Friday, November 30, 2012

November Update

  Amid our usual craziness of Girl Scouts, Mom's Group, Mission Friends, and school we have had many accomplishments in the month of November.

   Gwiny is now at a 4.3 reading level.  (4th grade, 3rd month) and has developed a love for reading.   This makes me a very happy mommy. She still loves to wear clothes that are too short and too tight, which is a very big challenge for all of us and has become worse now that the weather has turned cold.

   Izzy got all E's and S's on her progress report and has kept her behavior on super star all month!

   Emma developed a love for T.V. and just wants to cuddle and watch Dora all day.  This is a huge struggle for me.  I don't want her to watch T.V. all day but it is so nice getting to cuddle my baby while she still wants me too.

   We shared a great thanksgiving with both sides of our families, and while I tried not to over eat, I'm pretty sure I failed miserably.  I bought a new washer/dryer on black Thursday?  and for the first time in a long time a DRESS on Friday. And then was cursed for my too much shopping too little sleeping with horrible ear infections that are letting me give in to Emma's desire to lay down and cuddle all day.

   And I opened an etsy shop.  You can check it out at www.etsy.com/shop/semprastudios.  If you know any one that you may be interested in purchasing some Harry Potter stuff for Christmas let me know.  I will change my shipping rates or give you a discount or something.  I'm still learning how all of this works.  I guess I should have done more research before jumping right in to this.  But that is far too rational for my life.








I also upgraded my mac from Leopard to Snow Leopard which doesn't let me preview my photos before inserting them into things.  So I think I am just going to throw some randomly numbered photos in here and see how that turns out.  ( surprisingly not terrible )
 

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

  This past weekend we had the ability to join my mother's team in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk.   This is the second year my daughters and I have participated and again had a wonderful time.   It started with a dance warm up, followed by the walk, a little time on the playground, and lunch at hooters.

My Grandma made a fantastic bra for my mom that is two cupcakes and every year she has been cancer free they add another candle.  This year marked her 4 year anniversary of completing treatment. 


Mom in her cupcakes, Grandma with some ice cream. And my girls and me in zebra print. Gwiny and Emma both have theirs on under their jackets. 


  
I also should note that my Izzy walked the entire length of the walk, 3.5 miles!  Gwiny accompanied my dad to walmart and lowes because he was injured and couldn't participate.  And Emma rode the whole length of the walk in her stroller and fell asleep at the 3 mile mark. 


  
 

Friday, October 12, 2012

Awesome things my girls say

   Because I feel like we have not done anything particularly interesting or noteworthy in a couple weeks.  I am going to make today's blog about the awesome (and not so awesome) things that my girls sometimes say. We will start with Emma:



  Yesterday we took Isabel to the ENT for a 4:15 appointment.  One thing I love about our ENT's office is that they have a room just devoted to kids.  It has a plastic picnic table and Highlights magazines and toys and a TV that plays the disney channel.  So waiting to be called back is never an issue.  But it all changes when you get in the room and have to wait 25 minutes that seems like 2 hours of all three of your children and yourself trying to sit still and wait.  So I decided I would make up a story to tell them.  And they specifically requested a scary story, of which I will give you an abbreviated version.  All daughters were visited by a scary monster on Halloween and he told them that they would have to do a ritual before midnight otherwise monsters would roam the earth.  But the girls called the cops and the monster ran away.  So the next morning monsters were roaming the earth and they had to make a golden bullet out of their blood and a ritz cracker.  Then they had to find the scariest monster and mommy had to shoot him with the golden bullet and all the monsters would disappear. So they went to the scariest place they could think of, Walmart.  And when they found him he turned in to glitter and then all the other monsters turned in to glitter, so the girls scooped up some monster glitter and went home and made a craft.   
   At some point in this story Emma yelled really loud " I would get my knife!"  I was shocked, I guess I shouldn't be sense I was talking about shooting Monsters and all, but I immediately had to stop my story and talk about how we don't actually want to hurt people or monsters and that this is just a pretend story and how she isn't even allowed to touch knives.  Still not my best parenting moment, not my worst either, but I probably shouldn't tell stories about shooting things. 



