Guess Who's Cutting the Cheese Now?

As some of you may know ...

I am a HUGE cheese fan.  I have always loved it.  Maybe it had to do with growing up a few miles from one of the best ... (scratch that) ... THE BEST cheese factory in America.  Cheese has always been one of my fetishes.

When we lived in Oregon we visited the Tillamook cheese factory many times.  That was always a tour worth taking - in my honest opinion.  And since we've left Oregon, I rarely get to enjoy good stuff of this quality.

But that all changed recently.

First, my Grandma hooked me up with 4 pounds of the lovely goodness when we were visiting her in Oregon.  At the time, I was like ... YAY!  Thank you SO much Grams!  Love it!

And then just this week, my Parents (Chris' folks) dropped a huge cheese bomb on me.  They sent over 15 pounds of Heavenly manna for me to eat.  Yes ... me.  I'm not afraid to say I'll probably end up eating most of it myself.  I am the only one in the house who can cut this cheese as it was meant to be cut.

I have always been proud of my cheese cutting abilities, and now hopefully, I'll be doing a lot more practicing.

 

By the way ...

If you ever feel the need to send me anything from the Northwest - say as a gift, or anything like that - please check out the picture above.   Those black cheese packs in the bottom left of the picture - those things are THE BOMB!  Love 'em!  Those are Aged 'to perfection' cheddar cheese.

Al

All the Lovely Little Eggs

Trying to get caught up on some of the happenings out in Oregon while we were there. Here is a quick one that totally surprised me.

Some of you know that I've sold chicken related books online for about 4 years now. So chickens are ALWAYS exciting for me to talk about and see.

So ...

We show up at my Dad's place and they've got a coop and 10 hens. That was cool. Even more cool was that they were all still laying, even in the middle of winter. So I grabbed some shots of his coop, his hens, and the egg gathering.

It was pretty cool too, the girls named a few of the ladies.

Keeley named hers - Eggna
Kait named hers - Cluckla
Alexa named hers - Jessica

 

  

  

  

  

 

Al

Todays Grocery trip!

I think that today I had my best grocery trip yet. Well at least for the amount of items that I was able to get. There was a trip that I had earlier this month that was for yogurt that was free but since that was just for the one thing I guess it is a bit different.  Anyhow...

Today's trip was all this. The total put of pocket was $11.86 and the total savings was $134.23!! That is 92% savings  people! What a blessing! The checker was just shocked at the total savings and how little I spent. And she went over each and every coupon because she is fairly new to the store and she wanted to make sure all the coupons matched up. That kinda bugs me because it can take so much extra time. But I know that I have been very careful and make sure that the coupon wording matches what I am purchasing so I know it will stand up to the scrutiny. It can just take so much more time but I will wait for that kind of savings I guess!
Here  is what I got...
14 packs of Yo-plus yogurt
8 cans of Rotel Tomatoes
2 packs of Knox gelatin
2 pack of phyzeme
2 chobani Greek Yogurts
2 A-1 steak sauce
2 Kraft Bar-B-Q sauce
4 Sundown Vitamins
3 packs of chinet plates
2 packs of Ronzoni macaroni noodles
2 packs Jolly time popcorn
2 bottles Hidden valley Ranch
2 Tyson cooked pot roast
4 Eight-o-clock coffee
2 Craisins Dried cranberries

The things that were free were the chinet plates, and the Chobani Greek yogurts. The things that were free with overage were, the 4 sundown vitamins (4.00 overage) the Phyzeme (2.00 overage) and the Knoxx gelitan (5.22 overage!) That is $11.22 WOW!
The rest just ended up being very little after coupons and sales. 53 items for $11.86!
God is good all the time!

Great deals!! God's blessings continue!

So it has been a while since I posted any of my deals. The girls and I went out today and so I decided it was time to share some of the goods!
Here is a deal that I got a couple of days ago at Target. They had this body wash on sale for 2.99 a bottle. There is a Target store coupon in the site for 1.00 off Nivea skin care products and then I used a Manufactures coupon for 2.00 off one Nivea body wash. So I was able to get all 4 bottles for free! And these are big bottles too, 16.oz.

Then todays deals! For all of this I spent a whopping $1.93! The food things (On the right)were purchased at CVS and for that the total out of pocket was .74 and I got back 10.00 in extra care bucks to spend next time. I also paid with 10.00 extra care bucks that I had from a couple weeks ago. The other items (On the left) were purched in a couple different transactions at Walgreens. and the total for all of that was 1.19. And I got a 2.00 Regester Rewards back to spend next time. All of this thanks to Coupons!!

Here is what I got at CVS:
4 bags of Stacy's Pita Chips
2 bags of True North Pistachio crisps
2 bottles of Gatorade
1 green bag tag (this is a tag that when I go in and have them scan it I will get 1 extra care buck for every 4 scans. I needed a filler item so that I did not loose any of my extra care buck that I was paying with.)

