Girl or Boy--The BIG Question!

Given that we have four girls so far, the guesses abound regarding what this child will be! Ted and I are planners and prefer to have the "surprise" of our baby's gender early, so we always try to find out at our ultrasound, which happens to be coming up after the holidays. So before we find out, I thought it would be fun to have a poll to see what all of YOU think I will be having this time! If you are a subscriber through email or google reader, please click through to my blog to take part in our fun little poll on my sidebar! Do you think I need to keep the pink or buy some blue? :-) After you vote in the sidebar, I'd love it if you would leave a comment on this post with what your vote was, just out of curiosity!

We haven't "tried" to influence the gender of our babies, and we would be perfectly happy with five girls. We love the family God has given us and don't "wish" it to be any different. Ted doesn't feel sad or deprived that he doesn't have a boy--he loves all his girls to pieces! That being said, since we have 4 girls, is it more likely that we will have another girl? I've heard it said that once you have 2 of the same gender, you are more likely to have that gender again. There are plenty of people who I've heard of (or been told about!) who have had 4, 5, 6, or even 7 of one gender! Interestingly enough, I have a friend who also has 4 girls about my daughters' ages, and she is also pregnant with #5--and we are both due in May. We are BOTH so anxious to find out what #5 will be, even for the other person! If you'd like to guess what she is having as well, leave a comment below.

So are those "odds" scientific or just an old wives' tale? I found this article about the odds of having boys or girls in multiple child families very interesting. Their conclusion? Your odds of having either a girl or a boy stay pretty close to 50% with slight variation. In fact, with any child you are slightly more likely to have a boy than a girl (51% to 49%). So it looks like we've beat the odds with the first four, will we do it with one more? Remember to vote in the poll and then leave a comment on this post after you vote. Once I have my ultrasound in early January, the poll will be closed and I will reveal the results of the ultrasound!

Interestingly enough, I also found this article linking consumption of breakfast cereal prior to pregnancy to babies' gender. "Women producing male infants consumed more breakfast cereal than those with female infants." Hmmmm. . . cereal has been on sale a lot lately! :-)

H's First Piano Recital

H has been taking piano lessons from our friend Mrs. B. for a little over a year now, and she just had her first piano recital! She got dressed up in her Christmas dress, and I even let her wear one of my necklaces since it was a special occasion. She was SO excited! She prepared two songs, Away in a Manger and We Three Kings. H is not usually one to get up on stage (unlike G who loves the spotlight), so I wasn't sure how it would go--would she get nervous? I tried to prep her as much as I could, asking her if she felt confident about her songs. She replied, "I can play Away in a Manger with my eyes closed!" I said for a concert it's probably better to keep your eyes open! :-)

Recital night came and she was #6 on the program. There was a wide range of abilities there, from kids who had just started lessons to those who had obviously been playing for several years. H's turn came and she did a wonderful job! We were all so proud! Ted asked the kids afterwards what their favorite part was. M said "the notes". G said, "the music". H said, "When it was my turn to play!" The first thing she said when we got in the car was, "When can I do another recital?" I guess she wasn't nervous after all! :-) Click through to my blog to see two short videos of H playing her two songs. She looks so little and so grown up at the same time!

Weekly Shopping-saved 70%!

This week I only went to the grocery store for double coupon day. WOW. It was incredibly busy there! Apparently everyone loved the sales they were offering! I did two transactions, then put them in my car and went back for three more. I bought 73 items, doubled 25 coupons, spent $57.26, and saved $132.13, a savings of 70%!These items were free: 3 gallons of milk, Cool Whip, Bagel Bites, and 24 of the 32 boxes of Keebler/Kellogg's products!

These items were $1 or less: Ice cream x2, stir fry x2, Egg Beaters x2, baggies, frosting x3, cake mix x3, chocolate milk 1/2 gallon, cream cheese x2, Buddig ham x5, carrots, Warm Delights, and the other 8 boxes of Kellogg's/Keebler products.

Considering the other things I bought, I got a great deal on my groceries this week! I also bought dry milk for $16 and dry chocolate mix for $6 (I use these to make my homemade hot chocolate mix), 4 cases of Mtn Dew for $10, coffee (less than $4), pretzels, broccoli, Karo syrup, cottage cheese, and more milk.

