One Busy Week!

Jeff and I registered Jakob for Kindergarten on Thursday!! Registration began at 9:00AM and the current Kindergarten students performed a few songs and then the principal and assistant principal talked about the upcoming year.  We completed the paperwork and took a short tour of the school.  Jeff and I both liked the design inside the school; should be a fun and busy next year!

Earlier in the week, I learned about E-Mealz.  They create menus for the week that include the ingredients and instructions for the recipe.  Using some of the options from the menus, I came up with the following menu for this upcoming week.  (Jeff and I have created menus before and when we made them, the week was so much easier at dinner time.  Even if you flip flop days, you still have the items on hand to cook dinner!) View my pretty menu HERE.

Sunday: Pork Chop Casserole with Green Beans

Monday: Spaghetti with Garlic Bread

Tuesday: Cheeseburgers with French Fries

Wednesday: Leftovers

Thursday: Walnut Crusted Chicken with Red Potatoes

Friday: Banana French Toast with Bacon

Saturday: Chicken Fried Steak with Mashed Potatoes

I took Jakob to his ice skating lesson this morning.  This is the 3rd week of lessons and he did much better today!  He was so proud of himself overall and loved getting the sticker from Ms. Palma!  Jakob was not attached to the wall nearly as much as he was the first two weeks of practice and stayed near the cones.  Most of his skating was by himself with little assistance from the teachers except every now and then!

Jeff and I went out to eat at Parkers Brothers Trail Dust steakhouse for dinner.  It was pretty good.  I had an 8 oz steak, baked potato, salad, and bread.  Jeff ordered their chicken fried steak and it came with mashed potatoes, beans, and bread.  Jakob ordered from the kids menu and wanted the chicken strips.  I think he got as much food as we received!  We took his leftovers home with us for him to eat during the week.  After he finished eating, he went down the slide.  I did not know this was inside the restaurant and he absolutely loved it!  He went super fast on the slide and had to reminded not to scream inside the building!

We are down to three more weeks of school and I cannot wait until the summer!  We have two more instructional weeks and then students will be taking their semester exams.  Only two more Mondays since one of them is Memorial Day! It has been one amazing year and am blessed with the teachers I am surrounded with everyday!

Ice Skating Lessons and a Trip to Target

I took Jakob to his ice skating lesson this morning.  This is the 3rd week of lessons and he did much better today!  He was so proud of himself overall and loved getting the sticker from Ms. Palma!  Jakob was not attached to the wall nearly as much as he was the first two weeks of practice and stayed near the cones.  Most of his skating was by himself with little assistance from the teachers except every now and then!  After he finished his lesson, he wolfed down a Pop-Tart and we went to Target.

Majority of my list from Target had coupons and I wanted to highlight below the items I picked up with coupons.  I did not have time to take any pictures today, but came home with four reusable shopping bags full of supplies!  Overall, savings are still savings!

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Total Before Savings and Coupons: $185.37
Total Spent: $153.69
Total Saved:$31.85 or 17%
Rebates: $9.74 (Rebate factored: $41.59 or 23%)
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Cleaning Supplies
Clorox Toilet Wand System $9.74

-$5.00 Mail in Rebate

Clorox Toilet Wand Refill $4.29
Swiffer 360 Starter Kit $8.99

-$2.00/1 Swiffer Starter Kit, Any - 05-02-10 PG

Swiffer 360 Refill Kit $8.99
-$1.00/1 Swiffer Refill
Receive $10 Rewards Card after spending $20 on Refill Kits expires 6/30 (I will hang onto my receipt until I purchase more.)
Cascade Rinse Aid $3.49

-$1.00/1 Cascade Rinse Aid, Any - 05-02-10 PG

3-Pack O-Cel-O Sponges $3.99

-$0.75/2 O-Cel-O Sponges, Any Packages - 05-02-10 SS

Medicine-Healthcare
2 - Tums $3.74

-$1.00/2 Tums, any 24 ct+ - 03-28-10 RP

Aleve 50 Count $6.69

-$1.00/1 Aleve, Any 40 Ct. Or Larger Excluding Aleve-D Products - 05-02-10 SS

Claritin Children's Allergy Product $8.84

-$2.00/1 Claritin Children's Non-Drowsy Allergy Product, Any 4 Oz. Syrup Or 10 Ct. Or Larger- 05-09-10 SS

Groceries

12 - Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers $2.79

(Used 12) -$1.00/1 Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers, Any - 03-28-10 SS ($1.79 each!)

