Good deals

I swear I do more than just shop, however, that seems to be about all that I have been posting lately. Oh well...

Today I spent $40, and I got six bags of diapers, six tubs of wipes, 1 bag of wipes refill, 4 cases of coke, and one loaf of french bread. As Billie the coupon queen would say, I bought three bags of diapers and got everything else free :)

Good deals and cute kids

MacKayla's birthday was last week and I will post about it soon, I am just waiting until we do her party this weekend.

But here is the deal of the day for todayTotal OOP: $15.94, and I have a coupon for $5.00 off of my next order, yeah for great coupons (thanks Billie). The soda was all on sale and everything on top I had coupons to get for free.


MacKayla won the boxtops drawing at school and wound up with this Webkins poodle that she has named Saia (Say-ah). She has the most interesting names for some of her toys, except her teddy-bear who is simply named Teddy. She is also wearing one of the outfits that she got from her Grandparents for her birthday.
I am still trying to get a great photo of Bella to use as her 1 year photo, so far this is what I have some up with. If anyone feels the need to practice their photography skills, I would love a good photo of this kid.
Leave me alone
Please no moreHappy but not looking at the cameraPlaying with her books, but not smilingLooking somber
Very cute, but where's the adorable smile
Here she is being silly in her high chair, she likes to cock her head to the side until you do it and laughShe has learned the game "where's your nose" and will proudly point to her nose whenever askedMacKayla and her birthday presents
MacKayla opening one of her birthday presents, she got a Disney Princess Wii game. She is just starting to figure out the controls, but she did seem to like it.
MacKayla also got a snow cone maker for her birthday.
MacKayla was also given money for her birthday and wanted to buy some new clothes. I have never really taken her clothes shopping and I am not sure that I want to again. She was such a little girly-girl, she had to look at everything, reject whatever I picked out and it took us 10 minutes to settle on the shirt. Oh vey! She got a new pair of jeans as well but we have to exchange them still.
These are the new jammies that she picked out as well.
Annika being cute!

The next three photos are to show the difference in my crazy kids. They had each eaten a bit of chocolate birthday cake and they each have their own way of doing it. MacKayla has a slight bit of cake around her mouth, Annika gets it all over her mouth and some on her forehead, and then Bella gets it everywhere, gotta love messy kids.

The girls all sharing a few minutes together before bed.

Books Read in February

Here's the update for what I read in February...


Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (Really enjoyed the first series)
Patterson - 422
Maximum Ride: School's Out - Forever
Patterson - 409
Maximum Ride: Saving the World
Patterson - 432
Maximum Ride: The Final Warning (This is the second series of Maximum Ride, and it was nowhere near as good. The whole book was about man-made global warming and how we are destroying the polar caps...it was very tiresome)
Patterson - 304
The Tales of Beedle the Bard (It was a fun, quick read)
Rowling - 112
Stonefather (Really loved this story. It is a short story out of the coming Mithermages series. I am really looking forward to the series coming out.)
Card - 112
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (This was an okay story, geared more to younger children though.)
Patterson - 288
Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo (The story was pretty good, however the writing was very good. Even when not entirely into the story I enjoyed how the author was putting it together.)
Skye - 400
The Time Traveler's Wife (I really enjoyed this story. I have read it before and I picked it up in Friday night and was done by Saturday night, the story is that engrossing. A warning though: it is not a book for younger readers, it contains language and adult relations.)
Niffenegger - 546
Leven Thumps and the Wispered Secret (The story still feels like it is meandering a bit, but written well.)
Skye - 162 (only finished the first third of it this month)

Page count for February: 3187
Total for 2009 thus far: 5076

How many have you read?

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Share with your fellow reader friends.

Copy, edit and paste into a note of your own.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen- Yes
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien- No
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte- Yes
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – Yes
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee- Yes
6. The Bible – Yes
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte- Yes
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell- Yes
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman- No
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens- Yes

Total: 8 (Woohoo, I've read more than 6 in the first category)

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott- Yes
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy- No
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare- No
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier- No
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien- No
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk- No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger- Yes
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger- Yes
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot- no

Total: 10

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell- No
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald- Yes
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens- No
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy- No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams- Yes
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh- No
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky- Yes
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck- Yes
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll- Yes
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame- No

Total: 15

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy- No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens- No
33. Chronicles of Narnia Series - CS Lewis- Yes
34. Emma - Jane Austen- No
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen- No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis- Yes
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini- No
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Mais- No
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden- No
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne- Yes

Total: 18

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell- Yes
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown- Yes
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving- No.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins- No.
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery- No
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy- No
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood- No
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding- Yes
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan- No

Total: 21

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel- Yes
52. Dune - Frank Herbert- No
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons- No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen- Yes
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth- No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon- No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dicken - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley-Yes
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time- No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- No

Total: 24

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck- Yes
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov- No
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt- No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold- Yes
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas- Yes
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac- No
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy-No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding- No
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie- No
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville- No

Total: 27

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens- No
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker- No
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett- Yes
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson- No
75. Ulysses - James Joyce- No
76. The Inferno - Dante- No
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome- No
78. Germinal - Emile Zola- No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray- No
80. Possession - AS Byatt- No

Total: 28

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens- Yes
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell- No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker- No
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro- No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert- No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry- No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White- Yes
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom- Yes
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton- No

Total: 31

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad- No
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery- Yes
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks- No
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams- No
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole- No
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute- No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas- Yes
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare- Yes
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl- No
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo- No

Total: 34

No too bad, I have read a third of these books, but I guess I have a long way to go.

