Teaching Our Children

Hey guys!  I guess I better post this month since this is a topic I'm super interested in.

What do you do with your child(ren) that you would consider moving them in a forward direction (rather than backward or just not moving).?  Sorry if that was confusing.  Let me explain what I'm trying to say...

When I teach Vidalia how to play her violin or about saying please and thank you when she wants things, I feel like we move in a forward direction.

When I dislike what Vidalia is doing (i.e. pulling my hair) and I tell her to stop or say no without explaining to her why, I feel like we move in a backward direction.

I can't think of anything that I wouldn't consider either moving forward or backward, so forget the not moving.

I feel like when I do small things that make me a better person, they help Vidalia to become a better person as well.  So, what I'm asking, I suppose, is what is it you do that betters your family?

One of my favorite things to do is learn about what other families do, how they function and then evaluate how those same things would or wouldn't work for my family...so if you have a little time, please share with me (in September or next February or anytime).

Oh and p.s. we are officially in Orem now.  Although we will probably move again within a month.  We move way too much.

Off topic...

...well, or completely on topic, I guess... What in the world do stay-at-home-moms DO all day? You guys, I hate that I'm even asking this because it makes me feel useless and stupid, but seriously. I am so bored. I mean, Luke and I have a riot all the time because that's all I have to do, and I love that. I really do. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I could do to "use up" my time, even some useful things. But it's a year into the full-time at home gig and I'm running out of steam for the stuff that I've been doing to "keep busy." (Ugh, I always HATED women saying that, because for my working mom it was like a slap in the face.) I mean, I'm running out of desire to do any more crafts again ever, and I think if I spend another minute trying to perfect the art and science of homemaking that my head is going to implode.

I keep thinking about part-time jobs, but the time away from Luke wouldn't be worth the money to me (it's surprisingly difficult to find work that's less than, say, 10 hours a week that will pay you more than minimum wage--which means that after paying a babysitter, it would cost us more money for me to have a job). I don't think I'm skilled enough to teach piano lessons. I've thrown around the idea of babysitting or nannying, but stuff like that is regulated strangely around here and there's a glut of college students and low-income young women that will take the work for pennies on the dollar.

I'm looking into picking up old hobbies (like piano) and maybe starting up some new ones (like photography). But I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. I feel like I'm an educated, motivated, ambitious person and it feels like I'm wasting so much precious time that I could spend doing something...I don't know. Meaningful. Not that raising a child isn't meaningful (!), but I guess I just feel like I could be doing more than I am. I've thought about it for hours and hours and talked about it with Scott over & over; he's not ready for another baby just yet, and I bet that boredom is a really, really bad reason to get pregnant anyway. Ha ha.

We're planning on getting a second car soon, so that will expand my horizons exponentially, but I have no idea what to expand said horizons into. We just moved into a new ward (with moving and vacations and everything, last week was our first Sunday there), and on the new-member sheet they have you fill out, I tried to hint as strongly as I could that I was very willing and able to help out a lot in the ward. I doubt that will come to much, though, because it's an enormous ward with about a quadrillion students that constantly come and go, and I don't think we'll escape that category since we're the same age as everyone else.

Man, I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain. I just feel bad...like I'm ungrateful or something. I feel like I should be more content. Maybe I'm just having a hard time downshifting after the craziness of school school school college college work work work, you know? But it's been a year and I still feel...itchy. Brain itchy. Or something. Help?

Family Home Evening

Hey all,

With a topic of "Building Righteous Traditions" for this month, FHE is the first thing that comes to my mind.  I find FHE a little bit awkward with a 1-year-old.  She's at an age where she understands things if they're simple (perhaps she understands more, I guess I wouldn't really know).  It makes for super short lessons (i.e. we should take care of our bodies, let's do push-ups and eat berries) and sometimes completely unrelated activities.

What do you guys do for FHE?

