Our Little Chunk

Today was Elsie's 4 month checkup so I thought I'd do a post dedicated to our little chunky monkey...
Weight: 16 lbs. 9 oz. (92nd percentile!)
Length: 26 inches (92nd percentile!)
Head circumference: I don't remember exactly, but it was around the 50th percentile.
I looked back in Maia's baby book to see how they compared and at 4 months old Maia only weighed 14 lbs. 11 oz. and at SIX months she weighed 15 lbs. 13 oz.....still LESS than Elsie at four months!! So funny how different they are...I guess my milk has just gotten better over the past couple of years huh?
Here's a little bit about Elsie:
*She can roll from her front to back (she tries to get back to her belly, but only makes it halfway)
*She loves to be on her belly
*She is full of smiles and giggles
*She is a very happy, content, sweet baby
* She loves to blow bubbles, squeal, and growl
* She is very interested in her toys, especially this little giraffe she has
*She has suffered a few head injuries (among other things) by her sister Maia, but still seems to be quite normal:)
*She scoots to get things while on her belly (already??) Seriously! She pushes up off her toes and moves herself forward to get toys, etc.
*She's full of rolls and we LOVE to kiss her chubby cheeks!

We love you Elsie girl! We can't imagine life without you in our family!

You've GOTTA do this!!

So you all know that I love a good deal...curb items, garage sales, clearance sales, couponing...the list goes on. Speaking of COUPONING, I hit the greatest deal this week, I just had to share (I'm hoping to inspire my sister, Sienna, to get into couponing:) Anyway, if you have never done this before, it can be a little confusing so I'm going to try to walk you through it step by step. And as a sidenote, Megan started a blog a little while ago where she posts great deals (such as the one I'm going to tell you about) and how you go about doing it. You can find that blog HERE. I know it hasn't been updated for a little while, but hopefully in the fall when life is more normal she can get back into it and I can actually help her with it a little bit this time! So check it frequently and be sure to leave comments on how excited you are about the deals you are getting! Anyway, back to this sweet deal...This deal is on Huggies Diapers and you have to go to Rite Aid to get it.
So the first step is GET YOUR COUPONS. You want to try to have 5 coupons to get the best deal, but if you can't get all of those it still is good deal and you need to do it. I get the Huggies mailer, so I was able to get coupons there, as well as in the Sunday newspaper. This week's paper has a coupons for $1.50 off of regular diapers, $3 off of Pure and Natural Diapers, and $2 off of GoodNite diapers (I was able to use all of those coupons for this deal, even though I was only buying regular diapers) If you don't get the Sunday paper or the Huggies mailer, you can print a couple of Huggies coupons HERE Now these are for the GoodNites diapers, but like I said earlier, the coupons still worked fine when I went to the store...beware though if you get a Nazi cashier who really checks the coupons out (you know the one Megan:).
The second step is to print $5 off of a $25 Rite Aid coupon, which can be found HERE.
The third step is to go shopping.....
Here are the deals Rite Aid is offering for the Diapers (only thru July 25th, so you better hurry!)
* $2 Rebate on any Mega pack of Huggies diapers, Pull-ups, or Goodnites
*Purchase 5 packs of Huggies diapers and get a voucher for a 6th package FREE (voucher is valued at $11.49)
* Giftcard for $25 when you spend $50 in participating Kimberly-Clark products (which Huggies are) There are tons of other products that qualify too, so if you don't want to do the diaper deal, but still want to do this giftcard deal, go HERE and scroll down to Rebate #61 for a list of participating products.

So this is what I did...I bought ONE Mega pack of diapers, and FOUR Jumbo packs, used my coupons (which totaled $11 in savings--you could actually save $15 with coupons if you were able get and use all of the $3 off coupons), and used my $5 off of $25 Rite Aid coupon (side-note here...you might be able to buy the diapers in two separate transactions which would make it so you could use 2 of the $5 off Rite Aid coupons, I didn't do it that way, so I'm not sure, but it's definitely worth a try! Does that make sense?). Then I came home and entered my receipt into Rite Aid's Single Check Rebate system, which is the fourth step (HERE is the link to that and you will need to register if you have never done it before). So pretty soon, I will get my $2 rebate, my voucher for the free pack of diapers, and my $25 Rite Aid giftcard. After you deduct all of these things, I think I figured I ended up getting my 6 packages of diapers (approximately 135 diapers, I bought size 4)for about $19, or $.14 a diaper. If you are able to ring it up in two separate transactions, and use two of the $5 off of $25 purchase(One website said that you can do it that way,and I don't see why you couldn't) you could get them for about $.10 a diaper, which is so great!! So now is the time to stock up on diapers!! Like I said earlier, you have to do this before the 25th of July (your receipt has to be entered before then too) so get going on it!! The fifth step is to leave me a comment if you actually do this...or if this is way too complicated to understand!! Sometimes I'm not sure I'm the best at explaining things even though it all totally makes sense in my head! And the final step is to go shopping for some clothes and/or accessories and use all that money you just saved to get something you really love:)

Busy, Busy as always!

