Entries from May 2009 ↓

  We just got back from a weekend getaway. Being penny pinchers, we’re going to do that and a couple of day trips for our ‘vacation’ this year.

   So anyway, we decided to do this last minute and got a super rate on our hotel. The hotel was attached to an indoor water park. So we did the water park one day and then the small zoo the next. It was really a wonderful time and the kids adored it.

   I love watching them shake with excitement about hotels. I have no idea what they find so wonderful about hotels but they do. They bounce around and say “Look! Look at that light! It’s so bright! And that bathtub! It’s so DEEP! And the water is so WARM!”. Like we don’t have lights, bathtubs and warm water at home.  And you seriously cannot get over their excitement about the ‘breakfast bar’ (Deluxe Continental Breakfast Buffet is how the hotel described it). They could have been serving up liver and onions and I think my kids would have eaten it just because.

   Our room had a microwave and a mini fridge/freezer. We bought stuff for lunch and dinner and decided to only eat one meal out, saving ourselves tons of money!

  All was well and good, as long as you’re not counting the bed bouncing, the forgotten swimming trunks and toothpaste, the water logged tennis shoes, and the ulcer I got trying to keep an eye on both children at all times admist all the other small children at the waterpark. Especially crazy little Warrior who has no fear of leaving his parents or running off into some deep pool. (Why oh why, do they make all swimming trunks nearly the same color? Thank God that kid has his white-blonde hair to make him stick out a little. But Forest’s head looks the same as every other kid’s!)  But seriously those happen on even the best planned vacations, right?

  The ride home though. Oy vey. We really thought we planned it right but we didn’t. The timing was all off and the kids were not impressed. At all. Our 2 1/2 hour car ride took about 5 hours. We had to stop once to pee along the side of the ride. Then Warrior insisted he had to poop. Twice. But he didn’t. And we stopped twice for him out in the middle of nowhere, driving all around trying to find a bathroom. He thought it was so funny that he tricked us and we fell for it. Twice. Forest spilled milk all over the van and himself. (Yay for when we got out today and have to smell it baking in the sun!) We couldn’t find extra jeans and he had to ride in his pajama pants which he was VERY unhappy about. And I only bribed them with 30 lollipops a piece and, for the record, I totally don’t even feel about myself for doing it because I’m still sane, which was the only thing that mattered at that point. Which is why at 10pm I am on the laptopand watching my children run pell mell around the house. Oh, except the baby, who is soundly sleeping in my lap. So she’ll be up bright and early whilst the kids sleep in. Good times.

Here are a few of my favorite photographs from our trip. (No pix from the water  park - remember, I’m trying to watch the crazies.)

Checking out some ducks.

Waving to Mommy and Sissy from the carousel:

Finally! An appropriate place for Crazy! (A cage.)

Making music in the zoo.

OK. This melts my heart and that’s the truth. Don’t they look absolutely in love? Well, they are. And I’m out. But that’s OK.

Her wave kills us. She walks around the house doing it, waving at no one. It’s SO a parade wave. We think she’s practicing for her big debut.

See what I mean about that white hair?

Happy!

A great way to save time and money, is to buy meat while it’s on sale, cook it all at once and then freeze it.

I wait until chicken is on sale for $1.99 per pound and I buy loads of it. And I do mean loads. (Hamburger seems to go on sale more than chicken, so I don’t get as much per shopping visit as I do chicken. Also, we don’t eat as much red meat as we do white.)

Fortunately for my wallet, unfortunately as far as work goes, chicken and hamburger were both on sale at the same time a couple of weeks ago.

I bought 17 pounds of chicken and 10 pounds of hamburger.

I then had myself a good ol’ meat cooking day.

I decided to grill about 12 pounds of chicken. (And I even learned how to grill on this day. I’ve never, until then. My sweet husband showed me how, all patient like. He didn’t even run inside and look up affordable life insurance quotes prior to teaching me. He seriously should have though; I’m not that good.)

I made some breasts marinated in BBQ sauce.

I cut strips and did some marinades in different sauces: BBQ, Ranch, and Italian.

I also did some plain (mostly for the kids).

Then, I cut chunks and browned some on the stove.

I also cooked some in light Italian dressing.

Cooking all this chicken at once saves a lot of time. Instead of just standing over the stove cooking one pan of chicken, I cook 4 at once. Instead of grilling one meal’s worth, I’m grilling 3. See what I mean?

So then, I put it in Ziploc bags, mark them according to contents, and freeze.

I make some small packages for my husband’s lunches. But most I use for dinners. When we’re running late, instead of a frozen pizza, we have grilled BBQ chicken, baked potatoes and corn. It takes literally as much time.

For the hamburger, I brown it all up, rinse and drain it, and freeze it as well. I use it for making Sloppy Joes or Tacos most of the time. It literally takes 5 minutes to make when the hamburger is already cooked. (Even quicker than a frozen pizza!)

