being frugal Archives - Stories of Our Boys

Day 3 of Jumping Into Fall: Shopping Deals We’re Loving This Week

2018-09-10 aprilmomoffour being frugal, big family life, blogging, parenting

***When you purchase through links on my webpage, I do earn advertising fees.*** 12 Days of Jumping Into Fall & Recovering From Summer Day 3: Shopping, Creating, & Learning Online (In case you missed the first 2 days, here are the links: Day 1 House Cleaning Playlist and Day 2 Tackling Low Self Esteem.) Do you know what else you tend to do when you get your days back to yourself? Well, personally, I pop open my laptop and go gallivanting […]

My 4 Favorite Homemaking Hacks for 2018

2017-12-28 aprilmomoffour being frugal, big family life, books, family, housekeeping, marriage

I love Christmas break. Time off from spelling tests, chauffeur duties, graded papers, packing lunches, and best of all I’m not desperately rushing everyone to not be late…..oh how I love time off. We always spend a few days at my parent’s house and a few days at Alan’s parents’ house, and it’s such a blessing to spend time with them and soak up the rest and good conversation. With people you see on a daily basis, it can be […]

Why Is It a Good Idea to Pay Your Kids for Chores?

2017-08-22 aprilmomoffour being frugal, big family life, cleaning, family

Lately, I’ve started a system where each of our boys has a couple of new chores he must do each day. Yes, even the 4-year-old. I instituted this because I actually cannot keep up with the housekeeping all myself anyway. I pay them a quarter for each of those jobs, plus I give them extra coins when they exhibit a wonderful attitude. I’m able to pay them on the spot because I have a big juice jug full of change. […]

4 Hacks to Help You Save and Pay for Your Child’s Higher Education

2017-08-01 aprilmomoffour being frugal, parenting

Allow me to introduce you to Jacob. Jacob is a finance blogger over at Dollar Diligence, where he writes practical tips like this post on food budgeting. Today I’ve asked him to share with us about college savings accounts. I hope you’ll stop by his blog and say hello! *********** As a fairly recent college graduate — and as someone who just paid off hefty student loans — I know firsthand how expensive getting a college education can be. The […]

How to Save Money Using Dealspotr.com

2017-03-20 aprilmomoffour being frugal

What is “dealspotr”? I first heard of dealspotr.com a few months ago, and I didn’t know what to think of it at first. It’s a place to find good deals to save money, and you can share deals that you find too. You can find coupon codes as well as sales on there. My Experience with dealspotr I thought, “Okay, you can post deals when you find them…eh…” I found an exciting deal at Papa John’s, and if you know […]

How To Pay For Private School: Changes We Made To Make It Work”

2016-12-01 aprilmomoffour being frugal, family, giveaways, military life, moving, toddlers

Our family is living on a budget for the first time…..since 8 years ago when we read that Dave Ramsey book. This year was a huge change. We went from paying about $3,000/year in school tuitions to Classical Conversations and preschool to paying about $15,000/year total in private school tuitions. That’s two full school tuitions plus a partial one for my kindergartener, who has a partial scholarship. It was a big jump. We realized we were going to have to […]

You know they aren’t all going to be this good, right?

2015-01-27 aprilmomoffour babies, baby milestones, being frugal, John David, parenting, toddlers

It all started with Caleb’s scooter accident on Sunday…apparently that was an omen of sorts. The next big challenge was that we promoted J.D. to a toddler bed. This has never been a big deal for us. I remember Joshua was so good at sleeping on a toddler mat,

My Vacation Timeshare Disaster

2014-03-12 aprilmomoffour babies, baby, being frugal, hard times, kid quotes, snowboarding, vacation

This past Friday, we gathered up all of our chick-ies and headed to Massanutten Ski Resort. I had been so proud of myself for finally booking a nice vacation for us, well in advance. We aren’t always the best vacation planners. You can make us sound fun by calling us “spontaneous”, but really that just means we procrastinate until we actually leave and then end up “winging it,” missing out on all the things that book out really far in […]

New Year’s Check Up

2014-01-05 aprilmomoffour being frugal, books, exercise, potty training, toddlers

Goal: Be anywhere near as happy as Dan…That’d be great! As I wrote in a previous post, my goal for 2014 is to chill. I want to calm down, enjoy my children, and not get all worked up about a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even matter all that much! I was doing pretty great on day one, but then January 2nd hit, and Alan went back to work. I don’t think ‘calm’ or ‘happy’ would be the […]

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This One’s For the Grandparents : )

2013-06-26 aprilmomoffour being frugal, John David, newborn care, pictures, videos

Daniel meets John David Today I’m uploading lots of videos of our children that will probably only be interesting to the grandparents. This one’s for you, Granddaddy, Nana, DaddyO, Nonna, Granddaddy and Grandma Cunningham!! : ) Dan loves babies. Dan loves baseball. John David was VERY sleepy after having his first bath at home. He did not enjoy the bath. For little ones with a cord, they cannot be submerged in bath water. They hate being cool, so it is […]