OK, school supply shopping might not thrill you, but let me put this in perspective for you so you get why I am excited. Last year, Tyler had the pre-bought pack which cost me $35 or so for 5th grade (I think because it included a huge binder, this year they wanted almost $50 for incoming 6th graders). However, the binder was open-style and my 5th grader kept losing everything out of the edges. Evidently this was a common phenomenon because I was informed by my 10 year old that he needed a zip-up binder of a particular kind that everyone else had. I spent another $25 on that thing as well as replacing several other items he had received at the beginning of the year (all the higher priced items, of course) which literally fell apart within the first six weeks of school.
Additionally, the pack (and requisite list) had included 48 #2 pencils. 48!!! Each kid provided this and they were placed in the community pile for distribution throughout the year. Tyler doesn't even use them. He prefers mechanical and I am often asked to go get replacement lead for his pencils which costs me probably $15 or so throughout the year. On the rare occasions that Tyler didn't have his mechanical utensil with him or was out of lead, he would ask for a community pencil from his teacher - probably less than 5 throughout the year, and she would get angry with him and give him a disciplinary mark for not having a writing utensil. Explain that to me! It's a community bucket! Urgh.
Then Tyler gets another supply list for his REACH (gifted) program after school starts. Anyway - I probably spent $100 or more on supplies for 1 child last year, not including his back-pack, bike lock, 3 lunch boxes (Brewer kept finding them and chewing them up) and project supplies throughout the year. Not enough to break us or anything, but I will have 2 or more kids in school from now on and I wasn't going to spend money on a pack of supplies that I would have to replace again.
Frugality is key! My goal is to get as much as I can for as little as possible (and preferably higher quality on the pricier items), have extra supplies on hand so I don't have to pay more later when they need the supplies and be able to donate extra supplies for families that I know just getting the basics is difficult. I kind of felt like if I spent less than $10 per kid on all the little supplies, it would be no big deal to spend $30 on the premium binder Tyler wants for this year, etc. The school district got smart too - they made the required binder one that zips up for everyone.
So here I am, racking up deals on pencils, paper, folders, spirals and crayons in the midst of spending a total of 8 days at the family lake house in Texoma. When we finally got home from the second installment of that vacation on Sunday afternoon, I came home to find that my boxer, Brewer, really didn't like getting left a second time. Evidently he had reached his limit. You've heard of dogs chewing shoes up while you are at work because they miss you . . . well Brewer decided to get into my school supply bag! The only reason he isn't dead right now is that the crayon boxes he chewed up only cost me a quarter, the pencil boxes were only $.19 and the filler paper packages were only $.60. Over all it was probably about $2 worth of damage, but the mess! Wow! There were also a lot of random cardboard boxes and papers chewed up. The neighbor that was feeding him had picked up a lot of it and left it in a half-chewed banker box on my kitchen table, but I still had quite a disaster to clean up. There was also a fiasco regarding a combination of kitty litter and foam play matting, but that was so horrific I can't even relive it to explain it to you. Let's just leave it at this - it's all clean now and sanitary again, but it took me well over 2 hours to get it that way. NOT how I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon. Basically, all of my pets are lucky to be alive today.
So, coming home from our vacation was not great, but the week in general was awesome. We had gone up on Friday night, the 8th of July, after Scott got home from work. I had literally worked all day on packing everything a family of 5 (plus one) would need for a week at the lake house and I was exhausted before we even hit the road. We had invited Tyler's best friend, Jerry, from next door to come along so he would have a playmate for the week. He does great with his little brothers, but they aren't big enough to go off to the playground or the beach or fishing at the dock without an adult, and Tyler definitely is old enough. We figured it would save our sanity to have Jerry along, and it definitely did. The two had a great time together with only a few moments of irritation at each other, which was to be expected.
Last year, we had to carry Scooter to a beach chair, lay out towels for him to sit on and basically minimize any contact he had with sand or water at the beach. Of course, I just thought he was crazy (being the ultimate beach bunny that I am), but I didn't know that he had Sensory Issues at that time either. When we went up for Memorial Day this year, I was so thrilled that Scooter just walked right out into the sand and started playing. He still didn't want to go near the water or any wet sand, but it was a huge improvement. So, imagine my utter and complete JOY when on this trip, Scooter just walked right into the water and was even pulling wet, icky sand from the lake bottom up in his hands to play with! This is really an accomplishment and a milestone that I can't even really give justice to with mere words.
