A Scrap of Life

My son has his first job! Congrats to Chase on being picked to be a teen book reviewer for the St. Helens Book Shop. He'll be reading and reviewing books interesting to teenagers. His favorite part is that he gets ARC's (Advance Reader Copy), which are books that haven't yet been released, to read and review. It doesn't exactly pay in dollars, but instead pays in books. And for those who know Chase, they know that is perfect! His first review is up today on the book shop blog ( www.sthelensbookshop.com/blog ). Check it out!

Gotta love spring break! I finally took the time to download and edit the cameras this week and now have lots to share from the last few months. The boys took turns being team attendants at the Blazers game. HUGE thanks go out to Brian's dad, who has faciliatated having Hillyer's MidCity Ford sponser the boys as attendants. This was Chase's 2nd year and Tristan's first. I posted Chase's photos last year so I'm just posting Tristan's this year. Here's his name up on the jumbo screen. And here he is down on the floor with the players. Look center on the right hand side... he's the one with the giddy look on his face. ;) My baby girl is 9! This is a difficult age for me. I am always reminded that 9 is halfway to 18. Halfway to grown. Halfway to getting up and going on with a life of her own. It's a stark reality to realize that our time with our children is so short. But she is growing up to be an amazing and beautiful woman. One of her favorite ...

I've hesitated to post about this before now for a few reasons. The first is because it is so entirely self-centered of me to be doing this. Then there was the fact that until two weeks ago it was just a plan and not a sure thing. And, of course, there's the guilt associated with the plan and the money issues and I just wasn't sure I wanted to share it with everyone. But now that we've passed the point of no return, here it goes... I'M GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!! So here's the story behind this all. Becky and I met when we were both pregnant with our girls. That was over 10 years ago and she is like a sister to me. She is just such a fabulous person and we get along so well. Our kids are similar ages and the same genders (how wierd is that? We each have teenage boys, pre-teen boys and tween girls). Anyways, she's just a good friend who also happens to love Disney. Now, the other part to this story is that 2 years ago she had to move away. :( Her husband took a n...

I'm not going to post another picture and I promise you I will quit boring you with my savings after a while. But there's a thrill with getting something for next to nothing and I'm just so excited about it. So here's todays deal... 11 boxes of cereal (cheerios, shredded wheat, fruity pebbles, kix, raisin bran) 3 bags of salad 11 boxes of fruit roll ups/gushers 5 boxes of nature valley granola bars 5 bags of nature valley almond granola bites Grand total, after all coupons: $16.32 That averages out to 47cents per item. And it's great to look at the bottom of the receipt and compute my total savings. Original value of all items: $121.85. I paid $16.32. Pretty darned good...

So I posted before that I was starting to watch the coupon sites to see how we could save more money on groceries. Here's what I walked away with today from Safeway: Here we have 26 items: 12 boxes of cereal, 8 boxes of fruity snacks, 5 boxes/bags of granola snacks and a bottle of Excedrin. Full price for these items at the store was $125. In total, after coupons, I paid $21. That means I saved 83% on these purchases and paid an average of $0.80 per item. I do have to give credit where it is due. The two sites I frequent are www.frugallivingnw.com and www.krazycouponlady.com . Check them out if you're interested in saving some good money on your groceries.

I realize that it's March, but I never got around to posting Christmas photos because I was still working on Disneyworld pictures. But it's never too late for Christmas, right? So, the day after we returned from Disney we slept in nice and late to help with the jet lag and then got up and went Christmas tree shopping. We quickly realized that most Christmas tree farms aren't open on Fridays, though we were lucky enough to find one open. We found this beautiful noble that we (ok, Brian did it all) cut down. The family hauled it out and we brought it home and decorated it. We set the camer up to take some pics in front the tree. We were lucky enough to get one with the dogs too. The kids have put up this Santa sign each and every year since they were old enough to know about Santa. I'm amazed at how big the kids have gotten over the years and one day will gather all these Santa sign pictures side-by-side to compare. Here's this years pic. Aaaaahhhh... Christmas Eve....