Grocery Run #2 TOTAL SAVED $164.63

So our final run for the week is as follows:

2-10 oz bags of Mahatman yellow rice, 1-32 oz Mahatma White rice, 8-rolls Cottnell Bath tissue, 1-pk Dixie Refill bathroom cups, 1-pk Dixie Coffe to go cups, 4 lbs Domino Sugar, 2- V8 Soups, 1-Colgate Kid Toothbrush, 1-Colgate 360 Toothbrush, 1-Colgate Toothpaste, 1 Box Nexcare Bandages (waterproof tattoos for the kids), 4-Sargento Salad Finishers, 1-Bag of Salad, 1-pk mento gum, 4-pk Dole mixed Fruit, 6-pk Delmonte Peach Cups, 6- pk Delmonte Fruit Cups, 4-pk Dole Strawberry Mixed Fruit, 1-bx Moon Pies (I haven’t had these since I was a kid), 1-bx Barbie Band-Aids, 1-bx Tostino Pizza Rolls, Birds Eye Broccoli, Birds Eye Steam Fresh Vegetables, Steam Fresh Potatoes and Green Beans, Reddi Whip, Jell-O Moose Cups, 6-pk Sargento Shredded Cheeses, Meatballs, 1-bag Dunkin Turbo Coffee, 12 Roll Bath Tissue (store brand), Lobster & Shrimp Dip, Natures Own Bread, 4- boxes Nature Valley Granola Bars, 1-box Lucky Charms, Lawry Lemon Pepper, 2-bags Tostitos Chips, 1-Cheese Dip, 1-container Eclipse Gum, 4-boxes of Quaker Bars, 2-Endusts, Palmolive Dish Soap, 6-Rolls of Viva Paper Towels, Vanity Fair Napkins and Plates, 8-Rolls Brawny Paper Towels, 12-Rolls of Northern Bath Tissue, 2-McCormick Seasoning Grill Mates, 1-box 100 calorie snack crackers, Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Cookies (not on sale but Guy had to have them).

Total Before Sales & Coupons $269.75

Total After Coupons $105.12

Read more...

Grocery Trip #1 SAVED $108.36

I got really excited when I found out that we were going to have 10 consecutive days of Triple Coupons. I know its lame but saving money gets me excited.  So today I hit up Lowes Food (since it was their last day of triple coupons) and Harris Teeter to get their B2G3 deals.  Harris Teeter starts tripling tomorrow.

Here is the take: 2 cases of water, 6 Hamburger Helper, 2 bxs Froot Loops, 2 bxs Corn Pops, 2 -10 oz Mahatma Yellow rice, 2 bxs Cheeze Its, 2 Bertolli Skillet Meals, 2 bxs Drumstick ice Cream Cones, 2 Cans Frenchs Fried Onions, 1 -80oz  bag Mahatma Long Grain Rice, 1 Jar Newmans Pasta Sauce, 8 bxs of Cherrios, 2 Welches Juices, 1 pk Mozzarella Cheese Dippers, 2 Texas Toast Garlic Bread, 2 Starbucks Ice Cream (yummy), 6 Yopolait GoGurt, 1 International Delight White Mocha Creamer, 1 pk 32 oz Meatballs.

Total Before Coupons and sales $163.71

Paid out of Pocket  $55.35

TOTAL SAVINGS OF  $108.36

We will be doing some more shopping tomorrow at Harris Teeter. Three seperate runs since we have over 60 coupons.  Once we are done we will be donating some of the stuff to the Food Pantry at the Catholic Diocese.

Read more...

Treasure Hunt #11

We went on our weekly caching trip and found some great Caches.  Here are a few pics.

This was at a nice local park.  Another great park for us to visit again.  We looked for a couple of caches hidden here and did not find either of them.  We were very dissapointed but will try again some other time since there are 30 caches hidden throughout this park.  They have these wonderful hiking trails throughout along with some sport fields.

Although we did not find any caches we did find this nice little stream and a few extra hiking paths.  All in all we may not have found our caches but we found another little treasure ....This Park!

We found this one in another park.  Although we had visited this park before we did not know how big it was.  These next few caches took us all the way to the back of the park where we found a pretty lake, soccer fields, playgrounds and yes caches.

We found this little guy gaurding one of the caches

The kids loved playing in the park once the sun came out and the rain clouds disappeared.

This was a matchbox cache.  Blayke loved this one since it was stocked with little matchbox cars.  We found a Geocoin in this one also.

Chaosmanor's Laval K-9 #2 was placed in a cache in California on 6/13/2007.  It has traveled 6,911 Miles. Current GOAL: My mission is to travel wherever I can, bringing smiles to the faces of those who meet me :-) I would love to have my picture taking with any dogs you might know. And I enjoy being discovered, too. Best of all, I don't eat anything! Arf!! 

