Vacation Rundown!

So we got back from vacation Monday. We had fun, the kids had fun and we came in under budget from what we had saved-which means we have that much we will save for the next vacation.   

So here's the rundown.. 
We drove down to Springfield, Illinois and back home, taking backroads and avoiding four lane highways and interstates when possible. 

I spent about $150 before we left on snacks and toys for the kids to keep them occupied. Our plan was to get hot sandwiches from a fast food restuarant for lunches and eat the chips and drinks we had in the car from my shopping trip. I put together a homemade happy meal for the kids, complete with a toy for the lunches.  

For breakfast, we made sure we stayed in hotels that had a continental breakfast which we took advantage of all but one morning. That one morning, we went down to breakfast and the breakfast bar was packed, so we decided to swing by Mcdonalds and grab sandwiches. 

Suppers we ate out.  Usually the kids ended up finishing their food at the hotel, but hey, either they ate it or we ate it for them.  

The entire trip was more about the drive and what we found than what was in Springfield when we got there, although we did enjoy seeing the Lincoln sites in Springfield.  We are family genealogists, so when we saw a graveyard, we stopped and perused.  The kids weren't so sure about it, but after awhile they figured out what we were doing and had fun spotting graveyards.  

Before we went, we tried to find as much as we could that was free to help with the costs.  We did do a few things that cost money, but I would say those few things were worth it.  I do have to say, while we did write down how much we needed for those and figured more for parking, a few of the costs were wrong so just make sure you have a cushion for fees that are more than websites said they would be.  

The big towns we hit were, St Joseph Missouri. We drove around the historic district and took some pictures-especially the house where Jesse James was killed.  The next big town was Hannibal, Missouri where we took pictures of anything Mark Twain we could find.  We then went on to Springfield where we did everything Lincoln we could find.  After Springfield we drove through Carthage and Nauvoo for Mormon history.  We spent our third night in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Drove through the Amana Colonies-which we TOTALLY planned wrong because we went through those on early Sunday morning. We drove through Ames and stopped at the Historic Fort Dodge in Fort Dodge, Iowa.  We spent our last night in Le Mars, Iowa and ate at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream shop/museum before we headed for home.   

Andrew's favorite part of the trip was parking underground in Springfield. He just enjoyed that! Eva's favorite part was her 'superhero ice cream' in LeMars. I honestly don't remember the actual name of it, but she certainly enjoyed.   

All in all costwise, we spent about $800, which isn't too bad for a family of 5 on a 4 day vacation.   We had fun, and that is the important part.  

We also have a ton of snacks leftover. :)

-Tabitha 

Grocery Trip And Homeschool Stuff

So we went grocery shopping today. HyVee has some good sales this week. 

I'm loving the idea of planning 7 meals and just doing a rotation. So That's what I'm doing again. HyVee has pasta 10 for $10 so we are going mostly with pasta meals. Chicken was also on sale.  I did decide to splurge a little and get charcoal for our grill, because it will save the house from heating up. 

All in all, I spent $330 and a little extra for perishables and some extra snacks we decided we wanted for vacation. 

For those of you who are school shopping, go check out Dollar Tree. I know Walmart and Target run .50 or $1 sales right about now, but if you can't find what you want or need there for cheap, check your local Dollar Tree (or you can buy a case on their website and have it UPS delivered).  I found some great worksheets at ours today. And they have little marker boards I'm debating about grabbing next month. 

On my homeschool sites, I often see questions about teaching kids to budget.  In my opinion, budgeting is a must. Everybody (unless you're a millionaire) needs it. So might as well teach our kids early. And I think they learn best when led by example.  If you don't want your kids helping with your grocery list, give them some random amount and the grocery ad. Tell them they need to meal plan and make a grocery list that fits within that amount. If it doesn't fit, it can't go on the list.   The grocery ad is good for all areas of basic math and life skills to boot. 


That's all to report for now.


I'll be back in a few weeks with vacation tips. 

-Tabitha

Vacation Food Shopping

Well, we made an unexpected trip to the city today, so decided to do most of our vacation food shopping. I'll hide the goods in the office so the kids don't eat them. 

We've decided we prefer something fresh (Subway or the like) or something hot (think Arby's sandwiches or KFC type).. So we'll get the entree off somebody's dollar menu and use out of our stash for the rest of the meal.  Most everything will last us beyond vacation, but that's ok.