Gwin:

 About 10 minutes after the story I was letting them watch videos of themselves on my cell phone and her doctor walked in, apologized for what his hand looked like and assured us that it was a burn and not contagious.  He then proceeded to talk to me throughout the whole appointment and even as we walked out the door he was still talking.  I have never heard a doctor say " Well, I better let you get going" before. Especially this doctor. Izzy has seen him 4 times and he was the one that performed her surgery.  He has always been very professional bordering on curt.  Anyway, after we left I said to the girls " That was weird."  and Gwin was like " Yea, I bet he was talking to us like that so he could get a sponsor so he could get some burn medicine."   I was like " Gwin this isn't the Hunger Games!"

Izzy: 

  Today Izzy had a pajama party for the letter P at school.  So Izzy picked out special pajamas.  She walked out of her room saying this "  Puppy and Peace sign Pajamas for Pajama Party 'P' day"  
Like a boss. 


 

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The case of the missing Izzy


There are lots of things I should be blogging about like :



 The Gwiny/Israel birthday party. 



Our family trip to Universal Orlando 




My eldest daughters intense interest in becoming a supreme court justice today.



But the most pressing and most hilarious issue in our lives right now is how often Izzy has gone missing in the last two weeks.

   I realize I am being a little Izzy heavy having written two blog entries about her in a row, but what can I say, she gives me a lot of material.  Usually she does enough crazy stuff on her own but this time she has a cohort, her school.

   I am going to preface this with a disclaimer.  I love our daughter's school.  They are both very happy to go to school every day.  They love their teachers, they begged me to bake muffins for their (former) bus driver, they really enjoy going to school every day.  Which makes me a very happy mommy, considering we moved out of the city to be in a place (we could afford) with a good school. In fact our school only does one fundraiser a year and that is what I am baking the 6 cakes for, making it possible to contribute in ways other than buying junk from a catalogue or requesting large sums of money 3 or 4 times a year (both of which we have experienced).

  On Monday of last week the girls came home on bus B which was unusual because they have ridden bus A since the first day of school.  Oh well, they got home.

   On Tuesday of last week, bus B drove by, stopped, and my daughters were not on the bus.  The bus driver radioed the other buses and it was found that my girls were on bus C.  The bus driver assured me that bus C would drop them off at home.  So I walked back from the bus stop and by the time I got home bus C had stopped and off came my girls not knowing anything was wrong.  I asked the bus driver why they were on this bus and he said " I don't know, I am just a substitute."  Okay.

  On Wednesday the girls came home on bus B and we were told by the bus driver that this was their new bus.  They should always be on bus B.

  On Thursday Gwiny came home on bus D and the bus sped off before I noticed there was no Izzy. Gwiny was hysterical because Izzy was not on the bus.  She said she had told the bus driver that her sister was missing but the bus driver was too busy and didn't hear her.  I called the school and they were able to track her down on bus C.  Bus C brought Izzy home and when I asked the bus driver what had happened she didn't know.  She said she thought Izzy may have gotten on the bus because it looks like bus B.

 On Friday I wrote a note in to the school that the girls would be car riders for that day and all of the following week until I was able to contact someone who could tell me what bus the girls were supposed to be on.

 On Monday I talked to the school office.  They told me that they had no idea what bus routes had changed and that they are contacted at the end of every day if there are any bus changes.  I told them I planned on calling the bus depot and that I would find out if the girls bus had changed or if there were just substitutes.  They said " If you find anything out let us know."

 On Tuesday (today) I called the bus depot.  They told me that the girls were to permanently be on bus B.  So I called the school and told them.  They repeated thanked me for being so nice about the whole situation and said they had had a lot of trouble with the bus situation and were disappointed with the way the bus system had kept them in the dark about a bus change.

  I felt a completion to my goal!  I now know that when they resume bus riding on Monday they will be on bus B, maybe.  Anyway, they will probably get her home.

  I go to pick up the girls at school today.  And there is Gwiny waiting for me..... with no Izzy in sight.  At this point I tell them, "umm... we are missing my other daughter."   They radio the front office ( the lady I have been contacting, which I am sad to say, I have no idea what her name is.) and she says, through the radio " Check bus B and bus A because Isabel gets confused."

  At this point I can't stop laughing.  How has my daughter ended up in the wrong place 3 times in 6 school days?  How much of this is her fault?  How much is the school to blame? What am I going to do with Izzy?

  Izzy's teacher brings her out and says that Izzy kept telling her she was a car rider this week but she wasn't listening to her, she kept saying " You are a bus rider!" She apologized and told Izzy she would listen to her from now on.

