My most recent grocery trip

My latest trip to the grocery store I have decided is "worthy of the blog". Eric chuckled (and I swear he rolled his eyes) when I got home and started setting up the groceries to take a picture, but I was excited... so here it is.

Total at checkout: $169.99
Total I paid: $88.69
Total after a mail-in-rebate: $73.69! (That's over a 50% savings!)
*Plus I earned a 15 cent fuel reward!

Here's a list of everything I got:
5 California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza's
4 bags of Rold Gold pretzels
6 boxes of Post Fruity Pebbles cereal
1 bag of Ruffles potato chips
2 bags of flour
10 cans of frozen juice
2 gallons of milk
2 boxes of Yoplait Gogurts
2 loaves of bread
2 cans of French's French Fried Onions, and
4 cans of Enfamil baby formula.

My average price per item was $1.85. The only things I paid full price for were the 2 bags of flour (at $1.66 each), and the 2 loaves of bread (at $1.50 each).

The guy behind me in line was staring at the screen and finally said "Man, I just keep watching the price go down."

I just smiled!

Sweet "P"

Sweet "P". This has become Paisley's new nickname. Eric called her this a couple of weeks ago and we thought it was perfect. It fits her! But anyways... I had my uber talented friend, Marcie, come and take some pictures of her the other day. (I would definitely recommend her for anyone needing pictures. To see her website click here.) She did a great job! And of course Paisley was the perfect model!











Thanks for the great pictures Marcie! And thank you to everyone who has helped out...we SO appreciate everyone who provided dinners and time to help us those first few weeks while we adjusted! We are so blessed to have the friends and family we do.

Sawyer-ism

After returning home from running some errands:

Grandma Mitton: "C'mon darlin, let's go inside."
Sawyer: " No I NOT darlin, I Sawyer!"

This made me laugh! :)

Family Pictures 2010

We were lucky enough to have some great weather so we took advantage and went out and snapped a few family pictures. We think they turned out pretty good! Here are some of our favorites.











I LOVE MY FAMILY! We are not perfect and we make mistakes, but I wouldn't want to be with anybody else. I am so blessed to have an amazing husband and he has given me two kids that are (in my eyes) perfect. I love spending time with them; laughing with them, crying with them, kissing owies, and creating all sorts of memories. Each one of them brings something all their own to our family. Something unique. Something special. And it is so much fun to see what adventures we will have each new day.

A little more

Here are a few more pictures of little Paisley. I forget how tiny they are. And now I look at Sawyer and he just looks so big! He has adjusted so well... the poor guy, his whole world changed in a few days. But he's taking it like a champ. He loves Paisley... loves to give her kisses, tickle her feet, and check on her when she is sleeping. As for her- she eats, sleeps, and poops! But what else can you expect from a newborn? She is absolutely beautiful and we can't get enough of her.

below: one of the rare moments when she is awake.


Sawyer giving her a kiss. (She is the only one that he will GIVE kisses to. Everyone else is allowed to kiss him but he won't ever give kisses to anyone else!)


This one's a little blurry (darn my picture taking skills), but it's one of my favorites.


Just another cute one!

Introducing...

PAISLEY ELLE MITTON!
Born: April 28, 2010 at 4:21 PM.
6 lbs 7 oz
18 inches long


(more pictures forthcoming)

Warm Weather and "Green-nics"

