Savin' our dimes to wrap up 2009.

For our New Years Celebration Tod and I chose to spend the evening at Albertsons raking in the deals.

Here is our loot:

The total price (before taxes, and sale prices): $246.78.
We paid: $71.36.

That's a 71% savings.

How'd we do it? Haha! Well, we separated our merchandise into 3 purchases, utilized two $10 register reward we recieved with our Protor and Gamble Products on 2 of the transactions, and bought a ton of Christmas clearance items. We don't get that high of savings all the time when we shop -- our average is between 20%-40% savings on our purchases -- but with the Christmas clearance, great sales, coupons, and the two $10 register rewards we really made a great deal!

Most of the Christmas items were .50 cents each! We got lots of cards, wrapping paper, and gift bags & singing gift boxes.

Thank you Proctor & Gamble!

We could have saved even more on this purchase had we been able to take advantage of Olay's rebates, but the other deal seeking mom's in Utah stole our thunder and bought out all the qualifying items that would make the purchase a good deal. This time we let go of the money making Olay deal in hopes that we can still use it later on, before those Olay rebates expire.

We also watched the broadcast of the New Year's festivities at the House of Blues in Boston, and shared out very first New Years Kiss. *tender*

Happy New year everyone.

Back into the Swing of things.

Well, school is back in full force for both Tod and I. I started classes on the 26th of August, and Tod began on Aug. 31st. This semester I am trying to challenge math, again, and hopefully I pass this time! Why is it that I can do most everything but play with numbers? I'm not terrible, but unless I have a very clear and easy to understand instructor, trying to make sense of math on my own is just not happening. Luckily for me Tod has committed to be my tutor cause he's brilliant in that area of academia. So, the plan is: math pass + good looking -- I mean -- smart tutor + a dedicated student= Pass college algebra! If my math and stats classes go well this year I will graduate. Finally.

Tod is studying Computer science, with about three more semesters after this one to complete his degree. Classes are challenging and exciting.

Some more exciting news is that I got a new job! Funnily enough, now that I have "legal permission" to work off campus I found another job on campus. It's ok though, cause it pays $1.50 more than my last campus job, and it's in a department that will give me LOTS of room to grow and plenty of opportunity for work in the future, including working from home if I so desire.

Where/what is it you wonder? Well I am a Grant Research Aide in the Sponsored Programs office. My job is to help professors on campus find grants to fund their research projects. This job will both help me to find out where the grant $$ is and how to effectively write grants. Learning both of these important skills is what can enable me to work from home. I don't plan to be a home bug all my life, but there will be a time that I will want to be there for my kids, and still want to use my skills, and these I can safely do together.

This is the website for the office that I currently work for. The information on the site needs some expansion because the information is rather limited but at least it's a start. http://www.uvu.edu/sponsoredprograms/

The Coopers are back in P-town! That means Tod and I become the perma-babysitters once again. Also it means that we get to use the second bedroom in our apartment! We have been storing their things for the summer so that they wouldn't have to pay for a rental unit and their things could be protected from temperature wear and tear (some casualties from last year were Taralee's drapes that she made that used to be green that are now orange and some candles that became misfigured because of the heat).

We had some great help with some friends in the ward, including my visiting teaching companion, her husband, and a couple other men from the ward who came with them. So thankfully for all the big stuff it wasn't just the Cooper's and Anderson's toughing it out. It was quite amazing how some items ended up in the apartment, such as the Coopers king sized bed... it came up over the railing of the balcony, and their apartment is on the second floor!

Another joy of this adventure is that we get to sleep on the floor! The Coopers were kind enough to let us use their box springs for their king sized bed, and we put a couple of mattresses that belong to La Grande on top. But with their boxsprings gone and no beds to replace them we have put our memory foam mattress topper on the floor.

Management did order new twin beds, of which 2 were meant to come here, but somehow they did not end up at our house. A little background information first --

Our apartment is a fully furnished place for 4 single girls, but as time has passed and married people have lived in this unit the 4 beds turned into 3 mattresses by moving the pieces to other apartments that could use them. On Friday such has happened with two more mattresses, so we now have one. The reason why we gave up the two is because Managment has invested in some new twin bed sets, and I requested that we get a couple of those because we don't have a bed. We do have a memory foam mattress topper that is very useful in "unifying" 2 separate beds that we push together so we can sleep like a real married couple. Hopefully we can get those new bed sets delivered to our house today so we can both rest well; Tod didn't like the floor last night.

Another fun adventure we had this week occurred on Tuesday. Our power was turned off!
We have not been receiving a bill from our landlord, because they weren't being sent a bill, and so we have not been paying for it because no one knew where it was going. We have been asking for it for over 6 weeks, because after the first one not coming you think perhaps it jsut didn't get sent out this month, we'll get it next month, and when no bill showed up the second month, we began to ask weekly for it, because we didn't want to end up with a monster sized bill!

We tried to call the utility company a few weeks ago to no avail, they wouldn't talk to Tod because his name was not on the account so they wouldn't give us any information, my name wasn't on there either, so no use trying to get them to talk to me. So we patiently waited and repeatedly requested some information from our management company until Tuesday. Then we called and kindly asked them to do something about it immediately, because our fridge was defrosting, our lights were out, and we had no way to keep our computers charged. So while we waited we took one of our coupons and went out to Lunch at the Village in, because we couldn't cook ourselves any food.



We also got a cube of dry ice to keep the freezer cold, and did it ever! It worked like a charm.
Then we picked up a cheque and the account number from Continental Management and paid Provo electric, and had our power back on by 5pm. Hopefully we get out electricity bill this next month.