Turkey Shopping

This past week I did my Thanksgiving shopping. Even though I am eating at my in laws I like to have my own Turkey to smoke and have at my house. I also take a sweet potato casserole to church on Sunday for fellowship meal and I take one to my in laws to eat on Thanksgiving. So, I went to our local Ingles (I am so over Wal-Mart) and this is what I bought:

I spent $55 but I did get 2 Turkeys and a box of mandarin oranges and four Cokes. We also got apples, sweet potatoes,and bananas.

I am hoping that I don't have to go back to the store until after Thanksgiving.

Daycare Fun

I had almost decided that after Christmas that I did not want to keep as many kids in my home anymore. It is alot of work to keep three kids under the age of two and then have my own four come home in the afternoon. It is really not that bad. I only have three kids two days a week and I have one four days. I do have Monday off and that is the day that I volunteer at the special ed pre-k. My days are busy! Well, Steven has been trying to talk me into keeping the extra kids because we need the money. We do need the money, so that is why I am keeping them, but today it did not seem like that much work. We did some turkey crafts, read some books, played outside, and had fun. They are all sleeping right now. I just need to think of my days with all of them in terms of that it is a daycare, and that we need a schedule and we need to do some fun things. Today was good.

Ashley and Steven are going to El Salvador the week before Christmas. I am excited for them and a little nervous. This is a trip of a lifetime for them. They are building houses for the homeless, doing some Christmas parties, and working in some orphanages. The trip is expensive, but so many people have given us money and we have done fundraising. I just have to remember to be thankful for all that is given to us!

Well, laundry awaits. I hope to get a post up soon about our Christmas and what I am thinking of getting the kids. I am a little stuck on what to get my 9 year old girl. I don't want to get barbies or baby doll, but I don't really want to get electronics. Any suggestions out there?

Shop unitl you Drop

I have just returned from a shopping weekend with my mother and my sister. We went to Charlotte, NC to the Southern Christmas show. This is a craft fair and it takes a whole day to go through it. We started about 10:00 on Friday and then finished at around 5:00. Then on Saturday we went to Concord Mills Mall which is a huge indoor outlet mall. We shopped there from 10:00 until 5:30. On Sunday we headed home, but we stopped and shopped at IKEA for a few hours before heading home. We got alot of Christmas shopping done and had a great time. We have gone every year for the past three years. It is good to get away from it all and enjoy my mom and my sister. My feet are really tired, but we had fun.

Yes, I spent too much money, but don't we always when we shop like this. I found some really cute clothes for the kids and some little crafts. A few little trinkets to put in stockings that I won't see around here. I did not buy any toys. I usually wait until black Friday for that! Yes we hit the stores at 4:00 am and shop until noon. I usually get my shopping done on this day!

The only bad thing about these trips is that we have to eat out the whole time. Now, I like to eat out, but after a day my stomach can't handle it anymore and the food just feels heavy. We rarely eat out, so this is usually something that I have to deal with when we travel. Yuck. Restaurant food tastes so bland. May be if we went to upscale places it would be better. No, we like to save some money, so the bland food it is.

Well, I better go and sort through my stuff and see what I want to give the kids now and what needs to wait. I hate having to wait for Christmas. I am terrible at secrets.

Bouncing Meals

One of the ways that we keep our food bill low is that we have lots of what I call bouncing meals.  I will cook a roast or a chicken, and then use it for several meals.  I also often turn leftovers into another meal.  We try not to throw food away and stretching it into another meal makes it so that you almost eat for free a couple of nights a week.

My son called this mystery soup, because when i make it, it is a mystery as to what it will taste like.  It just depends on what I put in it.  This week I had a pork roast one night that I made into bbq sandwiches.  I had a good bit left over so I decided to make this as a base to the soup.  The first thing I did was to soak some beans overnight in the crock pot.  In the morning I turned it on high and added the meat.  I also added a chopped onion and green pepper and some garlic.  I then added some taco seasoning and ranch mix.  Once the beans are soft I added a big can of crushed tomatoes and a bag of frozen corn.  It turned out really good.  It was kind of like a Brunswick stew.  We served it with shredded cheese and corn chips.

