You know you're a penny-pincher when...

Your daughter comes home from a school event and says, "Guess what came with the donuts, Mommy? Free napkins!"

And, upon opening a Christmas card from Grandma containing a gift certificate for ice cream, she joyfully yells, "Mommy, look! A coupon! Aaaah!" and jumps up and down like she's won the lottery.

I think I must be rubbing off on her.

Video Diary

So, I've noticed that I've taken a lot of pictures of my baby. Even though I always put her in bed the same way, she is always completely different when I check on her before I go to bed. So, for a month, I took a picture of her every night. These are the highlights (with a few oldies but goodies thrown in.) Enjoy!

More Yoga for Unconscious Babies

This was taken with my cell phone camera, so it's a little dark, unfortunately.

HOWEVER -

How cute is this?! I can't for the life of me understand how she can sleep like this, but boy am I glad she does, because it's so darned adorable! She loves her yellow blanket, too. When I put her down in her crib, she always grabs it and rubs her face in it before pulling it over her head. Every time. This little lady absolutely melts my heart!

L quote: "Mommy, look, Q found some more of Daddy's armpit refreshener! Thank goodness, I thought it was all gone!" (Yes, we would all suffer if he ran out, wouldn't we?)

E quote: "I got stung by a waps at the Loo-How!" (Translation: waps=wasp, Loo-How=Luau)

This baby and this man...

Are both tummy sleepers.

I'm very much in love with the both. (And my other two kiddos too, of course!)

But thankfully, my husband isn't such a mobile sleeper. Don't worry, I took the plastic thing out - she can reach much farther out of her crib than I realized!

Now, if I can just get her to sleep past 5:30 AM...

E quote: "Mmmmm, I love beef-turkey!" (She means beef jerky.)

Can't think of a quote for L, sorry!

One little nut...

A leaky compression nut on this valve, which is the water main to our house, caused all this damage.

You can see on the rug how far from the wall the water got.

This is what was under the sectional couches. It was worse under the carpet, which I didn't get a picture of. It's hard to tell in the picture, but there are mushrooms growing out of the carpet, as well as on the other side of the wall. All the food storage we had stored there is ruined, as well as a couple boxes of memories, and a portfolio of chalk and pencil drawings I did in college. The legs of the sectional have wicked up so much moisture that a couple of the have disintegrated. If we can't replace just the feet, we may have to get a new couch. Obviously, we've also got to get new carpeting downstairs (actually, I'm ok with that part.) I think our insurance will be good to us, but our fingers are crossed anyway.

Home ownership if FUN!

L quote: "These geysers need breath mints!"

E quote: "Rrraaaawwwwrrrr!!" We were at the Dragon's Mouth cave at Yellowstone (I may have the name wrong, but you get the picture) and E ran up to L roaring, trying to scare him. She scared everyone in the area, and one lady said, "Your daughter's roar is forever recorded in my video!"

Time goes way too fast.

This little angel is now one year old. Is it wrong that I want her to stay this way forever? (Stay little, not covered in chocolate cake.)

She brings so much love and laughter to our family. Plus, she's really, reeeaaaaallly cute. I love you, my little girl. Thanks for being part of our family.

(I had to add this at the end - this is what my engineer-to-be made while the rest of us were eating cheesecake. My other little lady is on the left, and their sweet little cousin is on the right.)

E quote: "Mommy, I need marshmallows and crappers for my tea party."

L quote: "Mommy, I like your tummy - it jiggles like a big pile of pudding." (This will come back to haunt him when he's 16 and wants to borrow the car.)

Hubby quote: "Marrying you was one of the fastest decisions I ever made - and I've been paying for it ever since!" (I make sure he pays dearly!)

Look what I got!

There may just be something to this couponing thing, because this last week I paid just $2.00 + tax for all this:

Two jars of pasta sauce,

Eight boxes of pasta,

and

Eleven bottles of body wash.

My actual cost was a little more, because I got extra coupons for the body wash from a clipping service, but you get the picture. I will only buy non-perishable stuff, toiletries, or household items because I don't like processed foods (although I'm ok with jarred pasta sauce - life's too short to make it and can it from scratch) so I won't buy a lot of the things you can get with coupons, but I figured I could stock up on the other stuff. If I can find space to store them all. Will I ever be an "extreme couponer?" No - I'm way too lazy. But I can do little stuff like this.