I also made some Banana Bread while I was browning the meat. The kitchen was hot anyway, so it was a good time to do it. Besides, I had some browning bananas that needed used up.

It’s things like this that help make my life as a SAHM easier. It saves money. It saves time. What else could I ask for? Oh, besides a maid. Please.

To see this and other Tackle it Tuesdays, visit 5 Minutes for Mom.

I never really loved doughnuts. Well, I kind of did. But they made me sick to my stomach after I ate them. Too heavy. Too rich. Too bad for me. The thing is, I love white cream. The kind they fill some doughnuts with. My friend from a different city brought me some from a great bakery near her home and oh.my.gosh. De-li-ci-ous! And they didn’t make me sick.

A few months ago my husband made the mistake of telling me that the doughnuts at our local tiny grocery store were similar. Not quite as good, but good, nevertheless. I figured I’d try one one day. Mistake.

You see, they ARE good. Really good. Too good to be 3 blocks down from my house. And they don’t even make me feel sick.

So now, I make excuses to go grocery shopping when I’m having a sugar craving. Or I’ll just ‘go to get gas’ and make a little detour.

Seriously, these doughnuts are going to beat me.

See, today I felt stressed and was out anyway (to get flowers because my other ones DIED! And I was sad because they died, you see. So I deserved a pick me up, don’t you think?) and I had to get some. I ate it before I got home so the kids wouldn’t see and I wouldn’t have to share.

See, the little problem is that I am going to have to start reading liporexall reviews if I keep it up. I was really hoping to actually have a bathing suit body this summer. Not like a bikini bod; that ain’t happening, ever! I just wanted to look alright in my one piece. That’s all.

To think, I walked by these doughnuts for year and years. I can do it again. I must say no to DOUGHNUTS!

   One of my guilty pleasures is watching HGTV. I’m an HGTV junkie and I freely admit it. I get all sorts of little jolts of creativity and ideas of things to do. Proof: my basement is full of materials to do projects that I have no time to do.

   One of my very favorite shows is House Hunters. I was all sorts of excited to find House Hunters on Fancast (A data base of television shows that are available for viewing online)! It’s perfect; I log on to the shows on my computer (in the dining room) and fold the laundry on my kitchen table. Or, rather, I pretend to fold laundry. You see, I have this sickness. It’s called the “Go-Go sickness”. I feel guilty when I just stop going, so I do productive things while I relax. However I’m neither very productive or relaxed so it’s kind of contradictory.

  This afternoon I watched two episodes of House Hunters. The first was about a young guy wanting to move from Idaho to the Strip in Las Vegas. He wanted to be near the action of the casinos and all of the Las Vegas hotels. The more lights and action, the better. He ended up with an awesome place. (I always like it when they choose the one I would have chosen. heh)

  The second one was also about a single guy wanting to move to the city, although I can’t remember which city now, to find a bachelor pad. He ended up with a very modern loft. I always thought I liked modern but this was too modern for me, to be honest. And I always hate it when they buy million dollar condos and have crap furniture. What the heck?! Also,while we’re on the subjects of pet peeves…. perhaps this is just being married to a building contractor but I really can’t stand it when they go into a half a million dollar house and say “Oh! The wall color is AWFUL!” OK. Seriously. Do you know how friggin’ easy it is to change wall color, people?

  Anyway, I was obviously waaaay too into the shows because after 43 minutes of viewing I only got 1 and 1/2 loads of laudry folded and now I have 487 billion pairs of socks to match, dinner to cook, and the toilet to plunge (don’t ask). What’ll I do, you ask? Well, I guess I’m forced to mate the socks, and watch more House Hunters of course!

   “The world is too good for me!” declared Forest dramatically the other day.

    If you are wondering what the heck he is talking about, you’re not alone. I was too. But I should have known. Because everything in his life always comes back to one subject; Wii.

   I swore I’d never have the video game addicted child. But I do. I do limit his time. A lot. But it still consumes his mind. He lives, eats and breathes video games.

   So back to the world being too good. He was referring to the Mario Kart Wii game. He is good at that thing. Dang good. He figured out how to connect it to the internet via WiFi and then proceeded to figure out how to play races against other people: the world.

   He can only come in 1st place 8 out of 10 times, which is not good enough for him. Which prompted him to declare out of the blue the other day that “The world is too good for me.”

  It kind of makes me giggle to think that is online playing games, in all probability, against adults. And he’s kicking butt. He can legitimately kick my husband’s butt sometimes. And mine every time.

  I still play though. I’m not a big video game fan (he didn’t get that gene from me!) but I do love Mario Kart. There’s just enough competitiveness that it’s fun but not too complicated. I love that the races aren’t too long and I can just play a few. I also appreciate the lack of violence. I don’t like shooting and don’t want it in my house.

   So two thumbs up from me and “world too good for me” man. Check Mario Kart out if you haven’t. As usual, Buy.com has it on sale.