Shopping bargains

I bought all this yesterday at Walgreen's. I used coupons, and sale prices combined. My favorite deal in this picture was that both coffee mates were just 25cents EACH. I really wish you would check out Saving Sherry she tells you exactly how to do this!

I am getting no payback from her for informing you all. I am getting enjoyment and having fun watching the cashier say "ha?" (when they tell me my total).

For those that don't want to click on the picture, I paid $14.76 but w/o coupons and sales it would have cost $24.49. I am starting a stock pile for the pantry our church has.

Lilah, the REDnosed DOG?

A lot late, but I wanted to show you all what kinda condition we found Lilah in when we arrived home from Miami. Apparently, she had been trying unsuccessfully to pry her cage door open at night. She is used to her cage, she sleeps in there every night for the last almost 5 years but guess she really wanted out badly, and failed. Poor Girl!

a Puppy, Superman and Anakin?

Halloween!

It was busy evening here on Friday. I first made a big crock pot of vegetable beef stew and Jennifer and the kids had dinner with me before Trick-Or-Treat. Then we went over to help the kids I watch get ready, we were both busy painting their faces green and spraying hair black of course I had to first hot roll it and put make-up on Cori, after all witches need BLACK hair and defined eyes and lips! We all had a great time doing it. Then I drove Jennifers car back to my house because she always ends at my house. Here is a picture. L-R we have Blake: Superman, Joel: Anakin Skywalker, Cori: Elephaba from Wicked, Jayde: the little puppy dog and last but not least is Seth: Master Yoda

MIAMI Florida

I thought I'd share some more of our favorite pictures from Miami and Marco Island. Like I said earlier, we went to Miami for Sam's work and then we went onto Marco Island for the rest of the week and then back to Miami for an over night stay to catch the airplane early in the morning to come home. This was a much needed and appreciated vacation.

These salamanders were all over outside.

I want the boat in the middle with the
cabin cruiser.

This is the pool at the Hilton where we stayed.

Sam took this shot of me in

swimming mode.

Bargain shopping!!!!

My pal, Savingsherry@blogger.com just tagged me. If your into saving money and who isn't I'm talking lot's of it, just visit her site, she tells you practically exactly how to do it! Of course coupons are nearly mandatory. But you can still save by getting the CVS and Walgreens sales and end up getting Register Rewards=walgreens or Cash Back=CVS you do however need a CVS card/ you can get it for free right at the store. Then you use these rewards to purchase the next stuff. Walgreens however does not require anything special.

This is from a recent shopping trip:

Miami Trip

Once again, I was fortunate to travel along with my dear husband to Miami for a business trip. We stayed at an awsome resort/spa (not on his dime this time), called Doral golf resort/spa. It's actually where the "Blue Monster" golf course is, also known as the home to the PGA. I am not a golfer of any sort so whoopie do. But I did take a looooong walk around the many golf courses and being surrounded by green lush lawn, beautiful palm trees, and coconut trees was thrilling enough for me. I was also a pool lounger and even got in a cat nap there. All this was enough to keep me occupied till the greet, meet and eat with all the other "techies".
All these pictures were taken with my camera phone. I've noticed these can not be enlarged by clicking on them.






A tangled up mess of tree roots.

My ultimate hang out. I swam, and slept here.

FALL TIME

Off to Mishawaka, Indiana

This is some grill'in on the RANGE!


We also "roasted" marshmallows.

I was fortunate to run off to my sister and brother-in-law's house for 5 days. We had a blast. As you will see in the pictures we did some very unusual grilling, we played lots of backgammon, Aggravation, dominoes, battleship, (thanks Cori for the tip) and some other card game where we matched up colored tiled squares called Connecto.

We went to a sauerkraut dinner, several parks, one was a Japanese garden, went mushroom hunting (picture to follow), helped set up for a gigantic "rummage sale" where I found Blake and Jayde some clothes at a church she does sewing at on Tuesdays (picture to follow), went to the zoo, and went to CiCi pizza, "Welcome to CiCi's!" I love that place and Sam does not so my favorite brother-in-law took me there. (Sorry Tom, if you are my b.i.l., not sure what you are) haha.