  Well Izzy has made it home all three times.  And later she smeared chocolate cake all over her face, so she must be feeling okay.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Bad Decisions


RJ:  What was that screaming about earlier? Who was that Izzy?  I thought we were going to have to take someone to the hospital.

Me:  Yeah, it was Izzy.

RJ:  What happened?

Me:  She put a stool on her face and then asked someone to step on it. 

   

Thats my daughter
and her pet snake. 

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

When Emma thought she saw a ghost

  What?! I know!  Two blog entries in a row.  This is not normal people, so don't come to expect this out of me.  To be honest, this one wouldn't be happening except I don't think I can make a facebook status that touches the amount of insanity that has gone on at my house today.  And I don't mean that I did a super amount of workout dvds.  

  The really crazy stuff started shortly after the girls got home from school. (Although RJ working from home is usually troublesome when I am trying to get a bunch of stuff done while they are at school.)  Izzy started with asking me to make muffins for her bus driver.  She has been asking me for about a week. Today I had over ripe bananas and told her I would make them.  I thought it would work out so perfectly, they could have banana muffins for desert, I could take them to moms night out, and we would pack a few for her bus driver.  So after I went through all the homework.  Showed them all what to do, I headed to the kitchen to make the muffins.  Well, while I was doing that, Gwiny did 2 pages of spelling homework that are due tomorrow.  She had about 3 spelling words to go before she was finished when she realized that she had done last weeks words, and our world fell apart.  She cried and cried and cried.  And I offered to help her with the new words and she refused, and she cried and said she was so mad at herself, and she started on her new words.  She got 13 words in to her ABC order and she realized she skipped a word that started with a B and then she cried and cried and cried and threw away her paper, and still refused help. This happened 2 more times and I decided that I was more needed here, helping with homework than going to my moms night out.  She soon pumped out her homework and by 6:30 she was finished.  Just in time for dinner that I had been making with the muffins. 

  After dinner, the girls each had a bite of muffin and they all went running separate ways to spit it out as fast as they could.  To which I get this fine quote, " These muffins taste like they have real bananas in them."  I'm not sure what kind of bananas they thought were going to be in them. And later as I was cleaning the toilet seat of a muffin and spit combo, this quote " I sometimes feel like I am living in a house full of alcoholic sorority girls." But nothing has ever come close to the devastation that hit Emma about 30 minutes post muffins.

  My girls have done some pretty crazy stuff.  I mean they say and do some really weird stuff.  Like the time I had to tell Izzy that she wasn't really a mermaid and she didn't talk to me until an hour later when she went to the beach and didn't grow a tail.  Or the time 3 year old Gwiny tried to make toys come out of the catalogue and couldn't figure out why she couldn't just take them out.  Then she cried because it wasn't working the way she thought it should.  Here is my Emma story:

  Izzy and Emma were playing mother and daughter.  Izzy was the mom and had put Emma in her bed. When I walked in the room Emma said " My dad is hurt, he is in the kitchen."  I told her " I will go check on him and make sure he is okay."  When I came back about 2 minutes later I told her.  " He is just fine.  I checked him out and I saved him! He is eating cheese-its on the couch now."  So she and Izzy came running out of the room to check to see that her 'dad' was okay.  Izzy and Emma ran to RJ and said " You are okay!" and he said " Yep, but now I am a ghost" and gave the spooky "ooohh" and Izzy ran away laughing.  Emma on the other hand came running to me hysterical.  I couldn't understand at first why she was crying so hard.  Until I realized she really thought RJ had died and was a ghost.  She wouldn't look at him, she wouldn't touch him. She was terrified of him. We tried talking to her.  We tried telling her he was teasing and that ghosts are not real.  Finally, I forced her to touch his arm. Then he fed her a cheese-it which seemed to convince her that maybe he wasn't a ghost after all.  

Then we played uno and they all went to bed. As I tucked Emma in for the 23rd time she said, " Remember that movie Casper we watched at Grandma's house. He turned in to an egg and if he didn't have eyes, I would eat that egg. At Grandma's house." 

The End. 

     Who Ya Gonna Call?  

Monday, September 3, 2012

The Potty Train and other fun adventures

  Well the girls have officially started school.  In fact, they are about to start their 3rd full week.  So I am not doing so well with my timing again.  Ehhh, you know me, thats what I do.  Well, I am proud to say that I am the mother to one 3rd grader and one Kindergardener.  Every time I say that it makes me feel old, real old.  

