Semana Santa or Holy Week

For some reason Blogger is messing with the order of my pictures. They are in reverse! :) I will post more pictures of the floats and the crowds either tonight or tomorrow.

Pine needle, straw, and flower carpet
Birds of Paradise flowers were used to create smaller crosses

"Designers" deciding on where to put the large bouquets

Colored sawdust created with stencils

Pressing saw dust into the stencil

Working from 2x4's suspended in the air

Beautiful work!

walking across 2x4's in order to get to the middle of the carpet

This was the carpet inside the cathedral in the Main Square in Antigua

It is Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Guatemala. Antigua is one of the most popular destinations to celebrate this week, especially if you are Catholic. Without me going into an indepth religious discussion on Catholicism versus Christianity, I am simply going to post these pictures in memory of my first Semana Santa.

Here is a little background information: The Catholic people in Antigua create these amazing masterpieces made up of flowers, palm leaves, fruit, vegetables, and colored sawdust. They work for hours and hours and literally in a matter of seconds they are destroyed. Catholic people carrying floats (which are VERY heavy and made out of solid wood) walk over these 'carpets'. The incense is extremely strong and actually takes your breath away. The Catholic people are creating these carpets and carrying these floats for several specific reasons, which I am not going to get into... The people carrying these floats have to pay money to take a 'turn'. The parade route is marked by 'retorno' signs and this is where if your turn is up, another person may jump in to carry the load.

Personally, I don't agree with why the people are doing this, but I can appreciate the hardwork involved in creating these wonderful carpets.

Celebrity Apprentice and ALL????

We sometimes watch Celebrity Apprentice and last night happened to be the show that we chose to watch. They were doing a "viral video" for All Small and Might Laundry Detergent. Both teams failed at the task and neither one was a winner.

But, All did release a valuable coupon that is only good for today (April 6th until 11:00 EST). You can print out two per computer (just use the back button). This will be awesome savings with an upcoming sale. Click here to print! My family has purchased this product before and it worked great!

A Year Ago...Pictures

These pictures were taken exactly one year ago today in Guatemala. We had our foster parents back for another night to stay with us. At this point, we had Caroline back in our custody, but we had established such a wonderful friendship with them, they became our guests. They loved Caroline very much and were missing her terribly.

On one of Tim's trips in, he found this amazing bakery a few "blocks" away from our house. If you didn't know it was a bakery, you would have walked by it because it was in someone's home. Anway, Juliza and I walked to get some goodies and brought it home for a special treat. Mario decided to "celebrate" Caroline's 1st birthday a bit early and gave her cake. I knew at this moment that my baby girl was going to LOVE sweets!! Wow, how time does fly!!

Gotta love Softsoap!

Softsoap and Walgreens was definitely showing me love on Monday! Tutti called me and told me to RUN to the store and buy softsoap body wash. If you purchase one, a catalina would print out for a FREE softsoap body wash. BUT...the best part was the coupon was 'rolling', meaning that you could buy another one, pay for it with the free Q, and do again...rinse and repeat! I did this 8 times! I paid $.28 for the 'other' ones!!!

My OOP was about $4 because I threw in some other items like jello for jello jigglers and some stickers for our Easter Egg Hunt next week at my house. I also got my mom some FREE Equal for her morning coffee. :)

Frugal Friday...Kroger 96% savings!

It was a great week at Kroger! Check out these savings...

OOP: $1.39
Saved: $31.46 (96% savings)

Even better...a catalina (money towards your next purchase) printed out (2) $1.00's!

10- McCormick Grill Seasonings- $1.00 each - (10) $1.00 MQ
4- French's Mustard- $1.25 each - (4) $.50 Q (doubled)

School Easter Egg Hunt

Ruth and Caroline...pigging out on chocolate! :)

Ruth, Me, and Caroline

Look Mommy!

Ummm....what's in these eggs?

Let me count my precious eggs...1...

2...3...

Caden is checking out Caroline's cute basket

Is there really candy in here??

Caroline had her first Easter Egg Hunt at school on Tuesday. She was so funny! She didn't really get the fact that you raced to pick up as many eggs as possible. Caroline just stood back adn watched the other children at first. She then started picking up a few eggs, but she would shake them first to see if there was anything in them! LOL! What she didn't realize was that the ones that didn't make noise actually had stickers in them! :) I would have LOVED for her to have picked up only the "quiet" ones. We suffered a HUGE belly ache later in the day. We live 1.1 mile from the school. So I handed Caroline her baskets and not thinking that she could open her candy by herself. By the time we reached our driveway, she had eaten SIX pieces of chocolate! I am a pretty strict mom with her diet and RARELY let her eat chocolate or candy...so my poor child had more chocolate candy in 1 mile than she has had in her entire life! Needless to say...we have been having major BM's!! Oh, well...it was fun! I must say thank you to Grandmama for her adorable bunny basket. Caroline loved it and so did the other children! :) Thank you Grandmama!!!

Eating Out With Friends

We went out to eat last week with our friends Ada and Torbin, Thomas, and Ruth. Can you tell by the pictures that the kids had a GREAT time? Who wouldn't have a great time with all you can eat chips and salsa?? :) Yummy!!

April Showers and LOTS of them!

This is the lake in our backyard. As you can tell, it's pretty full!
Caroline and Peaches playing in the rain...and yes, we are still in our pajamas!

Cheese!!!

I just love those puckered lips! I can only imagine what she's thinking!

Question on Coupon Fraud???

I am looking for a policy that talks about how it is coupon fraud when a store downgrades/changes a manufacturer coupon. Any help??? I would greatly appreciate it!!!