Picture Sharing

I made a new site on Shutterfly with our pictures. I am really liking how the pictures can be organized - it's way easier than here on blog spot!

The website is http://theyoungerrollakoenigfamily.shutterfly.com/.

You will need a password to view the pictures though and it's the general that our street is named after with a capital S at the beginning. Let me know if you need additional assistance with the password!

Enjoy!

Loafing

We are enjoying some pumpkin bread for the start of our lunch! We were talking about how yummy it was and I thanked my boys for making it as they did much of the work.

The response, "Yes, we did do most of the work. You only did the loafing!"

Great play on words!

Bargains...re-thought

So I wrote my boring post on Saturday about what I bought on my grocery shopping trip...and I read through some other people's blogs about how little they spend per week on groceries. I got a little discouraged and have thought about it some more.

My conclusions:

• Good bargains are good things!
• Finding a good bargain is a lot of fun!
• I need to limit my grocery list/couping finding time to about 1 hour per week. (Not including shopping, but shopping should not be a time to look for bargains.)
• We eat a lot of food at home and that's a good thing.

Here's what I assume in every weekly grocery budget:

• No eating out. (Way back when, we did this at least once a week, now it's a big treat.)
• Feeding another couple at least once a week if not more.
• Sunday potluck - main course and a side and possibly a desert or breakfast food
• Sunday night is popcorn, fruit and cheese
• Every other week we do eat with our in-laws, but the alternate week, we host them.
• Four of us eat breakfast, lunch and supper/dinner and snacks at home.

All in all, that's a lot of food. We eat very little convenience food but we do eat quite a bit of fresh fruits and vegetables (generally not organic). Grocery shopping will not define my life. Eating well is a good thing and I don't have to beat myself up about buying something that isn't on sale and without a coupon! (I did make a quit trip to Kroger yesterday to get in on the buy 8, get $4 off on some things that were out of stock on Saturday - savings 72% but I only bought sale items and canned tomatoes, cereal and cheese do not make a meal! I also want to try a recipe for Boston Cream Pie I read this morning - no cheap cake flour that I know of.)

Happy Eating!

Pictures from the first quarter of 2010

We got these great new phones in January and I have been taking pictures. I finally figured out how to get them off of the camera easily!

The standard blue chair pose.

Throwing in at basketball...

Rice Crispy Treat Egyptian Pyramids

Basketball Action...

Straw Fishing at Cub Scouts

Reptile Ranch - Just today!

Finally Leo the Lion - we even got to hear him roar!

Text sent on Friday morning

Dere dad I hav icksiding noos. I lost my tooth. I hope we see you soon. Luve...

Saturday Shopping

I subscribe to this blog called Money Saving Mom that sends out "deals" at different stores and encourages thrifty shopping habits. The person who writes the blog is a Christian home school mom so I can identify with her! She's moral with her thriftiness which is great too! With the amount of stuff that's on her blog though, she definitely puts in quite a few hours of work a day.

Anyway, they suggest that you post about your Saturday Shopping Deals. I had the opportunity to go grocery shopping all by myself yesterday. A great bonus is that some friends lent me their automatic car so I didn't have to do the boot transfer at every store. When I shop all by myself, I am more free to peruse for bargains and look through coupons than if the boys are with me!

The biggest shopping requirement yesterday was to get the big guy some black pants and shoes for his first concert as part of Rolla Young Singers. Amazingly the pants and the shoes that I bought did fit! He even liked the cheaper pants of the two pair that I brought home. I picked up some traditional black dress pants as well as some black cargo pants. Both of them fit, but he thought the dress pants were more appropriate. (Yes, he used that word.) I couldn't disagree though I think they'll pretty much get worn one more time and that will be it!

Back to shopping...I went to Aldi, Kroger and Country Mart to buy groceries. I spent $115 which is more than I like to spend in a week on groceries. Even though I spent that much, I did get some good deals and we won't eat all of this food in a week. I didn't plan out meals before I went shopping which is a pretty big no-no for me so now I'm going to have to plan our meals around what I have on hand. We definitely have lots of vegetables to eat, the protein may be a little more lacking.

Kroger has a buy 8, get $4 off promotion going on. I had coupons for quite a few things so that was my primary reason for shopping, we also were out of fresh fruit and almost out of fresh vegetables so I wanted to pick those things too. Unfortunately they were out of some of the items on their promotion, so I will probably go back and spend a little more of our money food budget.

My Kroger receipt says that I saved $52.01 and I spent $46.22. I don't think that's too bad. Even though I was after those things that were on sale, I did have a few things on my list that we were out of like peanut butter that I picked up.

My best buy? Oscar Meyer Bacon - 2 1lb packages
Sale price $2.77/package
2 $1.50 coupons
Paid $1.27 per package.
Received a $1 off next purchase as well which brought each package of bacon under a dollar. (Breakfast for dinner one night this week.)

I had an extra Lunchable Coupon left from a few weeks ago. Not normally something that I would buy, but I ended up paying $.24 for one. Not a bad price for a treat my kids get very excited about! (Part of a lunch for field trip tomorrow.)

We are trying some Smart Balance Sour Cream for the first time. We use their "buttery spread" so I thought we would try the sour cream. I paid $.49 per 16oz tub for that as a final price. (Bean Burritos are yummy with sour cream.)