Cheap dinners

So my meal planning usually goes like this:

Sunday night I sit down and pick 4 dinners I'm going to cook the next week. I usually try to pick 2 that I know I can make quickly (like 20 minutes or less), one a little more complicated, and one that I make ahead of time (like in the crock pot). That way I can still make the longer cook time recipes that I love, but I can do it on a night when we're not very busy or when I know Scott will be home with plenty of time to watch Luke while I cook. Having two quick-cook recipes takes a lot of stress off of me at the "magic hour" (5 pm at our house)--you know, the time of day when you've run out of steam and the baby is getting cranky and dad is getting home and everyone's hungry and it seems like there's too much to do.

Maybe 4 dinners a week isn't much to cook, but I always make 6-8 servings (Scott and I are kind of pigs, I guess...we each eat more than one "serving" at dinner, and Luke eats almost a small adult serving if it's something he likes) so we have leftovers. Lunches during the week are leftovers or sandwiches. So 4 nights a week (usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday) I cook a meal, 1 night is "gecheroni" (get-your-own-ey, meaning clean out the leftovers in the fridge...usually Thursdays because it seems like I get more tired as the week goes on), and 2 nights we plan to eat out (almost always Friday & Saturday, but if, say, Tuesday one of us has just had a crappy day or we've got too many errands to run, then we might eat out then & stay home Saturday night).

I have a Pinterest board of new recipes that I really should try, but it seems like we get into kind of a routine of eating the same comfortable things all the time and I don't really mind. I think these are all dishes that I can make for pretty darn cheap, and most of them take about 20 minutes to half an hour to cook. We usually have the main course plus a veggie (frozen, canned, fresh, whatever) on the side, and a grain on the side if it's not already in the recipe (say, something like rolls).

(Well, drat. I thought I had brought my list out to Utah, but I guess I left it at home. We'll see how much I remember.)

• Tacos
• Quesadillas
• Rice & beans & grilled chicken
• Pasta al forno
• Carbonara
• Spaghetti bolognese
• Stir fry
• Curry
• Tikka masala (I've only ever made it with chicken, but I want to try paneer sometime)
• "Oriental" chicken salad
• BBQ pork sandwiches
• Bratwurst roll-ups
• Hamburgers (well, turkey burgers, since I'm too cheap to buy beef for anything anymore)
• Oven roasted chicken (bone-in) & potatoes
• Chili cheese dogs
• Cabbage patch soup
• Crock pot "roast" (I usually use boneless pork ribs since I can get them cheap & they're mighty tasty)
• Egg & sausage hash (meaning I try to make omelets and they end up scrambled eggs)
• French toast
• BLTs

I think I've left off a few that we do all the time, but that's a good enough list for me for now. Basically my grocery lists look like this:

Meat 

• Ground turkey--1.49 lb (I use half a pound for a meal)
• Ground pork (sausage)--2.29 lb (same story, half a pound at a time)
• Boneless pork ribs--2.49 lb (I usually use about a 3-lb package)
• Bratwurst--2.69 for 5
• Bone-in chicken--0.99 lb (don't use this very often...basically only for roasting)
• Boneless skinless chicken breasts--I can get these on sale for 1.69 lb about 6 times a year; otherwise I use the flash-frozen ones in the big bags that are 2.00 lb. 
• Bacon--2.69 for 12 oz (I use half a package at a time)
• Eggs--man, I don't know...how much are eggs? Not very expensive.

Can you tell our grocery store is awesome?? Most of those prices are pretty killer, although I know you can find similar to that in Utah if you watch sales. I only bothered to list the prices because meat is almost always the most expensive food you buy. Basically I can keep our grocery costs low by refusing to buy meat for more than about $2.75 a lb., which does mean no beef--but I love pork so much that I don't care. Scott misses it a little, but he just orders beefy stuff when we eat out. :-)

Dairy

• Milk
• Butter
• Cheddar cheese (block)
• String cheese
• Cottage cheese
• Yogurt (I usually buy 1 pint a week, alternating plain & vanilla--I use the plain for cooking whenever you'd use sour cream, and it's yummy to eat on its own if you stir in honey)
• Parmesan in a can (once in a while we'll splurge and get the real stuff)

