Being totally smug...and taking credit

The other day I was thinking about my grown kids....who are not really kids. Scott will be 30 this summer, and Elizabeth will be 27. My adult kids.

Both were married last summer, and I really like my son and daughter in law. For this moment in time, all four are happy, and doing wonderful. One can never be too smug, for things can change in a heartbeat.

But for now I am relishing in the fact our kids are great.....and are great people.

I called my daughter up today and announced that *I* was a terrific mom...and my husband was a terrific *dad*. The reason? We have two terrific kids.

My husband was in the car with me while I made this crazy phone call, and he laughed and said a good part of it was luck.

NO! I told him if parents have to be blamed when their kids do bad stuff, I sure as heck plan to take the credit for when they are doing wonderful.

For this moment in time...I am a WONDERFUL parent.

Of course...my daughter now thinks I am a tad daff.

Time is Relative

This morning I took my mother to the doctor's. As I waited for her, a young couple with a small child sat in front of me. The boy had a bottle, yet he looked a bit old for a bottle. Next to me another lady sat down with a small boy and girl. They looked as if they were in early elementary school.

The youngest child was cuddling with his father, and the two were smiling at each other lovingly. In that moment I wanted to tell them to relish this time, as it is over so quickly.

Next to me the little girl climbed in her mother's lap, and I remembered how my kids were constantly climbing on my lap. My mother-in-law used to comment that she never saw two children who sat on laps as frequently as mine.

My oldest with be thirty this summer. 30! And my little girl, is three years behind him.

It really does seem like such a short time ago.

The little boy and girl next to me were looking at pictures on the wall. They were of sports teams the doctor had sponsored. Each had a date, and the mother was pointing out one to the children, noting that it predated their birth.

For them, that was soooooo long ago. The year 2000.

Time is relative.

Amazing Coupon Savings

For all those moms out there trying juggle their family’s budget, make more time with their children, and fill their pantry with food….have you discovered couponsense.com yet?

When my kids were little (Elizabeth was just a newborn) I took classes on how to use grocery coupons – how to get more bang for my buck. It was a great class, but I thought the whole thing took a lot of work and I HATED clipping, sorting and saving all those coupons. (I have a junk mail phobia…and while coupons are not junk mail…they somewhat resemble it).

We moved to the small mountain village of Wrightwood when Elizabeth was just a baby, and Wrightwood only had one grocery store – family owned – at the time. Therefore utilizing the coupons to their fullest would be difficult. When it snowed the week we moved in, and my box of coupons got wet, I threw them away, and it gave me the excuse to give up.

But it is a quarter of a century later, and couponing has changed drastically…in that we now have the internet and programs like couponsense.com that make the process easy, fun, and a great way to save money.

I joined a couple of months ago and LOVE it! The savings are amazing.

The basic premise is this:
Do not shop for your weekly menu, shop to fill your pantry

Plan your weekly menu by what is in the pantry

Combine coupons with weekly sales to get the best deals

Buy in bulk, in that you purchase the maximum number of items that you can using the coupon and sale

Do not CLIP your coupons when you get them, you file the insert according to the week, and pull the coupons you need, when you need them. (This is one way couponsense helps)

Now, the big difference is couponsense.com. It does a lot of things, and I can’t explain them all now, but my favorite thing it does, is that it monitors the sales of all the local grocery stores. It then tells me where to find coupons to go with the sale.

For example, the first week I started I had 5 coupons for Colgate, at 75 cents off. A local pharmacy was offering Colgate on sale for 88 cents. So, I bought the maximum allowed (which happened to be 5). I spent 13 cents for each tube of Colgate toothpaste.

Since I’ve started I never pay more than $1.50 for a box of cereal. And I have been consistently paying $1.50 for a gallon of milk, because I can quickly find out which store is offering the best price for milk that week.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If they offer the service in your area, you can purchase a one month trial for $4. After that it is $15 a month, and well worth it.

I have a referral number, so if you give it a try I would appreciate it if you would use it. But, I am not posting this for the referral, I really..really…think it is a great way to shop.

Referral number: 1714074
http://couponsense.com/