I'm still here!

Hello bloggery friends! I am sure after such a dry spell of no posting that I lost all 4 of my readers, but if any of you have stuck around, thank you!

I have not fallen off the face of the planet this last month, though falling off the face of the U.S. and down near Hawaii somwhere would have been nice!
This has just been a very busy time for us. This post will be chok full of randomness, so be prepared!

My camera was grossly neglected the last month so we have all of 2 pictures of school. We have still been enjoying MFW in a big way, so don't let the lack of still-shots make you think otherwise.

We have whizzed through Kenya, Saudi Arabia and we are currently visiting India.

The pictures below are of the Decorative necklaces art project we did for Kenya.
Although the girls all seemed to think they made better hats.

After that we suffered a self-imposed craft drought and have done NO MFW crafts until today when we did the stone inlay craft for India. Though we cheated and used playdoh instead of clay, so I am sure it will crack when it dries and we will have gemstones all over the house. Joy.

Random picture.

Here's our Christmas tree this year. I let the girls decorate it completely, so click on it at your own risk. I figure Christmas isnt about having a perfect looking tree, so if they want to group 33 ornaments on one branch, so be it. Its quite a unique tree too....

It's not every tree that has a cute Gizmo ornament....

Or an ill-fated Gizmo ornament...

Their one Christmas Eve gift. Zoobles. Believe it or not, this is the ONLY still photo I have of gift opening. Momma forgot to check and make sure that the camera batteries were charged before Christmas morning. Oops. Rest assured there were abnormal amounts of gift wrap flying around, lots of yelps and squeals and mass quantities of those frustrating little twist ties.

This little guy *HEARTS* his new track set and this is only a SMALL portion of it. I got a HUGE amount of track, extra bits and pieces and a whole bag of motorized trains and freight cars at a yard sale this summer for about $40. So he was set and I didnt need to buy him a THING while holiday shopping.

Momma got a Garmin for Christmas. I love this thing. I may have kissed it when I got it out of the box.

After my run, I hook it up to the 'puter and I can even see my run on Google Earth and do all sorts of other cool 'techy' stuff.

Rad.

And THESE should be arriving any day now. Nike Air Max 2010+.

Retail cost: $160 Price for me: FREE

Only because of THIS:

Bought those in July, only used them for running. I wore down the heels enough to 'pop' that air cushion on the sole. We sent them to Nike to see if they would qualify for a Nike voucher. 2 weeks later I got a $160 voucher in the mail to use at Nike.com and I used that puppy right away. Hopefully the shoes will get here in the next few days as I have been running the last couple weeks in 7 yr old shoes and I am noticing that my knees and shins are kind of mad at me about that.

The other reason for my bloggy absence is due to the fact that I have been spending a fair amount of time trying to work our grocery budget down and learning the ins and outs of coupons and price matching. So far, I have worked us down from about $330 a week to $230, not too shabby! My goal is $200 or less a week (this includes EVERTHING we get Aldi's, Whole Foods and Super Walmart-meaning paper products, soap, batteries, cat food etc)...

I would love to hear your best grocery saving tip!