   Gwin is doing great in 3rd grade, even though I am sure we never had to work this hard in 3rd grade.  She is currently doing a unit on spores in science, graphs in math, and learning vocabulary words like 'resistance'.   Yikes!  Aside from school Gwin is about to start girl scouts again and she has her 8th birthday coming up. She is still wanted to wear only tight clothes, so that is our fun challenge of the year with Gwiny.  Aside from the clothes fight, she seems settled in to her school and for the most part, willing to do her homework.  Even if it is just to get it over with so she can watch iCarly. 
    


   Izzy started kindergarten this year.  She has been having a bit of a hard time adjusting.  Some days she cries because she doesn't want to go to school.  Some days she comes home telling me she had the greatest day ever.  She has been getting a little extra instruction at home with me sense school started.  I feel like it is not right for her to get to run off and play while Gwin does homework, so we have been working on writing her numbers.  With any luck we will get her back in the swing of things and loving kindergarten as much as she loved her pre-k. 


  Emma started full time potty training the first day of school for her older sisters.  I told her that she would be going to potty school with me and we packed a backpack full of diapers, panties, and skirts that she would have to carry with her wherever we go.  The idea was that she would no longer wear diapers except at night, on long trips, and in a pinch if we couldn't find a bathroom.  She has been doing so great!  She is in panties full time now, again with the exception of those listed above.  But the very best part about the potty training so far was the first day when we got home after dropping the older girls off at school.  I told Emma, " Lets go sit on the toilet, it's time to start your potty training school." She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look similar to the one below, and said " That is NOT a train.  That is a TOILET.  I am going on a potty train."  



   

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

How waitressing prepared me for motherhood.


 As I was driving home from Gwin's doctors appointment yesterday, I was thinking about just how many things I try to accomplish at one time.  And being the overcritical of myself mother that I am, thinking that maybe I just needed to do one thing at a time.  Maybe that would enable me to spend more time listening to my children instead of listening to a few words, deciding its not important and then pretending to listen to the rest of the story about what so-in-so did at school yesterday, while do the dishes and cook dinner and think about what is still left on my plate for the rest of the day (get what I did there, you know you did, but kinda wished you didn't 'cause it was that lame).  Well that flashed me back to a time when I didn't know how to multi task.  It was tough.
    Instead of doing a story, here are some things I learned from waitressing that I use in my every day life as a mother.

-  How to fill up endless cups of milk.  Sure it used to be soda and beer, but still, I am always filling up cups.

-  "  This doesn't taste good, I don't want to eat this"  I am pretty sure I have heard this statement from both my children and customers.

- The fine art of popping a cold meal in the microwave.  Yes people, thats what I did when you complained about your food being cold.

- How to make someone feel comfortable.

- How to make a good desert.

- How to tell someone no without making them feel like they have just been told no.  "  That is not currently an option."  or " We no longer have that on the menu"

-  How to stand really really close to someone without feeling uncomfortable.

-  How to sneak off to the bathroom without anyone noticing.

-  And most importantly, how to work on only tips and smiles. 


Thursday, August 2, 2012

Farmlympics turned Kidlympics

  First of all, I would like to give a big shout out to my parents who were so awesome to take my kids for almost a whole week this summer!  It was some much needed relaxation.  I tried to sleep as much as humanly possible, but it turns out, I am not nearly as tired when I am not chasing 3 kids around.  So mostly I watched Netflix and broke a bathroom sink trying to 'fix' it.  
  As children of military members, kids who moved every few years, our families have been and will always be very close to us.  And also because of this, we never lived near any of my grandparents.  We would get to see them a few times a year at best.  Luckily, we live only 3 1/2 hours from my parents, 2 1/2 from RJ's.  This means we get to see everyone about once a month.  But summers are very special, and now that the kids are getting older and we will have two in elementary school, it is getting harder for us to take those weekend trips.  Which makes summer time the best time to spend with grandparents.  So after the kids got their week with Grandma and Grandpa, we planned to spend some time with Grammy and Grandad.  
  I had great plans!   Our trip was only 1 week before the olympics and in order to get the kids pumped I created the FARMLYPICS.  We were going to speak in British accents.  I had brought water balloons for a water balloon archery event, a frisbee for the discus, etc.  We were pumped.  And then on day 1 1/2 Gwin came down with a fever and we had to leave.  Sooo... when it came to the summer sleepover I had promised the kids but had not delivered on, I seized the opportunity and went all Olympics on it.   






