A Weekend of Savings

Well, the totals aren't complete but here's where we are so far:

Trip 1: Spent $11.86, Saved $46.44
Trip 2: Spent $13.23, Saved $43.89
Trip 3: Spent $16.06, Saved $43.83

These purchases include my regular milk, produce, and $7 in meat that I needed for a product return tomorrow where they'll give me double my money back. So even though it doesn't appear to be the greatest of savings, I still have some returns to do and at least one more trip to make . . . and then there's the Sunday paper coupons. :)

However exciting triples are, the bigger savings will occur tomorrow night! It's time for the annual Matthews Consignment Sale and I can hardly wait. Thankfully I've been too busy to think much about it, but I'm sure I won't sleep much tonight. I'll definitely post my savings from that along with my final triples numbers on Sunday afternoon. Until then, happy shopping friends!

Hilton Head Vacation

We started our trip at EdVenture in Columbia, SC. It was free since they are a reciprocal museum to Charlotte at Play and boy was it fun! Here we are in the outdoor bubble exhibit. We were enclosing ourselves in a big bubble.

This picture is just for Pawpaw Page! Savannah loved dressing up like a firefighter and playing in the real firetruck. We also enjoyed milking a cow, picking peaches, grocery shopping, playing with blocks, etc, etc. She had a blast and played hard enough to need a long nap as we continued towards Hilton Head.

This is one of our first days on the beach. The weather was perfect and Savannah loved every second on the beach playing with all of her sand toys. Here she is resting with Dave after trying to catch birds for quite a long time. She kept lots of people entertained on the beach.

This is how we travelled to the beach each day. It was a little bike ride, but Savannah loved being in her cart. We spent a lot of time on these bikes this past week and only got caught out in the rain twice.

Here is one of those rain trips. We rode to the BiLo to get a newspaper. Look what Savannah decided to play with on the way home . . . our newspaper was soaked! Crazy girl.

Savannah was so prissy all week. She hated getting dirty, but thankfully she quickly learned how to "wash" her hands in the ocean water.

Putt Putt is much different with a toddler! She liked putting her ball IN the water better than hitting it with the putter.

These birds were beautiful! There were three of them right outside of Jake's Cargo shop at South Beach.

Here is Dave trying to help cool Savannah off at the Salty Dog Cafe. We are now all proud owners of Salty Dog Tshirts. Savannah loves hers and always points out the "salty dog".

We had a wonderful week! Thanks Mom and Dad Bachmann for giving us your week of vacation. We truly enjoyed lots of quality family time.

Thank You Harris Teeter!

After getting back from vacation one of the first things I wanted to do is sort through the sale papers and coupons. I quickly noticed that Harris Teeter had some awesome sales this week so Dave and I made two trips on Saturday and were quite pleased with our savings. However, after getting extra coupons from my two neighbors I did some careful planning and hit HT again today for two separate transactions. I got all of the above groceries for FREE and they even had to give me $1.23 back! They were as shocked as I was, but it really paid off to make an extra trip! In case you can't tell that's 21 items for FREE. Oh how I can hardly wait for triples this weekend!!!

She Did It!!

Last night I was in the kitchen and I heard Savannah making her usual nighttime poopy in her diaper (she was actually wearing a swim diaper because she was screaming to go swimming at the beach so we let her wear her bathing suit all afternoon). I quickly yelled in and asked her if she was going poopy and for the first time ever, she actually said yes. She normally says no and then hides in this one particular corner in the office to finish the job. That was probably way too much info . . . Anyway, I then asked her if she wanted to go on mommy's potty and she said yes. We rushed to the potty and she POOPED ON THE POTTY!!! She was so proud as she even got to use "paper towel", as she calls toilet paper, and then got to flush the potty. Afterwards, we practically threw a party for her. She got her reward of chocolate chips and loved them.

Now I know we're a long way from being potty trained, but this was a huge step in the Bachmann house!

Play Dough

Not too long ago when Dave and I first started teaching Sunday school to children at church we were told that we needed to MAKE the play dough that we used in class. They made it easy by providing the ingredients and the recipe, but it just seemed odd to me . . . to make play dough?! Well, today when I dropped Savannah off for school, the teacher had lots of ziploc bags at the door with a sign asking parents to make play dough. Thinking she was asking every parent to make it, I quickly took my bag and headed out the door. All the time thinking, what am I doing?? I have a million other things to do today and I just volunteered to make play dough! I started to return my bag of ingredients as she didn't need 12 volunteers, but decided that it might be a bit tacky. So, I turned it into a afternoon activity . . . with my little chef by my side we did it! I actually made play dough. Praise the Lord I was the one that picked up the RED request because that is the only food color that I had in the house!

Back To School!!!

I'm not sure who was more excited this morning, me or Savannah, that WEE school started again today. Although I have to say it's not the same dropping her off with teachers we're unfamiliar with, I'm sure she's going to have a great year. Here's to another fun year of learning. Dave had to leave really early this morning for work, but made sure to remind me to take this annual picture of Savannah on the bench outside of WEE school. It's amazing how much she's changed in just one year (see last year's picture 9/7/07 post).

Savannah's First Trip to Atlanta

On Friday we packed up and headed to Atlanta (or Hotlanta as my friend Marie calls it) for a visit with Grammy and Papa. Dave, his dad, and Brian had tickets to the Clemson game at the Georgia Dome so we decided to spend the weekend there as we had several birthdays to celebrate too. Savannah did awesome travelling and we didn't have to get the TV out even once on the way down or back!!
We arrived and were immediately greeted by Dave's old bouncy horse. I had been warned that this horse was coming back to Charlotte with us, and although I'm stilled not thrilled about having it here, Savannah LOVES it. Both she and her cousin, Alyssa, gave horsey a workout this weekend. Now he's in the middle of our living room and Savannah begs continuously to ride "horsey". She even kissed him good night twice tonight!



Here are the girls helping Grammy make blueberry pancakes Saturday morning. Notice Savannah is already wearing her Clemson colors. Grammy must have some magical powers in her garden because Savannah ate tomatoes right from the garden and then ate homemade pancakes. Way to try new things, Savannah!



Here are Savannah, Grammy and Papa at the park. We visited the nature center and then headed to two different parks to let the kids play. Savannah loved seeing the ducks although she was mad that she couldn't get "feet wet".



Can anyone say, "no more monkeys jumping on the bed"? Obviously the big loss for Clemson didn't upset these two as they had the time of their life. Alyssa and Savannah were great roomies this weekend. Savannah got a brand new air mattress with bumpers (a definite for travelling with a toddler as it easily deflates and is small to carry) and she loved sleeping in her new bed! Alyssa slept on the bed and Savannah in the floor. I heard them having many early morning "conversations".

We had such a fun weekend and enjoyed every minute of family time! Thanks Grammy and Papa for a great weekend! Now were back in CharHOTTE as our one year old air conditioner is broken . . . hopefully it's still under warranty!