a girl after Daddy's heart

It's a gorgeous day here today and after we got home from the grocery store (more on that later) we stayed outside to play for almost an hour. For the entire time we were outside, my nature loving daughter (Daddy's girl through and through--shown here picking up a leaf) ran back and forth from her favorite rock in the side yard to the oak tree in the front yard collecting acorn tops (she calls them "coe-ah," which is her word for "corn"). She'd pick up one at a time, run back to the side yard, squealing and holding her precious acorn top with such delight, drop it into the pile she had accumulated, run back to the front, and pick up another one. Here she is holding her acorn top....can't you just see the excitement written all over her face?

She'd pick up only one at a time. Never mind that she has two hands....or that acorn tops are small and she could hold several in her hand at once. No, that hasn't occurred to her. So it was back and forth and back and forth. And loving every minute of it.Here she is running back from her rock (her rock is the big one behind her to the left). She likes to sit on it, and this is the first place she runs whenever we go outside to play.

Once she had a pile over by her rock, she decided that wasn't the place for the pile. So she proceeded to pick them up again one by one and move them to a different pile under the dead lilac bush, which is about a yard away from her rock. I caught a little of that process on video. I tried to upload it and had trouble. I'll try to add it on here later.

This went on and on, and would've continued unless I hadn't intervened and told her it was time to go in to have lunch. She didn't want to go in, but was happy to eat lunch and practically fell asleep feeding herself her yogurt. Daddy came home and sat and had lunch with her, but she didn't say a word. Very unlike her usual chatty self. "She's very quiet today," he commented. I told him I thought she had worn herself out running back and forth for so long. Here's hoping for a long nap this afternoon!

We'll go back out this afternoon and probably this evening, too. She would stay out all day if she had her way. I just wish this beautiful weather would stay with us, but it's supposed to rain the rest of the week, and then be colder on Saturday, which is our next nice day. Oh well. At least we've had this glimpse of spring for today.

Okay, so I said I'd tell you more about the grocery store. I went because we needed milk, but I decided that I'd check the ads to see what was on sale, even though I didn't need too many groceries. Well, I found out that Lysol products were half price, and there were a ton of Lysol coupons in the paper recently, so I was able to buy about six different bottles of different cleaners (which I desperately needed, too!) for 28 cents each! And a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner for 4 cents! Plus I had a prescription transferred there using a coupon and got a coupon for $10 off my groceries in return. I was very excited about my deals. Not only that, but earlier in the week I saw this post about signing up for Kohl's email mailing list and getting a $5 coupon, so I did that and received my coupon a couple of days later. Today I went, looking for a white short sleeved shirt with a collar for my little one to go with a skirt I have for her for the summer. I had no luck in that department, but I decided to look through the clearance racks. I found two dresses for her for next winter both marked down to $3.40. I bought them both, used my $5 coupon, and ended up paying $1.92 for two dresses that originally would've cost me $68!! I get a little too much of a thrill from my bargains, so most of you are probably reading this paragraph thinking, "So what? Who cares what you paid for toilet bowl cleaner!" but it's quite exciting to me.

So there's a glimpse into my day....bargains and acorns!