Couponing

I want to first start off and say that I was introduced to couponing at least two years before the show Extreme Couponing came out.  My mom found out about couponing a few years ago and was so excited over how much money she was saving that she wanted to get me involved as well.  I knew I needed to learn it, but I just put it off.  I have watched a few episodes of Extreme Couponing and it motivated me to put into action what I already knew.  I am really trying to crack down and watch the amount of money I spend  because being a single mom does not allow much room for extras or for any mess ups financially.  I've decided to start small and work my way up to the big league to where I get $1,000 worth of groceries for free.  My first trip was last week to Rite Aid.  They had many good deals at Rite Aid, but I didn't get my list together in time to enjoy most of the sales.  I purchased Crest toothpaste which normally is $2.99 and used a .75 coupon and then I received $1.60 in rewards back.  The total price I paid for the toothpaste was .22. To seasoned couponers any amount that is not free for toothpaste is not that great because toothpaste and toothbrushes are free a lot of the times.  This week I went to Walgreens and got a toothbrush that was normally $2.99 and paid .99 for it because I got $2 in rewards back.  I'm not finished this week with my savings, but I would like to start talking about the deals I use because money is not free by any means and I think a lot of people try to find ways to stretch out their check.

A mother's love/Vacation Part 2

I know my previous vacation post was super long. To be honest I could have made it even longer than it was and found myself towards the end just trying to get it finished. I have a lot, or had a lot of things to say about Maddy's first trip to the beach. Every time I see or hear of someone going to the beach I find myself just thinking about Maddy at the beach. Before I had Maddy I used to wonder how my mom could give up so much of her time, her money, and everything else she has given up for my sister and me. I find myself able to answer that question a lot easier now that I am a mom. It is amazing the love a mother has for her child. I want to give Maddy many experiences in her life. I hope I can find ways to let her experience things that not even I have experienced before. I don't want to do this to spoil her, but to give her opportunities basically. I don't ever want to stand in the way of her dreams or what she wants to do in this world. I won't be able to give her every opportunity she wants, but I will at least try to give her the tools needed. I have thought a lot about being a mom this week and primarily because I have been totally engrossed in the Casey Anthony trial. I see videos and pictures of little Caylee and wonder how a mom could go about her life as if her daughter never existed. Maddy has become my life and I don't mean that in a bad or unhealthy way. I know it will be sad the day it is time to let Maddy go and honestly I will have to figure out what to do with my time once that day gets here lol, but I will be able to let her go and be her own person and let her find her place in this world. I will however, always be there for her when she comes crawling back home or back to me needing advice as I have done to my mom numerous times. I don't mean for this blog to sound conceited or anything like that, I am just writing down my feelings. Even though Maddy is just in the other room I am missing her terribly right now. As I came to my room tonight I could hear her breathing as I stood in the hall and I just want to snuggle up with her hehe. Maddy is not the type of child to have a parent sleep next to her. She did in Florida, but she did not sleep good. Ok, so I totally went into a new direction on this post. I will talk a little vacation talk now.
Once we got back home from Florida, Maddy just acted as if she had been home the entire time. She didn't run around and scream and laugh like I thought she would. She just walked around and carried on about her day. I had an assignment due the night we got back, but ended up crashing while I tried to finish it. I woke up a couple hours after I fell asleep and just said forget it I will turn it in late. I wanted to stay home for the most part once we got back from Florida because it makes time seem like it is going slower than if I go here there and everywhere. So Wednesday I kinda did that but kinda didn't. Me and Maddy spent the day with my mom. I can't remember exactly how we ended up together but we did and we jumped in her car and went to run errands. Oh yeah, she was home and had some things to do. Well, we ended up jumping on the interstate because Maddy was sleepy but was having trouble getting to sleep so my mom, as she always does, headed south lol. I kept trying to convince her she should just take us back to Florida that we really didn't need money to do so, but she didn't quite believe me. We stopped in calhoun at the exit where OshKosh and Carter's is to, well, I don't know why she pulled off. She got back on the interstate only she went the wrong way, she was headed towards atlanta instead of chattanooga. we got to talking and she forgot to get off on an exit to turn around. We finally stopped talking because we were like 42 miles out of Atlanta and I told her she had no choice but to stop at the next exit. We got turned back around and started the journey home. Maddy pretty much slept the entire time. Once we got close to Rossville she woke up and was hungry so we ate Wendy's. That was our day on Wednesday. Thursday my mom had some work to do so me and Maddy spent some time playing at home. We actually spent all day at home until around 2:00. We jumped in the car and headed towards RiverPark to meet my mom. Maddy is really starting to play more on playground equipment and I think it's neat to watch her grow. She carried her baby around with her everywhere up until she wanted to do something herself lol. She really enjoys the swings. I wonder if it reminds her of when she was a baby and slept in her swing. I doubt it but you never know. Friday was a real busy day. Me and Maddy hit the road to go to babies r us to get a present for a baby shower. I will just add here that I love babies and going to baby showers. Ok, so after Babies R Us we headed to credit union. I originally wanted to set me up an account and then let Maddy have her own account. Unfortunately I didn't think it all the way through and think about the fact that she is a minor and does not have photo ID and I do not carry her birth certificate around, nor do I have an actual copy...just what the hospital gave me so, I set me up an account and she is on my account. I am thinking about setting up another account for me and that way one can be solely for Maddy, but in my name and the other can be for me...not that I ever have any money to keep for savings lol. That took a little while and afterwards we headed to my mom's work so we could all head back down to GA. We went to OshKosh to get Maddy her fourth of july outfit. That is something I will do everywhere. I loved her outfit last year...this year it's cute but not exactly what i was wanting. That is our vacation in a nutshell lol. I loved spending the week with her. She has some pretty severe sinus issues ever since we got back and I think her throat was hurting and her cough sounded so terrible so she wasn't always in the best of moods. I think she had a good time though. She did really well going to school on her first day back. She didn't really cry and went right to her teacher and they said she did really well. Ok, I have taken a long enough break from my school work so I will end this here. Thanks for listening :)