Is anyone else here in the Utah Valley loving this amazing weather? We sure are... we've been BBQ-ing and going to the park and pretty much just playing outside whenever we get the chance! I can't wait for summer to finally be here. And neither can Sawyer!
I need to be better at documenting all of the funny things that he does and the good times that we have. I am lousy and blogging and lousy at keeping a journal. But today I am going to share a few of the things that he loves, and hopefully that will be good enough until I can come up with some sort of system.
Today after church we decided that we should have a picnic in our backyard. The weather was great and we thought it would be fun to just be together as a family. So we asked Sawyer if he wanted to have dinner outside and have a pic-nic. Since we haven't had a pic-nic since last year, Sawyer has no idea what a pic-nic is and so he thought we had said a "pink-nic". He looked at us for a second and then informed us that he didn't want to have a pink one, he wanted to have a "green-nic". It was so funny! We tried to explain that is was a pic-nic and not a pink-nic but he was insistent on having a "green-nic" so we had one. Although when we threw down our big red quilt to eat on he told us we were having a "red-nic". I love how this made so much sense to him, and he was so sure what he was talking about! I'm sure that we will now have a summer full of "green-nics".
With only a couple of weeks until the baby gets here, I'm realizing that I'm running out of time with just my little boy. This makes me a little sad but he's going to be a great big brother- and we're going to have so many fun times with another little person! At 2 1/2 years old... here is Sawyer in a nutshell:
Favorite food: Pizza and lasagna.
Favorite movie: Toy story and Toy story 2.
Favorite color: green.
Favorite song: Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam, Moon Song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the ABC's.
Favorite things to do with Dad: watch BYU sports, take showers, sing cowboy songs, shoot hoops, wrestle, hide, jump on the bed, and cuddle on the couch.
Favorite things to do with Mom: cook, help "fold" laundry, read books, and play time-tunnel under her legs.
He loves talking to grandma's and grandpa's, and aunts and uncles on the phone, playing with other little kids, going to nursery, and take car rides. He loves being outside and he loves all animals.
He loves to help do the dishes and put the soap in the dishwasher, and he loves to help vacuum.
He learns so fast and is always excited to try new things. At the park his favorite thing to do is swing. He would be happy to swing for an hour straight and not do anything else.
He is just starting to be more picky about what he wears. He likes to pick out his own pajamas and his own socks. He always wants to brush his teeth by himself.
He is definitely getting more independent. He wants to do everything by himself, from climbing in and out of the car, to buckling his car seat, to closing doors. He gets very upset if you try to do anything for him.
He is such a great kid- and we love him so much! We are so lucky to have him as part of our family. I'm anxious to see how he adapts to a sibling. I think he'll do great! He is so easy-going and brings so much happiness to our home. What else can I say but WE LOVE HIM!!

I swore I would never do this...

If you know me really well then you know that my new big thing in couponing. I have really gotten into it! And I swore to myself that I was never going to dedicate a blog post to the deals I'm getting. But today as I was dancing out of the store (that's right... dancing!) I knew I had to blog about this trip. I have to tell SOMEONE about the awesome deals I'm getting- and Eric just doesn't quite get into it like I do. So I'm going to tell whoever is reading this right now.

It's taken me some time to see results, but I am definitely seeing them. And I'm not like some couponers out there who buy something just because it is a good deal. I don't buy something unless it's something that I will ACTUALLY use. I guess I figure that if you buy something you don't normally use, chances are you're going to end up not using it- and even if it was a really really good deal- it's still a waste of money. But maybe that's just me. Eric always says that his grandpa used to say something along the lines of "If you don't NEED it, it's a waste of money- no matter how good of a deal it was." So I ONLY buy things that we use. And with couponing I buy ALOT of it now, so I guess you could argue that it's a waste to buy 5 boxes of crackers when you only go through 1 box of crackers a month, but this way I buy 5 boxes of crackers for pennies and then when I would normally have to go back to the store to buy another box for regular price- I just skip down to my storage room and pull out another box-- I'm mean, it's not like their going to go bad (unless a mouse gets into them or something)! I get things like pasta sauces, pastas, canned goods, jarred goods, dishwasher and laundry detergents, etc- and none of those things are going to go bad before I can use them. By the way, my food storage is AWESOME for a little family of 4! So this is my justification: if I can buy 4 times as much stuff for the same exact price- I'm going to do it!

So today I was able to get some AWESOME deals. Smith's has some major sales going on. So here's what I got



Total at checkout: $67.35
Total I paid: $17.44

I saved $49.91 on groceries today (which, by the way, is a 75% savings!) So how did I do it? By combining coupons with sales. Let's break it down! (oh my gosh I am so nerdy!)

Here is a list of everything I bought and what I paid for it:
* 4 boxes of saltine crackers: .69 cents a box!
* 4 bags of Quakes rice snacks: FREE- I paid nothing for these!
* 4 tubs of "I can't believe it's not butter"- .49 cents a tub!
* 5 boxes of Krusteaz cookie mixes: .49 cents a box!
* 3 pkgs of Solo plastic cups (which will be great for our baby blessing coming up
this summer): .49 cents a pkg!
* 2 Edge shaving creams: $1.25 each!
* Eggs (18 count): $1.89
* Milk: $2.00
* Bananas (not pictured): $1.50
* Tic-tacs: (which were for Sawyer for being such a "good boy while shopping"): .79
cents. (not exactly a great deal but worth it!)

Throw in some tax and I paid $17.44! An average of .67 cents per item! Isn't that CRAZY!!! I love it. Like I said I was dancing out of the store! They were even out of a few items that I need to go back for on Friday (stocking day) that will bring my average even lower!

Now not every shopping trip is like this. But I have noticed enough of a difference that I am going to keep on doing it. Maybe I'll keep doing little updates like this- just so you can see how great it really is- even though I swore I wouldn't. It makes me happy!