Grains

• Bread (I get 2 loaves a week since Luke & I eat so many sandwiches & toast)
• Penne pasta (our grocery store doesn't carry the whole grain kind, so I try to get that if we're ever in Walmart or whatever)
• Spaghetti (whole grain...it gets kind of gummy if you get the thick noodles, so I buy the angel hair)
• Breakfast cereal (raisin bran, mini wheats, granola, cheerios, and Scott's pick of the week, usually the generic Honey Bunches of Oats)
• Tortillas
• Tortilla chips
• Oatmeal (when we run out, which is like 4 times a year)
• Rice (I like to buy the 25 lb bags at the international foods store--something like $17 for my favorite brand of brown rice, which is a steal)
• Sometimes a box of hamburger helper for crazy/lazy nights
• Frozen crescent rolls
• Triscuits

Fruit & veggies

• Apples
• Bananas
• Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, some kind of little berry (whatever is cheaper, frozen or fresh)--these are Luke's favorite food in the universe and they go on sale often enough that I try to keep some on hand.
• Oranges--well, whatever citrus is cheapest that week (tangerines, clementines, whatever)
• Strawberries*
• Pears*
• Avocados*
• Kiwi*
• Mangoes*
• Grapes*
• Baking potatoes (yukon golds)
• Roasting potatoes (reds)
• Sweet potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Spinach (bagged)
• Romaine lettuce
• Broccoli (frozen)
• Cauliflower (fresh or frozen)
• Asparagus (frozen)--only because our grocery store carries an awesome generic kind
• Green beans (canned)
• Other canned veg as the mood strikes (beets, corn, whatever)
• Raisins (for Luke)

You know, listed out like that it sure looks like a lot. It doesn't seem like it when we're shopping. And the * ones I pick one or two of only if they're on sale.

Baking goods
Okay, so I am trying very, very hard to be good and quit making dessert so often. I used to just keep a constant stock of things like brown sugar, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, etc., but now I'm trying to get to where I need to make a trip to the grocery store if I'm going to make dessert. Wish me luck!! I do keep flour, white sugar, and canola oil on hand, but I buy those in bulk when they go on sale.

Other stuff
And then misc pantry items like peanut butter, honey, jam, olive oil, ketchup, salsa, soy sauce, etc. as we run out. The ones in that category that we go through the fastest are peanut butter, honey, and olive oil; I love love love love love Costco's olive oil and peanut butter (I'm going to have to figure something else out when our membership expires next month...), and the honey at our grocery store is usually not too expensive.

Snacks
Scott and I each have our weaknesses for snacks that we want but don't need...he always likes to get a bag of chips, and I have to keep otter pops on hand (even in the winter...I stock up in the fall, haha). We try to limit ourselves to only one snacky thing per grocery trip (so per week), though. Most of the time at home we'll snack on stuff like popcorn, tortilla chips with salsa or cottage cheese, fresh fruit, and whatever dessert I've made lately because I have no willpower. I did try making kale chips the other day, and I thought they were awesome. Salty and crispy and yummy. They have a weird aftertaste, though. My family didn't like them. What kinds of snacks do you guys eat?

So that's basically my "pantry" list--stuff that I buy if I've run out, no matter what I'm making that week. And actually, there are a few exceptions (like I get the tikka masala mix at the oriental store, and I get cabbage if I'm going to make soup), but basically all of those dinners only need the pantry list stuff. I don't buy anything else unless I've got a pretty darn good reason to (like I've been asked to make a specific dish for a party or something). I guess all the produce can get expensive, but we don't buy very many things that are pre-processed anymore (the ones I can think of are all of our breakfast cereals, the crescent rolls, and the chips), so I know we save loads of money that way.

I don't really use coupons at all. I tried to use a coupon on the kind of sunscreen I like the other day, but I think I left it at home. The foods I buy (fresh meat, fresh dairy, produce) never really have coupons. Things that aren't food (like cleaning supplies and diapers), I can beat the coupon prices by ordering in bulk on Amazon like Melissa said. I think couponing works really well if you have a lot of pre-packaged foods that you buy, or if you don't care what brand of health/beauty supply things (like shampoo) you buy.