I would have liked to have even more pictures of how Scooter was playing, but I was pretty busy relaxing in the water myself. Riley kept asking to 'go really really deep' with his floatie on and we took turns complying. Riley has no fear whatsoever and told his grandma at one point that he basically wanted them to cross the lake to the other shore together. Right.
We had quite a few visitors to the lake as well. My parents and our dear friend, Susan, came up the first Saturday and spent the night. I don't have any pictures of them, but rest assured, they got some serious time in the water. On Sunday we took dad's dog, Rebel, and our sweet Bella (she only came for the first leg of the trip, but she loves Texoma) down to the beach and let them play. Bella just waded and swam for the longest time, probably thinking this was the coolest she had been all summer. Rebel kept trying to catch waves in his mouth which was highly entertaining.
On Monday, Scott's mom, Sandy, came up for one night with my nephew Jaxon whom she was watching for a few days while his parents and sisters enjoyed Disney World in Orlando. Jaxon will be 1 this week and this was his first trip to the lake.
Over all, we had a great time and I even remembered to pull out my camera a couple of times inside the house, instead of just at the beach, but admittedly not much.
The kids love it there, but after 5 days they were almost as ready as Scott and I to head home for a couple of days. I was in technology withdrawal and desperately needed to do my deal shopping for the week. We came home early Wednesday afternoon and between then and Friday morning, I got all my deal shopping done, got all the laundry done, packed Tyler up for church camp and then repacked the four of us up for another weekend at the lake.
Scott and I spent Friday afternoon repairing a French Door and a couple of deck chairs when we got there and then we spent a quiet night watching one of the little guys favorite movies, Transformers, together before we crashed. The next morning, Scott & the boys set up our beach gear again while I prepped for more visitors. Mom and Dad returned for the day, this time with Tara and my niece, Jocelyn, in tow (as well as Tara's dog, Winston, and sweet Rebel again - that was a crowded truck). Not long after they unloaded, Susan returned for another round at the lake with her daughter, Emily, and grandson, Riley, as well as our sweet friend Claudia (another surprise). {Side note here, the Riley thing gets confusing - mine is Matthew Riley and Emily's is James Riley, both called Riley and both named for Emily's beloved brother who passed 10 years ago this month. We usually call one big Riley and the other baby Riley, but baby Riley is 18 months now and might soon be bigger than my Riley, so we think we are just going to refer to them by their full names when we have them together. Crazy, but good crazy.}
When Jaxon had visited, we got to witness him taking a few of his first halting steps and spent a fair amount of time walking around with him grasping our fingers as he toddled here and there. Jocelyn, who just turned 9 months on Friday, was walking full steam upon arrival and trying to run after her cousins and 'boyfriend' James Riley. She is so adorable, but I am so glad that none of my kids walked that early (both Tara and I did, at nine months - our poor moms . . .). Jocelyn even tried walking in waves and in the sand. Pretty brave for having not been walking fully a week yet. The two babies were so cute though. James Riley is a water baby like you've never seen. He just plunges head first and expects you to catch him, holding his breath like a pro. You have to keep an eye on him, but it's hysterical.
(My personal favorite is James Riley walking around with no pants on after we lost the swim diaper.)
Is there anything cuter than a GIRL baby playing at the beach? I don't think so. Especially when it's one of my nieces! Anyway, I promise I haven't lost all the good feelings associated with our trip despite the messes my pets left me with upon our return. It's taken me two full days to unwind and get the laundry mostly done from our trip. Then Tyler came home from camp yesterday and gave me another full load of wet, musty smelling, gross laundry. Scott is back at work and definitely paying for his full week off, but he said it was worth it. Originally we were going to go away to Florida or South Texas for an ocean beach rental, but this was actually more fun. We got to share something we love with people we love. Here's hoping there will be many more times like this at that very house (there's drama involved, but I won't get into it) and that we aren't limited to just one weekend a summer like we were last year.
