Family Home Evening

As a Latter-Day Saint I try to participate in the weekly ritual of Family Home Evening. This week I decided to plan the activity. We would be learning about staying within our budget, food storage, and personal preparedness. After I got home from work Evan and I headed out to K-mart. We hardly ever venture into the store, because frankly it kinda scares me and the prices are the same as my clean, well-lit Target. But alas they lured me in with the promise to double the value of my coupons. Here is a picture of our purchase.

Recap of what we purchased:

5 boxes of Kellogs Special K cereal

2 boxes of Kashi Go Lean

3 cans Campbells Tomato Soup

1 can Campbells Chicken Noodle soup

5 tubs of Huggies wipes

1 bottle of Huggies lotion

1 bottle of Huggies Shampoo

1 bottle of Huggies body wash

1 5pack of Bic highlighters

2 Men's Speed Stick deodorant

1 Arm& Hammer toothpaste

Grand total= 15 CENTS plus I got a coupon for $5.00 off my next purchase of $5.00 or more

Evan and I have come to love our little shopping "dates." As appreciation Evan even collected all the stray carts in the parking lot and put them in the cart return.

Recently we have kept a pretty accurate expense report sheet and as September draws to a near I am proud to announce to my posterity (and to the rest of you) that we have spent $61.86 on groceries ($163.14 UNDER budget), $11.16 on household items ($3.84 Under budget), $9.96 on personal hygiene products ($5.04 Under budget), $35.47 on gifts ($10.47 OVER budget; but considering it included 7 baby shower gifts, a Christmas gift for my nephew and a Christmas gift for my niece AND the wrappings to go with it, I'm ok with going over 11 dollars).

All in all I think we had a productive family night and reviewed the basics of budgeting and personal preparedness.

I still Love BYU

Evan was able to get tickets to the BYU vs. Florida State football game, and since growing up he was a Seminoles fan, I felt like it was a good excuse to take a break and head up there. Since the airline flights conflicted with his weekly exam he decided to drive. He invited a friend to drive up with him so that they could study in the car (surprisingly they did study). At the last minute I decided to tag along. We left after Evan took a quiz in one of his classes around 2pm and made it to my sister Heather's house in Provo around 1am. My mom kept texting me and telling me to take pictures, even with those reminders I still only managed to get a few pictures.



Saturday morning I drove to Salt Lake to watch Hannah play in a powder puff tournament against other chapters in her sorority. They didn't loose any of their games, but since they didn't score as many points as another team they didn't advance. Hannah was pretty bummed about this. She did a great job though. She is sure athletic and competitve. She played center. Then I drove her back to her dorm so she could shower and pack for the sleep over at Heather's house. It took us about 40 minutes to get back to her dorms, she only knows how to get places using the "red shuttle." It was pretty funny and she even let me use one of her guest passes so we could eat in the cafeteria for lunch. Soft serve ice cream..YUM

Evan and Mark before the game started. Our seats were right above the 40 yard line. We rushed to get to the game early to see the players preform the "haka" but they didn't do it this game :(

Evan and me once the sun finally went behind the stadium. My dad was watching the game from home and said he saw me on tv when they scanned the crowd. Of course I was sending my sister a text, so perhaps I didn't look like a true fan, but I assure you that I am. We lost big time and our ranking dropped, but I still am a huge BYU fan and will always bleed blue. GO COUGS!!

After seeing my old roomates and hanging out with my sisters some more. I finally went to bed for a few hours, then headed back for Arizona early Sunday morning.

Retail therepy

Since I follow a few "frugle" blogs I came across an AWESOME coupon. $10.00 off any purchase in the juniors department at Sears (NO MINIMUM PURCHASE)!! At my Sears right now they are having a sale on their clearance...40% off the already marked down clothes. So I found two tops. They rang up with tax 9.09. I gave the cashier my coupon and paid $0.00 out of pocket! Then I raced home to print off two more coupons, when I realized that the "juniors" bathing suits were not in the Juniors section, but with all the other bathing suits. Both bathing suits rang up at $8.99. I did two seperate transactions to get both tops for free!! Can you believe that?? I still can't believe it.

Also Seventeen Magazine was doing a promo with ULTA, a beauty supply store, if you bring in a printed copy of Seventeen Magazine's home page you get a free FULL SIZE Bad gal's Mascarra. If you haven't heard of this mascara lets just say it's "pricey." I got over to Ulta a couple hours after it opened and got the last one!

Back to school

Evan headed back to school on August 31. I wasn't quite ready for him to go back, but I think he was. Good thing he really enjoys what he does. He has been studying a lot more this year than he did last year. Some say that this year (2nd year) is the hardest of the four years of school. (residence is a whole different story)

Here he is on the first day of school. His shirt says "Trust me i'm a doctor." We went to the outlet mall in Anthem to go school shopping and he got this shirt one other shirt, 3 pairs of clearance board shorts, and a new pair of running shoes. All pretty good deals (except the shoes, why are they SO expensive, oh well he was way overdue for some new shoes)

Back to School BBQ

We got together with some friends and had a little BBQ before the husbands headed back to school. It was a little warm (what can you expect from an August evening in Arizona?), but the food with tasty and the pool temperature was perfect.

Some of the ladies...

The Gents...

My niece and nephew swimming away in the pool.

Evan swimming with his nephews

Performing tricks in the pool. Evan is going to be such a great father one day.

Little Visitors

While Evan was still on summer break we invited his niece to have a sleep over at our place.

This is her posing with some statues after we took her to Cold Stone Creamery. Of course she choose ice creame with sprinkles.

This is Evan and his niece in the "Fort" we built in the living roome. After wards we watched "Happy Feet" and went to bed.


Then it was her brother's turn to sleep over. He brought his train set and Evan had a good time playing with him.
Here he is in the "fort" we built together.

I tried to get a picture with him and his racecars, but that didn't work out too well. Evan also took him swimming a lot while I was at work.

Fourth of July

I know it's a little late, but I guess I just forgot. I wanted to post about it anyways since I'm planning on making my blog into a book in the near future.

Well we had a pretty lazy day. Lucky for me I had the day off. In the afternoon we went over to our apartment complex BBQ area with the Andersons and had a BBQ with the complex. Then we went with the Andersons to Surprise and watched the city fireworks there. I wasn't expecting much so I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and length of the show.