Everyone who knows me knows i like to shop! Especially online. I HATE to pay full price for anything, and rarely do. Thats why i have a hard time at Christmas, i pay full price. I thought i would share with you a few of my favorite websites for finding items at a great price. Click the name of the site to be brought directly there.

• Zenni Optical. This is where i buy all my eye glasses. I have bought 4 pair in the last year from them and can't complain about anything. I buy the $8.00-12.95 pairs. Shipping is $4.95 and takes around 2 weeks to get them. They ship them in hard plastic cases with glass cleaning clothes inside a box with bubble wrap. I love this place!
  
• Lands End Overstock. I always thought Lands End was for old people! The quality of their clothes is amazing. 100% guarantee too! I buy all my swimwear from them. They have a promise it will never fade, stretch or lose its shape, if it does you can return them for a full refund. Check the "On the Counter" section on Saturdays. They post items with deep discounts then. Every other day they mark them down even more. But they sell out almost always before Wednesday.
  
• Airfaredig. Okay the website has drastically changed in the last month and i don't really like it. But they use to have daily updates on the cheapest airfare with direct links to purchase it. Hopefully this will come back. But they still have good deals posted on the site.
  
• Amazon. I always check Amazon lately. If anything you can get a idea on the price. They have so many people/websites that you can see from a list where you can get it cheapest. Also Amazon has all of its own products it sells Free Shipping if you spend $25.00 or more. I love this!!!!! Towards the bottom of the page it will give you a list of what other people bought who looked to this item, i find cheap things here too.
  
• Craigslist. I do check it everyday but its really hit or miss. I did find my babysitter on Craigslist and a few other Hayden things. I have sold Baby items here and get a great price for them. A lot more than a Rummage Sale.
  
• When shopping online make sure and search for coupon codes first. Just search the store name and discounts or coupon codes. You will always find at least a free shipping if not some percentage off.
  
• Find someplace that gives you Cashback or some type of Rewards. My Credit Cards both do and so does Upromise, which goes into a College Account for Hayden, we have like $30.00 for him, not much but something.
  
• Picasa by Google. Its free photo editing and storing. I LOVE this. I do all my photo editing with this FREE program. Its a one time download from Google. I upload all my favorite pictures to my online web albums. I can access this anywhere, anytime on the Internet. Its my piece of mind if something happens to my computer the only thing of value i have on it is my pictures.
  

So those a just a few of my favorites. I didn't give the address for my favorite site yet! Someday. You can add something to my list if you'd like to leave me a comment. Have a great weekend. Back to work on Monday.

A Year in Pictures. Happy 2008 to Everybody.

Well we are home from a great weekend in Brainerd. We stayed Friday night at the "WaterFall Hotel" (Holiday Inn Express-Waterpark). Hayden was lucky enough to get some waterparking in. He knew once we hit Aitkin where he wanted to go, all of the sudden we were driving around Aitkin and he said "I want to go to the Waterfall Hotel." I don't know if he associated Aitkin with Brainerd or what, but we hadn't told him we were going there. Smart Kid! He swam like a little fish and went up and down the water slides a couple dozen times. We stayed in a Kid Suite and Hayden got his own bunk bed. He loved it! He kept telling us he was going to sleep in his own bed. We went to 2 drive through Christmas light displays. One was at the "This Old Farm" where Paul Bunyan Land moved to 5 years ago. It was beautiful. However Hayden fell asleep and didn't see anything! Then we went to the Brainerd Arboretum. It was a mile of lights to drive through ranging from Teddy bears to Santa Golfing to Nativity and bells. It was amazing. It was so good we went on Saturday night too! Hayden got to see this time. I tried to get pictures but they didn't come out so great! If they do this next year we will be going again.
Saturday we moved on to Cragun's. We ice skated, played in the snow, and made a fire in the fireplace. We love Cragun's! We swam Sunday morning and built a snow sculpture, a Christmas Tree with beads and a snowflake topper! We won 1st place, out of 1 team, us! We still would of won! Hayden didn't really participate but when we weren't by the tree he kept asking "Where is our Christmas tree?" We rode on the Horse pulled Trolley too! We had lots of fun!
I am going to post "Our Year in Pictures" either on the side bar or a separate post so be watching for it! Happy New Year's to everyone. I know we were blessed with another great year i hope you were too!

Christmas is over? Boy does it fly by. My computer is having some issues lately and i couldnt sign on to the blog for two days it was driving me nuts! We had a great christmas getting way to much. I got a new black coat which i am in love with, even Jason really likes it! He got Wii games, golf stuff and a basketball hoop. Hayden got everything! A bike from Santa, Camera, lots of Diego stuff, tools, uber cute sweater from my mom. Now all we need is a LOT of batteries!

My baby is 3! We sang, he sang, lots of people sang! He did very well. It was a long day but we did it! I made sure to tell him Happy Birthday first before all the Merry Christmas. The Buffy is gone. Santa brought it to all the babies who needed them. He cried himself to sleep on Christmas, i wasnt to far off either. Jason had to work the next morning and was sleeping when i was up with Hayden sobbing until 1 am, i was in Hayden's room thinking bad thoughts about Jason! But come the morning he said he heard him and felt bad too. So i took back all the bad things! Sorry Jason. He was fine yesterday and we'll see how today goes. I am the one who needs to be strong.

We have been playing games at night with either Sarah and Casey or Emily and Aaron. I forgot how much i love to play games. We've been having fun. We haven't even really had time to play all our new Wii games. I did try my new game and it's "Mama's Cook Off" it was fun weird too! We don't play our Wii when Hayden is awake or here so we have very limited time to play, but i HATE video games for kids. Our child will NOT ever get a video game system until he's like 16. Computer is fine, a lot easier for me to monitor the play.

I am going to get some video of Hayden singing and pictures on today so check back! Also i think i am going to change the layout and look of the blog so watch for that! If something doesn't work or you don't like let me know!

Merry Christmas

We hope everybody has a Very Merry Christmas. We were lucky enough to celebrate 2 of our 8 Christmas parties this weekend. We had great fun at both of them. We travelled to Grandma Sandmon's house in all the snow, on Sunday, it only took us an hour and half to drive the normal 45 mins! Saturday we celebrated with the Routh's. A very busy day chatting with lots of people. Friday was my birthday and celebrated with Sarah and Casey with dinner and games. Jason bought me a leather Coach Bag! I have been wanting one forever. I also got Exchange cake from my Mom and Dad. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, nothing better than Exchange cake. I have a few pictures of all the fun! Here are a few things we did this weekend.

• Hayrides
• Presents!
• Eating
• Jessica
• Playing in the Snow
• Singing
• Fun, Fun, Fun

Here are a couple of the Christmas pictures of Hayden and Jessica, none that we ordered though, that's a surprise!