It has been a little while since I have posted. Grant and I have both been working at Alpha Granite, and Grant has even been working almost full time which has been a huge blessing. We are wanting very much to pay off our loans so any extra cash we can get will definitely help.

As many of you know, I have been reading the blog www.hip2save.com a lot, and I get a lot of my great deals off of her website. A few of the things that she puts on there are just sweepstakes or things to enter. I do them for poops and giggles,but I never expect to win anything. But low and behold I won something!!!

Actually, I won two!

Johnson and Johnson has some awesome giveaways where the first 10,000 to enter win, etc. So I always enter just because you never know.

This was the larger of the two; I had never gotten anything like this so it was a cool treat, especially since I won’t have to buy ziplock bags for a while now.

After there first win, a few weeks later I got this one in the mail, a little bit smaller,but I will take anything free and be completely satisfied.

Again, very few Ziplocs will be bought for a while.

Ok, so Grant and I have one main Luxury that we pay for. We don’t need iphones at all,but being really frugally with other areas of our lives, this is the one area we like to splurge a little bit. Also, we know that the second these phones become to expensive, we can cancel the data plan and start using regular phones again. Anyway, as some of you may have heard, the iphone 4 just came out. So, Grant and I sold our older iphones 3Gs phones, and Grant wanted to preorder both of our phones. Well, he was lucky enough to right when he woke up on the June 15th which was the first day to preorder he some how got his preorder in… then all of the servers crashed. So, it was looking like only Grant would get a phone on release day. He tried ALL DAY to put my preorder in, only to find out that they are only allowing one preorder per Apple account. If he had known that, it would have saved him some time. He then decided to order my phone through AT&T and have it delivered to our apartment.

As the days went by, Grant kept reading all of the latest news on what was going on with the iphones since this was vital information for him. He then told me that he was really sorry that he wasn’t able to get my order in with Apple, or sooner with AT&T because my phone might come as late as July 2nd or July 14th rather than June 24th. Well, As time went on, we realized that Apple didn’t put a hold on the shipped phones this year. This means that, once they made it into a town they were able to be delivered to their new owners with out being held. Last year, the phones could be housed in a warehouse across the street,but until the 24th you wouldn’t be able to get your hands on it. This year they didn’t care, so some people were receiving their new iphones on the 22nd which was two days early. Now Grant was annoyed because if he had known that, the would have ordered both of our phones to be delivered to our apartment because his preorder was only for one day at the Apple store. If he were not get into line to late, he could miss his phone and have to wait until at least July 14 which would be a huge bummer.

So as Grant would say, “Long story Long.” My Iphone came the day before preorder dates. It was delivered the 23rd. Also, we found out that if you leave a signed note the UPS person will take the note, and leave  your item even if you are not here.

Here you can see our Awesome UPS person disguising my phone box under the mat. The box was very nondescript, so no one would have been able to tell where it was from and what was inside,but the extra precautions were very appreciated non the less.

Here you can see the new box design. The old ones looked completely different.

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There are some more pictures of my phone. Grant then got up around 4:30 am to go stand in line while I already had my phone. He had a decent time in line, so I don’t think it was too bad, but if we had had both of ours delivered to our door it would have been nice. We have had fun finding out all the new features, and we even got the apple bumper cases as well. Pictures to come soon. Hope you are all well, and we have phones again WOOT!

This is Grant’s Favorite shirt, and it says it all. We were going camping with the young married’s group from church that we hang out with. This was our second time going, and it was soo much more fun actually knowing people.

One of the coolest parts of this trip, was the fact that our stuff was out of the storage unit, and we could use our own stuff.

Our Ghetto way to filter the water that went into our water cooler thingy.

There was a deal that day at Papa Johns Pizza, and Grant was waiting for this day.

The pizza that we ended up eating. It was great, and it made the hour + drive much more fun.

Here you can see Grant driving there, and yes, he still had the IV at this time.

This is what happens when Grant tries to help people set up their tents. ;p Shea and Anthony’s tent pegs and Grant didn’t get a long…

Grant got this awesome water cooler from his grandpa, and it was awesome to actually put it to good use.

We were going to share a tent with Shea and Anthony since we didn’t have a tent so this is where we were sleeping.

Of course if turned out that Shea didn’t spend the night, and Anthony slept outside… so we had this HUGE tent for 2 people how goofy. Anyway, I should have taken more pictures,but completely didn’t think about it. Anyway, it was a great camping trip with a lot of fun people. We played an AWESOME and funny game of volleyball which was way fun. We also had some tasty smores, and it was just great fellowship.

Ok, so people sometimes pronounce HIV like a word rather than saying each letter. Well, Grant got poison Ivy and we called it the IV(Like a word not the letters.) Pretty much, Grant always knew he had some pretty bad reactions to poison ivy,but he never had it this bad before. He was helping Paul with his lawn service, and first thing in the morning he got it. This means that the oils had all day to set in.

He went home and showered, he did the usual thing when he thinks he has poison ivy…. scrap it with a blade and pour bleach on it… didn’t seam that healthy but whatever.

After about a week, it kept getting worse and kept spreading or so we thought. I think really the oils had stayed on his body long enough, and whenever they wanted to just showed up.

So, he tried everything he could think of, and let me tell you there are some weird remedies online. I remember the time I came home from work and he had soaked his arms  in salt water and bleach for a while. We could see the pigment discoloration difference of where his arm had been submerged and where it wasn’t.

It got so bad, that he finally considered going to the doctors. Then he called a place Tanya knows, and they said if he was having trouble breathing then they would give him steroids,but other than that there is nothing they can really give him. So, Grant had to stick it out some more which really stunk for him.

The really bad spots started to heal,but lots of small areas were still showing up. I am sure he was really miserable, and I felt bad.

The constant oozing was pretty gross not going to lie.

I probably was not helping matters. I made fun of the IV, and refused to touch him. Even though it is supposedly not contagious,but seeing him get more and more over time didn’t help.  I didn’t want any part of that. Here I am with a flat sheet between us so that I don’t have to touch his arms… We were going to watch a movie. Kinda cruel I know,but I don’t do well with itching… When I get a mosquito bite, I scratch it until it stops itching… one time in my life I don’t have a lot of discipline. I am just very glad that Grant no longer has the IV, and I am sure he is glad that he is out of quarantine.

I have been trying to coupon and find good deals to make it possible to hit our food budget. It is awesome being able to score good deals especially when I don’t have to mess with Store Bucks and other rewards that are designed to make you think you are saving money. When in reality they put a lot of restrictions hoping that you forget to spend them, or can’t when you want to; so, in essence trying to rip you off . So, there is a store here called Fiesta, a lot of people don’t like shopping there because it isn’t always the cleanest, and you need to know how to tell produce is fresh before you buy there.

Anyway, they had  a great deal on beef where we were paying $0.99 cents a lb. of beef which is very very good…. Needless to say we stocked up.

This turned out to be around 15-16 lbs. of meat, but according to Grant you can never have too much meat.