Ellie's thoughts on marriage...

This video is long, but watch it if you want to see a little bit into Ellie's head, how she thinks.

What does Rowan want?!?

Quick update

Ellie has her cast off, yippee! She was very excited about going to the children's hospital (where her orthopedic surgeon is) to get it off. The clinic was very busy and we were there for 2 hours, but she finally got it off, and the pin removed. She cried while the cast was removed, as it was loud and scary, but it didn't hurt her. However, she SCREAMED when the doctor removed the pin, because it hurt her. They don't give any pain relief, just a 1, 2, 3, pull! It bled a couple drops, but he wrapped it up basically to keep her from looking at it. It was kind of freaky to look at her finger with the pin in it; it was about 45 minutes between taking off the cast and taking out the pin. And afterwards, well, Jason couldn't look at the hole in her finger for too long without feeling sick :) Here is a picture of it for those who like that kind of stuff...

She can bend it fairly well and is starting to write with her left hand again. We thought that maybe she would switch to being right-handed, but nope. There you go, Aunt Nichole, she's a lefty!

The kids are sick (barfy, crying sick), so I can't write a long post. Maybe sometime this weekend :)

My latest hobby

Buying as much stuff as I can with as little money as possible. Otherwise known as couponing :)

As of now, Walgreens is my favorite store. Does everyone know that they give away products free after rebate (known as FAR in the couponing world) every month? In that alone, I have enough make-up and shampoo to last me for a long while. Even with just these products, if you add in coupons, you can actually make money off of this. How great is that? A store is PAYING me to take their products! Above and beyond FAR items, many items go on sale for equal or less than coupon value. For example, take a look at this picture of stuff I just bought last night:


Exedrin PM, 6 (yummy) candy bars, a bouncy ball, and 2 decorative flowers (for Ellie's room). I "purchased" all of this for a measely $.92. Almost all of that was tax. The excedrin and candy bars were free with coupons, buying the excedrin gave me a coupon for $1 off your next order, and I used that to buy the decorative flowers (which were on clearance for $.50 each). The bouncy ball was also on clearance for $.25, and I threw that into the first purchase so my total wouldn't be negative, because Walgreens doesn't allow negative balances before tax (this is called a "filler item" in the coupon world). Catch all that? Isn't it fun? I'm not even going to share the bundles of stuff I "bought" from Walgreens last weekend when they had a $10 off your purchase of $40 coupon.

Here is last night's grocery run. I had gone "real" grocery shopping earlier in the day and saved over 50% on my bill, but this was a late-night run with some coupons that I didn't bring earlier. My grocery store doubles coupons with up to $1 value (so $2 doubled) on Wednesdays (with some rules and stipulations). This is what I bought last night:


6 boxes of Cleanteam flushable wipes
10 refills of Cleanteam flushable wipes
3 loaves of Sara Lee 100% whole wheat bread
1 gallon of Deans skim milk
3 Reach dental floss
1 Aquafresh toothbrush
1 Pillsbury crescent rolls

My total before coupons? Over $60. After coupons, $6.78. Amazing, right? Do you see why I am so into couponing? (Did I just make a noun into a verb?) Usually I'm not able to acquire mass amounts of something, like the wipes, but someone gave me a bunch of coupons for them.

I have a lot of help from various websites where people gather to share deals. If anyone is interested in me helping them get started, let me know! I won't bore everyone with my methods. As long as no one lives near me and takes all my deals, I will be happy to share ;) It's just a great way for me to productively use my free time after the kids go to bed, and save our family some needed money!

Summer is over :(

It's official. By the end of today, our summer will be over. It seems the weather agrees with this, because today and tomorrow the highs will be near 90, and then 71 and 66 for Wednesday and Thursday. Please hold off on the snow for as long as possible!

For our summer's last hurrah, we drove up to Pennsylvania. In hindsight, I think we were more than a little crazy. The trip was a blast, and we had so much fun seeing family, but 16+ hours in the car with 2 kids? Not something I would recommend! On the way there, we drove through the night. It was okay. Ellie was able to sleep pretty well, but Rowan kept crying and falling back asleep. At first it was every hour, then every half hour, and eventually down to every 5 minutes. At that point, I pulled over and brought him up to the front seat to nurse him, hoping that would keep him asleep for a while. Well, as I put him in my lap, he threw up all over me! Then again. And again. But after that, he went back to sleep and stayed asleep for a couple hours!

We drove to my sister Nichole's new apartment where she lives with her boyfriend Warren. They were so gracious to let us stay there with them. Not only us, but also my other sister Tara and her husband and 2 children. So, there were 6 adults, 4 kids (3, 2, 1, and 8 months old) and 2 cats living in their 2 bed, 1 bath apartment for 3 days. Sound like fun? Actually it went pretty well. :) We also had a big surprise. My mom and Mike flew up to visit too (they stayed at a hotel)! Here is a picture of all the family:

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of other pictures, because everyone else took them for us :) Jason and I were even able to drive up to New York City for a day/night, while my wonderful, kind, amazing sister Nichole watched our kids for about 26 hours. Did I mention she is wonderful? (Rowan woke up at 3:30am and would not go to sleep. So, no sleep for Nichole!) But Jason and I had lots of fun with his sister and her fiance'.

The drive home, we decided to drive during the day, since we all had to be somewhere at 9am the next morning. So, we left at 9:30am and returned to Madison at 2:00am. The trip wasn't really too bad. We just stopped for 1 1/2 hours each for lunch and dinner. And, we turned Rowan around to face forward, because I thought maybe he was car sick on the way there from facing backwards. He didn't throw up, so maybe it helped? (I switched the seat around again once we were home again. He'll be rear-facing until he outgrows it.)

So, we didn't get many pictures from our trip, but here are a couple that I haven't shared yet because of my blog-slacking.

Ellie's last ballet class:

Ellie can still draw/write with her cast on! (She had to get her cast extended while we were in Pennsylvania, because her original one was falling off. So, the tip of her finger is broken, yet she has a cast up to her shoulder!!!) If you look closely, you can see the word of the day. Ellie picked it!

Sorry, no pictures of Rowan this time.