Texas and My Husband

Tomorrow I'm hittin' the open road and heading down to Texas to visit my husband. Needless to say I'm pretty excited. I have only been to Texas once and it was in February of last year not too long after they had started the job he is currently on.

Seth is a Superintendent for a construction company that's located here in Kansas and he's been working out of town the past 4 and a half years. Not fun. This is his third project, building waste water treatment plants, with the company and each one of them has kept him out of town. Twice now he has been over seven hours away meaning he only gets to come home every other weekend. Again, not fun.

After being married and "living" together for a year and a half I still have no idea what it's like to live with him full time. I always like to joke that we are easing into living together when people comment how much it must suck to be so far away from each other. And yes, it isn't fun to try and fit our relationship into phone calls and crammed weekend visits but we're making it work. The truth is, I think it has probably helped our relationship (not that it was bad) because we are forced to talk to each and actually communicate since that's the only option we have. Plus, we know it's only temporary.

By temporary, I mean, once he has finished up the job he is currently on he will get to move home! We are thinking it should be in the next month or two when he is finished and I can't wait. Neither can he. After this job is done he will be moving up to Project Manager and be responsible for several projects,  but he will get to work from the office that is about 40 minutes from our home. He may still have to travel maybe a couple days a month but that will be nothing compared to now. 

Anyways, I'm going to visit him tomorrow until Sunday and I'm really looking forward to it. He has sent me pictures of the job he's building, but it looks so different from when I saw it that I can't even tell what anything is. It's always impressive to me that he can just look at the plans and build things. I mean, who knows how to just build a waste water treatment plant? Seth, that's who. 

We are also going to do some fun stuff like visit the Stockyards and go see some bull riding or a rodeo maybe. I even talked him in to taking me to get a pair of cowboy boots:) Oh, and I'll probably eat a lot. I'm really good at that. If any of you have suggestions of fun things to do around Ft. Worth feel free to send them my way! 

You can check out my Instagram (here) if you want to follow my weekend as Texas girl.

Ya'll have a great weekend, ya hear?! (just practicing my accent;)

Extreme Couponing?

I feel like I pretty much dominated at grocery shopping these past couple days. I managed to stock our freezer and cabinets fairly well while easily saving over a couple hundred bucks. 

To give you an idea of the savings I had on Sunday:

I spent $74 at Wal-Mart for 70 items. 

One item was $20 and it was my dog's flea and tick meds and this was the only item I didn't price match. 

So essentially I spent $54 for 69 items. 

6 pkg of Kraft shredded cheese - FREE

6 pkg of Kraft natural slices cheese - FREE

6 pkg of Oscar Meyer bologna - Free (I don't eat this but I donate it)

6 pkg of Oscar Meyer Deli Fresh lunchmeat - .49 cents each

3 pkg of Oscar Meyer Bacon - .99 cents each

4 - 32 oz bottles of Gatorade - .59 cents each

4 jars of Planters peanuts - .99 cents each

6 pkg of Green Giant steamfresh frozen veggies -.65 cents each

Can't remember what all of this was priced but the total added with the stuff above only came out to $54.

2 pkgs of Crystal Light

3 bottles of Hunts Ketchup

2 Velveeta Cheesy Skillets

3 pkgs of Keebler Cookies

2 - 4lb bags of C&H Sugar

2 - 24pk cases of Nestle Pure Life Water

1 - 12 roll pk of Angel Soft TP

3 - Butterfingers

1 - Cheetos

1 - Fritos

4 pkg of Hamburger Helper

3 cans of manwhich

1 - Ekrich Smoked Sausage

$20 dog meds

Wally world deals.

You might be looking at this list and thinking that's a lot of crap and cheese. I admit, there is quite a bit of junk in here but this is also not what we eat every day and most of this stuff will last my husband and I several months (not the cheetos, they are my weakness;). I honestly go to the grocery store 2-3 times a week and pick up the fresh produce but I tend to stock up every couple months on this other stuff whenever they have big sales. A lot of the stuff "freezes beautifully" including the cheese and lunchmeat so that helps as well. 

Monday I followed up my big food extravaganza with a little bit of shopping at the local Dillons (Kroger). I had to run in to deposit my paycheck and pick up a prescription so I thought I would check things out while I was in there. Good thing I did. 

1 Gillette shaving cream

2 bottles of Pantene

2  tubes of Colgate toothpaste

1 Colgate toothbrush 

3 cans of Van Camps pork and beans (bbq season is upon us!)

1 Dial handsoap

1 Downy Unstoppables (mildly obsessed with these, have you tried them?)

1 head of Romaine lettuce

Grand total $5 and change. Not bad if I say so myself. 

Dillons deals.