Vacation Part 1 of ?

If you follow me on facebook or twitter, you have probably heard enough talk about my vacation lol. Today has been a real struggle in going back to work. I have missed Maddy so much today and found myself wondering how she was dealing with going back to school. We took a trip to Panama City Beach, FL and stayed at the Holiday Inn Resort. That hotel was perfect for Maddy, and me as well lol. I don't make a ton of money and am barely getting by with my check as it is, but the money for that hotel is so worth it. We only got to stay for a couple of nights, but I'll take what I can get on limited funds. The hotel has a web cam gallery. They have a web cam for the pool area, for the water park area (i will talk about this in a minute), the roof, and the beach. This is what helped us decide where we were going to stay. I have been looking at the beach cam all day today and find myself saying this time last week we were blah blah blah. We left out of Chattanooga around 9 a.m. Sunday morning. This was Maddy's first long road trip as well as her first trip to the beach on this earth. I took her to the beach when I was almost 6 months pregnant with her and boy did i get burned pretty bad lol. Her dad went with us, which I was thankful for because I did not want to travel what should be a 7 hour road trip on my own with a toddler for the first time. I expected Maddy to only tolerate roughly 2 hours because when we go to Gatlinburg by the time we are almost there she is over being in the car. I really think the Lord was helping me out on this one because she last a lot longer than 2 hours. She slept for the first 2 hours I think and when she woke up she fussed a little but once she got food in her belly she just talked away. We sang some songs and laughed and she had her fussy moments, but once it got pretty bad we stopped at a rest area. We ended up stopping in Clanton, AL. She was very unsure of what was going on so she let me carry her in and change her diaper. I feel so bad for her because she freaks out when you put her on the diaper changing station. I think she feels like she is going to fall and has a fear of heights. Once she got changed we got right back in the car and continued our journey. Much to my surprise she didn't fight getting into the car, but that would come later lol. Once we got past Montgomery, I had to make one more gas stop to finish out the trip. We went in and changed Maddy and got her a juice and thought we would just get right back in the car and go. Oh no, this time is the time that Maddy was fighting when we tried to put her in. I don't blame her in the least because it had been an extremely long ride for her. She is real good at listening if you catch her at the right time so you can explain what is going to happen. This time I couldn't really explain much to her, but was able to entice her with her juice. Once she saw her juice I was able to tell her that she had to get in her seat like a big girl and then mommy would give her her juice. It was a success and we were ready to make our final stretch. We were approximately 45 minutes away from the hotel when Maddy got real fussy. I have bragged so much about how well she did in the car and I am just so thankful she did as well as she did. Once we got to the hotel we suited up and hit the beach. It was 6 p.m. and unfortunately there was a cold snap that was moving through so i was so cold due to the wind, but the beach was so soothing. The sun was setting and it was just a really pretty picture.  I thought the ocean would be freezing but it was really warm. Before I go on to tell about Maddy's reaction I want to post a picture of her in the car on the way down.