 

We took a picture of this coin with Hunter our Beagle and posted it on the site. We will move it along soon.

We Dedicate this find to our Super Hero Women! Thanks for coming to the rescue - GIRL POWER!!

This cache was titled "Girl Power".  We needed some assistance to find the right coordinates to this one.  That's when Super Women Brittney, Madison & Jocelyn came to the rescue.  They looked up the correct coordinates for us (since our blackberries weren't working) and helped us find this one. 

We found This "Love Bug" in Girl Power Cache.  This travel bug was first placed in a cache in Cresent, NC on 6/2/09. Unfortunately it has only traveled 70 miles.  Current GOAL: This Travel Bug is the Love Bug! The mission is to take a picture of yourself with your love and email to love@markcantrell.net. Once the mission has been completed, please move me quickly to another destination! I would love to visit Hawaii, Texas, California, Madrid, London and Paris. After all this I would really love to make it back home to Mark. Thanks!

We followed the instructions and will move it along later this week.

Read more...

Four Little Green Thumbs

We decided to buy a raised planter instead of building one.  They were pretty cheap so we got a 4' x 4' to start off with that way we are not biting off more than we could chew at one time.

Mia and Blayke were so excited about transplating their plants, mommies herbs never grew (must have been bad seeds)

We had to put chicken wire around it to keep the silly rabbit out.  So let you know what we have planted here is the list.

(2) Sunflowers, (2) Watermelons, (2) Pumpkins, (2) Jalapenos, (2) Sweet Peas, (2) Cherry Tomatoes, (2) Regular Tomatoes, (1 Eggplant).  We have two more vacant spots for some extras. 

We have started seads for 2 different types of lettuce, Brocolli, Cilantro, & Carrots.  We will see which ones take.  If they all take we are gonna get one more planter box.

Read more...

Life of a Black Lab

Found this little guy on my morning stop today.  He just started his journey on 4/10/10.  So we will be moving him along on his travels this weekend.  Cute story behing this Travel Bug.  Current Goal:It's Shelby (in small/stuffed form) off to travel the globe and spread good cheer as the official mascot of Life of a Black Lab! Visit http://www.lifeofablacklab.com/ to see what Shelby (in non-small/stuffed form) has been up to lately.

Read more...

Grocery Buy of the week - SAVED #137.26

We have just been buying filler items lately since we are pretty well stocked with groceries.  However, Harris Teeter had some pretty good items on sale this week so I could not resist.  They have this Express Lane online shopping service, you can order your groceries online and your shopping will be done for you. You just designate the time you want to pick up your groceries and they’ll be ready! No hassle, no waiting, no need to get out of your car - all for a low service fee of only $4.95 per trip.  I save way more than $4.95 with coupons so I figured it should pay for itself and it did.  It was way cool!

I put the order in at 10:30 AM and they called me at 1:20 PM to tell me the order was ready.  They put it in a refrigerated area until you come to pick it up.  I drove into the Express Lane on may way home to get the kids and was in and out within 8 Minutes by the time they brought it out, loaded up and paid.  WAY COOL- Drive through grocery shopping who would of thunk it!

Bought several items of which were 10 jars of spagetti sauce and alfredo sauce, 6 boxes of cereal, 6 lbs of shrimp, 3 lbs of Salmon, 2 Beef Tenderloins, 4 lbs of strawberries, 3 pks of Rice, 2 boxes of popsicles, 10 Boxes of spagetti and pasta, and way more other stuff....all for the lovely price of $62.39 and best yet didn't have to get out of the car.  I am sooooo doing that next week when there is Triple Coupons to be had.

Read more...

Treasure Hunt #10 with some added fun

We hit the 30 caches found mark on Sunday.  We went to South Carolina on a hunt for some and then hit Plaza Fiesta for some lunch and fun.  Here are some pics of our outing.

I must say we have found some VERY nice parks in our treasure hunts that we have mapped to spend lots of time at during our stay in Charlotte over the years.

Plaza Fiesta is an indoor flea market with south american products for sale.

They also have this 6 story play center for the kids along with an Arcade

The kids had a blast

Read more...

Treasure Hunt #9

Mia had a great idea this morning on our way out the door to go on our weekly treasure hunt.  She got one of the baskets from their playroom and filled it with "swag" tradable items.  The basket came in hand to hold out collection, blackberries & GPS.

Our first two hunts were unscuccesful.  We think the caches have been taken since no one has found them in the last 8 searches based off of their logs.

On our hunt for our third cache we found these tractors.  Blayke is in love with big machines so we had to stop and take a closer look since we had the chance

Looks like they are building a greeway walking/biking trail through these woods.  It will be a nice addition to this particular area of town.  There are lots of parks and homes around so pleanty of people will enjoy/use it.

