How to have a frugal Birthday/Labor Day Weekend

Sorry for being absent for over a week! It's been kinda crazy lately. This couponing fool has hardly had time to sleep!

I wanted to share our great Labor Day/Amanda's 30th Birthday Weekend.

Darlin Dan and I booked a condo on Lake Travis using some Timeshare points-cost us $59 cash for the whole weekend! It is a comfortable little place that we like to go to. It is close to Austin, so the drive isn't too long. The entire trip took less than 1 tank of gas for my car.

We started our adventure at Panera Bread Restaurant at 6:00am on Saturday morning. We ate an "out of this world breakfast" and picked up some sweets for later!

 I had booked 6 seats on the Austin Steam Train for Saturday morning-leaving at 9am. The tickets were $17 a piece. We needed to be at the train station by 8:45am and our trip was going to take us about 2 hours. We got to the train station right in time.  We had a great time on the train and arrived at Bertram, Texas in time to see the Oatmeal parade............this is a small country town near Austin and this parade had a very country feel. It was great! After the parade, we got back on the train and headed back to the train station. From there, we checked into the condo-about a 20 minute drive. When we got there, the guys decided to go check out the golf course (very important you know) and the gals relaxed with a glass of wine.  I just happened to get this wine on clearance-some at Walgreens and some at CVS. We also had some visitors-deer! The deer came right up to the condo looking for food. The office sells deer food and the deer expect to be fed. When the guys got back from the driving range, they decided to go for a swim in the lake. The water level in the lake is very low this year as we are experiencing a severe drought in this part of Texas. I walked down with the girls and loved the beautiful view.

For dinner, we had some of my stockpile meatballs, marinara sauce and pasta. Jessica brought salad fixings. After dinner we had birthday cake for Amanda and we sang Happy Birthday is the birthday girl!! She opened her presents and we ate cake and sat around and talked for a bit. Since we had gotten up so early, we all were ready for bed before 10pm!

Sunday morning was golf for the guys ($26 a round),  relaxing and a short shopping trip for the gals. We ate our sweets from Panera Bread for breakfast with some hot coffee. As soon as the guys left for golf, I put  a 9 lb. brisket in the oven for dinner.  I've had that brisket in my freezer since Memorial Day-I got it on sale at Walmart and used one of my precious $3 off beef hangtags! When the guys got back, we served them chicken salad sandwiches and crackers w/cheese to hold them until dinner.
We had a great dinner of brisket, roasted vegetables and ranch style beans. We picked up some french bread and made a great fruit salad for dessert.
Jessica and Anthony had to pack up and get back to San Antonio for work on Monday. We were sad to see them go. We rest of us had Monday off. We watched Big Brother and then Amanda and Jerry decided to get back to SA and check on Dino-the dog! Darlin Dan and I had the place to ourselves. We had a very relaxing rest of the evening! We got up early Monday and got back to SA by noon.
We had such a wonderful time with the kids! I'm hoping to plan another family weekend trip very soon.