EATING FOR FREE!!!

BY: HEATHER

As you all probably know by now, I am OBSESSED with finances, budgeting, saving money, penny pinching, scrooging, whatever you want to call it! In fact, according to the high school career tests, I should pursue a degree in finance. I, however, am not a fan of math so I will stick to finance as a hobby. Since most of you also love free food, I thought I would do a post on how you can eat out for cheap or free! I don’t eat out very often, but I have found some tricks to make it free or super cheap. Share your ideas too because I love me some free food!

TOP 6 TRICKS FOR EATING OUT CHEAP OR FOR FREE!

11.       LOOK AT YOUR RECEIPT – Almost every fast food place (and some nicer places) will give you free food for filling out a quick survey. Subway – free cookie, Costa Vida – free chips and Queso, Chick-Fil-A – free regular chicken sandwich. These can add up to a lot of free food and don’t take a lot of time. Most are done online or over the phone and you just fill out a Likert-scale survey about your experience. (BONUS:  If you can get your co-workers to buy the food and then give you their receipt, it is absolutely free! Thanks Kimber and Grace J)

22.      REWARD CARDS – Much like the receipt, a lot of places have reward cards. Now, I realize you have to initially pay for items (like buy 10 get 1 free) but if it is somewhere you frequent anyway, you might as well get rewarded, right? I have had many free Jamba Juices in my day thanks to my buy 6 get the 7 free card. Subway, costa vida, café rio, jamba juice, (notice I eat on campus a lot??), sensuous sandwich, etc. all have reward cards. Bonus tip: sometimes you can get even more bonus points by doing certain things. For example, Subway recently gave me 30 bonus points (that is the equivalent of a six in sub!) just to register my reward card online.

33. SPEAKING OF CAMPUS – For those of you who still work here, you are lucky! There is always free food options around campus. Waffle Monday, Flippin Friday, free pizza, club rush, Wolverine Wednesday etc. Almost every option is a “no strings attached” come and eat options which is the BEST!

4. THE INTERNET IS YOUR FRIEND – If you are going out to eat anywhere, google the restaurants coupons! You can almost always find a coupon online for most “Big Chain” restaurants.  Pizza Factory almost always has free bread twists coupons, you can usually find a free chips and salsa at Chili’s, etc.

55.   HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!! – Sign up for any and every birthday club you can! Some are better than others, but almost always there is a free element. Free meal at Tucanos (with the purchase of another meal), free ice cream at Baskin Robins (actually free!), Free burger at Red Robin, etc. You can even spread these out throughout the year by entering different birth dates (is that dishonest? Maybe…don’t quote me on that. I may be having some inner conflict with it) 

6.       SURVEY WEBSITES – Thank you Evelyn for cluing me in on these! So, you have to do a little work for the free food (which isn’t that hard; giving your opinion about stuff? Easy enough for me!) but it is totally worth it. I do both mysurvey.com and opinion outpost. After you have earned enough points, you can trade them in for gift cards to your favorite restaurants! (Opinion outpost actually gives you the option for paypal or amazon gift cards, but you can buy food there as well! MySurvey also gives you options for DVDs, other prizes, etc. but I almost always do the food gift cards! In fact, that is what I have given out as birthday gifts, babysitter presents, etc. and have not had to spend a dime! Even better) If you are interested, sign up through me or Evelyn so we can get the bonus points! J EXTRA BONUS: Some of the surveys require you to test products, which they send to you for FREE! I have done toilet paper, baby wipes, diapers, paper towels, and shampoo surveys. Got all of these things for free AND earned points for trying them out. WIN/WIN/WIN (As Michael Scott would say!)

Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth. I love free food and I love saving money so any tips you have on either subject, I’d love to hear from you!

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Even maternity leave... Bummer. At least it is just part time for now because this little stinker will change too fast! PS I made his blessing outfit... One of the few planned projects that I actually finished while on leave!




And I want to be the one that this one drives crazy all day even if it is exhausting!

True Love

This is what true love is made of...

Potty Training....for real!

WARNING: This is going to be a sappy Mom post...and it's going to get real. Viewers beware!

***Just realized I never mentioned in here that this is Heather posting :)***

So, I'm sure you have heard of books or heard friends and family tell you how they have potty trained their children in 1 week...3 days...24 hours! I do not doubt that this could be true, however, this is not the case in my situation. I knew going into this it would probably take a little bit more time since we are dealing with a speech delay, however, no one told me how incredibly hard this would be!

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the hardest things I have done in my life (in fact those words came out of my mouth to my husband "This is the hardest thing I have ever done!" I get the look of "really? REALLY?" Um...yes...REALLY!) I never thought I would cry, pray for, celebrate, clean up SO much urine/feces in all my life...but I did all of those things. The first 2 days were terrible and I really wanted to quit, but we stuck it out. We are now going on week 4 and there is still a learning curve, but I think he is getting it. He now likes to tease me and say "go potty" because he gets such a good reaction out of me - "You need to go potty?! Ok, let's go!" and then he says "NO!" but one time he told me "go potty" and didn't  respond "NO!" so I took him and he went! Oh, the miracles! (See, my life revolves around that porcelain throne!)