Tired

I volunteered at the pre-k in my kid's school yesterday. They have a special ed. class there, and since I used to work with kids with special needs, I like to help in this class when I can. I usually stay for just a few hours on Monday, but the teacher asked me if I would help them with a field trip, so I said that I would. I didn't know how long the field trip would last, so I decided to make arrangements to stay for the day. Staying all day was tiring. On top of that we had three extra kids spend the night on Friday and Saturday so that they could go to our church youth party and fall festival. I don't mind the extra kids spending the night, but they won't ever go to bed and then the younger kids still get up early. It makes for a tiring weekend. Add working all day Monday with special ed. four year olds then by last night I was tired! I know many people do that kind of schedule every week, but not me and I don't want to. If I get a job next year(I am trying to work in the school next year) I will have to slow my weekends down a little and everyone will have to help out more.

I have three day care kids here today, but right now they are all napping. I hope they stay that way for a while. I usually won't nap during the day, but I like to have some time to relax for a while.

We have soccer and dance tonight. Steven is out of town, so it is up to me to get everyone where they need to go. We may not go to soccer if Emma is still coughing. I hear a baby I better go get him.

Entertaining Children

We don't think it is very hard here to entertain our children.  We really don't watch much TV, we don't have a video game system, and we don't have tons of toys.  What we do provide is plenty of craft supplies, Lego's, pretend type activities, and outdoor play equipment.  We also let the kids have friends over on a regular basis.  I think building relationships with friends is more important than providing electronic entertainment.  Now, my oldest has a cell phone (my old one) and we did buy her an i-pod touch for her birthday, but we make her put these things up during homework time and we make her put them in the living room at night.  We also do the same when friends spend the night.  The phones come in the living room at night.

I read somewhere (I think the Tightwad Gazette) that this is called creative deprivation.  You let your kids get somewhat bored, and they will entertain themselves or each other.  I have found that out to be true.  Sometimes I have to hear for a while that we have nothing to do in this house, but then when I tell them that they can do some chores, they quickly find something to do to entertain themselves.  Ha Ha!

The $1.00 Dinner

Last night we had a soccer game at 6:00 and then Ashley had dance class at 7:15 that lasts until 8:45.  So obviously Ashley needed to eat before she went to dance, but Emma and the rest of us needed to wait until after the game.  Ashley has to go with us to the game because dance is just around the corner from the ball fields, so she had to take a portable dinner and  we needed a dinner that can easily be heated up when we got home from the soccer game.  We don't get home until 7:30 and the younger kids go to bed at 8: 30.  So what do we do?  We make soup and homemade bread.

I did chicken soup out of leftover homemade stock and some odds and ends.  These are the ingredients I used:

In the bag is frozen chicken stock that I made last week from a chicken that we had.  I took all of the meat off of the cooked chicken and then put all of the bones in the crock pot, covered it in water and added a tablespoon of salt.  I cooked on low for 24 hours then I strained it and put it in the fridge for a day.  When it was cold I pulled the fat off of it and put it in the freezer.  I consider the stock free for this meal because I already counted the cost of the chicken in the meal last week.  I then chopped some carrots, celery and onion and added them to the stock along with some poultry seasoning and a little pepper.  I chopped my veggies in the food processor so the they would be really small (the kids don't like chunks in soup).  I also added some chopped garlic and then let it simmer for a few hours.  I also had some leftover chicken in the freezer so I added that too.  When it was done I added the ramen noodles (broken up) and one of the ramen seasoning packs.  Then that was it.  I don't have a finished picture of the soup because my camera batteries ran out, but it looked like soup!

I figured that the stock was free and that I had about .75 cents worth of veggies.  Ramen packs are .12 cents so that makes $1.00.  We also at half of a loaf of homemade bread, in which it costs me about .50 cents a loaf to make.  So you can add another .25 cents for the bread.  This meal feed a family of six and we had three containers left over for lunches.  Ashley carried hers in a thermos to the ball field.  Everyone said that it was tasty!