Well, what do you guys do for dinner? What are your stand-by meals that you make all the time? Any grocery store tricks I can steal from you? :-)

Saving Money on Food

Man, I'm so behind the times! We moved like 5 weeks ago and I've been in Utah for like 3 weeks, so I guess I have kind of an excuse. :-)

So groceries...we took a hard look at our budgets back around February because we're really trying to save for a house and we just weren't making much of a dent. Our biggest cost was rent (obviously), so we moved to a smaller, cheaper place (that is also much closer to Scott's work). Our next biggest cost was food. We were spending usually around $600 a month on food (holy CRAP!). My mom fed a family of 7 on that much the whole time I was growing up! So we knew we had to make some changes.

Almost half of our food costs came from eating out. It's almost embarrassing for me to admit that, since when I was a kid, my family only ate out like 10 times a year, if that. My parents kind of ingrained it into me that even going to McDonald's was a very special occasion. Maybe that's a little too tight fisted (and my parents certainly aren't like that anymore), but Scott and I really were spending too much money eating out. It's obviously not healthy, either. It's something that progressed over time--when we were first married, we almost never ate out, but lately we'd gotten up to 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes 5 if we ate out for lunch on Saturday when we were running errands.

The problem was that in the years we've been married, our two favorite things to do together are go to movies and eat out. We love eating out because it feels like a special event, and we love to try new kinds of food and get to know the different parts of our city. Eating out in Salt Lake (when we lived there) was my favorite way to experience all the different cultures there. Eating out is a great way for us to relax too, since we don't have to cook or clean up, and Luke loves to watch all the lights and sounds and people in a busy restaurant--meaning we get to actually talk over dinner. Since we couldn't take Luke to movies and we didn't have access to any babysitters, date night automatically meant eating out.

But we looked at it and decided that we could save a lot of money just by being more conscious of what & when & where we were spending it. We set a goal to eat out just 2 meals a week (instead of 4 or 5!), and set a dollar amount that we could spend on those two meals combined (say, $30). That way, if we wanted to go somewhere a little more expensive one night, we would try something new on the dollar menu at Wendy's (or whatever) the other night--or just stay home. It's hard sticking to the budget and we don't always make it, but choosing to limit how frequently we go out has made a huge difference.

The groceries thing too was actually even easier than I thought. We had been spending about $400 a month just on groceries, which really is ridiculous for two adults and a baby who still breastfeeds some. In literally one week I was able to cut it literally in half--from about $90 a week to about $45--by doing just 3 things: I planned economical meals for the week in advance, I made a grocery list for only the ingredients we didn't already have, and I ONLY bought what was on my list at the store. If we "ran out" or I didn't have something I wanted later in the week, I decided I would just have to wait until next week's shopping or I would have to make do with what I had in the pantry. It wasn't nearly as ascetic as it sounds; Scott actually didn't even notice the change in the kinds of meals or groceries we had in the house. He certainly noticed the difference in our checking account, though! Cleaning out the pantry was a good thing, too...I discovered a couple of boxes of pasta and a cake mix that dated back to before we were married (4 1/2 years ago!). Holy cow. We had moved like 6 times and took those boxes each time because I just wasn't thinking consciously enough about using what we had instead of buying more than we needed.

So basically, we decided to stick to a budget and shop consciously, and it cut our food costs nearly in half (about $600/month to about $350/month). We still go over a little sometimes, but nothing like before. It's very exciting to me to have the extra moolah piling up in our savings! I guess the real lesson here though was that we had gotten pretty irresponsible in our spending up to that point. Oops.

Hmmm...Textiles

Does anybody have a favorite craft?  Mine is making baby shoes.  Like these.  I was amazed at how much easier they are to make then I suspected.  And they're cute.  I think that's why I like making baby shoes.

Feeding my family

Okay, I don't have much to say on this topic I guess.  We don't spend tons on groceries and the best way I've found to save money is to make huge meals and eat leftovers.  It is rare for me to make a meal that we don't have for at least 2 dinners.  One way to do this is to make soup.  I love making a huge pot of soup that lasts for several meals.  My favorites to make are Zuppa Toscana and clam chowder.  Plus, soup is one of the only ways Savannah will eat vegetables :).