Lets recap: 



Opening Ceremonies.
3 fairies, 1 princess, and a baby dragon show. 


Balloon volleyball with a blanket net


Archery.  Shoot the balloon off the boot with a hairband


Rhythmic Gymnastics.  Enough Said. 


Self Portraits? 


International cooperation taco dinner


Olympic Ring cookies.  

Oh no, is that my teacher showing? 

Thursday, July 19, 2012

You have what in your nightstand?

  While this has nothing to do with raising daughters, I find it super funny, therefore I feel the need to share it with you.  In a not so odd exchange at midnight with my husband, I told him I liked that his lamp has 2 brightness choices.  His lamp looks like a japanese pagoda and I am pretty sure it came from Japan.  This started a conversation about who had what on/ in their nightstand.  Come to think of it, I think I saw a King of Queens that went down similar to this. 


RJ-  I have a japanese light, a box with a knife in it, a bottle of throat cloraseptic, an empty bottle of throat cloraseptic.  I have psp accessories, a star wars book, Jurassic Park, and an unopened box of harry potter legos. 


Me - I also have a box of harry potter legos!  I have a track suit, 2 ugly ties, some 2 year old people magazines, a cutout picture of gwiny's face, 5 ponytail holders, and a bottle of ear drops. 


So thats that.  Now the world knows. 

Monday, July 16, 2012

VBS Round 1

  While I am sure I could write a fantastic and emotional blog about my personal views on religion and how and why I consider myself a Christian without the need for a home church, I will not be doing that today. Neither will I be explaining how important I believe it is to give the girls every opportunity to become a much better Christian than I.  As of tonight the two older girls they have officially gone to 3 VBS nights this summer.  Two at Kara's church and tonight they had their first night at the church for which they enjoyed VBS last year. I'm sure you can tell that I am trying very hard and not so coherently, not to give away these locations so people can't come creep up on my family.  
   I would like to tell you the lessons the girls learned at VBS, but all they tell me about is what they ate and what crafts they did.  So that will not be happening either. I will let you know, that tonight was the first night ever that Emma was allowed to participate in an event hosted by someone other than friends and family.  This gave me a great deal of anxiety, but I knew she was in good hands.  I just hoped that my daughter would not be the one that the teachers go back to their families and say "that girl is a handful." 
    First this story is going to take an odd detour into the back seat of my SUV.  Don't get your hopes up.  This is no 50 Shades story.  And no, I have not read that book, so I can only assume. 
   My girls love to have the strangest conversations in the car.  I know we have some weird ones while we are out of the car, but we have a nice girl club house when just the 4 of us are in there.  In the last week, I have spent one and a half hours of driving up to town and back explaining the entire premise of the Hunger Games Trilogy.  I have heard the girls whispering about what boy is cute and who kissed them.  They have hurt each other, played simon says, made up their own songs, and sang at the top of their lungs karaoke style with me.  And this is how our VBS night 1 conversation went down, keep in mind a talked a lot more than this, but my words are not funny so I am choosing to omit them :

Me:  Did you have a good time?  What did you do? 

Gwin:  All the kids in my class were bad.  One girl called the teacher Mr. Booger. 

Izzy:  All the kids in my class were good.  We talked about how my teacher's daughter is a pilot. 

Gwin:  Is your teacher pretty?  Were you the prettiest girl in your class?

Izzy: Yep, she was pretty,  Yes.  I am the prettiest.  Were you the prettiest in your class? 

Gwin: Yes, but it was like I was invisible.  A teacher took a picture of everyone at my table except me.  

Me:  Emma did you have a good time? Your teacher told me you were sad. 

Emma: Yeah, I ate chips with Nana. 

Me: Nana wasn't there baby. 

Emma:  Yes, Nana was there.  I ate chips with her.  I made new friends. 

Me: Nana wasn't there.  Are you excited to go back tomorrow? 

Emma: No.  I no go back tomorrow. I don't want to play with my new friends, I don't want to play with Nana, I want to stay home and eat cheetos. 

Emma: Some lady changed my diaper. It's a boy diaper. 

Gwin:  Why? 

Emma: I went potty on the toilet and they gave me a new one.  I will see Nana tomorrow.  I get a new sticker. 

Izzy:  I ate a granola bar.  

