It's that time of the year again

Cool mornings, dew on the grass, Texas football, parties and the holidays approaching. Oh and sick kids. Yep, it's that time of the year.

Last Saturday we made a spontaneous decision to take Madeline to her first Texas football game. My dad was already taking Tandy but couldn't sell his other 2 tickets so he offered to let 3 of us go. Terry was too tired to go and had a lot of work he needed to do so he graciously offered to stay home and watch Christian so the kids and I could go with my dad. Needless to say, Madeline was AWESTRUCK by the entire experience!

She won a $10 Academy gift card on the way into the stadium by winning a bean-bag toss game. She got a free poster and wrote "Hi Christian" on it (I brought along a bag with markers and a coloring book to keep her entertained if it got "slow") so he could "see her on TV." She was floored that Bevo was real and completely entertained by all of the cheerleaders. Her first cheer competition is this weekend so it was neat to be able to take her to that AND see the national champion UCF cheerleaders to boot!

Saturday evening we went to a fall themed party at some friends' house out in Hutto. They had hayrides, a bonfire, movies on the barn and a TON of food! The kids had an absolute blast and didn't want to leave!

Tuesday morning Madeline woke up coughing up a storm. I'd noticed that one of the mothers from a girl in her class had posted on Facebook that her daughter was barking and had a fever so my gut was that Madeline most likely had croup. The bark is unmistakeable. She never ran fever but it's been a rough couple of days for her with all the coughing. She's back to "normal" as of yesterday evening so we sent her to school this morning. She was ready to go back because the playground is done. I was ready for her to go back because Christian doesn't sleep as much when she's home.

As for deals this week, well, it's been a doozy week having a kid home sick. I went out on Sunday with the intention of shopping the loss leaders at 4 different stores along with finding a juicer for Terry. It rained. It poured. I didn't have an umbrella. I did have the baby with me. Rain + baby in car seat = not good.

Anyway, I went to Sprouts Farmer's Market for the first time. I. am. in. love. It's like a mini Whole Foods meets Sun Harvest with great produce at even better prices! Avacados and grapefruits were 25c each, apples 2lbs for $1, oranges 77c/lb, grapes 69c/lb, etc. I'm telling you, I'm in love with their produce section. Their meat section looked pretty good and most of it looked all-natural/no antibiotic/organic. The prices on sale items there didn't seem too bad either. I got a TON of fresh produce, some banana chips, pecans (on sale for $4.99/lb...a STEAL!) and our new addiction, Pirate's Booty all for less than $30.00. All of this would've easily cost me double that at the grocery store!

Next I went to Super Target. There I got 12 cans of Hunt's tomato sauce for 20c. Total, not 20c each! They were on sale for 35c each and I had coupons from ConAgra's Recession Payback "game" that gave me $1 off any 3 Hunt's items so that made them less than 3c each! Not free like they would've been at Walgreen's last week but I can deal with dirt cheap. I also picked up a few Halloween items that were 90% off.

Randall's was the last store I hit before Terry called and insisted I come home. I'd been gone over 3hrs and he claimed the kids were missing me. There I scored some good deals on meat on clearance. I got a huge family pack of pork chops for $6, a 5lb roast for $4, over 3lbs of smoked sausage on a stick for $6 and a pork roast for just under $5. I did the deal where if you bought $25 worth of participating products you got $5 towards your next purchase. We needed several things that were on that list of items and a lot of them had peelies on them making them an even better deal. I won't bore you with the list of items I got but my total before coupons at Randall's was $123.xx and after it was $63.xx and I got a $5 catalina to use on my next purchase so over 50% savings.

I met Terry for lunch on Tuesday and Madeline and I stopped at Target on the way home to get her "something small" at Terry's request. I wound up getting 2 tubs of Target brand baby wipes, a pack of Luv's diapers, 5 Glade candles and a few other things for $12.84 but I got a $5 gift card for buying 5 of the candles so $7.84 net. We also got the Barbie Three Muskateers and Barbie Christmas Carol DVD's for $10.80. For both. :) Both of these movies are in the Toys R Us Big Wish book on sale for $9.99 each. Target will price match. There's a $5 off Target coupon for the Three Muskateers movie and a $5 peelie on the movie to use if you buy it along with 1 of several other Barbie movies so the math works like this:
Barbie Three Muskateers DVD $14.99 <> adjusted to $9.99
Barbie Christmas Carol DVD $12.99 <> adjusted to $9.99
Minus $5 Target coupon
Minus $5 peelie (on the 3 Muskateers DVD) for buying both movies
$9.98+tax WOOHOO!

That's going to do it for today. Thursdays are rough for me with all of the afterschool stuff going on. Til next time...