Staples!!!

Staples is having a back to school sale this week with a few items as low as $0.01! I paid less than $8 and got the following:

2 packs of erasers, 2 bottles of glue, 8 glue sticks, 2 pkgs of 8 pens, 2 pkgs 5 mechanical pencils, 1 pkg of 5 sharpie markers, 2 pkgs of stickies tabs (I LOVE these for studying and marking in my textbooks), 2 clear plastic folders, 2 reams of white paper, and 2 pkgs of 50 pgs of photo paper! Total would have been $58.77... I saved appx $51! There were other items on sale, but I stuck to only things that I use and would buy for school even if they weren't on sale.

A picture of my items:


















and in a sad note, my camera is broken. :( hopefully it's a simple issue and will be fixed when we go to California in a couple of weeks!

Kara is 11!

And she is having a great birthday!

She started the day by playing video games, then out to lunch of her choice. A little shopping and running errands, then back home and she's playing a new wii game.

Later it's either bowling or antigravity (trampoline arena) - she hasn't decided yet.

4th of July - part 3: the fireworks (at home)

Living in Utah gives us the opportunity for many days of fireworks (the law lets us light fireworks for 3 days prior to July 4th and 3 days after). We bought a large multi-pack from the store which gave us plenty for two nights worth of fireworks (plenty for us to enjoy).

Here are some pictures of both nights combined:

Playing with the pop-its:

















Sparkler fun (waiting for it to be dark enough for fireworks):











































































































This year we let the girls each take turns lighting the fireworks under Jeff's supervision. Here are pictures of the first time each of them lit a firework:











































Enjoying the show:







































Some of our fireworks (I won't bore you with all of the pictures of them):

4th of July - part 2: the food

Aren't you jealous of what we ate? Jeff's BBQ pork ribs are heavenly! :)

4th of July - part 1: the fun

On the 4th of July we went to see a production of the Little Mermaid at Tuacahn outdoor amphitheater. They did a wonderful job! The sets were great, and the actors were good too! There were some cheesy musical numbers, but what stage production doesn't have those? I loved how the show incorporated water right on stage by flooding the stage with it at parts, making it rain, and projecting images onto a curtain of water to make it look like they were under water... really cool effects!

After the show Tuacahn put on a breathtaking fireworks show. My jaw literally fell open. The fireworks were so close and done so well and I've never seen anything like it! Maybe that will be a new tradition for us!

Here are some pictures of us before the show (no pictures during the show, and I purely enjoyed the fireworks and did not snap any photos).