Leaf pile

Remember doing this when you were little???

Bliss

The anatomy of a grocery bill

Ok so I ran the grocery store this afternoon to buy a few groceries. Barney was kind enough to do the bulk of it by himself (such a big boy) on Sunday so we'd have enough to get us through to today when I could go myself.

I spent 85 bucks!!! I remember the day I could run to the grocery store, buy a few groceries, and spend only 40... What the FUCK!!!

Ok so here is my bill..I thought it would be interesting to go through it and analyze.. yes i'm that bored.


1 lb Land O'lakes White American Cheese 6.09 Holy Shit face! When did a pound of cheese start costing more than 2 gallons of gas. Are you kidding me?

2 cans of Delmonte Corn 3.18 What? Wasn't corn 50cents a can at one point? ugh

Glade Scented Plugs Ins Apple/Cinnamon 11.36 WTF? I had a 1 dollar off coupon but seriously? Should I spending more than 10 dollars to make my house smell good? For some people that's an entire hour worth of working.

Generic Whole Wheat Bread 1.49 Ok so that's reasonable, however I had intended on buying my usual Country Kitchen brand until I glanced at the price, which I'd never done before, 3.89 a loaf.. and I usually buy 2 a week.. so yeah, generic from now on people!

Generic Complete Pancake mix - 1.89 I think that's a good deal.. that's at least 10 meals worth of pancakes.

Store brand Skim milk - 2.95 That's alot better price than the 3.85 for the name brand milk. I go through about 2 gallons a week with a toddler... so that's 6 dollars worth of milk. I guess I can't complain because formula was 25 dollars a can.. and that only lasted a week... milk is way cheaper!

I can't Beleive Its Not Butter Spray - 2.99 I bought the large bottle.. and this will last me a month or more. So I think that's an ok price. right?

Oven Fry Chicken - 1.69 This is a premixed breading for chicken... I guess its ok.. but do I really need to spend money to put breading on my chicken? Not really but it is yummy.

Sprite 12 pack 2.99 That's not bad.. i'll pay 2.99 for a 12 pack... That's only 25 cents a can.

Viva Paper Towels - 2.19 Ok so when I first started buying the Viva brand paper towels they were only 99 cents a roll. I love them because they're soft and feel almost like a thin wash cloth. I've actually accidently put them through the laundry and they come out clean and reusable! haha I'm ticked that they're 2.19 now.. but I bet its because people have realized how much they rocked so they've raised thier prices.

Wise Cheddar Popcorn 2.50 Remembe when a large bag of chips was 99 cents??? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr


Softsoap Hand soap Refill 2.77 This is a large bottle to refill my bathroom handsoap.. it'll last probably 4 or 5 months... so not to bad.

90%Lean Ground Beef 4.46 I'm not sure the weight on this, but its more expensive because I buy the leaner version. Still, the price of meat has sky rocketed and its vomittish.

Boneless Chicken Breast - 5.31 Ok so the price of chicken makes me furious. I remember when I could get a package with 3 breasts for 4 bucks.. now I get 2 for over 5.00!!! Damn chicken fuckers!

Chocolate Covered Pretzels - 80 cents. It was only a few.. for a snack haha no more expensive than a candy bar.. however I also remember when I could get one of those for only 50 cents.

Dried Mangos - 2.99 I have become addicted to these, even though they're not cheap. I figure its better than eating crap all day and Rowan thinks they're candy haha

Maine White Potatos 5 lbs 2.99 I think this is a steal. I'm making Sheppards pie out of them tonight and will probalby have 1/2 a bag left over for a side dish with dinners... I figure that's only about 50 cents per meal.

Gourds - 2.64 Ok so this was a total luxury item... probably not worth the money but they do look super cute on my coffee table

Mini Pumpkin - 69 cents.... also in my gourd bowl

Large Carving Pumpkin - 5.99 Total rip off.. but again, looks so nice in my fall garden

Star Fruit - 4.98 Only 2 of them folks, they're super expensive and they're in the "exotic fruit" section. But my daughter loves them and when you slice them they look like stars... any opportunity to get her to eat fruit!

