Spring Break 2011! Part 2

As I sit here getting started with this post I am already looking at the glass as half empty and I'm getting sad. Spring Break is half over today. The kids only have four more days out of school and I feel like we haven't really done anything to take full advantage of their time off as well as this beautiful weather.  

  Sunday/ Monday

 

We ended our Sunday by picking up two of my cousin's girls. They came over originally to spend the night and hang out Monday but they ended up staying until Tuesday evening. On Monday I went and ran some errands with Lindsey, Max and Gracie while the other two kids stayed home. Then came home and went out again, alone this time, so I could go take advantage of some deals at CVS and Walgreens. I think I made out pretty good for a beginning couponer. At CVS I bought all of this: 5 things of laundry detergent, 2 deodorants, 2 tubes of toothpaste and two boxes of candy all for only $7.38!

Regularly this all would have cost $60.73.

Later, I went to another CVS and bought 1- Purex 3 in 1, 1- Crest Toothpaste, 2- Clean & Clear Body washes and 3 individual packs of m&m's all for only .04 cents! I saved almost $30!
I also stopped at Walgreens (aka: Wags) and picked up 1 bottle of Focus Factor (regularly this alone costs $39.99), Reynolds Aluminum Foil and 3 boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal. I paid $20.45 and had a total savings of $34.70!     
Using coupons and finding great deals is definitely my new favorite hobby!    

Tuesday

Tuesday morning Terry and I had a doctor's appointment. I got my first B12 shot.

When we finished there we stopped at Sam Moon on our way home. I was looking for some jewelry to wear for my birthday. I ended up getting some cute earrings for Addison that looked like Aledo Bearcat paws and some cute little horseshoe earrings for me. That took half of the day to do so when we got home I wanted to take the kids to have some fun outside of the house. We went to ride the Forest Park Mini Train and play at Trinity Park. I think I missed most of the train ride experience due to my constant picture taking. But I got some good ones!

We didn't really end up playing at the park. It was more fun to go down to the river and run across the rocks so that's what we did!

Do you see the black dot by the water in the middle of this picture below? I forgot what some guy told us it was called but it's some type of ginormous rodent! It looked like maybe a capybara.  

After our fun at Trinity Park it was time to take the girls home. I stopped and dropped Terry off at our house first then went on our way. Shortly after dropping the girls off my suburban started acting funny. I would try to accelerate but it wouldn't get up and go. Luckily there was a gravel driveway off to the side of the highway and I was able to pull onto it. I called Terry and told him what was going on. He had gone out to run some errands with my step brother, Billy, so they stopped what they were doing and came to rescue us. We weren't too far away, about 20 minutes but it felt like forever before they got to us. I think it's mostly because I had to go pee. Anyway, luckily Billy knows some things about cars so he checked it out and told Terry what they should do and try to do to fix the problem. They came prepared to pull it back to our house but instead Billy and Terry drove it home while I took the other vehicle and myself and the kids home. Turns out, after trying everything Billy could think of and Terry talking to a friend of his at work about it the next day, my suburban needs to have the transmission rebuilt. This comes just a week after we took it in to have it looked at and get what we thought was wrong with it fixed that cost over $500! Now we find out it's the transmission?! AND it's going to cost at least $3 grand to fix it! (sigh.....................) So, until we can magically come up with the money we are back to using one vehicle. Again. This year.