What I have learned:

1. I could sing you a bunch of songs about going potty because little Owie bears new favorite video is Potty time (from the makers of signing time).
2. He is almost completely potty trained with me because when I am with him, I won't let him out of my sight until he has gone potty. Then, I give him an hour break and start following him around the house again.
3. Going out in public the first time in underwear was terrifying, but we made it through!
4. I never thought I was the kind of person that could deal with/clean up someone else's bodily fluids, but apparently when you love someone, it isn't so bad. 

The biggest thing I have learned:

EVERY CHILD IS DIFFERENT.  Ok.. her comes the sappy mommy part. the biggest lesson I have learned from having a child with developmental delays is this: Developmental delays does not mean limits.. it just means a different time table. I don't know if my sweet little boy will get this potty training thing in 2 days or 2 years, but I know he will eventually get it. He has taught me so much patience, and believe me, I am anything but patient! This has been a great life lesson for me because I always want everything to work out in my own way and in my own time table, but that is not always the case.

Being a Mom is hard. Being a Mom of a special needs child is hard. Being a Mom of any child is hard. Being a working Mom is hard. Being a stay at home Mom is hard. Not being a Mom when you want to be is hard.

I just want you all to know that I think you are all awesome! I have had the privledge of working with some of the strongest, smartest, most empowering women I have ever met and I am so grateful for that. Thank you for sharing in this journey with me and listening to all my stories about my life!

And so we go on...Stay tuned because one day I will post that potty training is complete and I won't have to think about the potty again... Until the next kid is ready! haha. Potty training = good birth control :)

This is Freakishly Accurate of Us...

In honor of Waffle Monday and Flipping Friday...

Miss you all!

-Kada

My Grand (Abrupt) Exit from Graduation

Well I guess this is really happening! For those who don't know, my last day in Graduation was Friday! The charter school I was interviewing with back in March had a teacher back out a week before their classes started. 

Wednesday 4:00pm: the longest final interview of my life

Thursday 6:00pm: the principal called to offer me the position 

Thursday 10:45pm: I sent my letter of resignation to Margaret and Stacy

Friday: I gave Alex a crash course on reissued diplomas and tried to enjoy my last bittersweet moments on campus!

So Saturday morning I tried to throw my classroom together and get my first weeks lesson plans prepared! Is this for real? I still can't decide.

I am teaching two periods of 9th grade composition, two periods of 9th grade literature, one period of 8th grade composition, and one period of student success (which is basically a study period ). 

I am still working on beautifying my room! The last teacher didn't leave much to work with, but I have ordered a few things so far. I can promise the first week will be crazy overwhelming, but hopefully I can hit the ground running and keep up!

I already miss the people in Graduation so please update the blog and keep having the girl's night dinners!!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Rodeback

English Teacher Extroidinaire  

THE Top 10

 My assignment for the day...Check! (special shout out to THE Gatekeeper and the new owner of "THAT chair")

THE Top 10 Things About Marriage That No One Told Me

1. With marriage comes the  obligation to not hit your husband in the head while you are sleeping at night (Nick’s been considering a helmet as his next purchase).

2. The ammount of chick flicks you watch decrease drastically- Should this have been common sense to me? Most likely! Still was a hard hit and the withdrawals aren’t getting easier. On the other hand it is so much fun stocking up your movie collection. Take the hunt for Bourne Legacy for example. This magnificent movie came out while Nick was on his mish so obvs he needed to see it. Good movie, full of action. You’d think it’d be at your local Wally World right? Wrong! Two Wally World trips…..nada. The one. The only. The Best Buy!.....failure. On our last attempt, energy lagging, we find it! Where you ask? TARGET! Chalk one up for the red team!

3.  Making your husband happy means you can’t just feed yourself chocolate and nut bars anymore. I actually have to think of somewhat healthy meal ideas and well…. It ain’t easy!

4.  That your husband could possibly become your dad’s fave. That’s right. We went to Bear Lake last weekend and what does Nick get when we arrive home? Well a happy thank you text from my dad telling him what a great time he had with him! So what do I do? Well I wait for the same text a course! Does it come? No. No it doesn’t. Does my dad still love me? Yesh. Does he just love to text my hubby now? Yes yes and yes. It’s actually pretty cute :) 

5. How much fun it is being able to dress your husband however you want! It’s like having your own life size Ken doll! And how happy he is that you bought him something when really it was my lil treat because I got to go shopping!

6. Target shopping trips could possibly be a lone deal. Who woulda thought not all men like to shop at Target? That’s okay I Target on.

7.  That your husband could have an opinion on the Bath and Body Works scent you choose to have in your apartment. And all this time I thought men paid no attention.

8.  How much fun it is trying to get your hubby to like the same food you like…..like popcorn for instance! I have been going to drastic measures to make this happen. Like….eating popcorn every night….and everytime it’s raining….. or whenever we go to a movie…..and any other time I feel it is necessary.

9. Okay this next one’s a little hard to hear so if any of you are havin a rough day you may want to skip this thought and continue on to numero ten. I continue……That your hubby may not like Disneyland (GASP)! But don’t worry ladies! I have not given up hope! One day he will like that place. If it’s the last thing I do!

10. How much you fall more and more in love with your hubby erday! Seriously I thought I loved him before. With each day I gain more and more apreciation for the wonderful man I married and for the joy he brings to my life.

Anyways! Life is good! Love ya gals!

-         -  the Gski