Wheeling, dealing and napping!

I've written before about getting some good deals and getting better at it. Well this past weekend I managed to get all this for around $6, most of which was sales tax - gotta love almost 10% tax in Seattle (boo).




I'm lucky that Tami likes to get out of the house with Mackinley and I on weekends so he can grab eye shadow and nail polish off shelves...I mean run around the aisles at Rite Aid! Now our Sunday morning routine is to hit up the Dollar Tree for another cheap copy of the paper and then off to get some deals at Rite Aid, Target and Safeway. We usually wait until Friday after work to go to Albertson's unless their are doubles coupons that expire before then. Our reasoning? The "good" Albertson's is about 20 minutes north of us and our favorite cashier works Friday nights.

Mackinley has been such a trooper the past week while I was sick. We didn't leave the house for almost 6 whole days and the poor kid had to play with me while I sat in a chair or on the couch for a few days. He must have known I was having a hard time because he took a nap everyday between 11:30 and noon for at least 2 hours. Today...today was a different story. He didn't nap until 3pm and he was just stirring, I hope he stays down for another hour or tonight will be no fun for anyone!

I thought we were on our way to some words but it seems like we are going backwards. Mackinley hasn't said chair or toys or signed "more" for like a week. I hope he just feels like he has mastered those skills and is moving on to the next, I read some kids like to do that. We have our next pedi appointment at the end of March...they wrote it down as today but they meant next month. Glad we called this morning to confirm, I would have been really irked if I had to drive downtown (with the freeway backed up due to a truck on fire) and paid for parking at the medical tower to just drive back home. I was really looking forward to talking with his pedi about his speech and finding out how much Mac has grown, his jeans are all the right length now so I'm sure he has grown over an inch since his 15 month appointment.

What's been going on?

I received a request for an update (thanks for a kick in the butt Allie :)) so here goes!

Mackinley has been busy "talking" all day long, not a whole lot of words but he's getting there. In addition to shoes, chair, down and go, we now have kitty cat, monster and I think we have car. He is not very reliable at speaking his words and still needs some prompting but I'm not too worried since he is rarely quiet. We have an appointment with his pedi at the end of the month so we will see then how much we need to work.

Mac also graduated from PT! After 8 short weeks he achieved all of his physical goals and Mali was happy to see him go, not really, she seemed kinda sad. We really like Mali and hope if we have to go back for any reason we can work with her. We go back in May for a check-up with her to make sure he is still on track, other than that he is free to grow as he pleases.

We have been working on cutting back and saving money. We changed cable providers and lost a lot of Kelsey's favorite channels but after a few internal tears she realizes we made the right choice. We also changed internet providers and saved money will getting higher speed internet! This works wonderfully since we are using Netflix instant watch so often it is a pain when the show is constantly rebuffering. Today we hit up Rite-Aid for some great deals, we walked away with 5 packs of Huggies, 2 giant bags of Halls cough drops, 4 king size candy bars (for Tami), 2 regular candy bars all for $20 out of pocket, AND we got $14 back to spend on our next purchase...so we REALLY SPENT $6! Gotta love Rite Aid + coupons!

In preparation for our summer we purchased our plane tickets for Hawaii, not a super deal, but we feel lucky to be able to go at all. We are pretty excited to take Mac to a warm beach where he can run through the sand! Last summer we hit up Alki, just minutes from our house, but the sand was too hot for him to crawl in and the water is cold :( We have decided to skip Chicago this year and save up for next year. There are some very special reasons we want to go and this year just isn't in the cards, we just can't wait for next year.

Kelsey has been dying to paint the interior of the house but Tami hates to paint and now with the baby it's almost impossible. Almost. Today we bought paint for the master bedroom and paint for the master bathroom and Mac's bathroom. Kelsey figures if she can clean up the walls during Mac's daily nap then if Tami will keep him busy at night she can get it painted. We chose Behr's Azul Tequila for the bedroom and Behr's Celery Sticks for the bathrooms...we feel limited with the limestone floors in the bathrooms since they do have a green hue, green is not our first choice. We also bought coat racks for the master bedroom and the entryway because our coats and sweatshirts are taking over! Between the three of us I think we probably own 30 jackets and coats. Why? Because we like to be fashionable, duh.

The whole family has been having lots of fun playing at toddler open gym, the park and with all of Mackinley's toys, we really can't wait for warmer weather. Mackinley would really like a Cozy Coupe and a climbing play structure with a slide...we'll see what Gammy and the Easter Bunny can cook up. Speaking of Easter, we have a kitchen island that has a boring white back side and we have been trying to figure out what to do about it for 4 years now. We decided that we are going to paint it with chalkboard paint and possibly a section with magnetic paint so that Mac has a giant easel to play on! Gammy thought it was a great idea and that Mac may get some paint in his Easter basket.

With high hopes for warm weather here is a picture of Mackinley's first outing to the beach at about 2 weeks old!