Anyway, these are not listed in the order we went there and I am thinking I forgot a few places but that's OK. I had a great time sleeping in and having weird dreams, that's what too much sleep med does to me. I'm stuck on 1/4 tablet of my sleep pill but I took 3/4 since I had no reason to wake up early.

After a mushroom seminar at a local

park we found this cauliflower

mushroom. We had it checked out by the

instructor and he assured us it was edible.

I cut it up and Sharyn coated it in flour

and sauteed it in butter. We sure enjoyed it!

My silly brother-in-law served us cookies and

milk. He was keeping our clothes clean with

towels. Does he actually think we would waste

a single crumb? I thought he knew us better

than that.

Not the best shot of an anteater, but I never

saw one at a zoo or anywhere but t.v. The

photo below has info on them.

One day my sister came upon this castle

so she wanted to show me too.

My panda clothes

I had to include this final picture of me. Check out my socks!

T I double Gaa R's!!!!

These shots were taken by Sam at the Memphis zoo. They're remarkable in color, quality and pose. The second to bottom tiger has a fish in his mouth. Click on it and you will see.

Memphis Zoo/ (Mystery Trip)

It was a tough decision, but I was finally able to pick and choose from my 140+

shots of the panda bears. I don't want to bore you too much, but I just couldn't get it down any lower, besides I am not making you look at these, but am glad you are. :-)

Photo Tag

While reading one of the the blogs I follow, her cousin hit her with PHOTO TAG. It sounds fun so I'm encouraging you to do it. What ya do is open your picture file and go to the fourth folder and then the fourth picture post it and write about the picture. I had no idea what I would find, but I truely love this one.

Sam took this photo in August during our annual VBS week. I am sure he took this one of Joel because we have watched him grow from mommy's belly all the way up till now. Joel enjoyed making these fun to wear glasses in his preschool class one night. He is 4 1/2 in this photo. He is also the little guy I watch and he, along with his older sibblings call us Aunt Lori and Uncle Sam. The girl in the picture is Allie, our Associate Pastors' daughter and she is 13. Scott has his back to us.

Blackout '08

Here are some facts about the blackout that affected most all of Ohio and into Kentucky:

• Hurricane Ike blew in for an awful visit with up to 70 MPH winds.
• Sunday Sept. 14 at 2:00 our power went out.
• I had to mash our mashed potatoes with a spatula, yes, they were lumpy.
• Our upstairs shudder busted in half.
• We were w/o electric for 89 hrs. We have gas water heater, but electric stove.
• over 1 million outages, the electric company we use had over 700,000 out.
• 84 out of 87 counties affected.
• due to no power, there was a gas shortage because it wasn't able to be pumped out of tank.
• Duke Energy had workers in Texas and had to call them home to help in this mess. They went from 12,000 workers to 16,050 to fix this outage.
• Electric company workers worked 16 hr. shifts.
• The wind blew my 79 year old dad over on the road. He was a little scratched up, but fine.
• The mums Sam and Blake planted on Saturday BLEW out of the ground.
• Some people were running extension cords across the street to feed off others generators to keep their food frozen.
• went to bed by 9 p.m. because nothing to do. Could be a baby boom in 9 months.(time will tell)
• Level 3 on Sunday and Monday morning that means ONLY essential personnel on road.
• Dad and Sue left for Oklahoma anyway on Monday morning.
• No ice available for miles. Matthew 25 ministries were giving ice away on Tuesday along with bottled water.
• The weather was perfect: no rain, temps below 83, and not too cold.
• One week later the weather is still co-operating w/ no rain and pleasant temps.
• One week later, Sunday evening they still had 700 w/o power.

Now for some pictures, I didn't go picture hunting, I thought that was rude, due to the fact that some had trees in their roofs and cars smashed. So this is just our property: