I save. It's great seeing their expressions each time I check out. One thing I'm finding though is that my pantry is getting too small. I think the guest bedroom will be visited by food storage soon. Every so often while browsing through the blogs, I may find some great deals at Target, Walmart, Walgreens and/or Rite Aid. Mostly from Target though. So, I decided to make things easier on myself and stay better organized by whipping up this shopping list, which is two per page. If anyone else out there is a crazy nuthead like me and wants a copy of this, I can e mail you the PDF. Or you can click on the picture and then right click and save. It's nothing fancy but it'll do the job.
If you want to check out some of the bargain sites I like, either scroll down and on the right hand side you'll see the box that says"blogs I like." Look through those. Probably the best ones are Deal Seeking Mom, Money Saving Mom, Stretching a Buck and Tip Junkie.

For my birthday, Duncan and Kaitlyn were the hosts: They reserved a boat from Northwest Boat Rentals in Poulsbo, for the ten of us. They even dressed up like unto the eighties! Now what type of hosts would do that? Only mine. We even had a cap'n Stubbing (The Love Boat) thanks to Brian. And the rest of us did our best to dress accordingly. I was told I didn't have to dress up if I didn't want to. You'll see why below. Everything was amazing and I couldn't have played it off any better. The day was beautiful and sunny. Duncan made up an amazing poster for me and had it tied to the boat. Kaitlyn made up some fabulous little gift bags for everyone filled with goodies from the eighties. FYI: I'm from the seventies, but we all know that the eighties rocked and ruled! Plus, I don't remember the seventies that much. Anyway, we each brought our own lunches to eat on the boat and the hosts supplied the AMAZING cake! Our guests were: David and Geeta, Errol and LaRee, Monica and Brian, Steve and I (of course) and our hosts, Duncan and Kaitlyn. We wished my sis and her hubby could have made it but they had kid stuff going on and she had just gotten back from a two week Hawaiian cruise. LUCKY! And they live up in Canada.

This was the view from up above. You can see Geeta and barely LaRee:

Duncan was there to greet us in his sweet eighties garb recently purchased by Kaitlyn just for this event (minus the pants and shoes). He actually LOVED it and is going to wear it often.

The tide was very low. The ramp was almost vertical. I felt sorry for those who wore heels:

And here at the end up the ramp awaiting my arrival was the sweet eighties chick with a mall rat wig in her hand, for me!

This is what I saw when I got into the boat. Amazing decorations:


And here I am wearing the mall rat wig along with a "birthday princess" head band:

Our good friends (adopted family), LaRee and Errol:

Me bro Deeb and his wife Geet:

Good friends Brian and Monica:

Errol was feeling a little left out so I let him borrow my stud rug:

And Duncan too:

And Brian:


Me and m'hubby:

My AMAZING cake!!!!

I ate my eye:

Cute stuff! Thanks Monica!

You guys really outdid yourselves! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I guess it's because you love me 8-)


And here are some sweet shoes that were in our presence (sp?):




Sorry Kaitlyn, I couldn't resist:

Thank you everyone who came! You all made it my best birthday ever!
To see some better pics that Kaitlyn took (even the one of the seal who was only about six feet away from our boat and was circling us), head on over to Duncan and Kaitlyn's blog. Click here.

I've become good friends with Monica ever since we met during volleyball season last fall. She has a wonderful husband who I feel right at home with since he is such a goofball (like us Fyffes), and great kids. Life is so much better with good friends (you all know who you are!!!). So Monica's birthday is a week before mine and I thought it would be nice to have them over for dinner to celebrate.

Chase wanted to sit at the "big kids table."


It was decent enough weather that we could eat outside (with jackets):

Cute Bailey:

Ashlyn can do the eye wink thing perfectly:

I don't know about Brian though:

We'll forgive him since he did the dishes. Amazing! Thanks a mill!

Group shot. Monica wanted to do the celebrating downstairs with Pops. Don't mind that I look like a whale (argh!):

Here, I'll help you blow out the candles:

And then I'll help myself to some cake. Heck, I might even wear some too. Good moisturizer:

Monica loves country music (she's an amazing singer by the way). I got her a hat and some scarves. Happy Birthday Monica! You're a great friend 8-)

If you're interested, here's a video of Monica singing. She and her hubby wrote the song:

Since I like to post things in order, I'm having to play "ketchup" with the previous goings on. I'm excited to post pics from my birthday, but I'll have to get "ketchuped" with the others first. Do scroll down to enjoy the latest "ketchup."

A couple of weekends ago Steve had to do work down in Olympia at the Washington State Capitol. His work agreed to pay for a hotel, so he thought, "why not bring the fam?" We drove down in separate cars since Steve would have to work the whole time (Fri., Sat., Sun.) and we wanted to have our freedom. I booked an amazing deal for two nights at the Red Lion which wasn't too far from the capitol. It was a pretty nice hotel too. We barely got to see Steve since he would get home late at night and we'd get up and leave before he would need to get up for his VERY LONG day.
We enjoyed some glow golf at Shank's: We went to the capitol mall to eat lunch and do some shopping and we found some great parks for the kids to play, walk and hike at. Here's Tumwater Falls Park (thanks to Cami's directions). There were trails that ran along each side of the river, which we walked down and then back up: We even found an amazing park below the capitol (Capitol Lake Park)where some festivities were going on: This park has a nice long trail that goes right along the waterfront and zig-zags up to the capitol. Here's Sarah sitting on the edge front. She was obsessed with getting the sliver out of her hand: The boys were obsessed with wearing the mesh bag that attaches to the stroller, on their heads:And right across from the Capitol Lake Park was a fun fountain park for the kids to play in: On the ride home, we stopped at Neverland Park at Point Defiance in Tacoma and were disappointed that they've removed all the fun little houses that they used to have along the trail. At least they still had the old woman's shoe: We had an amazing time and would definitely jump at the chance to do it again.