Online shopping

These past few weeks I have been scoring some great deals online. Deals such as free photo Christmas cards, free shipping plus an additional 30%, and so on. These deals have come at a great time too! I really haven't been in the mood to drive 45-60 minutes to go shopping and haven't been feeling well either. So to score free shipping and get the items on great sale prices has made my day!

I now spend some of my time reading frugal blogs that give links and such to online shopping deals. I am so happy to sit at home and accomplish the same thing that would have cost me quite a bit in gas money and my time! What perfect timing for Christmas shopping too! Last week I shopped online at Kohls and bought Christmas presents for the girls that were on sale, plus an additional 30% off, plus free shipping! They just arrived today and the effort was so minimal I am so pleased! If you are interested in some of these sites here they are:

http://freebies4mom.blogspot.com/
http://myfrugaladventures.com/
http://sisterlysavings.net/
http://www.couponcravings.com/

These sites have given me free things such as Christmas photo cards, as well as amazing deals! Well worth the read!

Harvest Festival

Aly's school has a great Harvest Festival every year near Halloween. This year it was the night before Halloween. They have carnival games, face painting, arts and crafts, trick or treating, a cake walk, and plenty of food. It is the perfect, safe Halloween event to do with the family. The best part is the girls don't get too much candy either!

This year since the girls decided to be dalmatians for Halloween I thought it would be fun to dress up as Cruella Devil. Aly was really excited about it, at first KK was scared. She ended up really liking it though once she saw me get dressed!

Mommy had to volunteer at the Harvest Festival for the first hour at Trick or Treat Alley. So Daddy and Grandma T took the girls around to all of the activities!

Aly chose to have a dalmatian painted on her face. KK wanted a rainbow. You know what was funny? When I went through the pictures on the camera I actually thought both of those pictures were KK! then I noticed the dalmatian and realized it was Aly.

When I was done at Trick or Treat Aly I found everyone in the Arts and Craft room having a great time!

KK's Halloween Party

Wow, what a busy morning for us! I had Aly's Parent/Teacher conference at 8:30 in the morning, then had to rush home to get KK changed for her Halloween party at school at 10:00 a.m. KK decided she wanted to be Pongo from the 101 Dalmatians! No surprise there right!

Her favorite thing to do at school is play outside. She spent most of the party outside and wasn't really interested in any of the activities. Her little friend Bryan followed us around the whole party. Everytime I am at her school he just talks my ear off! He has these big blue eyes and he is always happy. The funniest thing is even when he is getting disciplined at school for doing something wrong he has a smile on his face and is just the happiest little boy you ever did see.

This Halloween party didn't have any sugar...well, they did have a little bingo game with some M&M as markers but KK wasn't interested in playing. So she didn't have any sugar at her party. Kind of surprising right? She had fun though and loved running around and playing.

Disney On Ice

Last Night was great! We went to see Disney On Ice Princess Wishes at the Arco Arena. While the drive was not pleasant the show was great. I knew we would hit commute traffic so we left plenty of time to get there. The show started at 7 and even the very first princess skit was great. Aladdin came first and my favorite part was the carpet ride. Although I will have to say, they sure got their ethnicity's mixed up! Jasmine was a beautiful Asian girl instead of a beautiful East Indian girl, and Aladdin was a white boy instead of an East Indian boy.




They actually surprised me and did Jasmine, Aurora, Mulan, Snow White, Belle, and Ariel the first half of the show. The second half was entirely dedicated to Cinderella. It was really cute. We especially liked the stage coach.




We got to take Granny with us. Hubby would rather play volleyball then attend a Princess Show, can you believe it? LOL...yes, the audience was primarily female! Poor KK thought the show was too load and plugged her ears most of the show!

Last year we were lucky enough to win free tickets to the show. This year I was able to get 1/2 price tickets--that is why we had to go on Wednesday night. You know we didn't even get home until 11:00 P.M. at night! Good thing I brought Jammie's and we changed the girls in the car. They fell asleep shortly after leaving the arena.

KK and I liked last years show better. Aly loved this years show better. It was so cute to see her jumping and wabing at the princesses and dancing to the music. She really had a great time. Poor KK thought it was too loud and was really sad there was no whale this year like there was last year.

Crockpot Chicken Tikka Masala

Wow, I am so thrilled to have tweaked my harder version of Chicken Tikka Masala and made it into an easy crock pot recipe! This is a bit spicy so my suggestion if you want to tame it down is to use mild curry powder instead of hot. I buy all of my spices in bulk at an Indian Food grocery store in Folsom.

