ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

A few months ago, I wrote about using thegrocerygame.com to get the best prices on groceries. I just wanted to post an update after using it for a few months now to say that it's the single best thing we've ever done to save money. I spend less than $100/week on groceries and I cook most of our meals and they are usually very good meals with high quality meats and ingredients. I've had a few people ask me how hard it is, if we get to buy the things we like, etc. Here's my system....

-Subscribe to Sunday newspaper and grab the 2 or 3 coupon sections out and file into a folder by the date of the newspaper.
-Go to thegrocerygame.com and see what they have marked as being on a very good sale which means it's time to stockpile that item. Print out only the items that I want to purchase.
-Add items to the list that we need but aren't necessarily on sale.
-If items on the list are marked as having coupons, go find them and cut them out (the list shows you what date to look for the coupon).

That's it! The website also gives you the option to print out some coupons which could be helpful for many people but my main grocery store won't allow printable coupons so I can't make use of those.

I think you can try it out for 2 weeks for free and if you do, please use the email address paytonsmom@hotmail.com as the one that referred you.

This system really is so great so I hope others can use it. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be glad to answer!

In case you all didn't know (ha!), we love gadgets at our house. Although we aren't exactly early adopters, we do end up getting things once they come down in price. We've got three cell phones, two Tivos, a Roomba, two computers w/wireless network and now we are officially in the satellite radio game! My XM radio arrived today (an early birthday present for me but we wanted to be able to use it on our upcoming road trips) along with a boombox to play it with and a car kit to set it up in our cars. With three comedy channels and dozens and dozens of music channels, it should be the perfect thing for us to pass time on trips. Oh, and there's also an Oprah channel which might have had a teeny bit to do with me wanting it. ;-)

The weather here has been 75-80 everyday and Blake and I haven't been taking advantage of it enough. We headed out to the park today with bread in hand for the ducks. The ducks were making funny sounds but not necessarily quacking sounds and Blake hoped that they'd be attending duck school to learn.

White and Nerdy- Weird Al

Yeah, we're White and Nerdy.

Kami and Reaghan came down Thursday night to stay for a couple of days. Kami, Reaghan, Blake and I went to Fossil Rim during the day on Friday. Blake and I had just been but it's so unique and I wanted Reaghan to get to see it so we were definitely up for going again.

Most of the day, the two kids fought like brother and sister which was tough since we were in the car for 5 hours total and they were a foot from each other in the back seat. The good thing was that the weather was really beautiful and most of the animals were out today - in fact, I had never seen so many animals out on any of our visits. A few pics of the day....

Brave girl feeding all of the animals....



And her reaction right after feeding the giraffe...


More animal shots...






More wild animals...



After we got back, Kami and I had a dinner reservation for sushi and the kids stayed home w/Andy and Payton. Kami had never tried sushi but I really like it and Pirahna's is the best I've ever tasted. So we set out for Kam's first sushi dinner and Kami tried all of the types of rolls she ordered but didn't eat too much more than that. She said she liked one of the rolls but the others were too fishy. I've never had anyone not like the sushi there but I understand that sushi isn't for everybody.

We then left to get drive thru drinks at The Eskimo Hut. While we were at Fossil Rim, Kami kept saying "this is so weird" and she said it again at The Eskimo Hut as it is very odd to order drinks at a drive thru. We then headed to TCBY for some treats, then home and stayed up for awhile talking. Saturday morning we got up and had some breakfast and played a bit but then they were headed back home. It was good to see them and we're hoping to plan a girl's weekend w/us and our daughters sometime as they get along well (Reaghan wants an older sister, Payton wants a little sister) which will be so fun.

Some gratuitous Reaghan pics because she's too cute to not post them...