oh...ya know...a little of this, a little of that...and a lot of rambling.

hmmm...what to blog about....i told you i was going to try to do better, if for no one than myself, so forgive any ramblings.  or just move on over to the dinner you were making or the important work thing you were doing and skip me for today, i won't mind :)

things at the top of my brain list right now:
i want to paint.  paint paint paint, like...my whole entire house. pretty much every room, and the outside.  i know baby steps is the attitude i need here, but i want it all done. like...yesterday.  i have all these ideas and if i don't execute them quickly they will pass.  i suppose that is for the best.

we need a new washing machine. it only works about 50% of the time...if it wants to.  it's the spin cycle.  it's a waste of time in that machine. it doesn't do anything.  i mean, yeah, the drum spins, and the water drains, but the clothes are still sopping wet.  so anyway...we need a new one of those things.  barf.  our dryer seems to be working just fine, but it's spring and i dry what i can on the line outside or the line in the laundry room during spring and summer- i LOVE line drying clothes (i'm serious).

i don't like thinking about things we need.  it's stressful.  i know it will all work out.  the washer still washes clothes, so it's not like a desperate need, but it is annoying having to dry them 17 times (not really 17, but maybe 3 or 4) before they are dry.  That's stupid.  we need a new recliner. ours is dark brown leather and i love it. it is a rocker, a recliner, and it rotates 360 degrees.  i can watch tv and rock ridge, or i can rotate all the way around (well...halfway around, bc all the way would be back at the start) and look out the window while i rock him.  but this chair has rocked two babies and has been slept in as often as our bed.  it's on the fritz.  it rocks, but it's getting ugly.  but it is still functional.  so it's not a desperate need either.  so...i guess we don't need anything.  see how it all worked out in less than a sitcom's timeframe?

spring break is next week.  wahoo!  i have a whole list of junk to do.  we'll see how accomplished i am. 

i tried to be frugalisha (ha ha, play on words) again this week. i did pretty well but not as well as i sometimes do.  I did manage to get $35 worth of groceries at CVS for $20 after coupons, plus I got $8 in rewards bucks back....so I suppose that is like getting $35 for $12 which is pretty good. I also went to Walgreen's and got about $30 worth of groceries for $16 and left with $9 in register rewards... So that's kind of like $30 for $7, so that's pretty good.  Those aren't my best trips to those stores, but they probably aren't my worst either.  I didn't do so hot at Target, although I did save 25%.  Sometimes I just need things that don't have coupons (I mean really need them, like eggs.  And Lara bars, which I love...and which sometimes have coupons, but rarely, and almost never are on sale, but they were a few weeks ago)...and of course I needed those jeans that were marked down to $6 on clearance and which just happened to be in my size, and LONGS, which I didn't even know Target sold.  So I got a great deal, I don't think I've ever bought jeans for $6 in my life- being six feet tall makes it difficult to be a bargain shopper for pants!  However, I will disclose something I wasn't sure I was going to disclose.  I'm all about second handing stuff- Ridge wears hand me downs.  Sawyer's clothes are mostly name brand, but almost every single thing is bought at a consignment store/consignment sale.  Which means Ridge is getting hand me downs from Sawyer, which are actually second hand to begin with.  So tonight, I decided to stop by our local Goodwill. I go there once a month or so to scope out the furniture because I am looking for some nightstands.  I am all about painting and re-purposing things....Well, they had a set of nightstands, and I might go back to get them, I can't decide if they are workable or not for our room.  Since I couldn't decide, I thought I'd just look around for kicks.  I've noticed before that our Goodwill has some good name brand items-- maybe they all do, but I know that our Goodwill has some really nice donors!  I was just browsing, and the racks were full of Gap items.  I love the Gap.  There was Polo...Jcrew...the Limited...Express...a few Banana Republic items...American Eagle...and everything was $2.99 or less for the most part!  There weren't gobs of kids clothes, but enough for me to find some things for Sawyer.  I left with 12 things (maybe more, but I can only remember 12 of them off the top of my head), all name brand labels (almost all were Gap) for $35.  Seriously.  I know, some people are probably above second hand shopping, and that's totally fine.  I usually buy our things new, too, except for the kids'.  But seriously, it was ridiculous- some of the things I bought still had tags on them! As in, the original tags...as in, they were NEW!  I'm fairly picky, so I only bought things that looked pretty new.  A few things I bought were half price, so I got them for $1.50!  And Gap dates their items, so I was able to find the year they were made and decide if they were "new" enough to buy.  I won't be a weekly shopper there...or maybe I will...but seriously- it was stuff just as good as what I find at consignment sales, and cheaper because no consignor one gets a cut of the profits.  I've always been a bargain shopper- Ross, WALLS (oh how I miss my hometown for THAT, really, seriously, for reals), TJ Maxx, sale racks at ANY store...so this was kind of right up my alley.  Plus at places like Ross, you don't get big name brands very often, if at all.

Next...is there anything left to tell?  Sawyer spelled baseball on his own the other day.  It was pretty amazing.  He just decided to write it, with no prompting.  He is going to play tball this year, so maybe that is what made him want to write baseball.  We have been working on that silent "e" in our reading practice here at home for homeschool.  I didn't know if he really "got" it- other than in reading.  He gets it when he reads aloud.  But I came home and saw this:

I shall explain.  The BAS is self explanatory.  It is followed by a red B, and a blue O L (that's not a blue a, I thought it was at first) and a  red E.  The B, O, L is the "ball" part of the word.  BAS-BOL...and he told me he put the red 'e' to make the 'a' say the long A sound.  That's pretty impressive for a 4 year old, right?  So we talked about WHERE that e needs to go (I didn't write it for him, we just talked about it) and that the O should be an A  (which is tricky, bc A says aaaa and ay, but not always does it say the "ah' sound, but O says 'ah' or 'oh'...english is tough!)  Anyway, so he sat down, and did this, with no further assistance from me.

 

What a funny guy!  He then filled the entire page up with the word 'baseball' and that paper is now on my fridge (which is one thing in our house that is operating perfectly fine).  

Ridge is bleeding some.  His hemoglobin was all right today (10.9) but I just wish he'd quit bleeding.  It isn't a lot, but it's always stupid and annoying.  

Time to get ready for bed, turn on some old skool 90210 and work on someone's wedding veil (did you know I could do that?!?!?  I didn't either, until about a month ago!  It's fun stuff!)

What's going on in YOUR life???

Have a great week!  

Alisha