Gwin:  That granola bar was huge.  I couldn't eat it. 

Emma:  I want some cheetos. 


Monday, July 9, 2012

Summer 2012

  This summer we have done so many fun things it is hard to keep up with my own schedule.  Thank goodness I have two amazing calendars.  One in the kitchen and one in the girl's wing.  Somehow, my June schedule was completely booked before the last week of May.  Crazy right?  And now as we are entering the second week in July, this month is nearing max capacity.  What is it that we do you ask?

We play with our friends. 

We go to Baby Showers. 

And Birthday Parties. 

And we go on super fun vacations. 


We take the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's House and get picture texts that apparently will not upload here. 

We get visits from friends. I can't believe I didn't get even one picture of Jo when she was here.  Not cool me.  

I take pictures that look like this:


I let the girls use the camera and they take pictures that look like this:
Which you gotta admit is pretty great for a self photo. 

We shoot a b b gun and get this picture that has the South written all over it. 


And because neither of my handy dandy calendars are right in front of me, I don't remember the rest of wheat we have done this summer.  Oh we did spend last weekend fixing a faucet that broke in the house, no pictures of that either though.  

   To end my June post I would like to leave you with a few quotes from my crazy daughters. 


Emma at Target:   I really really want this drink.   Its not good, but it's tasty.  

Izzy talking to Gwin in the car:   Do frogs get presents for Christmas Eve?  Gwin:  No.  Izzy in disbelief:  Not Even New Lillypads? 

Gwiny talking to me:  I want to go back to school.  I like learning from someone other than you. 

Me:  Don't throw your starburst trash on the ground.  It might hurt animals that try to eat it.  Izzy:  Like what kind of animals?  Horses and Unicorns?  

Gwiny:  I know what you are going to do while we are gone.  Sleep for 3 days and go on 1 date.  (oddly enough, I am not nearly as tired when I am not chasing 3 kids, who knew!) 

 Emma:  You took a shower.  Your hair feels comfy.   Me:  Do you know what comfy means?  Emma:  Yep, its reading a book.  Comfy means, sitting on a pillow eating cheese. 





Thursday, June 14, 2012

My Weekend Away

  Friday night:  Brianna's birthday and our ladies night.  Thanks Bri for letting me be a part of your birthday. 

Check out these awesome pimp cups. 



Thats our picture in front of the log cabin. 


Saturday was Nikki's baby shower.  Here are some pics from that.  I went all camera crazy just clicking at weird times.  That plus my camera delay made a lot of the pics turn out crazy.  But here's what we got. 


Some baby shower decorations.





We had so much delicious food.  Thank you so much Mrs. Goover for everything! 


Hanging out. 


So many wonderful presents. 



Yummy Yummy. 

Sadly, I don't have a picture of my favorite part.  The apple pie shot.  You know your gonna have a good time when any party starts with shots! 


And that pretty much sums it up.  Great friends, Great food, Great family. It was a good weekend. 



Saturday, June 2, 2012

End of week 1

 


 Wowie, that week was not fun.  It included a lot of whining, crying, and complaining.  When I stopped, I turned around to hear more from every one else doing the same thing.  We stuck pretty well to my meal plan.  Well if you don't include orange chicken night that quickly became trip to McDonalds night.  

   Here is a picture of our first nights dinner.  Au Gratin Potatoes with Ham steaks.  Looks pretty good huh?  It was quite delicious indeed.


Lets see, the absolute most challenging thing was keeping control of my kids drinking portions.  In fact, it did not happen.  I had to make a Walmart run for milk.  I just can't stop myself from saying yes to milk.

This weeks meal winner:  Tacos.  I made these with soft taco shells, refried beans, $1 ribeye steaks, cheese.  Topped with Taco Bell sauce that is in our 'bag of sauces from fast food joints'.  For Izzy who doesn't eat tacos, a bowl of refried beans with red sauce that I found in our 'box of random seasonings that say weird things'  it was labeled just 'sauce' so good find.  And a bit of cheese to make it exactly like the taco bell pintos and cheese.

This weeks meal loser:  Orange Chicken.  As I opened the box that claimed to have "dark meat chicken and orange sauce"  I found this to the right.   Zero chicken 100% breading.  And this was in all 3 boxes of Orange Chicken I had purchased.

