Another great couponing day!

Well, I think we should be set for lunch meat for awhile. Today was the start of a new Macey's ad and the last day to use coupons from the Budget Buster booklet. Finally, the lunch meat in the BB booklet was on sale so I could get the best deal using the coupon in there. Here's what we got:
12 packages of Land O' Frost lunch meat
3 super size bags of Malt O' Meal cereal
4 Lawry's marinades
2 gallons 1% milk
2 Western Family sour cream (16 oz each)
2 Stove Top stuffing
3 Langer's apple juice (64 oz each)
3 boxes Capri Sun
2 Nalley pickles
1 Wonder bread

All for $33.49! It actually should have been about $31 but the checker didn't subtract one of the store coupons and we didn't notice til we got home. C'est la vie. It wasn't worth a trip back. But that $30 and change is how much the meat alone would have cost before the coupons and in fact, we actually made 66 cents on each package of meat, so I can't complain too much. I know we saved over $40 with coupons alone, and even more beyond that if you include sale prices vs regular prices (darn Macey's for not putting the savings on the receipt!).

PICTURES!

We got some new pictures of Averie done about a week and a half ago and finally got the online access after some technical difficulties and I just had to share my favorites! (The rest of the pictures are posted on my Facebook profile).

Averie tries a veggie!

So Averie's been doing really well on the rice cereal so last night, we tried her first veggie - a sweet potato. I think the pictures speak for themselves as far as whether she liked it or not :)

Another moment

I forgot about my moment yesterday! Oh well - as long as I get it in sometime on the weekend, it still counts, right?

Baby Food Deal

Babies R Us has cases of Earth's Best organic baby food purees for sale - buy one get one free. Each case is $8.99 and has 12 jars.

We bought 4 cases (48 jars) - one each of 1st pears, 2nd pears and raspberries, 2nd apples and 2nd carrots - for about $16 (also had a 20% off coupon). That comes out to about 33 cents a jar. Considering these normally go for 79 cents a jar, that's a great deal!

Go fast though. Quantities are limited and the sale ends next Thursday!

It's the little things

Averie responds to her name now!

And she smiles at me when I say it.

:-)

Getting some deals

Last night, Chris and I went grocery shopping, using the Budget Busters coupon booklet that Macey's recently sent out (I also snagged a few more last week from the front of the store where they keep the ads). Macey's doesn't tell you at the bottom of the receipt how much you saved like Smith's does so I'm not sure on that number (because I was too lazy to add up all the price tags, haha), but we spent $17.19 for:
2 gallons 1% milk
2 gallons chocolate milk
2 Keebler Cheesecake Middles
16 Armour Lunchmakers
2 Dreyer's ice cream
2 Freschetta single serve pizzas
8 32 oz Gatorades
2 boxes Frosted Mini Wheats
All in all, a great trip. Got some stuff we needed (mainly just the milk, haha) and a lot of "fun" food that we might not have otherwise bought because it wasn't a necessity, but we couldn't pass it up since it was so cheap!

That's really not my favorite deal though.

Chris takes Prevacid for his acid reflux.
It's relatively pricey - $26 for a 42 pill box that lasts 6 weeks - and since it's an OTC medicine, it isn't covered by our insurance. The other day at Target, after some regular shopping, the register spit out a receipt for $10 off a box of Prevacid. I was thrilled because I knew I could combine that with the manufacturer's coupons I had from the newspaper and Internet and get this stuff for pretty cheap.
$26 Prevacid
- $10 Target coupon
- $4 manufacturer coupon (Internet)
- $2 manufacturer coupon (newspaper)
= $10 out of pocket

Not bad, right? But it got even better - in the newspaper a couple weeks ago, there was a mail-in rebate to get 50% of the retail price back. I just sent in our rebate form to receive another $13 back from the manufacturer, which means I'm getting PAID $3 to take a $26 box of medicine out of the store! It is a great feeling to literally make money off of something that we need.

A trip to California

My grandma, "Granny", on my Dad's side passed away on February 26th from liver cancer. We were lucky that we were able to get away and go down to California for her funeral. It was a beautiful service and she will certainly be missed. I wish she had been able to meet Averie in person but I know she is happier now with my Grandpa Purdy, who passed away when I was just a baby myself.

Granny on her 90th birthday (a picture of a picture so it's a bit fuzzy):

Averie and I at the viewing (with my mom in the background - obviously not aware of the camera):

The trip to the funeral also was Averie's first trip on a plane. She did great. Had no problems specific to the takeoff or landing, except fussiness that was more related to her not getting as much sleep as she normally does, due to all the hubbub with getting to the airport on time and then all the happenings on the day of the funeral. And because I'm a terrible mommy, the only pictures I have of her the whole time we were in California was one, the above picture, then one on the airplane and one in the Long Beach airport! Here they are anyway though :)

Hopefully, we'll have the chance to go back to visit California on happier terms soon (and this mommy will remember to take more pictures!).

Starting solids

So we started Averie on rice cereal right after her 4-month checkup last week. It's been quite a success - she really seems to like it and is a pro at eating off the spoon. She's good at telling us when she's done too by blocking spoon entry with her tongue.

We'll be starting her on a fruit or veggie puree soon - I've heard a common one is sweet potato so we'll probably go with that. We're going the organic route right now because we were able to get organic for the same price as non-organic on a sale at Babies R Us. Leading up to starting solids, I had (have) plans to make her baby food myself but given that it's pretty cheap to buy it, and that I feel scheduled pretty tight already (between school and doing some work at home), we'll see how long those ambitions last!

A couple pictures:

Love her expression here

Wiping her mouth with her sleeve

This moment

I stole this from a friend's blog, who got the idea from another blog (that I have not yet visited) - Gracious Rain.

A new Saturday ritual.

A single photo – no words – capturing a simple, special, extraordinary moment that I would like to pause, savor and remember.

If you’re inspired to do so—as I was, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to see.

4 Months!

Averie had her 4 month well baby visit today (she will be 4 months old on Wednesday). She got 2 more shots and was such a trooper and cried for only a couple minutes. She weighs 15 lb 1 oz (75th percentile) and is 25 1/2 inches long (90th percentile). Her head is in the 60th percentile - it used to be the 75th so she's finally catching up with her head :).

At 4 months, Averie rolls from stomach to back but isn't interested in rolling from back to stomach unless we give her a nudge. Probably because she's not a huge fan of tummy time and doesn't want to go there voluntarily :D. She smiles all the time but only Daddy gets her best giggles. She's just starting to fit into her 3 to 6 month clothes so we hope she's able to wear everything (or almost everything) before it warms up.

We'll be starting rice cereal tonight as we wean her off her reflux medicine. That should be an adventure!