I order specific high dollar coupons from Coupons & Things by Dede.  Jeff likes these and normally are $3.00 each or higher!

4 - Campbell's Chunky Soup $1.89

-$1.00/2 Campbell's Chunky Soup

-$1.00/2 Campbell's Chunky Soup
2 - Quaker Granola Bars $2.19

-$0.75/2 Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, Any Boxes - 05-02-10 RP

Old El Paso Seasoning $0.87

-$0.60/2

Mission Tortilla Chips $2.50

-$1.00/1 Target Coupon

Keeping busy!

This week I set my pedometer goals for 5000 steps daily and 2000 steps of aerobic walking. My new pedometer I bought from Amazon connects to the computer and keeps track of all of the information. I averaged about 4000 steps daily and 1600 aerobic steps. I only wear the pedometer when we go out and not around the house. Overall, for the week I walked 8 miles. Since starting all of the walking, Jeff and I have both lost about 5 lbs!

This past week was the last week of school and I figured there would not be many teachers out of school needing substitutes. Instead, I enjoyed my last week with Jakob at school since Friday was his last day until August. I had random things to do the entire week including errands and a dentist appointment, so all in all, it's good.

We spent some time at the pool this week! I took Jakob to the pool on Monday and Wednesday. Since Friday was the last day of school, I picked up Roland at 1:00PM and then we had lunch and picked up Jakob. After we got home, we changed into swimming attire and headed to the pool. We spent a good 2 - 2 1/2 hours at the pool on Friday! They have so much fun and hate when I tell them it is time to go.I had a dentist appointment on Wednesday. The appointment was originally next week but I was able to reschedule it since I was trying to take a week off of daycare expenses. Since my dentist appointment, I am learning to floss! I ended up having four fillings in-between my teeth. Where if I had been flossing, it would have helped. I was able to get in quickly and returned on Thursday for my fillings. The fillings are not bad, but the being numb forever sure is a pain! Around 2:30PM, I was still numb and decided to just take a nap since I couldn't eat and I wasn't in the mood to do anything! I remember waking up around 3:30PM and realizing my mouth was almost normal again and deciding to continue my nap though! Finally got up around 4:00, made a peanut butter and jelly and went to get Jakob from school!

Wednesday night was the free rootbeer float from Sonic after 8PM. Jakob rode his bike and Jeff and I walked with him all the way to Sonic. It is about a 3 miles roundtrip. They sure were busy, but were handling the crowd well. Jakob was not sure of the ice cream and said, "I don't like this ice cream." We told him we were going to get ice cream. He does not drink soda so the rootbeer float was something new! They did not put a lot of ice cream with the rootbeer so it was primarily rootbeer, but was still good.
On Saturday, we went to the Lewisville Library for their Summer Reading Kickoff event. It was really busy which is good, but I was surprised with the number of people. I got the boys signed up for their summer reading challenges and Roland found a few books. Jakob picked up some Transformers books, but they are getting returned tomorrow. We needed those books for the short term process of waiting in line for the freebies, but are way over his head for understanding! Saturday evening we headed over to a friends house for a dinner party. Jakob got to play with 3 of his other friends, while we all visited, had spaghetti with great desert, and laughed and laughed! There is about 6 of us that have met from Children's Courtyard that we all get along really well and have been getting together to let the kids play while we all visit and have a good time too!

We went rock climbing today at Summit Climbing Gym in Grapevine, TX. We met up with Daniel, Jeff's brother, and the five of us climbed! I sent an email with a link for pictures because there are many great pictures! Jakob took over the photography and did well on most pictures...however, I did delete a lot of pictures before uploading them to send out! He was having a blast taking the pictures of everyone climbing. Jakob did okay climbing, but think he was a little apprehensive about the harness around him. He did go about twice his height on the wall and you'll see that in the pictures. Roland enjoyed every minute of climbing! Jeff and I were glad that Daniel mentioned it because we sure enjoyed doing it. It was something different and we figured if Jakob does it again, he would probably do better at it. I had found a coupon on www.entertainment.com that saved us 20% off our cost today, so pretty much paid for Jakob between the 5 of us that climbed today! I posted all of the pictures to my gallery.