Most likely to repeat:  Mini Pizzas.   Apparently they sell individual size pizza crusts in a set of 2 for $1, add pasta sauce, cheese, and peperonni ( also purchased at dollar store) and we made our own pizzas to celebrate the last day of school!

While the meals all turned out fine, none particularly delicious, and certainly none particularly nutritious, we are at the core a family of snackers.  I call us hobbits more than once a week.  Because snacks are necessary to maintain a sense of calm in our house it is crucial that we have a good deal of snack food.  Hence, the $25 for dinners and the rest for snacky foods from last week.   Gwin seems to have some sort of sugar issue.  I like to compare her to Paul Blart Mall Cop.  If she doesn't eat every 2 to 3 hours she has a melt down of epic proportions.  In case you ever happen to be going through my purse, this explains the amount of candy and snacks you will find in there.  I don't recommend going through my purse though, today I found a dragon in there.  True Story.  Its a beanie baby dragon, you would think that would be something I would notice, but thats how big and messy my bag is.

In unrelated news.  Izzy graduated from Pre-School last week and Gwin completed 2nd grade.  My babies are getting to be such big girls.  Izzy's school had a great ceremony and I can't be more thankful for the Linkers for not only recommending the school, but saving me so much time and money in transportation this past year.  Gwiny got on the A/B honor roll for the year!  I am so proud of my little big girl.  Its unbelievable for me to think that in a few short months she will be entering 3rd grade as a 7 year old.

Emma claims she graduated from mommy's school.  But in reality, she just watched Mars Needs Moms every Tuesday and Thursday and helped me with the dishes and laundry.  Also, she gets the Jason Mraz stamp of approval for not only helping us grow our veggies in the backyard, but for this awesome hat she was seen rockin' today.






   

Friday, May 25, 2012

Family Dollar Day 1

  I didn't realize when creating this idea, just how difficult shopping for real food at the Family Dollar was going to be.  I should have had a better outlook on this, but like usual, my brain tricked me.   Upon shopping for drinks I realized there would be absolutely no way I could stay in my $65 budget if I had to buy 28 milk cartons and 14 mini almond milks ( i.e. 2 servings of milk for each of my kids).  So I had to improvise.  I decided to spend $35 on food, leaving $20 left for fresh fruit, turkey, milk, and juice at Walmart, and $5 for rice and noodles that I have in my pantry.  I realize this is cheating in the grand scheme of things, but it was really my only choice.
   For the most part I will be leaving out breakfast and lunch.  Breakfast always consists of a granola bar or apples for the 2 of us that eat breakfast. And lunch always consists of either a turkey sandwich with 'whales'  (the dollar store equivalent of goldfish) and fruit, or a Peanut Butter and Nutella ( I have had these toppings in my pantry for months) sandwich with whales, or chicken nuggets of which I bought 4 packages at the dollar store.

Here is our meal plan for the week:

-  Friday dinner-  Au Gratin Potatoes with ham $3 (2 boxes of potatoes and 1 ham steak)

- Saturday dinner-  Make your own mini pizzas with tomato sauce and pepperoni $4  ( 2 packages of 2 pizza crusts, 1 package of pepperoni, and 1 can of tomato sauce, and one of my stockpiled blocks of cheese)

- Sunday dinner -  Steak Tacos  $4 ( 1 package of soft taco shells, 1 can of refried beans, 2 'Ribeye steaks', aforementioned cheese, and Taco Bell salsa from a box meal I bought months ago and never used)

-  Monday Dinner -  Hot dogs with corn $3 ( 1 package of hot dogs, 1 package of bread, 1 can corn)

- Tuesday -  Tostados and rice $3  ( 1 package of tostados, 1 can of refried beans, cheese, and pantry chicken pilaf pantry rice)

- Wednesday dinner - Orange Chicken and White Rice with peas $5  ( 3 packages of orange chicken, 1 bag of pantry rice, and a can of peas)

- Thursday dinner - Hamburger helper with smoked sausage  $3  ( 2 boxes of pantry hamburger helper, 1 package of smoked sausage)

Total costs for 7 nights worth of meals = $25

   As of 8:12 pm we have completed our first day of Dollar Tree living on a budget.

Also, please check out this link.  www.livebelowtheline.com .   I would love to say this is the reason we started this.  But it will be the reason we end it.