I know I always talk about how busy life is, but seriously!! Does it ever slow down?! I meant to post these pictures days ago, but obviously didn't get around to it. Last week was filled with lots of fun things....as I'm typing this, I can't even remember everything we did....I need to go look at the calender. See how my life is? Am I the only one like this? Anyway, David has been so busy studying for the dental boards so I have been trying to keep out of his way and do fun things with the kids.

For playgroup last Wednesday we went and toured Mercy Flight--the lifeflight helicopters--The kids loved it! They even got to see one of them land which was a big hit! They are stationed next to the airport and have this cute little area right by the runway where you can sit and watch the airplanes take off and land as well, which is always fun.

Maia and Lucas..
Maia and Momma
Maia was pretty excited to sit in the cockpit.
Here are all the kids lined up to watch the helicopter land.
One of the paramedics was really sweet and let all of the kids try on her helmet.
This is just a random picture of Maia, but I had to include it because it depicts what we see her wearing WAAAY too often....this girl is getting into this phase about changing clothes...she will change them 4 or 5 times a day. Sometimes it's into princess stuff, sometimes play clothes, sometimes sundresses, just whatever, but she LOVES to dress and undress and dress again!
Then on Thursday we headed to the beach with Megan, her niece Madi, and her mom, Alice. It was so much fun! Maia had a ball splashing around in the water with Madi. It was a perfect beach day and I'm so glad we got to get out and go. Thanks Alice and Megan for helping with Elsie so I could play in the water with Maia...couldn't have done it without them!

Maia loves the water and could play in it all day!
And here's our little chunk...rolls hanging out everywhere! How come it's so cute when you are a baby, but not so much when you are an adult?
Then on Friday we hit up some garage sales, of course, and scored this sweet "Arcade Sprinkler" for free. We just had to try it out so we called some friends over and played outside that afternoon.
Below is a picture of Maia and her friend Rylee playing the "arcade" game on the sprinkler. So exciting. And I know Maia's swimsuit it totally from the 80's but it is her "outside/sandbox" swimsuit. Yes, we have separate ones...no sense dirtying up the cute ones right?
That night we had a picnic at this cute little place by the Niagara River with the Fox's and the Davis'. It is a really fun place to go. They have picnic tables and a walking trail and little restaurants right on the river front. It is so pretty!

David and the kids watching the boats on the riverfront...
Maia's first experience with an ice cream cone...as you can see, she LOVED it.
This is one satisfied little customer!!
I guess that brings me to this week where now I have no energy to post anything about what we've done...some other day....maybe.

My big girl and the 4th of July

Maia is just growing up too fast! I am amazed every day at the new things she accomplishes! She has just recently learned to ride her "big girl" bike...she had mastered the tricycle and David kept telling me how she had to work too hard to get anywhere on it, so I found a princess bike at a garage sale a couple weeks ago and snatched it up for $8!! (have I ever told you how much I love garage sales?!) Anyway, I didn't know how well she'd do on it, but she hopped right on and the rest is history! Well, we are still working on getting the brakes down, but hopefully that won't be too much longer! For now she just yells, "mom, stop me!" when she is unable to stop herself....here are a few cute pictures of our grown up girl.


The next few pictures are from our 4th of July festivities...we started the day off with a brunch at the Evan's house(we had the most delicious waffles ever!), then came home and all four of us took a 2 hour afternoon nap (so heavenly!), and then that night we got together with friends again for a BBQ at the Shaheen's house. But the day couldn' t be complete without a firework show right? We let Maia stay up extremely late and we went and watched the big firework show that night. It was a fun day! We love having such great friends out here to celebrate holidays with!
Here we are in our 4th of July outfits...


I guess we have to keep the trike around for a little while longer because it sure is good for transporting people around. I thought these pictures were so cute! Jenn and I looked over at the kids during our BBQ and saw Maia hauling Hayden around....
...and then the next minute, it was Maia's turn to have a ride. They are too cute together!
David and the kids while we were waiting for the fireworks to start. I love Maia's cheesy grin!