20 pack of Postal Stamps 8.40 I had no idea they sold stamps at the grocery store! I was so excited.. the old man ahead of me bought them so I did too... saved me gas from having to drive to the post office. :) (ps.. remember when a stamp was 25 cents?)

I can't remember what this one was.

Brkstn Act Cttg Pnap 2.89 But whatever it was, i'm sure it wasn't worth it

So that's my grocery bill. It totalled at 84.70 I had a 1 dollar coupon, and also was credited 20 cents for my grocery tote bags..

I also just noticed that the tellar accidently credited me 3 1.oo dollar coupons.... sweet!

SeaWorld Follow up

Ok so I finally have enough energy to finish my post. The Seaworld trip rocked! We had such an amazing time. I can't decide between Seaworld and Animal Kingdom. Both were so great.

The Shamu Show however at Seaworld was probably my favorite part. Seeing the whales and all thier tricks was super cool. I watched a show about Shamu shortly before leaving for Florida and seeing it in person was even better.

We sat out of the splash zone, but once Shamu came out, he was so huge compared to all the other dolphins that he easily splashed us with his ginormous tale. We all got a face full of water, and I knew as soon as it hit us that Rowan was going to flip out. And she did! I turned her around and she was screaming. She got salt water in her eyes which I'm sure hurt a bit, and she hates being wet. She wanted to change her clothes immediately but she dried off quickly in the 85 degree weather so we didn't have too.

After being splashed she yelled out... BAD WHALE!!! NO SPLASHING!!!! I cracked up.

Rowan's second favorite part of Seaworld was the Manatee exhibit. She fell in love with them. We spent quite a bit of time there watching them slowly drift around in the water. She told me that they were all "sad". I think she took their slow gracefulness as being gloomy haha. Grammy bought her a stuffed Manatee which she carried around with her for the rest of weekend. Unfortunately we lost is somewhere along the plane trip home. I'm still searching for one I can buy cheap online to replace him.

Anyhow that was the rest of our trip. We had an awesome time, and so did Rowan. It does feel good to be home though... we were all pooped!

We're home

And yet again I'm to exhausted to write much.... will write tomorrow :)

SeaWorld

Well the time flew bye! Here I am Saturday night.. we leave tomorrow morning by 5:45. I don't have much energy to post about how SeaWorld was.

I will say it rocked, Shamu Rocks, and we got splashed. haha I will post more tomorrow.

But for now.. Slide show goodness.

Disney Day 2 - Animal and Magic Kingdom

Well today was the big day of hitting the two Disney parks. We started off with Animal Kingdom which I might say was well worth all the money and the plane ride here! What an amazing place. I've been to many zoos but this is what I always thought a Zoo should be. haha

We headed straight for Kilimanjaro Safari's to go on the safari ride through "African tundra". It rocked! We saw hippos, Rhinos, Crocodiles and an whole slew of other odd and awesome animals I don't know the names off.

After that we meandered through Pangani Forest Trail where we saw more hippos, a snoozing gorilla, and a bunch of super neat fish tanks/river habitats.

Then we zoomed over to "Asia" where we walked through the jungle, saw some tigers for 2 seconds at which point they rang the lunch bell and they all went running in.

I'm kind of bummed that we decided to both Magic and Animal Kingdom today because we only saw 1/2 of both parks and I would have loved to spend an entire day thoroughly exploring Animal Kingdom. Ahh well, maybe next time ;)

After Animal Kingdom we took the bus over to Magic Kingdom. It was sooooo cool to see the Cinderella Castle.. I felt like a little girl myself. One of the funniest things is seeing all of the little girls around all decked out in princess dresses and makeup. They have a boutique here where you can bring you girl and have her receive a royal princess makeover. They get a dress, sparkly updo's and make up to the nines... its adorable. Someday when Rowan is older I'd love to do that with her.

The Magic Kingdom as I said was pretty cool, but it wasn't really made for Rowan's age. We didn't stay very long because we were all exhausted. We checked out the castle and the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor show. (one of ro's fave movies)

Then we walked around the perimeter of the park and headed home for swimming and pizza!