As for the rest of the summer, Tyler had been gone for 3 weeks prior to our lake trip and the rest of us were filling up our days with OT visits, swim lessons once a week, occasional trips to Rowlett to get some work done and of course cutting coupons and shopping for deals. Gonna toot my own horn for a second - I have gotten so good at the drug store game that I barely spend anything when I go to CVS and Walgreens each week now and come home with loads of good stuff. It was time to up my grocery game and I am getting better each week.
The last 3 weeks I have spent a total of $100 on groceries for our family. That doesn't include some extra snack purchases for the lake, beer & soda & juice for the lake, bags upon bags of ice for the lake and stops for fresh produce from the guy who sells out of the back of his pick-up near the entrance to our boat club. Those were added vacation expenses though, not normal groceries. And that $100 bought me about $350 (retail) of groceries. Not bad, if I do say so myself. That's well over 50% savings. I have no desire to be as crazy as the extreme couponing people on TLC (although I am totally loving watching them), but I am saving a ton of money which I love.
My husband still has not embraced the idea of the 'stockpile', even though I don't come anywhere near filling up a garage or an extra room in our house and have no desire to do so. He will say 'but do we NEED that?', not realizing that I'm really only spending pennies or nothing on toiletries to stock up. Eventually we will NEED them and he certainly isn't complaining when there is always an extra toothpaste or deodorant on hand and he doesn't have to ask me to go buy one. This week, I got 4 tubes of toothpaste for about a quarter each when they are normally priced between $4-6 for this size and brand and 2 deodorants that are normally $4 each for a quarter each. So even though I wasn't out of toothpaste or deodorant, I see it as saving almost $30 on a future need for $1.50. And because I use the 'same as cash' bucks/rewards at those drug stores, I didn't pay the $1.50 - they were free. Scott will get it eventually. It's not like I am going out and spending $50 to save $10 on something we don't need. I am saving like crazy on stuff that we will most assuredly use and my out of pocket budget for this stuff each week is actually less than I would have spent on the random tube of toothpaste and hair gel I would have bought anyway. Plus, we are going to smell great around here!
Okay done with the self shout out - and because I never got around to sharing all the details of our trip to Austin and San Antonio earlier this summer, some more of my favorite images of that trip.
Just a note - that ride is similar to the splash waterfalls one at Six Flags, but about 3 times bigger. Scooter absolutely insisted on going. Scooter! Riley wanted to go too, but he was too short, so I hung back with Tyler and Riley while Scott took Scooter on basically his biggest ride EVER!
Cute, smiley baby is Scott's cousin's son, CJ. We had lunch with Uncle Dave, Aunt Jan, cousin Jenny and baby CJ at Mi Tierra's on our last day of fun in San Antonio. Shout out to Mi Tierra's for just the best Margarita ever!
Do you just love the pirate eye patch? I do - favorite picture of vacation by far!
And just a couple more random shots from summer fun - a splash park we went to with some of Scott's family one day, a couple shots from the Wet Zone in Rowlett and sorta, kinda proof that Scooter actually went under water fully at his second swim lesson.
So that's it - our summer so far in a nut shell, or a slightly skewed picture show for whenever I happened to remember that I owned a camera. I believe we are pretty caught up. Tyler took a full roll of film with a disposable camera that I will attempt to get developed and if there is anything decent I'll scan and post. However, I went through the camp's pictures and found a couple of Tyler. Can I just say - they get to do a whole lot more at camp than I did going to good old Jan K Ranch back in the day! Zip Line, BMX track, Paint Ball, Archery - Wow! I kind of can't wait to be a counselor when the little guys get older.
Hope you all are having a great summer too. Ours is winding down already, slowing just a bit and giving me a little time to actually contemplate and write just a tiny bit now, I hope! Only 4 more weeks until Scooter goes to school and I have all kinds of issues wrapped up in that which I am sure are good for a blog or two alone. Today though, I am going to figure out how I can work out getting back to the lake house to retrieve my forgotten drill and also how I am going to function with my parents gone to Wisconsin for 3 weeks come Friday!
Thanks and God Bless!
