I am thankful for many different things, for a little something different this year, I am going to list things that I am thankful for during this trip.

1. The Suburban we have the privilege of driving.  It is large enough for our family, and has some really neat features like wireless headphones, and heated seats.
2. Family that is awake late at night!
3. King size beds that let as many as 4 people sleep comfortable in them.
4. Heated Pool- this has been our favorite hang out spot, and a great place for the kids to use up some of their energy.
5. Haley- She has been a great help and enjoys being here!

This is a really short list because I have so much to be thankful for but this is a snap shot of our trip so far as well.

What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.
I was doing so well,even convinced most of my family that we could do this. I bought a gallon of milk at Walmart on Monday, thinking that should last at least a week. My plan was to use my gift cards, rain checks and coupons to buy a couple more gallons at Harris Teeter and met the challenge. I even made it to Harris Teeter in front of the milk. As I doubled checked my coupons here is the problem, they have expired. So even using my rain checks I am going to have to pay $3.79 a gallon for milk.Grrrr, After discussion and based on the fact we needed at least 3 gallons at home, we decided to put back the milk at Harris Teeter and head to Costco.   I actually did very well only purchasing items that we were completely out of or on our last container of. So I ended up spending $95. on milk, juice, bread and cheese. So the third week of the challenge is a fail!  But my goal is to be back on track next week!  Finishing out with 2/3 weeks meeting goal. That is a major improvement from  my last attempt and still very helpful for my budget/

Because of the storms in our area, Haley’s football game was cancelled; so we decided to head to Winston-Salem to use some coupons and things that expire on 9/30. I was able to leave two stores without spending anything!

First stop was JCPenny’s, I have had a jcpenny’s card for years. In the past they would reward you for spending $500 a year on the card as well as extra “gifts” throughout the year. This changed at the beginning of this year. I had not use my card at all. But when we got pictures made, I decide to use it so that I could easily track that spending. Good thing, because after much debate, JCPenny’s started their reward program again. For every $100 you spend on your credit card in a month, you receive a $10 off $10 gift card. I had two of these. So I was able to purchase an orange owl shirt for LIly, a pair of short for Zach(put up for next year), a long sleeve shirt for Zach and a short sleeve shirt for Zach. Two transaction and I spent $0!!!!

After some other quick stops, we headed to Harris Teeter, after yet another mistake with the Express Lane shopping, I received 2 $5 gift cards. I also had several rain checks with coupons that were expiring 9/30. So I was able to pick up 4 2L Diet Cokes, 2 bottles of Dawn detergent, 2 bottles of Lysol toilet cleaner and 2 dozen eggs. After coupons and rain checks the total was $8.09 so I still have $1.92 on a gift card.  We did make a decision to head to Costco as well due to the fact milk was priced at $3.99 a gallon. But I left Harris Teeter with no out-of-pocket!

Lots of hair = lots of hair bows

Haley’s senior year and Lily’s second grade year…

Trip to the mall usually means a ride….