Family Publix trip

We took our Little Princess to the grocery store last week. She has been in the store briefly before, but this was her first time sitting in the front of the cart.  I eventually ended up wearing her in the Moby, but she did well.

We split our purchases so that we could use two winn dixie coupons. Here is a list of what all we got.  Milk, cheese, yogurt, Halloween candy, apples, pineapple, pasta, hamburger helper, ground beef, oatmeal, bread, and a few other things.  Grover and I spent right under $50, and saved about $65!!
I'm glad I'm able to help out again and Princess L can come along too, now.

4 months old!

Our Princess is 4 months old.

I haven't done many posts about her, so here we go with an update.
She is still in 3 month clothes.  This past weekend we started putting her in her crib instead of the pack n play.  She sleeps about 6 hours her first stretch, and then wakes up every 2-3 hours until about 9am.  She recently learned she can splash during bath time. She likes to sit facing forward in laps. She is great with head control now.  She can't really hold her head up during tummy time though, or at least she doesn't use her arms to hold her head up.
Today at her 4 month appt, she got her shots.  We shared with the nurse about our cloth diapers.  I told her the Bumgenius 4.0s are my favorite at this time, and to go to cottonbabies.com.  As for her marks, she was 12lbs, 13oz.  Her head is still slightly bigger, but she is continuing to grow in length.  Hoping the shots don't throw off her sleep too much tonight.

Our favorite day thus far with her was of course yesterday.  While driving home from small group, I was making raspberries to make her laugh.  Grover jumped in the back with us when we got home, and we watched as she processed what I was doing and stopped laughing and tried to do it herself.  Her bubbles were adorable, and her tongue would sneak out every once in a while.  We are so proud of her cognitive development, and her cuteness.

I will start to post pictures soon. =)

He did it!

My Grover went to the grocery store and saved more than he spent!!! He saved about $34, and spent $24. Very Proud!

Another Couponer!

A few weeks ago before I started back at work, my Grover had to go get our folding table back from a friend. (Using it for my home office space.) He comes home and says you'll never guess what my work friend and I talked about, I of course start guessing. =) Well, he tells me they were talking about coupons.
Now, he is taking over and planning a shopping trip. He uses mycouponexpert.com and will be shopping on Thursday. We may make a family trip out of it, or I may just send him on his way and see how he does by himself.

Love my couponing Grover thus far!

6 weeks postpartum

It's only been six weeks, seems like it was years ago that I was pregnant and had a baby.  It's so strange how things go by fast, but at the same time it seems to be so long ago that we were expecting to have this baby.

Had a busy weekend, and yesterday I needed some rest.  Grover worked all weekend, so little angel and I went to parties and shopping together.  She was great the whole time, I love my easy baby.
Sunday afternoon we joined a large group of people for some athletics.  I was lucky my sister-in-law was there, she was able to watch my angel while I jogged the complex.  I was definitely intimidated by all the people out there, knowing I'm not in shape.  But my wonderful Grover stopped me mid jog and told me to come play and I have a good excuse if I get tired, (I had a baby 6 weeks ago!)  I was pretty winded, but played a whole game and a half of Ultimate Disc, and even scored a few points for my team.  It was a good confidence boost for me as I want to get to my pre-pregnancy weight and get rid of some of the extra flab.

As of Saturday I was 10 lbs from this goal, and had already lost 10-15 lbs since baby.  Shouldn't take long to lose the weight, but I'm worried about the flab.

Back to normal with help from Jesus

As you may have read I recently had a baby.  After two weeks I started to feel normal physically, and was less stressed.  But since then some of my personal goals and around the house goals have been difficult to start.

Baby girl's first outing from the house, was church on father's day.  For me it was important, as I want her to grow up with the Lord in her heart.  Since then I have not taken her to church.  I have realized it is difficult to get out the door with just her, as hubby has been working, and I sleep until ten since she is still tired as well.
We attend our small group on the 10th, and I realized we have been missing a lot at church.  A change in the children's pastor, our worship leader and his wife are trying to start their own album, and great messages from Galatians and Ephesians. So this past week Grover and I have watched two of the messages, entitled Letters.  I have also picked back up my devotional of Women of the Bible.  Doing this, has really made me happy about my little family, and reminded me of God's grace.  I do not have to prove that I am worthy of His love, it is already given to me.  I have thanked God every day for my family, but feel even better having a reminder that He loves me and I don't have to do anything to have this blessing.