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts cut up in cube size pieces

2 cups heavy whipping cream

12 ounces of Tomato Paste

1/2 cube of butter

1 tblsp. Paprika

1 tblsp. Curry Powder Hot

1 tblsp. Garam Masala

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ginger

1 tsp. black pepper

4-6 cloves garlic minced

Combine all ingredients in crock pot and put on low for 6-8 hours. Make a side of rice and some garlic naan bread. This is so good and a great dish to put leftovers in the freezer to take for lunch. For garnish you can add cilantro just before serving.

Beach Day

On Saturday we decided to take a beach trip. We hadn't been for a long time and we all needed a little family time together! We got to the beach shortly after 1. The first thing the girls wanted to do was fly kites. Aly flew her frog kite all by herself. She did a really good job. KK brought the dragon kite over to Daddy so they could fly it together. It was the prefect windy day for flying kites!

After we flew kites the girls enjoyed playing in the sand. Aly had a fun time burying herself. We both got some great pictures.

KK played in the dirt as if it were mud! She had a great time and didn't even care that she was getting really dirty!

Hubby took a few pictures of me. It was a bit chilly of a day. You can see in the background it was over cast. It was still fun to be there!

This beach had some huge sand dunes that the girls had so much fun running down them. I swear this is one of those activities if you let your children do it all day they are sure to sleep good that night!

I have never seen the girls get more dirty and I have never seen more sand on the bottom of the bath tub than this day! It was all worth it though. We all had a great time!

Aly was easy to get to pose for the camera. Yes we are still working on getting great photos for our holiday calendar!

Ed was able to get this cute picture of KK. She was actually running away from him as he was telling her to come. I think that must be a "naughty" girl smile...LOL

Slumber Party

On Friday the girls wanted to have a slumber party downstairs in their sleeping bags. Our floor is pretty hard so I put two layers of blankets down and got them nice and comfortable. Aly was most excited about the slumber party. The girls got to have glow in the dark bracelets. KK only lasted about ten minutes and then wanted to go to bed in her own bed. Aly stayed there all night by herself! When she woke up the next morning she told me that it was SO MUCH FUN!

Sisterly love

The girls were getting along so well this morning. It was so cute! They decided to lay next to each other on the couch and watch television. I sure hope they grow up to be best friends! As they get older they are enjoying playing the same things. KK loves to play dalmatians and so does Aly. They even play hide and seek together quite frequently!

Yes they fight a lot too. I will say, I definitely enjoy watching them play when they are getting along and having tender loving moments like these!

Aly's chicken

Did you know Aly had a chicken? Yes, she has her very own chicken whom she named Sparkles. She has handled that chicken since it was only three days old. Seriously, the chicken is in love with her too! She will only let Aly hold her. It is really cute to see too. Aly will pick up her chicken and take her for walks around the yard. She will hold her chicken and let her pick blackberries. She will also hand feed her wild pees. It is so cute. Poor KK is jealous and wants her own chicken that will do the same thing. We have three others but when they were babies, KK wasn't that interested in holding them daily so she never really bonded with one.

Sparkles is now laying eggs. Poor Aly can't hold her because she is obsessed with sitting on her eggs! We haven't decided when to take the eggs away!

KK's first week of preschool

Wow, it sure took us awhile to get KK's preschool figured out. We were assured that would would be able to get her into the Head Start at Aly's school but the end of August. We didn't think it would be a problem and were looking forward to having both girls at the same school. August came and went and KK didn't get in. I waited all the way until the end of September as they advised and she still didn't get in. So we finally put her in preschool the first week of October.

I have to admit I did love having her home. As she is getting older she is getting much easier, especially when she is by herself. She loved playing home alone everyday as big sister was off to school. She would spend hours playing in the playroom happily, thrilled that she didn't have any competition over toys! I actually debated waiting until January to send her to preschool. We decided we should start her now though since she fights with her sister so much at home. We were worried it would shape her social interactions with others. So we thought it was best for her socially to go now and learn how to play cooperatively with others.

We decided to send her to Aly's old preschool. If we kept her in Pollock all of those children go up to the local elementary school and KK will not be going to that school. However, if we put her at Aly's old preschool she will be able to have some of the friends she makes go with her when she goes to kindergarten. We thought this would be best for her for her transition.

She is having a GREAT time! She loves playing with all of their toys and is thrilled to play chase on the playground with all of the other kids. I have came early to pick her up all three days so I could watch her. I couldn't believe how well she is already making friends and enjoying playing with the other children. In fact, on the days she didn't go to preschool, she was crying because she wanted it to be a preschool day!

I am so happy that she wants to go to school. It is nice for me to have two days of errand running a week without any children! Now I just need to control my spending! LOL