The Little Red Hen - Updated

I copied this from the site American Thinker, you can read more here if you would like.

Once upon a time a little red hen called all of her Obama stimulus supporting neighbors together and said, "If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?"

"Not I," said the cow.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Not I," said the pig.

"Not I," said the goose.

"Then I will do it by myself," said the little red hen, and so she did. The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.

"Who will help me reap my wheat?" asked the little red hen.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Out of my classification," said the pig.

"I'd lose my seniority," said the cow.

"I'd lose my unemployment compensation," said the goose.

"Then I will do it by myself," said the little red hen, and so she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread.

"Who will help me bake the bread?" asked the little red hen.

"That would be overtime for me," said the cow.

"I'd lose my welfare benefits," said the duck.

"I'm a dropout and never learned how," said the pig.

"If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination," said the goose.

"Then I will do it by myself," said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and after they were finished she held them up for all of her neighbors to see. "Who shall help me eat this bread?" asked the little red hen.

"I will," said the cow. "I need to eat to make good milk and I don't have the time."
"I will," said the duck. "My welfare benefits don't provide bread."
"I will," said the pig. "I learned to eat in school."
"I will," said the goose. "If you don't give me any bread, that's discrimination."

But the little red hen said, "No, I made the bread I shall eat all five loaves." And she did.

"Excess profits!" cried the cow. (Nancy Pelosi)

"Capitalist leech!" screamed the duck. (Barbara Boxer)

"I demand equal rights!" yelled the goose. (Jesse Jackson)

The pig just grunted in disdain. (Ted Kennedy)

And they all painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

Then Farmer Obama came. He said to the little red hen, "You must not be so greedy."

"But I worked hard and earned the bread," protested the little red hen.

"Exactly," said Barack the farmer. "That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government system, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who who are not productive. It is only fair."

The little red hen smiled and clucked, "I am grateful, for now I truly understand."

The little red hen never again baked bread but signed up for all the free stimulus bread joining her friends the cow, the duck, the pig and the goose. And one by one all the bread bakers stopped baking bread, following the example of their friend, the little red hen. And soon there was no more bread and everyone was hungry.

And all the Democrats smiled. Fairness and equality had been established and ruled the land.

I'm old

Moderator: Welcome to tonight's meeting of age awareness. We are a group dedicated to helping one another through the difficult time of accepting your age. We would like to take a few minutes and let you introduce yourself and tell us about your realization that you are OLD.

Me: Hello, my name is La Tisha and I am learning to accept that I am old.

Participants: Hi La Tisha.

Me: Somewhere in my mind I knew that this day would have to come, but I was not ready for it to be so soon. On Friday I joined some friends in a volleyball game. I used to love to play and played frequently while in high school. I haven't played in ten years though, but thought nothing of getting out there and trying again. I dived for every ball that came out me, sliding on my knees as needed; I attacked every ball that I had a chance to. By the end of playing my knees were hurting and I felt really tired...who knew that was only the beginning...

Moderator: Is that when you realized that you were old?

Me: It was later that night when I looked down at my knees and saw the huge knots and bruises that had formed, saw the bruises forming on my arms and felt the ache of every muscle that I didn't even know that I had. It hurts to walk, to sit, to do anything...I am old.

Participants: We know your pain, we have been there too.

Moderator: We are glad to have you join this group, maybe next time you will be prepared for the further realizations that you are OLD.

Me: Thank you for the support and the friendship, I am twenty-eight and I am sure that as I reach thirty and beyond I will have many more opportunities to learn of my oldness...

I had a great time playing, but man it is hard to realize that you can't play like you did once upon a time.

Random photo tag

You've been tagged
Here is what you do: grab your camera and take at least 5 random pictures around your house.
No cleaning up first, this is your house as is:
Here is some categories you could use:
Room that stays the cleanest
Work in progress
What someone else is doing right now
Favorite decor or display
Something that represents your current life
Favorite relaxing spot
Something hand-me-down
Etc. etc.

This is our "hot spot" and try as I might, this is how it always looks. Everyone's stuff just gets thrown her until Mom is ready to deal with it.
This is the master bathroom, yes the master bathroom is the room that has the Spiderman theme. I'm sure most of you have "grown-up" bathrooms, but I live with a big kid and I get a kick out of humoring him.
This is my work in progress room. This is the laundry room, every weekend we have the intention of finally organizing it...we we have been planning to do that for at least two years, maybe before the girls go to college it will be done.
We are trying to start our food storage, it is also very much a work in progress. With that said, we are set on oatmeal and cold cereal. This is the girls vegging in front of the TV, they are watching Reading Rainbow. I remember going to the library in elementary school to watch videos of Reading Rainbow.
I tag: whoever hasn't done it, I am having fun seeing other people as they really live.