And here is what I got at Walgreens:
7 packs of Reach Dental Floss
4 Packs of Reynolds wrap foil
6 boxes of Jello
1 Mens Sure deodorant
2 bottles of Mens Pert Plus shampoo and conditioner in one
I was unable to get 3 more of the mens Sure deodorant because they were out. But the very nice lady at Walgreens gave me a raincheck so that I can get them when they get back in stock! So that will be 3 more deodorants free!! They are onsale with an in add coupon for 1.50 each and there was a 1.50 off manufactures coupon in last Sundays paper! Oh and I almost forgot the Mens Pert Plus I can send in for a manufactures rebate of 2.50. So again between the coupons, rebates and store credits (Register Rewards and Extra Care Bucks) I was paid to get all these things.
God is good in teaching me to stretch our dollars! 33 items for 1.93. that makes them .05 cents each! Not bad in my book!
Have Fun!
Chris

Our Little Rockstars

On our visit to Oregon we discovered the Wii rockstar style game.  This was the first time I had seen it, or knew of anyone who had it.  So we had the girls give it a try. 

And they loved it!

So we snagged a few shots of them playing.  Nick and Keeley seemed to really enjoy it.  Alexa was truly the rock star, getting all the songs down without problems - but she requested that we leave her out of the limelight.  So, you'll just have to stick with these few shots we picked up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess it may be time to get Keeley a guitar soon, and learn her how to play the thing in real life.

More Big Bend Power Plant Wildlife Pictures

This park is definitely one of the coolest places in Florida.  We've been back here several times.  Here are a few pictures from our latest trip.

And the coolest pics are the last two - a little blurry - but both are shots of jumping spotted rays.  You have to have lightning reflexes ... like me ... in order to get shots like this.  And check it out ... I got two of them.

I am like a puma!

 

 

 

Talk soon!
Al

Disney with the Joneses

Finally catching up a bit.  Although it's over a month late, I wanted to share a trip we took with the Jones family to Disney.  They visited with us from South Africa for a few days.  It was so cool to see them again - but WAY too short.

I didn't want to put up too many pictures of them, but here are a few shots from our trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catch you soon!
Al

Welcome Back to Oregon - The View is Great!

It's been a strange trip back home.  We've spent a lot of time with family, which has been awesome.  But, we haven't made it out to the countryside quite as much as we were hoping.

We did make a trip over to Sisters, because I needed to get out to see some mountains.  I thought I would share a couple of shots we grabbed while we were there.  We'll put up a few more shortly, but these seem to be a great welcome home for us.

It's amazing how much time you spend looking at all of the gorgeous scenery, and how much a person can miss looking at it.  I look at these mountains and think ... how could anyone get sick of looking at these?  I know I sure can't.

Talk soon!
Al

Keeley's Christmas -- LPSO toys

So we haven't posted any of our Christmas stuff, but Keeley wanted me to share these pics with you.

Apparently she really enjoyed these, because she took enough pictures of them.  This is collection of shots of her Littlest Pet Shop buddies she picked up for Christmas this year.

These are mostly for you kids out there who are big fans of the Littlest Pet Shop Online.   We love 'em!

We hope you like them too.

 

 

 

The Strike Out

So, just like everyone else in America, we finally had a couple of NICE, LONG 4 day weekends.  Since we had some free time, and the weather was cool enough to walk outside our house and enjoy it, we were going to go out and find a state park we had never been to before.  We were hoping to get in a nice hike somewhere.

I spent a couple hours looking south of us, and Chris spent about an hour looking north of us.  Although I'm not an expert at online searches, I'm also not a novice.  However, neither of us were able to find clear directions and places that we definitely HAD to visit.  So, I decided we were just going to head south and check out a place called Port Charlotte.  It is about 2 hours south of us right off of Hwy 75.

There is supposed to be a free state park there called "Charlotte Harbor State Park".  I figured, since it was a state park, that there would be plenty of highway signs that would point us in the right direction.   One word you don't see in Florida often ... FREE.  Almost every inch of this state is owned as private property, or is exploited for money in some way.  Believe me, these people know how to take money from tourists.     

Let me make a note here ... this is NOT the first time we have failed to find good quality information online for a destination we have wanted to explore.  Apparently there are so many people in the state of Florida that the businesses thrive simply because there are so many people they can't help but thrive ... or they die because they're so bad no amount of people could keep them stay afloat.   I haven't been overwhelmed by the online marketing presence of any attraction or destinations here - and yet most of them are always packed with visitors.

Anyhow ...

We drive 2 hours south of here hoping and expecting to find road signs to point us to some kind of park we can visit.

But alas, all of our hopes were founded on ... NOTHING!  Driving for miles, and we didn't see a single park sign in the area showing us where we could go, stop, play, enjoy their town ... ZILCH! 

The GPS gave us a couple of options but none of them turned out to be spectacular.

Here are the cool things we got from the trip:


After our 2 hour drive we finally found a tiny, little 3/4 mile hike in a little neighborhood park.  Thankfully Kait's eyes were sharp enough to pick out this snake hiding in a tree just off the trail.  It was waiting for a squirrel lunch - but I think we must have interrupted.  Can you believe Kait even saw the snake?  If you look at the first picture here, you can see what we were all looking at.  And somehow she saw it.

And then we also saw this on the way down to the area.   I guess I should have known that the grim reaper coming up behind you is NOT a sign to keep going the same direction.  Warning signs ... maybe I need to start watching out for more of them.

The look was so cool we had to take some pictures.