What am I going to do with ALL this cereal? The cereal will be donated, since cereal has been on sale for the past 3 weeks and we're pretty well stocked already. I figure the food pantries probably can't get cereal as cheap as I can, so I might as well help out when I can! But it was nice to be able to buy a couple of things that I normally don't buy because they usually aren't on sale for this cheap (iced animal crackers and soft batch cookies, for example). And the white cheddar Cheez-Its? Chalk it up to pregnancy cravings! ;-)

How did you do this week? What deals did you take advantage of? Leave a comment!

Today is Free Shipping Day!

Still have Christmas shopping to do? Good news--today is free shipping day! Over 630 online retailers are offering free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve if you order today. Some retailers may have a minimum purchase attached to their free shipping offer, but most don't. See the free shipping day website for participating stores and details.

Another option is to check retailmenot.com for a specific website you are shopping with to see if there is a coupon code you can use. If you are a member of sites like MyPoints, Ebates, or ShopAtHome, remember to shop through them to save even more!

I mentioned Cyber Monday (always the Monday after Black Friday) and Free Shipping Day (always around December 17th) to my in-laws at Thanksgiving and they had never heard of either one. I think of my father-in-law and my husband's uncle as being technically savvy, so I was surprised to have some info they didn't know! ;-)

Redbox Codes

Here are some Redbox codes to try if you'd like to get a free movie rental. I don't know if all of them work or not, but I wanted to pass them along just in case one of them works for you. People are reporting that some work at some machines and not at others, so write them all down and give them a try if you will already be driving by a Redbox. Some of these I have posted before, so it's possible you've already used some of them. If you have more than one credit or debit card, you can try the code again, as you can use a code once per debit/credit card. If you feel like it, you can search through the other Redbox codes I've posted and write those down, too, just in case one of them still works! Good luck, and I hope you can get a free movie! If you do find one that works, can you please leave a comment so the rest of us know? Thanks!

*If you haven't used Redbox yet, you can use code REDBOX to try your first rental for free on any day that works for you!
*This code only works for first-time Redbox customers.

Other codes:

ACME26

SNSV26

GANTS9

DVDATWAG (works only at Walgreens locations)

DVDONME

BREAKROOM

Date Nights-Do You Get Enough?

JuiceBoxJungle wants to know how often you and your spouse get out for date nights. There is a poll box on my right sidebar in the JuiceBoxJungle widget. Click your answer to see the poll results. If you're reading through an email or RSS subscription, you'll have to click through to my blog to take the poll.

I'm guessing a lot of you wish you could have more date nights with your spouse. What are your reasons for not going out more? Is it money to pay for dinner or lack of a sitter? Restaurants.com is co-sponsoring the poll and wants to help you out with discounts to restaurants. Have you used Restaurants.com before? They also have a promotion going on where you can "Feed it Forward" and give other people $10 certificates for FREE, up to 30 per day until Christmas!

I ask for gift cards to restaurants for Christmas, which helps with the food cost of dates out. Unfortunately, it's the babysitter cost that makes it hard for us to go out alone. We don't have any family in the area, and paying a babysitter for a couple of hours for 4 (soon-to-be 5!) young kids is not cheap! We already get a babysitter twice a month for our couple's small group, so adding another night gets expensive. But it's something we know is important, so we do try to go out. We aim for once a month, but it's realistically more like once every 2-3 months. One thing we've done is get a babysitter for a weekend lunch out, where we run to a nearby restaurant and are only gone for one hour, which helps to keep the cost lower.

Leave a comment below with how often you and your spouse get out for dates. What do you do to get out alone with your spouse?

Kellogg's and Keebler Promotions

When you hit the grocery store to buy those $0.99 Kellogg's and Keebler products, keep your eyes peeled for specially marked boxes. Linda emailed to let me know that you can get $10 Toy Cash (in the form of a check) with 5 tokens on specially marked boxes, or a DVD with 5 movie tokens on specially marked boxes. What a great deal!

Several Keebler crackers, Keebler Sandies, and Sunshine Cheez-Its are included in the $10 Toy Cash offer. Limit of one $10 toy cash offer per household, expires 12/31/10. A long list of Kellogg's cereals and Keebler crackers and cookies are included in the DVD offer, where you can choose from 8 titles.