Mom's Best Organic

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't blogged in a few days. Perhaps you are not.

Second of all, I'm sorry in advance to the majority of you who will find my topic of choice today incredibly non-applicable to your own situation. Perhaps you will say that I should keep it to myself if it's not helpful to most. And perhaps you would be right. But perhaps I would remind you that this is my blog and I can write about whatever I want to write about.

But that would be rude. So again, I apologize.

Anyway, now that everyone has rolled their eyes and clicked off my boring, unhelpful blog, I will get to my point. Baby J has reached the ripe old age of four months, and has been spending dinner time perched in someone's arms staring intensely at our food and drooling a river all over his clothes. I know that I can't hold him off much longer, so my thoughts have turned to how I am going to appropriately and as inexpensively as possible feed this next little human in the line of little humans I have to feed.

I'm sure his appetite will rival his brother and sisters, who will quite possibly have eaten us out of house and home by the time they reach puberty, after which they will most likely eat us out of everything after that which is possibly left. Baby J shows no signs of being any different. It seems that MacGyver and I can only create famished eating machines. And so poor MacGyver's salary for the next twenty years or so will be spent keeping these people from eating the furniture.

In the past, I've bought just about every kind of baby food you can imagine. Now that I'm in my organic/natural state of mind, there really is no option (at Walmart, anyway) but Earth's Best Organic. I have completely forgotten how much these little 2 1/2 oz jars cost, but I believe it's around a dollar (possibly a little less for the smallest jar.)

So today I rounded up Eldest and we went to the farmer's market to buy $3-4 worth of peaches. At the grocery store I bought extra organic baby carrots (Somewhere around $3.) I set about my experiment in the kitchen, armed with a food processor and ice cube trays. I cooked the carrots until they were not quite as crunchy as raw, but not soft. I washed off the peaches, cut them in half, removed the pits and stuffed them into the food processor. Everyone complained and put their hands over their ears, but regardless, about three minutes later we had pureed peaches, almost exactly like the jars of peaches only I left the skin on so there are red flecks.

After that, the carrots met their demise. These needed some of the water that I cooked them in to get to the right consistency, and a few minutes later around 60-70 1 oz portions were in the freezer. A couple hours after that, I transferred them to a ziploc bag where they will happily await Baby J's anticipated baby food debut.

35 jars of baby food would be.... uh.... (I'm afraid to guess because my math is just THAT bad.) around $30 I suppose? Give or take? Feel free to shame me if I am wrong. And I spent a whopping $6.

I'm a happy camper. So when I am about spending horrid amounts of money on food for this crew, I can keep in mind that it could always be more.

Comments? Suggestions? Math corrections?

A New Plan

Something someone posted or said to me recently stuck. And my first reaction to it was negative. Something like "That would NEVER work!" And then I got to thinking how nice it would be if it did work.

I suppose it might be helpful if I share with you the idea first. Someone told me that they buy the bulk of their groceries at the beginning of the month. For the rest of the weeks they only buy things such as milk or produce. In my mind I argued that this is just impossible, to buy so much at one time and be able to plan for an entire month in one shopping trip.

But I decided to try it.

At the beginning of the month I went to Sam's. I got three month's worth of the things I buy there (toilet paper, paper towels, olive oil, nuts, etc.) Then I went to Trader Joe's and got what I could only get there, enough for a month. Organic meat, cheese, Ezekiel 4:9 bread, etc. Then I went to Meijer (yes I did this all in one day with four children!)and got things there that Walmart doesn't have (organic salsa, cereal, etc.) The rest of the month I go to Walmart for a quick trip and get the produce and such for the week. It sounds complicated, but it's working out! I think this is going to help us when homeschool starts in a couple weeks, especially since I've got myself a new kindergartner this year!

So all this to say, thanks for the idea!

Too Much Stuff

I've been having a great time discussing the last couple of posts. I'm grateful that there are people that I know and people I don't know that are reading this blog. I started it to teach myself writing discipline and document areas in my family's life that I wanted to improve, but the ways that others have responded, taught me from their own experiences and challenged me to deeper levels of faith in areas I need to grow has been humbling. Thank you for reading.

I come back to the matter of finances again today. I've come to realize something in my adulthood that I never knew as a child growing up in the home of the pastor of a small town church.

You can have too much.

As a child, I never felt that we were destitute or poor. I couldn't even tell you now if we were. We did have to be careful with money. We did live frugally and conservatively. We wore hand-me-downs and once or twice I remember people bringing us boxes of food and we were grateful for it.

I didn't spend a great deal of time pining for things I couldn't have. I know I did the usual whining that kids do, but I never really felt like anything was truly missing from my life.

Then I went from Pastor's daughter to engineer's wife. We are by no means wealthy, and being an engineer, MacGyver has a personality that is practical and frugal, so we don't spend to extremes. We don't spend what we don't have. And the budget we have agreed on is not suggestions, it is the bottom line.