I will have to add more photos of our luggage and stuff once i get a hold of my mom's memory card, but anyways. I thought Maddy would absolutely love the sand, but much to my surprise she did not. I bought her some water shoes specifically for this trip at Old Navy, they are the most expensive pair of shoes I've bought her but she absolutely loves them and wears them every day now making the price worth it. Once she stepped onto the sand she quickly stopped and just stood there. Actually instead of describing it, I will just post the video.

Her reaction to the sand cracks me up! The next video shows her reaction to the water. I retract my earlier statement. The first night the water was really cold, but Monday morning turned really warm, but as the day went on got really cold again lol. The ocean must be female the way it kept changing it's mind...i know it doesn't have a mind but just go with it.

When we first got to our room, Maddy did not want to leave. We almost didn't make it to the beach that night because she refused to leave. When we asked if she wanted to go outside her response was NO! I think she thought she was going back in the car and was enjoying just being able to run around. Obviously we did convince her to get her bathing suit on and go outside lol. As soon as I turned in my assignments for school sunday night we all were so ready to call it a night. I was worried over how Maddy would get to sleep because this was also her first night away from home. We requested a roll away for her, but she did not want to sleep by herself and I can't blame her. To prevent her from falling we put her in the middle and we slept beside her but on opposite sides. We had a queen size bed so it was not that crowded. Maddy didn't want to lay down and go to sleep and it took her a while before she did. I was the first to konk out so her dad was in charge of getting her to bed. She ended up sleeping on her dad and I must say I really enjoyed waking up right next to her. I woke up around 5 something and kept dosing off and on. Maddy was having a hard time staying awake as well and would roll between me and her dad. Around 7 I decided to just wake her up and get ready to hit the beach. Monday was a beautiful day in FL. It started out cold but warmed up.

 This was Sunday night and her face is her reaction to seeing the water for the first time

 This was Monday and this is our view from our room. We were on the 6th floor

 The water was so gorgeous! God has amazing creativity!

This was the sun setting Sunday night...it was so pretty!

We first went to the pool deck on Monday morning and checked out Aqualand. It is a mini waterpark type playground for small kids. The water was perfect height for Maddy and any other smaller children. The water felt like ice water so we didn't go all the way in and slide, but we did try to get Maddy in. After half a day she decided to get in with her dad. I will post some video and pics of aqualand now :)

Now that I have lost your interest due to all the pics and videos we will move on to the rest of the day. We spent most of our time walking around the pool deck back and forth. I think people started to wonder what we were doing cause we were constantly back and forth. I was ok with this because my attention span isn't that long and I enjoy pacing around and unfortunately for Maddy I have taught her to do the same. Maddy was able to meet the hotel mascot which was Splash the dolphin. The rest of the blog I will just let pics and video speak for themselves. We ate dinner at a place called Scampy's...if you are tight on money but want to enjoy good seafood, this is the place to go. Poor Maddy didn't get a nap all day and unfortunately a 5 mile drive wasn't quite long enough so our dinner was quite rushed and unenjoyable cause she was screaming and crying. I was able to capture one pic on my phone of her eating, but can't upload it on here tonight. At night they put on a polynesian fire show where they have hula dancers and get lots of audience participation and at the very end they do a fireshow. It was very neat to see and we enjoyed watching from our own balcony where Maddy could easily walk around without us missing too much of the show. All in all it was a great trip and we are planning to take her on a cruise for her 2nd birthday as long as we have the funds to do so. I hope you enjoy the pics and video even though they are probably overwhelming lol. Before I finish posting pics and video I have to add that Maddy was such a good little mommy on this vacation. Baby went everywhere with her..the beach, the pool, aqualand...she took good care of her baby, which made me a proud mommy lol.

