This Crazy Life

This summer, like last summer has been crazy! It's a really good thing that Jeff chooses not to get a second job during the summer, because I would be stuck at home all summer and we'd never get a vacation.

We started out like last year having several Junior High events in a short period of time, followed by soccer camp, Mommy & Me yoga class, and did I mention Vacation Bible School? This year our children's ministry team had a hard time finding directors to plan VBS this year, so I volunteered my services. I'm not really sure why, but it ended up being a great experience, even though I was pretty busy for a while. I got to plan VBS for our church kids and all the visitors that came in with 2 of my good friends.

Since all that took care of the first 3 weeks in June, July was around the corner and left town on the Wednesday after VBS for a 2 week trip to the North Woods in Wisconsin and Chicago area to visit family and spend some time as a family. I'm hoping to give our trip it's own post soon, but we had lots of fun and loved building relationships with Jeff's cousins, and getting to see his aunts and uncles too. Jeff's grandmother has 7 great-grandchildren, and all but 2 of them are under the age of 3. Four of them were born within a year of each other!

Now that we've been home for almost 2 weeks, we're starting to enjoy our summer. The girls are playing in the backyard, I got to have a girls night out at the movies with my MIL and SIL. Sidenote: Letters to Juliet is an excellent movie if anyone's interested or wants to purchase it for me for Christmas! :)

We are just now starting to get busy again. We are making an impromptu trip to Athens this weekend to see my Grandpa who has cancer and isn't doing well, and next week Jeff has soccer camp and coaching meetings. We also have something else that's evading my memory at the moment. Next weekend we get to hang out with our good friends in Tyler.

We have even made plans to go to San Antonio for a few days without the girls. We are very excited about this trip (or at least I am). Over the past couple of weeks we have been watching a few different websites looking for the best deal for a hotel on/near the Riverwalk and had found a few things, but not that we were ready to book. We used Hotwire to book our hotel rooms on our way up and back from Wisconsin and got some great deals at 2 different Holiday Inns. Both were very nice and probably the cheapest price you could pay for any hotel. Last night while perusing for information on Priceline's Name your own price option, I found a coupon for an auction website that was $100 your first purchase. I clicked to see what it was and found a very nice 4 star hotel on the riverwalk.

It was a package deal that includes:
3 night stay
breakfast each morning- room service or in the restaurant
dinner for 2 one night at their restaurant (Approximately $50 value)
rose petal turn down
champagne and strawberries upon arrival
All taxes included
Must pay $40 fee for something

This package claimed to be worth almost $900 according to the website. We also reasoned that the cheapest 4 star hotel we could get was at least $100/night after taxes. The one we considered making reservations for was $100 before taxes. On this idea, the auction had 1 bidder who had bid early on and we were hoping this person wasn't paying careful attention to it. With all coupons and taxes paid, I am VERY excited that we won the auction and paid less than $350 for everything. It would be really great if the deal covers the charge for parking! We'll still have to cover a few meals and gas, but I'm just really excited and proud of my hubby for his diligence and frugal ways! We'll have to give our vacation it's own post too with some pics of everything.