I'm Still Here! (And Still Meal Planning)

Happy New Year!

Wait. It's February. Well, better late than never, right?

As usual, I started the year out with a bunch of resolutions. One of which was blogging. I had decided to start a new blog, where I recorded a few simple sentences each day about things my kids had said and done. I thought it seemed so doable, and that it would be something I would stick with. I didn't.

I had kind of then decided that I was just done with blogging. I couldn't seem to get the motivation to keep up with it, and even though I missed writing I figured it just wasn't in the cards for me anymore.

Then last week three different people asked me why I haven't blogged in awhile. Then I got an email from Highlights saying they linked back to my blog. And I was embarrassed because if anyone clicked on the link, they would see that I hadn't blogged since October. Oops. THEN one of my friends, who I was talking about blogging with, got me talking about food budgeting. Something I've been spending a lot of time on lately. And I thought, ok, I think I need to blog about this, and what better time than the start of a new month!

Since buying our house last year, we've really tightened our belts on a lot of things, one being our grocery budget. I set a monthly budget of $275 for us for food. This is strictly food prepared and eaten at home. It doesn't include eating out (something we can only afford to do very sparingly) and it doesn't include household products like paper towels, tissues, toilet paper, etc. It's still a tight budget though, and I tend to go over almost every month. I'm hoping that, with February being a short month I'll be able to stick with it. And what better way than to share with the world all that i'm buying!

I'm going to use the blog to be accountable for all my grocery shopping. I'll also include my meal plans, and a wrap up of what we ended up eating.

There's a lot that goes into my planning and shopping days, and i'll detail it out bit by bit this month. But to start i'll share with you our dinner plans for the week:

Monday: Glazed Turkey Meatloaf with a side of baked sweet potato chunks, steamed broccoli and steamed green beans.

Tuesday: Sweet Potato pancakes with yogurt and fruit.

Wednesday: We will eat at my mom's house

Thursday: Turkey Tacos

Friday: We'll eat at the dining hall. (What's the dining hall? My husband works at a college. Since he has to live there most of the time, he's given a meal plan as a job perk. He's allotted a specific amount of meals to use at the dining hall each semester. He uses some each week to take us out for dinner. The kids think it's awesome to dine with the college kids and I love that I don't have to cook. Or pay for a meal!)

Saturday: We have a party to attend

Sunday: Meatballs, Pasta and sauce with steamed veggies on the side

I *hopehopehope* I will keep up blogging about our food budget this month because I really think it will help keep me on track! Stay tuned tomorrow to hear about my first grocery trip of the month.

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Summer Living

Oh why hello there blog world. It's been a while.

Summer has been busy and not so busy, all at the same time. We've spent equal amounts of time at home being lazy and trying to get out of our blistering hot house. Since we didn't get air conditioners until mid-July we did a lot of mall trips to escape the heat. Once we did get air conditioners we spent time home, relishing the fact that we could be in our brand new house without melting completely.

We've had a lot of play-dates with friends that we're excited to finally live close to. We've had barbecues and beach nights, birthday parties and zoo trips. We've gone camping, swimming, and playgrounding. But most of all, we've soaked up every last minute of normalcy with Dan coming home each night.

Sadly, that part of summer ended this weekend when he moved back to our old apartment for a two-week session of training his new school-year staff. He'll have to live there now until December when he'll get a month off, and then again until May. We're sad, but looking on the bright side. The end of summer means the upcoming fall season is almost here, and we love fall!

So while it'll be hard to once again solo parent 6 out of 7 days and nights during the week, I'll be eagerly looking forward to crisp, cool weather, cardigans and boots, colorful leaves, pumpkins and apples.

The season feels over for us, but if you're still in summer mode, soak up every last bit of the season. I *promise* to update more frequently now that we're back to our own version of normal!

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