What we've been up to

-A few weeks back, the Becks invited us to celebrate O's birthday with them. Since we don't have any kids, and even when we do, we are probably not capable of producing kids as completely adorable as him, we absolutely adore him and think he's just darling. We got him a Thomas the Train toy for his birthday, which he seemed to like. Here he is playing with it.

-We also got the chance to babysit him one Saturday while his mom and dad went on a date. We really had a blast. First we watched Mulan, which is a favorite of mine. Then we played with toys for a while. We tried to eat lunch but O just played with his food the whole time. So we went to the library then he took a nap. He was a perfect angel the whole time. Isn't he just a cheeseball?

-For Valentine's Day, my friend Michelle and I decided to use my love cookie cutter and try and reproduce the Love Park statue, seen here:

Here's what we came up with. It's okay to laugh.

-I know I already wrote a little bit about Valentine's Day, but here's a picture of the lovely roses and chocolates that my husband got for me.

I think it was so sweet. Thanks babe. And here's a picture of the hotel room that we stayed in that night.

-I'm still shopping away. Got some great deals lately. Check out this cereal.

I went back and got 8 more boxes because the deal was so good. I actually made a bit of a profit off this, and since we eat cereal so much, it was awesome. I am really into bargain shopping on toiletries mostly, but this past week, I decided to try my hand at some food/grocery "extreme couponing". It was stressful, and I'm not going to keep doing it week after week like I do with toiletries. There's no place here to store the stockpile. It was fun to try though. It's pretty much the same concept that I use with toiletries. I swear my heart fell into my stomach when I saw the total at checkout (something in the neighborhood of $95), but I felt a little better when I got $85.75 back to spend on future grocery purchases, 7 reusable shopping bags, and a coupon for a free gallon of milk. Here's what I got. Not pictured is the chicken, roast, and milk that we bought.

-We've been working on our taxes. I hate filing our tax return. It's stressful.

-Not to toot my own horn or anything, but at work the other day, I got the Nurse of the Year award. It's not as big of a deal as it sounds. It is based on nominations instead of on some actual measurable criteria. And I was the only one nominated. So of course I won. Hee hee. But I'm not complaining. I got a monetary bonus for winning, which was nice.

-We have been watching TV shows about hoarding lately. It's crazy. And it makes me want to throw away all of my stuff.

Aren't you glad I finally wrote on my blog?