Disney Scrapbook

I have done enough pages (47 so far) to order for my scrapbook. I use the kind that you can add pages to, so I will just add more as I get them done.

I uploaded all my pages to the site where I order the 12x12 pages, so you can see them here.

UPDATE: up to 55 pages. I want to get this book done and printed in time to show off at Christmas. And it is so much fun when the kids look at the pages I have done so far- they actually forgot about some of those details already! Every time they see a new page it sparks memories. We get to relive the trip each time we look at the scrapbook. It will be worth all the hard work. Now if only I ever scrapped pages for our day to day life. I'm only like 3 years behind on that.

We're going back!

I just updated my Disney trip ticker on the top of the page. This time it's a real trip! (I was using it before as a temporary ticker until we knew our exact travel dates). The homeschool group set their next trip and we are jumping on again. The savings are unbeatable. We'll pay about half what we would pay on our own. The countdown begins!

Noteworthy

I just saved $80 at the grocery store. All my hard work and research is paying off. My first trip, I saved $16. Second trip, $32. Now I think I am finally in the game. It took me two hours to prepare for the trip, and sweat was trickling down the back of my neck by the time I was ready to leave for the store, but it's all good. I managed to score at least a week's worth of groceries, including all the fixings for Turkey day dinner, including the bird. On top of that I have a $5 rebate to mail in for the turkey. Not too shabby! I spent $122, so it would have been over $200 without the savings.

Bee City

Two field trips in one week is a little unusual, but so it was for us this week. I actually really needed to get out, personally. Sometimes the school week can be a bit of a drag. It's not the school work, it's the fighting that gets to me. Mentally, it was a perfect week for me to be in the "world classroom" this week.

Bee City was alot of fun. We learned much about bees. We made candles, bottled our own honey to take home, and make wax figures. There were so many animals at the petting zoo. That was really our favorite part. Particularly enchanting were the lemurs. We fed them "monkey-o's" (aka cheerios) by handing it to them. We all just loved how their little hands felt as they took the food out of our fingers.

The capuchin monkeys had little buckets on a pulley system. You drop a monkey-o in the bucket, and the little guy pulls the bucket to where he could reach it and grabs the treat. It was really cute.

You can click (twice, I think to make it even bigger) to see the page better. It is a busy page but I have been waiting a long time to use this honeycomb page template, and I had alot of pictures to put in it.



And look- Kelsey finally got to sit on a horse since we left NM;)


In other news, Jason felt sorry for me in all my depression, anxiety, etc that I have been experiencing lately and came home from Georgia the other day with my Christmas present, albeit extremely early. However, he insisted, and I am now the (co) owner of a shiny new iPad. I say co owner because there is not a living creature in this house that can keep their hands off of it. I have to say, it is very cool. Possibly even habit forming.

How do you measure up?

We finished up our unit on sea turtles today with a behind the scenes tour of the sea turtle hospital at the South Carolina Aquarium. That's one good thing about living near the coast. We have been able to witness the release of several rehabilitated turtles at the beach on Isle of Palms. Today we got to see them in the hospital.

I'll share more pictures later, but for now we just got home so here is one. I love how we can size up in comparison to the 4 turtle species that are found off our coast. Last week we drew the leatherback in chalk in the driveway to scale so we could see how huge they are, but I really like how this picture illustrates it!

Resolutions

Is it too early to make resolutions? I don't think so. Just trying to beat the crowds, so to speak. I have been reading alot of blogs lately that focus on frugality and saving money, particularly on groceries. This is a really weak area for me. Saving money and groceries. Put the two together, and you've got a major money pit. I don't make a list, I don't clip coupons, though I dabbled in it for a short stint.

My church did a free coupon class a few months back. I went. I took notes. I bought into it, hook, line and sinker. In other words, I spent $30 on a fancy binder with a pretty ribbon tied to the front and clear plastic pages for coupons. It had dozens of categories to file coupons under. It was going to save me tons of money.

Then I left the church. I walked out to the parking lot and noticed something was not right with my van. I mean, more not right than usual. I had a flat tire. $100 later, me and my shiny new binder were on our way home.

I purchased 2 copies of the Sunday paper, so I would have double the coupons. I clipped away my Sunday afternoons for a few weeks. And then it happened. The binder found a new home on the shelf in the hall closet.

Fast forward to today. Something has been nudging me to try again. I pulled out the binder, and found that all my coupons were expired. I have a fresh copy of the Sunday paper (just one this time). I discarded all my old coupons. I am trying this again, but not in such a labor intensive way. I am going to keep my coupon inserts from the paper, filed by date. I will refer to helpful websites such as I heart Publix to help me with the match ups. And hopefully I will save tons of money on my groceries. Oh, I also plan to make a list according to what is on sale that I have coupons for.

I'll report my success story here:)

Another resolution: exercise. Daily. I am signing Grant up for football and the other 2 for gymnastics. They will get a discounted rate if I sign back up for my gym membership. No excuses now, right? And we will be eating healthier too. I am sick of being tired and depressed. I need to get over myself and just do it!

So I will be busy with those projects, plus school which is ongoing and always keeps me busy. We hit a milestone last week: 1/4 way through the school year! We are up to 50 days as of the middle of this coming week. We started out great but lost 3 weeks due to our Disney trip (which was so educational on so many levels but I could only count one day of that as school- their field trip day.)

I am also working on some fun design work for some great friends. Website, tshirts. It keeps me creative and I love that. I hope to pretty up my own blog one of these days but that is so low on my list.

That about sums up my rambling thoughts for tonight. TTFN!