In addition to adding my church's message above.  I would like to share our former children's pastors new calling as they look for support, and share our amazing worship leaders' kick starter as they make an album.

No Longer Newborn

Our little Angel is one month today.  It's crazy how fast she has grown.  Not too sure how much she weighs currently, but this past weekend I packed up all her newborn clothes.  She is moving on to bigger and cuter clothing.
Before long she will be talking to us.  Of course I've thought about this so much, that I had a dream about it last night.  Wow!  I continue to remind myself to take things one day at a time.

Nursery finished!

I've had some help and we finally got the last piece for the crib so we could put it together and I could get to having the room ready for our angel.
I'm very thankful that we have been able to pretty much get everything we need. We exchanged a few things and had gift cards for things we did not get at the shower.  In fact last weekend when we went to Buy Buy Baby and Babies R Us, we only spent about $20.  We got every last little important thing with gift cards.  I feel so blessed and am glad our little girl is already extremely loved.

So we changed our office space to the nursery, and my craft desk became the storage space for the clothes and toys and such for the nursery.
So here is my craft space before I moved it to the armorer. (Yes a mess, and that is an old easy mac box, full of pens)

 

and here is the nursery set up with the expedit boxes and desk, and completely full of baby stuff.

Shower & Tubs

This past weekend I had a shower for baby girl with family.  My mother put it together and if she post pictures in the next few weeks I will add them.
Staying there was nice and it was still a bit chilly outside, but my father heated up the hot tub for me.  So enjoyable!  (kept the temp low for pregnant me)

It was so much fun to see so many friends that I haven't seen in a while.  Two of my friends traveled 4 hours.  =)  One friend, my birthday twin, I hadn't seen in years but she recently had a baby and I have been talking to her so she came too!  The only part about showers that is too much for me is opening all the gifts while people watch.  Is this ever comfortable for people?
My organizing self soon kicked in when people left.  I sorted through the big items, what was toys, and the clothes.  Had to have less bags, so my grover could play tetris and get it all in the car.

Things are going to start getting real, 3 months left or so.

Pregnancy

I am now about 24 weeks pregnant.  Things are setting in more and more as my belly grows.  I have gained about 10lbs, and still have chest pains, but everything else is great.

We are still looking into our girl's full name, but for now we just have a first name.

Since I have been doing a study of the Women of the Bible from week to week.  I thought I would mention some parallels to my current life.
Names and their meaning were very important in the culture as you see in Genesis 21 as Sarah names her son Isaac.  It was also common for a child not to be named for several years.
Also, if seems there is difficulty in some women becoming pregnant now, but this has also been seen in scripture as well.  Sarah and Rachel were barren for several years, and I'm sure there are many more to count as well.
Legacy has become more important to me as well.  What will I leave for my child, and what blessings will her future be.  In Genesis 27, Rebekah disguises her favorite son to receive his father's blessings, but we can share this blessing among all our children.

I look forward to sharing more about my study and my pregnancy/baby. God Bless!

Attachment Challenge

This past week I read about Lot's wife in the bible, and how she had been an obedient wife but when leaving the city of Sodom she had looked back.  When the angels told them to flee they said don't look back, and Lot's wife did so and turned into a pillar of salt.
(Read Genesis 19:1-26)
The last page of the week said to take a week away from television, magazines, and shopping, inother words your attachments, and find time to pray and reflect.

I have challenged myself to do so this week.  I will refrain from joining my community on theBump.com, television, and try to avoid too many baby things such as registry.

We have also been in a series at Access church called Fresh Air.  Basically a focus on important things and fixing yourself internally and not trying to do so much externally.  Our principles in this series have been:
#1: Fall in Love with Jesus
#2: Eliminate Hurry from your Life
#3: Give up Control

So with the challenge I am taking this week I am looking to God, and stopping to actually listen to him and not all the other hurried voices in the world.  I will work on relaxation, and breathing. (good things for this pregnant lady)

Hope you all have a good week and find time to challenge yourself in small ways and CHOOSE LIFE!

