We were up and at 'em bright and early this morning to hit the 8 am - 12 sale at Hy Vee. We were a little over budget (especially with my small purchase earlier this week,) but I bought diapers and some missing ingredients for three different things I have to bring food to in the next two weeks. They all stacked up on me! While I think I do a pretty good job of planning in advance, when I really have to "prepare" something, a lot of times there is an ingredient hole to fill. In this case those holes were bananas, graham crackers and cream cheese. Even still, all of those things were miraculously on sale!

Here is what we got --

2 16 count packages of donut holes
1 bag of multi grain bagels
1 bag of Reames noodles
5 Tony's pizzas
1 Betty Crocker Scalloped potato mix
2 cans of Old El Paso refried beans
3 bags of Lays potato chips
2 boxes Ronzoni whole wheat linguine
1 can of Rotel
1 brick of Velveeta
1 Cascadian Farm raisin bran
1 box of Nabisco Graham crackers
1 Nature Valley Nut Clusters
1 Hormel meat loaf
1/2 gallon of hormone free strawberry milk
1 gallon of generic whole milk
1 package of Huggies diapers
8 bags of generic cheese (Hy Vee cheese is perfectly good and such a good deal! I totally recommend it. We've been eating it for years.)
2 Philadelphia whipped cream cheeses
2 2 litres of Diet Coke
4.6 lbs of bananas
2 red bell peppers

My after tax total was approximately $62.00. I saved right around $10.00 with coupons. Not quite sure on the general sale total.

And, a public service announcement -- MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR RECEIPTS for correct prices. For some reason one of my bags of potato chips rang up as $2.88 instead of $.99, and the Betty Crocker potatoes were supposed to be free but cost $.65. I find something wrong with my receipt ALMOST every time I go to the store. I try to check before I leave, but I usually forget. Instead, I will put today's receipt with my coupons and ask for the overages to be refunded. It may seem trivial to some, but the overages plus tax equal $2.75 -- over 5% of my weekly budget. Overages of that amount would cost me $142.18 a year -- or enough money to send my little girl to dance class for 3 months and 1 week. (How's that for perspective???) I will admit that I HATE doing this because it seems pretty nit-picky. I just always apologize profusely and tell the person at customer service that I appreciate them making it right. That usually helps ease my embarrassment. : )