Dial Soap

I've mentioned before how I've been doing some couponing here and there. Lately I've been checking the sale flyer and if there is something on sale we use, I try to find coupons on ebay. My latest purchase was Dial soap. They were on sale for $1. Since we will always need bathroom hand soap I headed over to ebay and located some coupons. When I had heard about people actually buying coupons I thought that can't be worth it in the end. I stand corrected.

I found 20 coupons for $3. It seemed a little high but there were 20 of them and it paid off. The coupons were for .35. The store I go to will double those to .70 so I ended up getting the soap for .35 each (tax included) Overall I spent $7. If you include the cost of the coupons it was $10 overall. But, I wasn't including the cost of the coupons since the money to buy the coupons was from an item Aaron bought at a garage sale and then re-sold it for more on ebay.

Normally the soap cost $1.59 so for 20 bottles it would have been $31.80(tax not included). Of course I wouldn't go out and buy 20 at a time but eventually I would have bought that many over a period of time.

I called Kroger before we left because I wanted to make sure they still doubled coupons. I saw at a Kroger in Texas they didn't anymore. The kind (I mean rude) lady on the phone said that yes they do double but they will only double 2 like coupons in one transaction. Are you serious? That means I have to do ten transactions to make it work!

I ended up doing 5 transactions one day and 5 the next. I didn't want to make the people behind me too mad! Crazy coupon policies!

I'm excited and it felt like such an accomplishment! We won't need hand soap for quite some time! I usually don't find a lot of things I can stock up on but when I can I try to.

FOSTER CARE UPDATE: Nothing to report unfortunately. Our licensing worker was on vacation this week so I plan on calling her towards the middle/end of this week to touch base. The agency is offering a discipline class sometime soon so we would like to get signed up for that. I'm also considering talking to them about volunteering. I haven't completely decided yet if I want to add that to my schedule or not. If I do I would probably only do it until we received a placement. Who knows..maybe they don't even need any help. I've posted before about The Forgotten Initiative and how they serve local foster care agencies by doing different projects and supporting the agency workers in their difficult jobs. Of course you can volunteer through them but I kind of wanted to stick with the agency we are licenced with. I thought it would be great to help the agency in any way I could and it would also help us to stay involved. Helping the agency can help the workers better support and care for the children! So, I'm still trying to decide but no other news in regards to a placement.

Stay tuned for a post on deodorant and how I ended up paying .08 each (tax only)!! Have a good week everyone!

Lake Of The Ozarks

Last week Aaron and I took a vacation to Lake of the Ozarks for our 5 year anniversary. When we decided we wanted to take a trip for this occasion we were thinking about Colorado as the destination. It ended up that Colorado was going to cost more than we wanted to spend so Aaron brought up LOTA (Lake of the Ozarks). I went to the website vrbo.com and found a condo to rent right on the lake!

The condo was really nice and even had a screened in porch with a view of the lake. When we arrived on Monday we got all our things settled and then headed out to the grocery store to get some snacks. I found a Jelly Belly set up where you could fill a bag with tons of different flavors for $7.99 a lb. Well they come out really fast when you pull the lever so I think I ended up with a whole pound of bubble gum ones. I was shocked when we checked out and the total was $44.00. I was thinking all we got was water, toilet paper, paper towels and some breakfast stuff. Well, we had over $15 in jelly beans (over 2lbs).

Anyways, the first night we ate at a place called Bandana's barbecue. It was pretty similar to a Famous Dave's so it was good! On Tuesday we went shopping to the outlet mall. I came home with some new Nike shorts, a tshirt, hoodie, playing cards and one of those Coach wrist wallet things. One of those where I can put my license, debit card, cash and phone in. That way I don't have to carry my whole stinking purse around.

Tuesday night we ate at a place called JB Hooks. We had a great view overlooking the lake. A coworker of Aaron's told him to go to this place. He said it was expensive but it was worth it. I disagree with this. Our meal was $89 for food that I would say was similar to an Olive Garden or Red Lobster. I guess we were paying for the view?

Wednesday morning we got up and went jet skiing. It was nice because there was hardly anyone out on the lake. We took turns driving but I didn't ended up driving very long. I was spinning the ski into circles and when I went to turn back the other way I didn't hit the gas hard enough. Needless to say we ended up flying off. I bet it was not a pretty sight. Let me tell you it was SUPER hard getting back up on it. You have to grab a hold of this bar on the top of the seat and basically pull with your arms to get your whole body up. As I was looking like a struggling beached whale I'm sure the people in the houses nearby got an early morning laugh. (Note to self...work on upper body strength)

Once I got back on the jet ski Aaron realized he had lost his ring. It has always been loose so it is somewhere in the bottom of the lake never to be found again. So, Aaron's walking around with a naked finger. Not something I like.

There was also a pool at the condos so we spent some time there getting burnt and doing a little swimming. At night we liked sitting on the porch and just looking out at the lake!

Overall, we had a good trip and enjoyed visiting a place we had never been to before. Below are some pictures.

I thought the welcome note was really cute and they also had blueberry muffins for us! 



This picture above is the screened in porch.

View from the porch

View from our dinner table at the expensive place! 

Back Up And Running

Our computer crashed on us the night before we left on vacation (June 3rd) and we finally got it back tonight. Apparently the hard drive went bad? So, almost $200 later we're back in business! We took my Dad's laptop with us on vacation so Aaron could try and stay caught up on work emails. Then his laptop ended up crashing on us. I still don't know whats wrong with it. I now have to try to get all my favorites back on here since they couldn't recover anything. Not sure I'll remember all of them! The other crummy thing is that we had just redeemed a $25 iTunes gift card on there and downloaded 10 or so songs to put on our ipod. Well the night we went to do that is when it crashed so we lost all those too.

I'm glad we have it back though! I felt at a loss for a while. On the other hand I'm reading a good book right now so that kept me busy on times I would've been using the computer.

I'll update on our vacation and our "we're still stuck in the same spot with the foster care situation" soon!