Grocery Smarts class

Back by popular demand, I am hosting a Grocery Smarts class on Thursday, March 4th at 7 pm. It will be at my church in the West Jordan/Kearns area. (Right by the Utah Olympic Oval.) It's not a church activity, it hold more people than my living room does. :)

Grocery Smarts is a free website that matches weekly grocery store sales with coupons from newspapers, mail, & printable online coupons. I have saved tons of money using this system and it is easy and not terribly time-consuming. There is no obligation and nothing to buy unless you want to get a newspaper subscription for the coupons. Even that is not necessary to save big $!

All are welcome & feel free to bring a friend. We will also be having treats of you'd like to bring something to share- totally optional.

Let me know if you are interested & I will send you the details.

To my friends- my cup runneth over

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is born. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

- James Boswell

Grocery trip

I haven't done a major shopping trip since the whole bed rest episode in December. I had no appetite & no energy to push around a full cart. Luckily, our food storage was well-stocked from previous shopping trips & buying things at the best prices when they were on sale.

I have noticed some things were running low, so I got brave & planned a big shopping trip to Smith's since my reward certificate for $26 came yesterday & they are having some great sales right now.

I used grocerysmarts.com & clipped my coupons and headed out. I won't bore you with the details, but here are my totals. My original total was $208. After my freshvalues card, coupons, discounts, etc my total was $87.48, plus I earned a 15 cent fuel reward & 500 points toward my next reward certificate!

This was for 67 items, including two bottles of Tide, dishwasher detergent, Solo plastic cups & bowls, meat, produce, enough Goldfish crackers to get us to St. George and back, a birthday gift for a nephew, 3 tubes of Colgate & much more.
Added bonus: I was at Smith's Marketplace in West Jordan, so I got a free hour of child care for Aubrey & Lydia.

It took a little effort, but it was so worth it!

After all that, we went to Harmon's for PTA day. The girls played the games & got ice cream, popcorn, cotton candy, & stickers. I also bought some cereal out of obligation for the small donation that will go to the school. I'm not shopping again for a long time!

Sleep, where for art thou?

I'm going to complain for a minute here. Shocking, I know.

Over the weekend I didn't sleep very well & I was exhausted. Monday night I took a whole Unisom and was semi-comatose for a good 12 hours. Next time, a half will suffice.

Last night I was looking forward to a normal night's sleep. Why do I even try?

12:00 A travel alarm clock the kids pretend is a flip phone was beeping. I was the only one who woke up and had to dig for it in their room in the dark. It took me probably half an hour to go back to sleep.

2:30 Aubrey woke up with a bad dream. Rather than just come into our room, she laid in her bed yelling for Daddy.

3:00 Lydia started crying in her sleep. Since Tim was holding Aubrey, I went to check on her. She was on the floor all tangled in her blankets. I put her back in her bed and went back to mine.

3:37 A phone beeped. I thought it was Tim's saying he had a new text. I was ticked! Turns out it was my piece of crap phone alerting me to a "new" voice mail. It was left January 21st. Thanks for the notice!

Now I was wide awake! I watched the first half of the Princess Bride and decided that wasn't helping me fall back to sleep. I switched over to a PBS special about the Shakers and finally went back to sleep around 5:00.

Some people hate mornings. I hate nights.