Talking about couponing.

Ok just the once. Well maybe more than once, but not all the time. I promise this won't become a coupon blog. Because AWESOME ones already exist. If you are lucky you can even find one done by someone in your town. Then when they mention deals you can actually GET THE DEALS instead of just getting mad you don't have a store they shop at or whatever.

So last week I watched the TLC show Extreme Couponing. And I LOVED IT. Not that I wanted to do that extreme level of couponing. It's a goal in my life never to put my kid into a dumpster. Not for coupons or anything. Also I just don't have 70 spare hours a week to organize coupons and shop. Can she really be saving over say... working a full time job instead? But I guess she loves couponing. More power to those folks.

I was all interested though. Could this be for me? On some smaller scale? I mean I don't like paying for things. I facebooked about it and my friend Brooke linked me to THIS BLOG. Frugal Fun and Fortune. The thing is that the girl is local to me. So when she talks about deals they are at stores I actually have. I learned that NO stores in my area double coupons! So the amazing deals some people get I cannot get.

Anyhow Meagan finds the deals. She posts several times a day when she finds cool deals. She just posted a way to get FREE Special K. You can't imagine how much ceral this family eats. And we like Special K. And I'm getting TWO free boxes tomorrow. It makes me so happy.

But mostly I'm playing the CVS game. I started this week. I spent 10.58 out of pocket and got:
four toothbrushes
mouthwash
two packs of nail files
two boxes of ceral bars
one box of Special K
AND $4 in CVS dollars to spend on my next scenerio. So it was sorta like I only spent $6.58. Pretty cool.

I plan not to get too carried away. Basicly get things I really will use, take advantage of combining buy one get one free with coupons at Publix and play the CVS game.

Ok that's my new news lately. Well that and:

• Working out really well. Making friends there. Calvin is in the daycare and they love him to pieces.
• Kids are not into being back at school, tired in the morning, trying to get me to let them stay home and stuff. They will adjust.
• Calvin slept 8 hours last night. It was awesome.
• House is kinda messy. I need to get on that tomorrow.
• Saw Guliver's Travels and Tangled, both were better than I expected. Bought Despicible Me and LOVED it. Might be my favorite kid movie.
• Recently addicted to new shows: Tabitha's Salon Takeover, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Milionare Matchmaker.

baby Calvin

My friend Kayla took these awesome photos of baby Calvin for us this weekend. The one where he's sitting on my chest, that's the first time he ever did that. He thought it was super fun. He is growing entirely too quick.

Everything is going well, we are tired and happy around here. :) Christmas was a blast.

They induced me at 9:30am and I had him at 12:30pm.

It sort of went too fast for Brian. He had left to go home, make lunch, vote and come back. When she came in to check me a few moments after he left (without our one cell phone) she said, "Oh where is your husband, you are really close at 7cm" Well with Ethan, the time between 7cm and baby delivered was just an hour. So I called home hoping to catch him and tell him to skip the voting. 20 minutes later I felt the "urge to push". I was shocked. I called her in and yup, baby was right there. Like I could touch him. RIGHT THERE. I didn't catch Brian! He was on his way, but I was ready to push NOW. Thank heavens we live close. My Dr said it was ok to wait as long as I could stand it. Baby was looking great on monitor. Brian walked in expecting more labor, baby was out within 3 minutes of him walking in. Everyone was suprised at how fast the delivery went. I loved it. I mean I was overjoyed. I didn't break a sweat, didn't strain, just popped him right out.

I guess because the delivery was so super easy I've felt great. I'm sleepy, I didn't sleep great the night before and last night I had a brand new baby wanting to nurse every few hours. But otherwise I'm fine. (Yeah, a bit sore, that's expected) I cannot believe how easy it all was. Makes up totally for the rough pregnancy.

Calvin is perfect. He has brown hair, which was my wish. He barely cries, the nurses were all amazed. I mean like he's cried out twice at all. But he's breathing fine, nurses great, no jaundice at all. Sleeps in nice chunks mostly. He fell alseep in the car on the way home and is still sleeping in the carseat right now. (about 1.5 hours) He is already trying to hold his head up.

Well that's the birth story. :) Love you all.

Some things that happened

Well October is always one of the most busy and fun months for us. Here are some things that happened.

Brian and the boys went to the Air Show.Halloween Happened.
And the Kelloggs spent a ton of time working on Lego. (There will be MORe lego pics on the craft blog http://erinkcreations.blogspot.com.

One thing we thought we would do this month but did not do was have a baby! We are inducing on this coming Tuesday November 2nd. You know, unless I have him in the next day that is. I'm kinda happy because I got to do almost all the fun things of October I wanted to do. I did miss Roniece's birthday party, I had THREE kid parties already on Friday and just couldn't party any harder. I am hugely pregnant you know.

Baby Shower

I see it's been forever from the last update to this blog.

We named the baby Calvin Verdie. He's due in 5 weeks. Exciting.
I had my baby shower yesterday. Here are photos; Look at the crazy look on my face in some of these. I had a GREAT time. I don't know why I have this horrible look on my face in these photos.

Here are some of my cute decorations, cute friends and cute food. :)

Here are my guests playing that discusting game where you figure out what candy bar is in a diaper but it looks like horrible poop.

All in all it was super fun. The food was DELICIOUS and I have tons of leftovers, so I don't have to cook today! Woohoo. I got a ton of cute stuff for Calvin and a bunch of diapers.

The question on everyone's mind

The baby is...


a

BOY.

I'm excited. Girls are scary. I did think it was a girl though, so it was a suprise. Now to picking a name.

Tomorrow is baby gender day

Tomorrow is the day we find out if "The Baby in the Tummy" is a boy or a girl. Keep us in mind for this fun day tomorrow.

If anyone is interested it goes a little something like this:

Stephen - wants a boy
Ethie - wants a girl (or a puppy)
Brian - wants a girl
Erin - changes every single day, one day I'm all about a boy and girl makes me nervous, one day I'm all about a girl and think I have two boys already time for a change.
Everyone else - GIRL.

I have never had so many people care so deeply about what gender the baby is. Like I'm missing out on half of life just because my kids are just boys or something.

I do want to SHOP for a girl. So if I don't have a girl I need one of my closest friends to have a girl. I need siblings so I can have a niece. Wouldn't that be good?

On to names:

Girl names: Either Megan Lee Kellogg or Lilyann Lee Kellogg. This will be based on if the kid looks like a Megan or a Lily. Mostly dark hair makes you a Megan and light hair means Lily, but it's pretty much going to be up to me. You know during that insane hormone surge and supreme fatigue of having just given birth, THATS when I'll make the decision.

Boy names: So this is why I kinda hope for a girl. I HAVE two great girl names. I have no GREAT boy names. The middle name will be Verdie. It's a family name and that part is totally set in stone. All our names have to end in "n". Brian likes Warren a lot. I used to but am over it. I like Jackson or Lincoln. Marcia and Gram like Simon. Brian thinks "Jackson" is weird because we live in Jacksonville, but we do like it here so I think that makes it ok. We talked about Dalton, which is the lovely town my family is all from, but Brian's never been there and we don't love it, just the way it sounds, so that's silly. Kids are liking Ammon from the Book of Mormon right now. I don't know about Ammon Verdie, I mean those are both pretty weird.

I'm hoping if the baby is a boy that boy names will start to feel better to me. Or maybe that's why they don't, because it's not a boy so why would they feel right.

Side note, I'm in my pj's and my neighbor is edging his side yard. I need some curtains... Just sayin.