Why I Haven't Posted This Past Week

It’s been a busy one for sure. I hope everyone has been able to score some great deals during my absence at A Thrifty Penny. Here’s a peek into our lives recently:

Hosted our parents at our apartment for a week–

It’s great to have them, but after a week it’s good to be back to just us 4 again for a while.

Little One was dedicated at church–

8th months old already and she’s such a sweetheart!

Had Turkey’s 3rd birthday party at our apartment

Since his favorite things are cooking and Elmo we had a cooking party with an Elmo cake, decorated with love by Nana. The kids made macaroni jewelry and mixed their own brownies and muffins. While those were baking we went outside to put play food into a play oven with large spoons. Then the kids had to take them across the yard to another play kitchen using the oven mitts. Actually, most of the 2 yr olds ended up just playing kitchen out there, but it was fun

Then they cut their own jigglers and had elmo cake. It was a lot of house cleaning and prep, both before and after, but so worth it!

Black Friday
I only shopped at CVS and Walgreens, but had about 10 transactions with lots of great deals! We spent a good chunk of time looking online, but only ended up buying 1 thing online over the weekend, and some shirts for Hubby today.

Very intense house searching,

We are supposed to be out of our apartment by Jan 1. I am very ready to get this process over with. This will be our 4th place to live since we married, and has been the most difficult search by far. There just aren’t many houses we can rent or buy in our budget in Tyler, particularly since all of our equity is tied up in our house back in Arkansas. It’s very difficult to choose between paying more money than we have to spend each month on rent, or to take on the risk of a 2nd mortgage just to stay within our monthly budget. I never thought it would be so hard to find a decent place to live in a city this large. If any of you Tylerites have suggestions, please e-mail me ASAP!!!

Up next for us in Dec:

The kids have eye surgery

Hubby has lots of out of town work (looks like we’re missing all 3 Christmas parties because of this)

Christmas travel

Packing and Moving – ugg

I hate to say it, but we probably aren’t even going to put up a tree this year. When we look back on this year of our lives I’m hoping we can say that we grew and learned a LOT, but that we really won’t remember how terribly difficult it has been.

I am going to strive to continue with my regularly scheduled posts, but things may be more concise than they have been. I’ll be utilizing the resources of some other super bloggers instead of doing all my own matchups. I’m making plans now for posts while I’m out of town so hopefully you won’t notice when I’m a little overwhelmed with life over the holidays. You all are wonderful and I enjoy helping each of you be more efficient with your household budgets and your time. I hope you’ll continue to keep me on my toes by asking great questions and letting me share great tips. ~Cricket

Why I Haven’t Posted This Past Week