Show Us Your LIfe Money Saving Tip

(Reposted for Kelly's Money Saving Tips)

I made a great discovery this week! Well, I think it's great, but everyone else may already know. Have you checked out the library lately? I realized that they have really good cd's! Every cd that I wanted to buy (which is at least about 15 at any given time) they had to rent! I have been mad at itunes for raising the price of their songs, so I haven't bought any lately, but now I can listen to everything I want FOR FREE!!! And they have movies too! I was mad because I looked up several of the last few movies we have rented and they had them all there, again FOR FREE!!! I'm all about saving a buck, and though I LOVE Redbox (I'm also mad at Blockbuster for being a RIP OFF) free is even better! SO needless to say I requested that a bazillion things be sent to the library by our house and I can't wait to go pick 'em up!

Dinner and Dogs

We've just been hanging around lately. The vegetarian diet is going quite well and we have both lost weight. i am really enjoying chopping and cooking vegetable rather than meat- SO much easier, SO much less "ickiness." I am learning to LOVE cheat day and I now savor every morsel of eating out or getting a dessert. We were so spoiled before and just scarfed down food at a restaurant because it wasn't really a treat, but now it tastes so good and we really appreciate it! This is one of our meals from last week- not too bad huh?

We took a trip last weekend to Tahlequah to go to the Red Fern Festival. It was really fun and I loved seeing the hound dogs. I teared up when I saw some like our dog Annie that we had when I was growing up and that really caught me off guard. I was pretty embarrassed and not expecting that at all, but sometimes things just hit you like that I guess. Here are some pictures of the field trials that were pretty fun to watch (although I felt really sorry for the raccoon.)

Ezra enjoyed listening to the music and his free balloon!

and look who is becoming an expert crawler...

I didn't think she was ever going to crawl because Ezra never did. He just walked and skipped crawling altogether, but she has gotten really good at it and I have been a very busy lady!

Have a great weekend! Eat some veggies!!!

Beaches and Bellies

I am SO excited that we have planned our beach trip this year! We are going in July and this time my family is going too! I can't wait!!! So we have about 3 months to go :( but that means lots of time to look forward to it, which I enjoy almost as much!

My husband decided he wanted to shed a few winter pounds before he made his beach debut and we could all stand to eat a little healthier, so he was talking about going vegetarian. We did this once before and in a few weeks he lost LOTS of weight. It seems to be a pretty sure bet for us, so a few weeks ago I began searching for vegetarian recipes. UGH! I don't know if you have ever looked them up online, but they are CRAZY!!! At least the ones I have found. They call for about 72 ingredients, half of which I have never even heard of...and I'm a WHOLE FOODS girl! I still have the ones from last time but we use them all the time and plus I don't have anywhere near 3 MONTHS worth!

To make a long story "somewhat" short I had heard of E-mealz.com, but never really checked it out. We looked at it and it looks great! You pick what store you want and what type of meal plan you want (low calorie, low fat, vegetarian...or just regular and how many people you will be feeding. Each week they send you a 7 day menu for your family with a grocery list from the store you choose (they even have ALDI!!! and NOBODY loves Aldi better than me!) The prices are listed next to each item on the shopping list and it is all done on a decent budget. (I think it says never above $85 a week) It costs $1.25 a week, but to feed three on a strictly vegetarian diet for a week, that CAN'T be beat! And I of course googled for a coupon code and got a discount off of that!

We went grocery shopping last night and I told Caleb our cart looked like a stranger's cart. I have wanted to try a lot of these things before, but I just wasn't sure what you did with them. I guess I will be finding out!

This is our "meat."

And this is what the rest of our meals consist of, plus lots of grains, dairy and egg beaters.

I will also get to cook couscous this week for the first time, and it will no longer just be a fun word that I like to say over and over. I'm pretty excited and he did say that we could do a "cheat day" once a week, so if I absolutely must have a burger- I won't have to be in the depths of despair for longer than a week. I'm hoping that Caleb and I will lose weight, but we are betting that Ezra will gain weight! He LOVES fruits and veggies and will eat more than you can imagine, but he does NOT like eating meat. None of us are huge meat fans, unless it's BBQ-then LOOK OUT! Ha ha!

And to make this an "official" post, here are my lovely little ones. :)

Ezra and "Rooney" going for a ride.

Then he dropped off the baby and got to the big boy stuff!

Daddy's already teaching him how to off-road in the Jeep. :)

Mommy and Poppy just swinging while the boys were being silly.

And here is bubs doing the "Papa" tongue. What...your kid doesn't ride a giant worm around your house???

Weird.