Here are a few of our finds  We hiked alot today to find most of these.  It was a perfect weather day with a High of 76 degrees.  We crossed several creeks/steams to get to a couple of these and got off track on one.

We found the "Travel Bug of the Traveling Pants" this morning.  These pants like to travel, (That's why we named it the TRAVEL Bug of the TRAVELING Pants) so keep 'em moving, people!!! And PICS PICS PICS!!!!!.  They have traveled 1,062 Miles and were originally placed in a cache in Virginia 11/18/2007/  We left them and the other Geocoin in seperate caches today.

We went to a local pizza joint for lunch and then went to Rita's for desert....yum.  It was a great day.

Read more...

Quick Hunt On The Way Home

I saw that this geocache had just been placed in its hidding place and I wanted to be the first to find it and get the "First To Find Collectible Coin.  It was titlesd"Rock of Ages" so I knew I was looking for a pile of rocks once I got to the location. 

 I parked in a local subdivision and started walking to the piles of rocks I saw by the main road.  Somehow I tripped in a hole covered with grass...just my luck a Police Officer was driving by at that time so he pulled over to make sure I was okay (or atleast not drunk I guess).  I was fine and explained what I was up to.  He stayed to help me find this cache.  Unfortunately I did not think to get a pic of him.

Someone beat me to the stash just a couple of hours earlier so the Coin was gone but he left a Travel Coin.  He also left these other coins with a website on them to get free trackable geocoins so I took one to see what that was all about.

We tracked the coin at Nana & Pops later after dinner. This Geocoin is "Rod's For the Love of Caching Feb 08 GSC&P Geocoin"  It has traveled 11,693 Miles on it's mission to travel the world one cache at a time.   It was originally placed in a cache in New Mexico on 2/21/2008.  It has been to Alaska and is working its way through the states no overseas visits yet.

Read more...

And the Diagnosis Is.....

We have all been in and out of the Doctor's/Urgent Care Offices for the past two weeks so we really haven't had a lot to blog about ....I figured we would catch everyone up on our ailments....

Guy - Had Strep Throat which dropped his immunity, he developed a rash which we later found out was Shingles.

Nelda - Tore a contact in her right eye, thought she had pink eye, lost her glasses & the dog ate her last set of contacts, went to see the eye doctor who informed her that she needed new glasses and contacts (her vision has worsened) and had to get her right eye checked because there appears to have been some nerve damage caused by something or another. Then she had to go to Urgent Care because she woke up really dizzy on Monday and could not stand on her own- turned out to be a bad case of Vertigo.

Blayke - Servere allergy attacks, pink eye, cold/congestion on top of the allergies.  He made two trips to the Urgent Care before his symptoms got under control.  He then had to go to his Pediatrician to get 4 immunization vaccines (he needs to get caught up since he was always sick when we took him in to get his shots).  They also had to draw blood to tests his allergies to decide on whether to put him on a perscription drug or start the shots on him since he is apparently not growing out of this allergy thing.

Mia - Started developing a cough on Monday...apparently it has moved into her chest....we had to take her to Urgent Care last night since she was crying and saying that everytime she coughed it felt like someone was piking her chest.  She has a Bronchial Infection she is now being treated for.

Her brother tried to make her feel better!

I think we have covered enough sickness in our house to last us the rest of the year......germ bugs, diseases and the likes PLEASE STAY AWAY!

Read more...

Treasure Hunt #8

We went to visit Nana and Pop since they were not feeling to good.  The kids really missed them while they were gone.  On our way back home we decided to do a little treasure hunting.  We found one at a local CVS parking lot.  It was a quick park and grab and had just a log  in it.  Then we went on a few real hunts.

This was a local biking trail, the kids love doing these hunts together.

Our first cache was hanging from a tree in an old coffee canister

It had a fun trade items for the kids

We found Teckla's - Geocoin Club August 2009 Geocoin

There is no current goal for this item but is has traveled 396 miles since being placed in a Florida cache near Micanopy November of 2009.

Our next one took us a bit to find, we had to try two different paths to get to it.

Yeah baby we found it!

Kids loved this stash.  We left Teckla's Coin here for someone else to move it along on its journey.

This one was fun to find in a local park.  We actually had a Muggle visiting from Georgia help us find this one.  (A Muggle is A non-geocacher. Based on "Muggle" from the Harry Potter series, which is a non-magical person. Usually this term is used after a non geocacher looks puzzled after befriending a geocacher searching for a cache, or when a non-geocacher accidentally finds a cache. Geomuggles are mostly harmless.)  These Muggles are now hooked.  We gave them coordinates to a few other caches near by and showed them how to sign up.

This cache was disguised as a bird feeder.  The owner actually super glued birdseed on the clear walls to make it appear full.  When you look in the box it is empty and has the stash and log inside.

We left 12 Provincien Geocoinrace 2008-2009 Geocoin van Janneke to continue on its journey.

Read more...