Ramona and Beezus

                                                                        

I must say this movie was a really cute movie. I have wanted to see this since the day it came out in theaters. I used to read these books as a little girl and would still read them to this day lol. I finally got to watch this movie today and now want to share my thoughts. I began to question whether this movie would really be as good as it looked in the beginning. By the end I was like this is a great movie! I can't say enough how I love the fact that it is rated G and is a family friendly film. I will not talk about what happened in the movie for people who want to watch it. I will say this movie shed some light on me in ways I never expected. It made me think about my niece's and how their life is and what is ahead of them. It pointed out that I needed to make myself available to them to come and talk to if they ever need or want to. I used to spend time with them all the time and then it just stopped. It's hard to manage three kids when you aren't used to it, but that is just an excuse really. This movie really goes hand in hand with what I really want to do in life as far as kids go. It shows that kids really do just want to be loved and accepted for who they are. It shows kids that it's ok if you are different from other kids and that is something that needs to be shown. We are unique individuals and just because someone looks different from the majority of people, doesn't mean we should make fun of or criticize them. We should embrace them and accept them. I will say this movie made me cry, which I never would have expected but all in all a great film. I can't wait for Maddy to get a little older so we can watch this movie together :)

School and Life Updates

My posts lately will be a combination of information. I do not have near the time I used to have to devote to my destress techniques, such as blogging since school has started. Before I go into what I wanted to say, I find it funny that after only one week of school I am finding myself wanting to double space my lines and use the two space rule after a period. One of these days I will write this as if I am writing for school. Back to my post. I honestly can't remember where I left off as far as my school is concerned. I know I talked about feeling overwhelmed. Looking back on last week I see where the Lord intervened and helped me without me really realizing it till afterwards. As I said in my last post my town experienced a lot of tornadoes, which caused my internet to be down. The first day my internet was down I was worried I would be in trouble at work as they do not care what your situation is. The second day my internet was down my boss already had texted me early that morning and I found out they were allowing those affected by the storm time off without a mark going against us. I was so relieved and was able to enjoy my day off, which was Friday.  I ended up having Monday off as well and really used that time to devote to school. I was able to get my reading done and start on my assignments. The part where the Lord was helping me out is by me having that time off to devote to school. I was really worried about being in trouble at first, but the Lord worked it out for me and allowed me time to do what I needed to do. The devil has been attacking me these last few days and is throwing one thing right after another thing. There was a time when I was beginning to question whether I should really be in school or not. I have since then learned that my being in school is ok and is a needed to step to be able to do what I want to do and I feel the Lord has my back so to speak lol. I have sweated bullets on some things this past week, but when it comes down to it...everything has happened just in the nick of time. This week I do not feel as overwhelmed with school. I am getting my job done before I get Maddy so when she goes to bed I have all that time to devote to school. My assignments this week have been relatively easy and so far has not required a whole whole lot of thinking. One assignment confused me, but my mom is smart and was able to help me out. I still have a lot of learning and growing to do, but I am learning to take this new stress and give it to the Lord just as I do with everything else.
Maddy has been doing a great job of sleeping in her big girl bed. She has only gotten out one night and it was sometime after midnight when she did. I did hear what sounded like her moving around in her bed, but it sounded just like she rolled over or something. When I woke up Tuesday morning, I walked in to an empty bed. I didn't freak out at first. I knew she was in her room somewhere and it's not a huge room by any means. My first thought was to check her closet because she loves playing in there. Her closet showed no signs of her. By this point I am getting a little worried. I checked beside her dresser and once again no Maddy. I wondered if she somehow got behind her bed (even though this would be next to impossible) but it was worth a shot to check. As I began to sit on her bed I was beginning to have thoughts of her being kidnapped cross my mind because I knew she was not going to be behind her bed. Right as I was seriously fixing to have a freak out moment something on the floor caught my eye. I saw this monkey poking out from underneath her bed. AHA! I knew I had found her. She was wearing her monkey pj's that have monkey feet so I pull her dust ruffle up and there is Maddy sound asleep UNDER her bed. I had to walk out and just laugh but I was so relieved she was safe and not kidnapped.
Maddy helped her Nana plant flowers this past weekend and also played outside a bunch. I was wanting to do this as a seperate post, but will just post the pics in this one. I hope you all are having a good week and thank goodness it is almost the weekend!