If you have any questions about what kind of deals I used just let me know. I use coupons a lot and I also always price match at Wal-Mart. Such an easy way to save money even though it does take a little bit of time. 

7 Quick Takes (2)

1. I'm loving my new phone! Not loving that my phone case from Amazon still hasn't been delivered. I mean, I placed the order Monday and it's Friday and still no delivery! Oh, and is there an app for patience?? Haha

2. I work for a printing company and they are very pet friendly. This is my newest co-worker, Bear. He helps me keep from stressing out some days. I would bring Gunnar but he would probably eat everything and ruin it for everyone so he gets to stay home.

3. My husband is on his way home to see me finally! Two weeks away is never fun but so glad that it should be ending in the next month or so. Then we finally get to take a vacay and spend the summer together doing fun stuff like going to Royals games. Love me some baseball!

4. I've been eating really healthy all week (minus my daily Pepsi's and occasional cookie) and the sales guys had to go and ruin it today by bringing us donuts for breakfast and pizza for lunch. No will power here...maybe I'm getting better though because I did only eat one slice of pizza and one donut. That's gotta count for something right?

From this...

...to this...

...to this. Oops.

5. I'm currently obsessed with the following songs: 

Boys Round Here - Blake Shelton

I know what you did in the dark (Light em up) - Fall Out Boy

Can't Hold Us - Macklemore ft Ryan Lewis.

All these songs make me want to jam out big time. 

6. It's May 3rd and it was snowing yesterday and acting like it wants to snow today. Come on KS, get it together! I need Summer NOW!!!

7. Earlier this week I bought a food dehydrator and last night I tested it out by drying strawberries, bananas, apples, pineapple, and blueberries. I tried a few of the fruits this morning and they are delish. I'm super pumped about trying some other stuff including jerky and then some herbs once it warms up enough for me to grow them in my garden. If you have any suggestions of good stuff to dehydrate, let me know. 

Happy Weekend!! You can follow mine on Instagram, here:)

More than a phone.

Well, I'm loving it, so far anyway. 

Even though I've only had my iPhone for less than 24 hours I've been hit with the realization that there are a heck of a lot of apps used to tell the world what you're doing. Facebook, twitter and instagram to name just a couple. I'm gonna have to be careful or I will end up spending more time telling the world what I'm doing than I will spend actually doing something in the world. Scary how easy it can be to get sucked in to social media. 

I've noticed recently that I have been using Facebook as a type of online journal if that makes sense. For example, I can go back and read about things that happened in college or the day to day stresses of planning our wedding. It's pretty neat that you can easily track all these little moments in life. I have always been somewhat of a historian in the way that I want to remember the past through words, stories and photos so this is really neat to me (thus this blog). Especially since I have always been jealous of those people that do journal religiously. My mom being one of them. It's amazing to go back through her journals and see all those little details that spark memories that would have otherwise been forgotten. 

As I install some of these new apps I'm hoping to be able to use this piece of technology to continue on the path of documenting life and memories. Time will tell if I'm able to easily live my life for me or for my technology. 

Oh, and click here for our Instagram debut:)

Marvelous Monday

How do you know the $1 garage sale DVD's are cheap knockoffs? (This isn't a joke, btw) When the combo disk includes The Passion of the Christ and Fifty First Dates. Seriously?? I totally would have bought a couple of the other movies because I thought they were legit until I stumbled across that one. Ha.

   and   = ????

Nothing like getting up at 4:15 am to stumble through peoples garages looking for bargains. Even though I may have not ended up with an awesome movie combo (which I now regret buying) I did have lots of fun since I went with one of my aunts and two of my cousins. We searched through hundreds, okay maybe not hundreds (even though there were hundreds) of sales and my cousins managed to find lots of cute stuff for their kiddos. Since I have no kiddos, now or within at least nine months, I managed to escape without much. I spent the majority of my money on breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that factoid considering my love for food. I did manage to find a box of cool canning jars that I'm pretty stoked about though. The sales were all at Ft. Leavenworth in the military housing which is actually pretty cool to see if you ever get the chance. Apparently they have one huge sale every year and it seems like almost every other house has their garage opened for potential bargain hunters. Pretty neat.

It may be Monday but I'm pretty sure today has the potential to be the highlight of the week because my iPhone has arrived!! I'm seriously so pumped that I finally got it and I can't wait for the end of work so I can go get it activated. If anyone has some awesome app suggestions I would love to hear them!

I ordered a couple cute phone cases off of Amazon today. One pink and one a light minty green. A couple of my favorite colors in case you can't tell by my current blog background. I also ordered some screen protectors and an Otterbox Armor case for my husbands phone. I guess the Armor case can be submerged in water for up to 30 minutes and it's crush proof up to 2000 pounds or something like that. Hopefully, since I dropped a small fortune on the case he will manage to keep his phone alive until it's at least paid off. Has anyone had that case before? Seth's in the construction field and is constantly around heavy machinery and water so I feel like it was probably a good investment.