Monday, May 21, 2012

5 weeks, 5 stores. $65 dollars

    Only two days ago I was in the food aisle at the Dollar Tree thinking "  Hey, I could use some pasta sauce."  Then I ran past it to grab Emma before she decided to get those 'terrible two' hands on something that could be permanently damaged.  As my husband took the kids back to the car, I got in line with my four bags of candy and whatever it was I had gone there to get.  Without the need to tell a child to stop touching something and the daydream of having a nanny that usually comes while waiting in line, I stared down the basket of the man standing in front of me.  Frozen burritos, 3 cans of spam, some twice baked potatoes.  I thought " Man, that must be awesome to be able to spend $25 on all of your food for the week." And then I became obsessed.  " Why can't I do that?  Sure we have 5 people to feed who are all some of the most picky eaters you will ever come across."  And then I answered myself with a resounding " We can do this!"  I continued to obsess over the logistics of feeding my family for a week on dollar tree food.  What will my husband think of this plan?

    As it turns out, he thinks I am nuts, and he doesn't want to eat anything from the dollar tree.  Especially when he found out the day this plan started hatching, that his raise went through ( Hurray!!).  But this was my challenge and I had already accepted it.  ( And yes, I do realize that talking to myself, answering myself, and telling myself "Challenge Accepted"  HIMYM style is completely insane.)  Imagine his dismay when I come out of the room this morning and announce,  "This is no longer a 1 week project.  I am going to take this particular challenge and apply it to several stores.  Dollar Tree, Walmart, Publix, Sams Club, and Winn Dixie."

   In order to make this all fit together, I have decided to give myself $65 dollars a week.  This will need to cover all food and drinks that I purchase for the week.  Seeing as my pantry is fully stocked with seasonings, condiments, random bags of noodles, and about 40 cans of stuff, I am going to allow myself the use of pantry items that are not main ingredients to meals.  I.e.  I can not use boxes of hamburger helper without subtracting the cost from the weeks budget.  However, I will not be including the cost of other purchases such as diapers, socks, baby shower decorations and the like.  I will blog each evening about what we had for dinner and any odd snacks worth noting.  Seeing as we are an active family, I don't think there will come a week when at least one day doesn't include a fast food run.

   Day 1 begins Friday. Although I can tell you right now, I did my Dollar Tree shop today and I am pretty sure the cookies won't make it.

   

Saturday, April 28, 2012

10 things to do before 30

  Recently, I read a list of 10 things to do before you turn 30.  I have 14 months until my 30th birthday.  The list I read was completely useless to me, as I had conquered all of those events before I hit 20.  "  Fall in love" Check " Go abroad" Check, " Live by yourself."  No going back now.  Although it would be pretty great to send my kids to sleep elsewhere.
   The list pretty much said " you need to learn how to become an adult before 30 so you can get married and have children while you are in your 30s."  Well, that does not apply to me.  So I decided to make my own list of 10 things that I cant to accomplish in the next 14 months.

1)  Go on a kid and husband free trip with a friend or two.   Nothing special, just a night away from my job would be really nice.

2)  Find the right career path for myself.  I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  I have always wanted to be a professional. However, I can never imagine a day that I won't want to be home when my children.  Whether it be when they get home from school, summer vacation, spring break, sick days, I want to be here, so I will probably be thinking outside of the box.

3) Lose all of my baby weight.  I have 15 pounds to go till I am back at what I weighed in high school.

4) Teach my children a new language.  I worked on this a little last summer, but this summer we are going to be studying Spanish an hour a day.

5) Put away $50 a month for a special vacation.  Two months after my 30th birthday is my 10 year wedding anniversary.  10 Years!  RJ and I would really like to go back to Las Vegas.  We got married in the Paris Casino and spent 2 days there before coming back home to move for Law School.  And yes, if you have done the math, we got married in Las Vegas when I was 20, not old enough to do any of the crazy things Sin City is famous for, except for the marriage.  I wonder how many Vegas weddings last 10 years or more?

6) Learn to stop talking so much.  I feel like I am too often comparing stories of my life when others are telling me stories of theirs.  Its not something I do on purpose, so it will be very difficult for me.

7)  Be more diligent with writing thank you cards. 


8)  Never have a need to buy another package of diapers for our family.  Emma night time trained by 3 1/2.  I think we can.


9)  Get a full new wardrobe, from a store other than walmart. 


10)  Unpack and organize my whole house.  We still have about 10 boxes lingering around here and we have never been in the attic.  I wonder what kind of storage space we have up there.