At Kroger I got two $4 off because I bought 16 items. Most of the items I had additional coupons for except for the Kraft cheese. The cheese is a good price, even cheaper than Aldi when you bought 8 so I definitely got some of that. I will probably go back again and get some more just because it's that good of a deal.

My other shopping wasn't as exciting. Aldi was just "normal" stuff for us. Juice, yogurt, fruit, fresh vegetables. I did pick up some egg rolls there - they had vegetarian ones which I was excited to see. (I'm guessing that we'll have stir-fry some time this week!)

Country Mart was a quick trip. They had some frozen vegetables on sale and I had coupons for those (Steamfresh .99 - .35 cent coupon doubled, .29 per package). They also had fresh Brussels Sprouts on sale too for $1.49/pound. My family loves those and that was a great price. We ate half of the three pounds that I bought last night with pizza! Unfortunately the Dole coupons were gone at the salad so I had to pay $1 per bag of salad!

Enough of my shopping adventure. Reading this blog and reading about getting deals is fun. I have realized that it takes time to print coupons and figure it all out. I have spent quite a bit of time on this in the last few weeks. The time that I'm spending will constantly need to be evaluated. I am buying food or other things that I wouldn't normally buy? Are we consuming what I am buying? Should I spend that time on something different? If this is "my time" is this how I want to be spending it?

I also picked up some pasta and pasta sauce pretty cheap (Classico - $1.99, $1.00 off two jars - $.50 off because they were part of the promotion - .99/jar). So pasta will be another meal this week! I think I have four dinners planned out while I wrote this blog! Happy Shopping!

Garden Planting!

We have peas in the ground...just a minor obstacle to work around, but we have about a 1/2 pound of pea seeds in the ground!

I had three little boys helping to plant - one that is over for a play date. They helped without too much complaining and are now waiting for me to cup up apples with caramel dip!

My obstacle? The boot that is on my foot because of a broken toe! Yes, my small fall down the stairs two weeks ago did end up in a broken toe. I kicked the door jam of the door going to the basement. I really thought it would get better, but after two weeks it was not so here I am in a boot. I have a check-up in two weeks, I don't know much more than that. No signing up for any 1/2 marathons for me right now.

Positive side - I am allowed to ride a bike so hopefully I'll learn to shift gears properly.

It's March!

If anyone reads this and wonders what is happening in our lives, I'll give you a short run down!

Today was like Christmas for me! I had a Pampered Chef Party last month and the order arrived today. My friends were very generous and therefore I was able to get lots of free/discounted stuff! I bought somethings intending them to be gifts...we'll see if I can keep my paws off! (So far, I've not had that thought of why in the world did I put myself through this...) My new mixer is supposed to arrive tomorrow! Wow, kitchen heaven for me.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a podiatrist. I slipped down the stairs two weeks ago and banged my foot against the door jam. It hasn't felt too good since even with magic Nikki fingers. I'm really afraid of leaving the office in a boot tomorrow, but I do really want to run again so I need to do this. (How am I going to deliver all the Pampered Chef stuff if I can't drive???)

The boys finished basketball this past weekend! Upwards was a lot of fun and the closing awards ceremony was surprisingly great - only an hour long with quality entertainment! I'm trying not to say this around the boys, but I'm thrilled that we aren't doing spring soccer. I was thinking that we aren't doing any sports until baseball this summer, but three weeks of swim lessons, four days a week almost counts as a sport! The boys were very blessed to have grandparents come to every basketball game that they played.

My husband has been working really hard. This week seems to be better than the last two - one he was home but worked a ton of hours followed by a week of being out of town.

I think I sealed the deal with the cookie contract tonight. I succeeded in making the cookie the way that they like them! We'll see if I can do it consistently or not, but tonight was good.

I picked up a weekend job in April working for a curriculum company at a convention in Kansas City. I'm really hoping that it is fun and interesting. My husband did remind me that I don't like to go on vacation without him but I'm trying it yet again.

Hopefully tomorrow I can manage to plant some peas in the garden between piano lessons and doctor's appointment. As I was digging in the garden on Sunday, I found most of my perennial herbs coming up and some parsley growing too. I picked something in my garden in December and I have thyme that can be picked right now too. That's really pretty incredible that it's only been three months that the ground was not producing! I'm expecting to only be gardening at my house this year so I will be working to maximize my space.

Our new cell phone only option is working well. I love having my personal e-mail on my phone and all of my contacts there too synced up with my gmail. It's still weird to not have messages when I get home or have a bunch of e-mail to go through because I've looked at it through the day.

For Lent, I'm fasting from Facebook. I do miss it some, but it's good to take a break. It's not always a good place for me and gives me some of the same vibes as high school popularity. I have really amazing friends that I can communicate with outside of Facebook!

That's a summary of our world! I hope that you are enjoying more light and are being blessed by our amazing God! (Pictures to come soon, I'm still not smooth with the picture uploading.)

Contentment

I haven't been blogging much lately because I have had some inward struggles with contentment and self-importance. Here are two passages that I have thought about this morning.

Philippians 4 10I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. 11I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Ephesians 3:14-19
14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

I'm working on being content and giving God the glory!