Oh, and another Happy Monday for me, it's approximately 80 degrees here and I'm in love with it. Yesterday I was able to lay out on my back deck for awhile and get some sun which was fantastic but two days of gorgeousness after this awful winter is blowing my mind right now!

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fifty+first+dates&go=&qs=AS&form=QBRE&pq=fifty+fir&sc=8-9&sp=1&sk=

Randoms

There are so many things I want to talk (write) about right now I'm not really sure where to start. I guess I will make a list kinda post with the randomness that is on my mind.

Twitter Drama

Last night at LifeNight (Youth Group) I had to meet with a handful of my girls to discuss the topic of online bullying via twitter and such. A couple of the mom's had brought some of the online drama to our (me and the other LN leader) attention and asked that we discuss with them. It was obviously not a fun conversation to have and everyone kinda just stared at me. I tried to lighten things up by throwing in a line from Mean Girls...You know the one where Tina Fey says, "Raise your hand if you have been personally victimized by Regina George"? Well, I was just met with cold stares and then I felt like they were thinking I was calling them Mean Girls. Face palm. Hoping they can all make up and move on at some point but things are still looking a little rough so we will see.

Gunnar

Gunnar has spent a lot of hours in his big pen this week and I feel really bad. After getting into a fight with a barbed wire fence last week I'm worried to leave him out but he just seems miserable inside the pen. Now don't think he's locked in a little kennel because that's not the case. It's actually a giant outdoor pen that I would guess is probably 20ft x 20ft (i'm not much of a guess-tamater but I think that seems legit) plus he has a huge shed that he can go into if the weather isn't nice. I'm pretty sure all he does is sit inside his shed though. ALL DAY LONG! It's like he is scared to go out in the sunshine or something. Hoping he gets over this soon because he is breaking my heart.

Seth

Warning: Extreme sappiness ahead

I realized yesterday that 11 years ago this month is when Seth and I started dating! April 14th, 2002. Holy smokes I can't believe it has been that long, or short depending on how you look at it, but wow. It was a year and half ago this month that we got married. October 15, 2011 - Best day of my life. I must say that I am blessed beyond belief that this man is in my life. He is the most loyal and best friend I could ever ask for. He would drop everything for any of his family or friends, even strangers at any time. His work ethic is unmatched as far as I'm concerned and his grilling skills are beyond delicious. Every time I see someone write about how wonderful and great their husband is I can't help but think that they don't have any idea how great husbands can really be. I hope I'm wrong and that all women feel the same way I do but I just don't think it's possible. I guess I'll stop here but be warned that I'm still full of all the sappiness.

Leaving the church!

Can't decide if my mouth wide open like this looks obnoxious or not...

Tomorrow's Friday and I. Can't. Wait.

The Day I Ordered the iPhone:)

In an effort to start this week off right I did what anyone would do. I bought/ordered an iPhone! In a short 3-5 days I will have that lovely piece of technology in my hands and I can't wait! I have wanted a darn thing for as long as they have existed but my hubs and I are t-mobilers. Multiple times I have tried to talk Seth into switching carriers so I can get my darn phone but he was pretty insistent that was stay with T-Mobile because they have treated us alright and his family and my family all have T-Mobile. So I have been stuck, waiting for that wonderful day when T-Mobile would strike up a deal with Apple and I could get my phone. 

After visiting T-Mobile on Friday to discuss my plan options, I realized that Seth and I could both get new phones and still pay the same we already pay even after paying the $20 a month per phone. Once the phone is paid off we will pay less! So, duh. No reason not to change phones. I went home to tell the Seth the good news and make plans to order our phones the next day. Pretty sure I drove Seth bananas asking when we could go back to order the phones on Saturday and when we finally arrived, their computers were down:( So, we went back Sunday. Still down! Finally, yesterday I went and they were able to order. Hallelujah!

In order to keep the good karma flowing (and because I was hungry) I decided to text my sis-in-law to see if I could take her to dinner. After spending hours upon hours in her house and not being cleared to drive after her surgery she was more than willing to get out of the house. I took her to Panera since she had never been and who doesn't love a good bowl of soup? It was great to catch up with her and see how she's doing with all the craziness going on in her life right now. 

I decided to top the day off by picking up some candy for one of my cousins who is having a rough couple days. I dropped it off at school with an anonymous card to hopefully cheer her up. I think it's the little things that make people smile so hopefully it will make her day a little better. 

Going to lunch with one of my best friends, her mom and sis and my mom soon so this day is looking up as well. Minus the drizzly frozen rain junk that is happening outside right now.

Happy Tuesday folks!