My how life has changed!

Has it been over a year since I last blogged? I guess so looking at the date of my last post. How embarassing!

But I have good reasons. :)

First and foremost, I am now a mother of 3. After a long and hard pregnancy and a failed induction attempt the week before he was actually born, we welcomed Christian into the world on September 1st. He is an absolute blessing to say the least. Tandy and Madeline are head over heels over this baby and it just melts my heart to see them enjoying him so much.

Because the pregnancy was so hard on me physically (suffered from HG the entire time again) I had to focus what energy I did have on the more important things like the kids and the house so needless to say, my bargain shopping trips came to a screeching halt.

In the midst of all of this we were trying to finish the house to get it on the market and I'm happy to report that we accomplished that too! We are so happy with the progress and the way the house looks. Now we're just waiting for someone to fall in love with it like we did over 5 years ago. We've had some interest and been on the short list a couple of times but no formal offers.

The original plan was we'd take the house off the market sometime this month and then put it back on in February because I honestly didn't want to deal with having to keep it spotlessly clean over the holidays but with Congress passing the extension on the $8k first-time homebuyer's tax credit AND adding a $6.5k tax credit for those buying a house who've been in their current home at least 5 years I think it's time to reconsider. This has been MUCH harder than I ever imagined it being!

The kids are back in school and doing well. Tandy was selected to participate in the Duke University 7th grade Talent Search program and was recently taken out of his regular math class and put into a pre-algebra (what 8th grade is supposedly doing) class. Last year he'd "placed out" of 6-7th grade math based on the placement testing they administered but because the school is small and they only had 3 core subject teachers they didn't bother with seeing if he could ace the 8th grade placement since they couldn't work around his subject blocks. Anyway, they hired a new PE coach and he's teaching Tandy and one other girl from 7th grade (who's an absolute angel) while the rest of the class goes to their regular math. He's also decided to participate in the PSIA competition so that will keep him busy when his schoolwork doesn't. Basketball will start here soon too.

Madeline is in kindergarten this year. She was sad that some of her friends from pre-k didn't return to the school but has enjoyed making new friends. In addition to doing Kumon she's on a cheerleading team and has also been taking private lessons. Their first competition is coming up on the 15th and she's SUPER excited about that! She's asked if she can take swimming lessons again and learn to play the violin but I think for now she has us (mainly me since I'm the one that drives her around everywhere) stretched pretty thin for now so we'll have to think about doing those later.

So, back to the subject...

The holidays are just around the corner. Can you believe Thanksgiving is in just 3 weeks? Christmas will be rolling in before we know it! Heck, Target has been putting out Christmas merchandise for a few weeks now! Yowzers!

Well, speaking of Target, I thought I'd let you know that once again, Target has their lovely Toy Book chock-full of wonderful coupons available again. Rumor has it that the book will not be available in-store but the good news is you can print the coupons right at home which means you can print as many as you want! Here's a link to the coupons for you: Target Toy Coupons. Now, before you get all print-happy let me warn you. There are 15 (yes, FIFTEEN) pages of coupons so you might want to figure out which ones you want to print and take advantage of the settings on your printer to print only the ones you want.

There's an INCREDIBLE deal on Wii games at Target going on this week. All the games priced $49.99 or less are buy 2 get 1 free. Combine this sale with the $10/2 Wii games coupon and you can get 6 games for as little as $29.96 plus tax . How do you do that you ask? Here's the deal...

Buy 6 games priced at $14.99 each = $89.94
Use 3 $10/2 Wii games coupon = -$30.00
Buy 2 games get 1 free = -$29.98 (2 x $14.99)
Total = $29.96 + tax

Now that is some DIRT cheap Wii games! Look at that math! That's less than $5 each before tax! GREAT for stocking stuffers if you ask me!

While you're at Target, their Halloween stuff is all on clearance. Hubby saw the 75% off signs and went a little crazy yesterday. My thought was I know that it'll go to 90% eventually and we really don't NEED this stuff (nor do we really have a place to put it right now) so I'm seriously considering taking a lot of it back. If I wasn't so tired right now I'd hit another store or two in search of more Tootsie Rolls. At $.63 cents a bag that's cheaper than the dollar store and Sam's. Considering the number of these things I eat now, well, cheap is best. ;-)

This week at Walgreens I'm stocking up on soup and tomato sauce (I'll buy Tootsie Rolls on clearance there too). The Campbell's chicken noodle and tomato soup is 2/$1 this week and there's a $1/2 printable which makes them free. Hunt's tomato sauce is on sale 3/$1 and there's a $1/3 internet printable which also makes them free.

Well, that's going to do it for my deals for today. I have plenty more coming later. Thursdays are my crazy day so I've got to get a nap in...