Halfway through pregnancy

Now that I just passed 20 weeks, I feel I should start to post more about my pregnancy. 

There are good parts and bad.
Bad:  A week ago today I went to the ER, because I had heart palpitations throughout the weekend, and my OB suggested I go.  Everything went fine at the hospital and I was out in 2 hours.  Of course, since then I have this constant soreness under my left breast, (around the heart).  Two days later I saw my OB who said it's normal to have heart palpitations and that they are more of a nuisance, but she made an appt with a Cardiologist for this week.  **I am getting more annoyed with this soreness, and can't wait until my appt.
Other Bads:  First trimester sickness, which wasn't much vomiting but more yucky feeling and loss of appetite.  Hemmorrhoids, enough said.  Drowsiness, which isn't too bad at all because I like sleeping, my work doesn't like it though.

Good:  I am now feeling the baby every day.  It is amazing, and I am enjoying it while I can, because the baby moves a lot when I sleep which is sure to get worse when the baby is bigger.  I do have energy sometimes.  I am enjoying the attention and help.

More Update:  Hopefully I will be starting Prenatal Yoga this week, finally.  We started our registry so that has been a big distraction when ever I am near a computer.  I started showing for real around 18 weeks, so maybe I will post a pic soon.  My 20 week scan went well, and we are expecting a healthy baby Girl.  Now onto picking names. 

Publix still amazes me!

Tonight my husband and I went grocery shopping, I had my coupons, but didn't have a list together.  I mainly went to get a few sale items and then spend $50 so I could get $10 off with the Sweetbay coupon I got from the Sunday paper.  Of course I love the fact Publix honors competitor coupons, but did not expect the following to happen.
The Sweetbay coupon states you get $10 off a purchase of $50 or more and then has a part that writes when you use this coupon the cashier will give you another $10 coupon to use at your next visit.
The Publix cashier had stopped after a coupon and explained to me she would need to just take off the money for that product, then she briefly walked away, and came back with a Publix gift card.  I was confused and thought why would she put that on a card if she just told me she would take it off.  Then the Angel spoke and told me Publix is honoring the coupon by giving people a $10 gift card to use again later.  REALLY?  AWESOME!  So basically you get $20 off of 50.  And I have another coupon, so I may make another trip this week.  SOOO excited and happy as husband and I just discussed our budget and how we need to save a little more on food.  Great trip, hope ya'll have a coupon and can use it too.

Getting Organized

I will spending a lot of time getting organized because in 5 months my little one will be here. 

One main thing I want done is to get my scrapbooks up to date, so I can start one's with my baby in it!  So last week I got out my supplies and put them out in front of the TV.  So whenever I am watching I will hopefully see it and get a little done.  I had started my scrapbook of after college and got caught up to 2010 right before my wedding, this past week. =)
I also got my coupons for this week last night, and went through old coupons and such to toss them out.  There were several inserts in Sunday's paper and I actually got an extra one or two from my papers.  Will have to plan and shop soon.
Another project I decided to do as I put my Christmas decorations away is to make little books out of the cards I get ever year.  I have kept the cards since we have been married and in our house.  So with three years worth I needed to either organize or toss out.

I went simple, cutting up Christmas clothing boxes for the cover.  Each one is unique to the sizes of the cards from that year.  And as for the wholes on each card and cover I used an office whole puncher to make sure they were all the same distance apart.  I just wrote the year on each one but may go back and some Christmas embellishments in the future.

2012 Savings

So I didn't keep up with my blog as I began working full time in the fall and then finally became PREGNANT!  (Yes, this was basically after the previous post, God's timing is best!)

But I did keep up with saving and couponing, we had some down times when I missed some inserts, and where we didn't shop for weeks and ate all my stockpile. (That's what it is there for!)

That being said I kept my receipts except a few ones where my husband went out and got stuff just for that night's dinner.  So for 2012 my spending vs savings is....
Spent $996.56
Saved $951.26
Almost saved as much as I spent!

More to come on upcoming baby soon.  And with a baby coming around, I do not plan on keeping track of the savings vs spending this year.
Hope you all have a great 2013 full of blessings and savings!