Whirlwind

Wow...I have a few things to say that I am just gonna put all in one post for time's sake. I started my first set of classes on April 25th and let me tell you...it is amazing the amount of work that is piled on you right away. I felt overwhelmed the entire week and just wanted to run away from it all. I stayed in constant prayer with the Lord about it and I just kept hearing in my head, "I am not a quitter." This is what kept me from literally quitting. On top of my feeling overwhelmed, we had a natural disaster in my community. On Wednesday, April 27th we had a series of horrible storms pass through that ended up destroying Alabama, Ringgold, Ga, and Bradley County. Hamilton county was affected as well, but no where near as bad. There are many other cities and towns I have not mentioned here as it is just too many. My mom didn't want to take Maddy to daycare that morning until after the storms passed. I was really worried it would be too late by the time they got there so I kept pushing her to go. I took one last look at the radar and they said it would be in our town by 8:30 a.m. I believe and I knew that my mom and Maddy would not have time to get to safety. I ended up telling my mom just to stay home and I would just keep Maddy home that day. Before I move on, the last tornado we had here, my mom got caught in it while driving and she did not want to relive that experience. Once the bad part of the storm got to my house and the power started flickering just like in the movies right before a tornado, me, my mom, and Maddy piled in my mom's closet and camped out in there. The power did go out and we were like uh-oh here we go...there was a time or two I just knew a tornado was headed our way from the noise I heard inside the closet. Nothing ever happened so once it got quiet I decided to go take a look out the window. It wasn't exactly calm, but it was not as severe as it had gotten. We were later told by a TDOT worker that lives in my neighborhood that a tornado touched down approximately 9 miles from my house. I will admit that I get pretty excited when "interesting" weather hits just because we do not see anything real horrible in Chattanooga, and I am really thankful we don't. I have always wanted to see a tornado in person, but not where it hurts anybody..I just wanted to see it in the sky or in a huge open field. I had no idea that on Wednesday I was going to get my wish. We lost power for approximately 4 hours and got in the car to assess the damage. We were supposed to be getting another round later that day and it was going to be worse than the first. The second wave was not worse at my house, but we did see some heavy winds and some hail. Later that evening my mom ran in to get me and told me to come look outside. I knew what i was going to be seeing..sure enough...in the sky was a tornado that had formed. That tornado ended up hitting bradley county and was an EF-0. My heart goes out to everybody who was affected by this storm and I will be praying for everybody. I have never in all my life seen anything like what I have seen and never in all my life thought Chattanooga would have weather like we did that Wednesday. I will post some pics of the damage we got up here in Birchwood and East Brainerd. My mom took these pics:

