Thanks

We just celebrated Thanksgiving this past weekend and we have so many things to be thankful for. We were able to spend Thanksgiving with family and it meant only a 1 hour car ride instead of having to fly somewhere. It also means that Justin was home for 4 whole days before he had to leave again. Now we are very much looking forward to his Christmas break when he will have over a week off from work.

We did a little shopping on Friday but did not feel like competing with the mobs to get any electronics for half-price. Maybe next year we will feel crazy enough to do that. But now it is time to get the shopping done, get the Christmas cards out in the mail, put up all the decorations, etc. etc. This really is the most wonderful time of the year.

leaving yet again

We moved to Katy, TX 3 months ago to be closer to family. When we made the move, Justin transferred within his company to the Houston office with the understanding that he would have to travel quite a bit for at least the first 6 months. From Labor Day until quite recently, Justin has been flying out of Houston early Monday mornings and flying back on Thursday nights. This past week he was gone from Sunday evening to Friday night. Here it is Sunday and Justin is flying out of town again tonight. :(

At least with it being Thanksgiving this week he will come home on Wednesday and be able to spend 4 whole days with his wife before he has to fly out of town yet again. I guess we should be thinking of all the flight and hotel rewards he is earning, right?

Grocery Game

One of my friends told me about an interesting thing online yesterday - http://grocerygame.com/
It is not available everywhere (you have to check availability in your state in the FAQs), but it is amazing. It is a membership and has a membership fee, but I think it will totally pay for itself and then some. And right now they are doing a special where you get to try 4 weeks for $1.

Here is how it works:
When you sign-up, you tell it which grocery stores in your area you want to subscribe to (you can get all stores for the first 4 weeks for a dollar, after that you pay $10 for 8 weeks of 1 store and $5 for each additional store). Every Sunday, they post The LIST for each store and you can access the ones you are subscribed to. The LIST contains all of the specials (both advertised and unadvertised) at the store through Tuesday (2 days later), if there is a coupon for that item (start clipping those coupons every Sunday!) and the final price you would pay for the item taking into account the special, the coupon and if they do any coupon doubling or tripling.

When my friend first told me about it, I thought that it sounded a little ridiculous - Can't I look at all the ads and go shopping on my own? But this thing is really great - I was able to see all the specials at the two big grocery stores here by looking online instead of getting a headache trying to process everything in the ad. Even specials that they didn't put in their ads I could see online. Then I could go through the list and pick out only the things that I would buy. I did this for each store and then compared the final price at each store to see which store I should buy certain things at. The LIST also tells me if something is such a low price (with specials and coupons) that it is worth stocking up on.

The end result for me yesterday - at Store A I spent $8.20 and saved $7.91, at Store B I spent $48.30 and I saved $37.24. And I didn't buy anything that I will not use over the course of the next couple weeks. My verdict - The Grocery Game is awesome! The small fee associated with it, totally pays for itself in the savings that you accumulate. And The LIST for each store basically let me know which store was the best store for me to buy different stuff with no headache on my part.

I highly recommend checking it out - if you sign-up put my email as a reference - jewels_mcfar@yahoo.com

BNL - 11/11/2006

Tonight we are in Austin and just got back from seeing Barenaked Ladies in concert. It was awesome - highly recommended. Lots of great songs and a good balance of old favorites as well as new material. It was quite cold at an outdoor venue though - but that was the only drawback.

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone. This year, since we have our own house, we decided to have a Halloween party. We think it turned out rather well. We had lots of people over, and tons of Halloween-themed food. See all of our pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/anesone/halloweenparty2006