The Tightwad Goes to an Amusement Park

The music has temporarily changed in honor of this post or shall I say because of the stroller? When we were there we heard so many comments about it, I stopped counting after about 30 people said "Wow, that's cool" or " Aww that's so adorable". I also heard lots of the typical comments: "you have your hands full, oh look triplets, a blonde-brunette-and a redhead!, are they twins, they aren't triplets are they-but that one is smaller etc..." so all in all the day was wonderful only 1 crappy "oh, I'd kill myself" and the rest was all positive.

We didn't get loaded up and ready to go until almost lunch time but I had planned it that way so we could eat our picnic lunch before we entered the park. Full kids=less whining for overpriced junk foods and drinks. We parked as far away from the other cars as possible so I wasn't worrying about them darting out in front of cars or a freak picking them up and taking them away. We were a good 100ft from the nearest car and there was a nice strip of grass and a big bush for shade. I brought the large cooler filled with foods I had cooked up the night before, I made 2 meals at supper time so we would have food to take. I made home made chicken nuggets from chicken breast, we like them dipped in egg and then cracker crumbs. They were yummy cold. We also had some very plain pasta salad, I left it a little on the dry side (to cut down on the messy hands of toddlers) and added some diced ham and that's about it, the pasta was little wagon wheels so the girls could fork them really easily. A big bowl of grapes and some of the meatloaf from the night before, and a big bowl of jello salad with oranges. Everyone ate the lunch and got full while we set up the strollers and Mommy packed up the diaper bag and filled sippies. We took crackers and dry cereal into the park as well as bottled water.

We had discussed the rides, looked online at them and we all knew our way around so each of the boys picked a couple rides that they really wanted to ride, we did those first so that if things went south we could make a run for it and still be ok with heading home. We managed to get in all the rides and let the girls ride some kiddy rides, we watched the Circus (kinda lame this year) and the kids all did wonderful. The girls ran around but stayed close to us and the area by the Raging River ride was nice and shady and they couldn't go too far. When it was time to get back in the stroller and move on they did it without fussing as long as we were moving. Piper spotted a seeing eye dog and spent a lot of time petting it and she also made friends with a little girl and a lady working at the tee shirt stand. We played no games-we bought nothing but a small bag of chips and a slush, 1 slush for Levi. The train ride that we went on is set up by a master mind. To get off the train and exit the ride you must go through a candy store! Guess what? Bizzarro Supermom just happened to have non-sticky sweet tart suckers in the diaper bag for everyone! They cost me a quarter on sale at the grocery store and I didn't have to hear anybody whine about not getting to buy that overpriced candy that we were forced to walk by. * (A side note here: Logan is 5 years old and just learned how to use a gumball machine at the store if that tells you anything about how I feel about my kids spending money on junk/trinkets and candy.)

After the park we stopped off at Hobby Lobby for a quick supply run and we ate at a buffet restaurant. The girls got more food on the table than in their tummies and the waitress gave us 4 helium balloons to take home. The van was packed full anyway but the added bonus of 4 balloons being squeezed and swatted made the trip home extra special. After 30 min.. Our trip home was just under 2 hours and we arrived home around 10pm, changed sleeping kids into pajamas and put them to bed. It was lots of fun for all of us.

40 Cups of Coffee, Thank you Ella Mae

I took Logan to his Kindergarten physical appointment today. He did really well. He is in the 25th percentile for weight following his own curve and at 43 inches tall he is pretty small but growing well. No shots, just a finger poke. He told the nurse he was in 2nd grade when she asked. Next we went to Walmart to get some groceries. For some reason I was stressed out during most of the trip. I think it's because I had left my list at home, so I worried about forgetting something and spending too much money. Could it have been Logan moving at a snail's pace directly in front of my cart the whole way or maybe that he was doing helicopter arms and knocking things off the shelves or that he was throwing items into the cart and getting in and out of the cart repeatedly? I don't know why, it should have been easier than dragging 4 under 5 year olds but it wasn't. I almost lost it when he took 2 styrofoam craft balls the size of softballs and shoved them up inside his shirt...yes they look like boobs and the other 3 ladies in the isle at the time thought it was funny, I wanted to crawl under the shelf and hide. My response was to tell him that we don't pick up things we are not going to purchase-I completely ignored the whole booby thing. We got through the check out line and went in to "pretend" to play the video games for about 10 minutes before going to the van and packing 2 carts full of groceries in there. We still had to go to another store because Wm was out of chocolate milk and plantains. I bought the plantains for making making a new recipe. We went to the drive thru and got a Happy Meal on the way home. We laughed and had some deep conversations about snacks and puppies and music class, I need to make more days like this minus the Walmart trip-or at least bring my list. Here is a link to a Youtube song, I like the oldies sometimes. This one is called 40 Cups of Coffee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMcdzc1TkO4 Thank you Ella Mae Morse

Got a minute?

Hi everyone it's a busy Saturday morning here so I'm making this a quick post. I am gearing up to do a lot of redecorating and moving rooms here at home and I will be keeping you up to date with lots of pictures of that and I'm also going to start adding my cooking on a budget advice lol. I keep getting requests for that. People want to know how I feed this big family and I'm going to start sharing that information soon. I have lots of great tips and recipes.

 Although it's not my best looking picture it's truly my favorite one. It's in San Diego at the Marine Recruit Training Depot on Family day. It was the very first time we got to see him for 13 long weeks. I swear I thought the last 13 weeks of carrying triplets was hard but this was harder! Anyway we had just picked him up and we were sitting down to eat in the shade, he was starving and in the picture I think he had food in his mouth lol. I had been crying tears of joy so my eye make up was washed away and I was still in that moment of staring at him and being thrilled to death to see him! That's why it's my favorite, because it captured that moment in time.. Have a great Saturday! Take time to teach your children something today and hug your loved ones.