I got variety boxes of cookies and chips and we all love Gardettos, so I got those for a salty snack. Now normally I just a big bag then portion it all out, but in this case, I just bought the boxes of single serving packs. 

Hubby and I (ok..more me) love our coffee.  So since Sam's had the Starbucks Frappucinos on sale, I got a little case of those. Also got Dr. Pepper for him and 7 up for me.  The kids got a case of juice boxes and I grabbed a flat of water. If we need more water, we'll just find a grocery store and grab another flat.   

I was going to get the kids those squeezable applesauce pouches (they love those things), but I couldn't find just applesauce, so I got a variety pack.   

Now, since the plan is to NOT get kids meals, we also made a stop by Dollar Tree. We got a toy for lunch for each day we plan to be gone. One of these days during nap times, I'll put them in paper bags we already have with name on the bag.  New toys are always a good distraction.   We also grabbed a few new coloring and activity books. 

All of this will get stashed away until vacation next month. But I ended up saving $10 by getting it now. 

Have a good week! 
Tabitha

The Next Month

The next month will prove to be a busy one... like I ever have non busy months. LOL

For meals, I've decided on a 5-6 meal rotation. For the most part (unless somebody gets sick from a meal), it's going to be Spaghetti, tacos, stir fry, pork chops, bbq chicken, leftovers.  Then we start all over again.  I am trying to keep dessert of some sort in the house in case somebody doesn't get full on the supper.  

Around the house we have been cleaning and will be prepping for a garage soon.   There's just so much stuff!  

I am doing my homeschool lesson plans, getting everything ready and we'll start again in August.  Still Kindergarten things, but Andrew is determined to learn to read, so we have to learn all the letters and their sounds.  

Lots of sewing projects and still working on the stockings...still on my first of six, I forgot how tedious cross stitch is. 

I'm also planning furiously for vacation this month as we go beginning of August.  I'll go to Sam's soon to grab some snacks and drinks while they are still on sale and then stash them in the office until needed.   One of the biggest vacation expenses is always food.  Our plan is to get hot sandwiches of some sort, then have drinks, chips and cookies in the van and either eat in the van or have a picnic and let the kids get some energy out while we eat.  The van also needs vacuumed and the car seats washed before we go.  

I'm way behind on laundry. I'm really trying to not use the clothes dryer, and that has put me behind with laundry as we have been blessed with many rain showers this last week. 


We'll get to pick our mulberries this week, the kids are really excited. They seem to be small, but are turning black so they are ready. 

That's about all the excitement happening here. Hope you are having a good summer, too. 

Tabitha

Shopping Trip June 4th

Yes, I know I'm a little late, it's been a little crazy around here. 

The ads looked like normal, not too much on sale.  My predicted amount put us way over our wanted $300-with no extras, but we have to eat, right? And with the apparent bird flu (according to the news anyway) killing chickens, our meat of choice is going to go up.  I'm not looking forward to that.  

Since I can generally get chicken around $1 a pound at Sam's (it depends on what I get-whole, whole organic, breast, tenders, legs, thighs....) we decided to experiment this month. I'm going to try some sort of stir-fy style for the most part for suppers.  Weekend lunches are hamburgers (40, 1/4 pound pre-frozen patties at Sam's for $30, I just add some homemade seasoning) and homemade french fries on the weekends, chips on Sundays (because I don't have an hour to mess with french fries).  We also have fish and we're experimenting with vegetarians meals using quinoa.  Lunches for the kids and I are whatever we can scrounge up around the house-my canned food cupboard is overfilling. Dennis is eating salads.  

So Friday and some of Saturday was spent chopping and portioning all the chicken and the vegetables so I can just get them out and thaw when needed, I'll have the whole meal there minus the rice-but that's easy enough. I'm loving the simplicity of these meals already.  Throw the chicken in with garlic, ginger and coconut oil, cook until done, remove from pan. Throw the veggies in, cook for about ten minutes, then put chicken back in until veggies are done. All the while the rice and sauce are cooking ride beside. Easy as pie and the kids seem to be loving it-which is always a plus, but my picky eater comes next week so we'll just how interesting this will get.  

Today I still have some prep work to get done for Dennis' lunches. Chop the broccoli and the lettuce and put it in containers or baggies so it's ready for his lunches. I cut up melons Friday, so those are ready to go.  But other than that, it's mostly done.  