Ok, the animal is not part of the damage, but isn't it so cute?! This is right down the road from me and they have all kinds of animals. Anyways, with all the damage from the storm we were left with no internet. I work from home and I was so stressed I was going to be in trouble with work. My work doesn't seem to care if a tornado came ripping through my house...they'd still expect me to stay heads down and focused and working. I did find out Friday morning that I was not in trouble with work thank goodness. The only problem I ran into was not having acess to school since my classes are all online. My mom has a network card from her cell phone carrier that acts as a connection to the internet for computers. It is good sometimes and really slow other times. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were all slow days and I ended up turning in a paper late and it caused me to miss my participation requirements which ultimately affect my final grade. Let me remind you that if I fail any class, I will have to pay $1,045 out of my pocket for each class I fail...that is a lot of money that I do not have so I HAVE to pass my classes. I was able to just let it go Sunday and I did have some quiet time with the Lord. I woke up this morning to still having no internet. My boss told me that I would need to work in the office or use PTO and I chose to work in the office because I have a vacation planned this year. I did take today off so I could get a jump start on school and low and behold we now have internet. The Lord has answered so many of prayers and I just feel so undeserving. My prayers are usually meanial and small compared to what other people are going through right now such as a loss of home or loved ones. I started to post this on facebook about my having internet and how God answered my prayers, but I didn't want anybody to get the wrong impression that my being without internet lately is so much worse than what people in ringgold and alabama and other places are going through. Please understand that I feel very fortunate to only have had our internet affected by this storm. I feel humbled after seeing all the devastation and I also feel very blessed.
The last bit of news on this post is Maddy has officially graduated to a big girl bed. It broke my heart to have to break down her crib...that was her last baby item I had left. She is no longer a baby in any way and I really miss my little baby, but I am very proud of who Maddy has become now. It was the strangest thing...she woke up late Saturday morning (I for one was glad because I didn't get to bed till 3 a.m. due to school) and I went in to get her. I realized I forgot her wipes in the living room so I told her I would be right back like I have done before. As long as I leave her door open she has always waited for me to come back. On Saturday she decided to do something different...she climbed outta her crib. It scared me so bad so I knew it was past time for her toddler bed to appear lol. I got her toddler bed put together, which is just her crib broken down and a guard rail installed and it was so super easy to put together. Once she saw it she immediately climbed in and laid her head down. She just smiled and laughed and it's like she just couldn't believe her eyes. That made me smile so big. I took some pictures with my mom's camera and then also video'd it. Here are the pics:

Her first night sleeping in it we kept our same bedtime routine and not once did she climb out of bed. I was very surprised. The biggest problem I have is waking her up now...which I can handle that but at the same time she looks so cute sticking her lil hiney up in the air sound asleep and I hate to wake her...I just want to let her sleep. She did another great job tonight...not once has she gotten out...thank you Lord. She does love her bed and I am so happy she does :) I have other things to talk about but want to take a little more time than I have right now.

This is a video of the storm I got on camera. The time was around 7:21 p.m. A confirmed tornado touched down in Bradley County, which is the left side of video from where I am, at 7:35 p.m. We actually saw the tornado in the sky which is not what I envisioned a tornado looking like, but this tornado was EF-0 I do believe.

My Lesson of the Week

I believe I blogged about trying to get my relationship and faith in the Lord back to where it was years ago. If I didn't blog about it I know I posted it onn facebook lol. Anyways, I have been through many trials since I started...well...trials for me anyways and I have definitely seen an increase in my faith. The past two weeks have been really stressful for me and I really had problems just giving it to the Lord. It's not that I didn't want to, I just couldn't leave it alone. In my daily calender readings I have...it just kept saying day after day about if we read God's word enough, it will sink in with us and we will be able to use it to rebuke the enemy's lies. After reading day after day about the importance of God's word and how it can help us I knew I needed to get back in my bible. This week I have made sure to make time to read my bible and it's already helping. I have been able to let go of the majority of my worry for now and I am leaning on God's promise that He will never leave nor forsake us no matter what the situation. I want to encourage you to start reading your bible if you've been like me and just let it go. I know more than anybody probably how every day life keeps you so busy you just don't feel like reading. I am not a reader anyways so reading is a very hard thing for me to do. The good thing is, you don't have to spend hours upon hours reading, start small and eventually you may end up reading hours upon hours. Right now I am doing the bible in a year plan. I have started this many years ago,but I ended up quitting. I just picked up where I left off. This week I have been in Psalms 63-65. I am glad I started there because I love the Psalms. A lady I work with has a bible study group and they are doing the read a bible in a year thing. They meet each week to talk about the things they learned that week through scripture and they also are motivators to each other for when they want to give up reading. I think that is a really great thing to have because it is very easy to give up reading. If you have any motivational tips on how to keep reading the bible when you feel like giving up I would love to hear it.