I did get very frustrated at Fareway stores again. To the point where I'm DONE. I will NOT be going back there-I don't care how good the sales are.  There were two things that impressed me about Fareway two years ago when they came to Sioux Falls, I was told that it was local meat (yeah, not the case-it's Tyson, which is anything but local...and I just don't like Tyson, so like Farmland products I avoid unless I can't avoid).  This last time, they had in their ads Oscar Meyer lunchables (just the simple ones with meat,  cheese and crackers) for $1 each.  Get to the store and it was Armour brand, apparently a 'misprint'. Yeah, not cool. Usually I don't mind off brands, but the Armour brand just doesn't have as much. Fareway was the last grocery store we went to so I because of what I had planned for lunch while driving, I didn't have too much of a choice at this point.  If something is going to be printed in their ads, they need to honor that ad. If they don't have that product in the store at all, there needs to be signs-on the door, where the product should be at that they don't have that, but this brand would be honored for the sale price-no such notice at Fareway Foods.  To top it all off, the guy that took the cart to car decided it was a good idea to fill my toddlers' car seats with groceries-he reached over the back of the back seat and put them there instead with the rest of the groceries in the back of the van. I have no doubt that if I didn't ask him SPECIFICALLY to NOT put the frozen foods on my hamburger buns, I would have had squished hamburger buns. Sorry Fareway, I'm done with you.  

Have a good week! 

Tabitha

Planning For Vacation

Sometimes I plan too much. I can admit that. But the planning keeps me sane.  

We are planning on taking a  vacation in August which will include a  nine hour road trip-and that's just one way, straight driving. 

A few months ago, hubby and I went through Google maps and found points of interest along the way,  put towns into a trip planner.  Depending on kids, how we're feeling and what not, we might stop and eat lunch.. Well, we'll eat lunch, the kids can play at a park or rest stop, or we'll eat in the car.  While we have a rough itinerary written down, we're not sticking to too much of it.  

I'm keeping track of everything in a notebook.  It's all in one place and if I find something else we might want to explore, it goes in the notebook.  Honestly, it really does a hinge on how high gas gets and the hotel price as to what else we can do.  But we do have quite a list of free things to do to make it fun for everybody.  

This morning, I sat down with my notebook and wrote down how I want to pack the van.  

In the back seat with Andrew and Eva, they'll have their toys, notebooks with school worksheets (my kids are geeks, what can I say?), coloring pages and crayong and pencils.  Blankets to cover with (they are weird), extra blankets for sunshades if the need arises. And under the seat will be towels for spills or accidents, simply because we will have a van of littles and you never know.  

In the middle seats will be Grace, snacks and drinks in a small cooler for easy access, the atlas, toys blankets, snack cups, drink cups, and the diaper bag with a change of clothes for the kids so I don't have to dig through the suitcase if the need arises.  

The front seat will get what hubby and I will need, MP3 player and charger, phone charger, Tom Tom and charger, camera.  

The back is going to be challenging. Suitcases-one for me and Dennis, one for the kids.  Big cooler, extra snacks that don't need the cooler, stroller, play pen. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it's all big stuff.  

I'm still working on the meal plan, but we are planning on taking most of our food to help with costs.  


-Tabitha

Winter Has Returned

Well friends, with as busy as it looks my summer will get I can't promise I'll make it on here all the time.. Case in point-look at the last month.  

Unfortunately for my garden, it seems that winter has decided to return.. Snow just 50 miles north of us, while a tornado has destroyed a small town about 50 miles south of us. 

My garden was planted beginning of last month, so things should start sprouting soon.  I haven't been brave enough to take my sprouts out. Broccoli and Tomato are sitting next to my sewing machine waiting to make sure the weather will stay warm.  

Next week I hope to get all the saplings cut down or dug up for somebody to plant in their yard with help from my dad and mom.  Lots of those to get cleared. 

We bought a new lawn mower as ours bit the dust... Now we just have to figure out how to work the bagger.   


On the inside of the house, I have many sewing projects.  I'm also finding new recipes and working on getting the diet more rounded.  Or at least the suppers.  The hardest part of that is finding money for more fruit and veggies, so we've been looking into Bountiful Baskets and Fruit of The Month Club.    At least with the cold weather I'm getting caught back up on inside chores.