We have everything we need. We have enough to spend extra to have healthier foods and products. We have enough for quality clothing and fun vacations with our family. And I'm thankful for this.

But we have too much stuff. Some days I wish I could just dump it all on the curb. I am constantly picking up the same 17 pairs of shoes, the same 600 toys and game parts and the clothes are everywhere!

So in the next month (before birthdays and Christmas hit us again) we are getting rid of extra toys, clothes, and all the things that just get crammed in corners and set to the side to deal with later. If it doesn't get played with much, doesn't mean anything to anyone, or tends to end up all over the floor and under foot - it's history.

I'm not sure what the Kidney Foundation does with all this stuff. But as long as it isn't my problem anymore - I'll just be happy to dump it on my front porch for them to whisk away.

Oh, and everyone wish MacGyver a happy birthday!

Excellence Vs. Perfection

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
- Harriet Braiker

Let's just get the confessions over with, shall we? I admit it. I'm sitting here at 11:03 pm eating my dinner. Actually, we'll call it my breakfast, lunch and dinner, because it's basically the only meal I've had today. Breakfast was a protein bar on the go. Lunch I had to choose between feeding myself or feeding my two month old. He won, of course. I got by on a chicken nugget and a piece of string cheese. I munched a little while I made and served supper late, and somehow I squeezed in my exercise while the baby cried and now here I am.

I'm such a whiner. At least my dinner is leftover broccoli, salmon and quinoa. (That's pronounced "Keen-wah" just so I can sound really smart.) That's got to count for something.

My other confession: I got a sunburn. I put sunblock on, but I always forget my shoulders and back. I realize this is not a step in the healthy direction. I realize it will be my own fault when I get skin cancer.

Needless to say, I'm a bit frustrated about everything today. It's one of those days where this whole idea of improving in all of these areas seems to big and too unreasonable for where I am.

As well, the goals themselves do not mesh well. I don't know how to have our family eat healthy, have our fill and still spend a reasonable amount of money on groceries. But then I wonder, what IS a reasonable amount? I only know what I spend. It seems out of control - but I look through the cabinets and fridge and wonder what was frivolous. If I skimp on fruit we run out within a couple days. If I don't get two of this or three of that I end up scraping together unbalanced meals and trying to stretch everything out to the next week.

My family goes through a lot of food in a week. Is this normal? Do everyone's kids eat every last pea and carrot and piece of meat on their plate, ask for more, and then still constantly whine about being hungry? (Just so we're clear, I don't feed them every time they ask. They get three meals and two snacks a day. Unless I indulge in a shower, then I come down to find half the grapes I just bought for the week mysteriously missing off their branches... and it seems that "Not me" was the culprit.) And I don't know, does everyone's husband polish off a bag of tortilla chips in a sitting and go back looking for more? (Sorry, MacGyver, just trying to be real. It's obviously not hurting your figure at all.)

I don't even want to think about what it's going to be like when we have four teenagers in the house...

One week in and I'm discouraged about this whole being more financially responsible business. It just seems like an impossible dream. And I totally sound like a whiner today. I don't blame you if you stopped reading three paragraphs before this. I wish I had.

But my new policy about complete honesty requires I tell you today that I am doubting my ability to pull this off. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

Thanks for sticking with me. And as for the quote - I'm pretty sure that's the source of my problem. I'm striving for perfection when all that is required to make a change is striving toward excellence.

I'm just going to have to figure out what that means in a tangible sense. If you have any thoughts or opinions, leave a message, here or on facebook. I'm really enjoying hearing from everyone!

Can We Afford All These Kids?

It's time to be quite honest. More honest that I'm really comfortable being. That's the sticky part of being a writer.

By the way, did you notice I moved the blog posts so you could see the bottle of glue? I felt that made more sense. And that little punch of orange on the page is so refreshing.

Anyway... oh yes, being honest. I'm actually starting with the easiest category. Money. Not that money is easy to figure out. I've never liked math. I got an A in geometry and still didn't understand how I'd come to the right answers. Figure that one out!

MacGyver and I have had our share of disagreements about money. In fact, we are just about as opposite as two can get in our views of money priorities. MacGyver knows that a penny saved is a penny earned. He understands that if you buy something for less you save the difference. He also gets a little nervous when our spending creeps right up there around where our income is.

It's not that I don't agree with him. I do. I am so incredibly relieved that I have a husband who saves and sacrifices and hates the very notion of having debt. I am also ecstatic that MacGyver can fix ANYTHING. While the rest of you hire your electricians and plumbers and handymen I have my very own who works for free. It's okay to be a little jealous. And I'm not exaggerating - he can fix just about anything with a chocolate bar and a paper clip.

Maybe I was exaggerating a little. But just a little. A tiny bit.

So here I sit and wonder - what exactly are our financial goals? We are already debt free (thanks to MacGyver, NOT me.) But I just have to be really honest and say having four children does get a bit expensive. All of them like to eat. I didn't get the picky little skinny child who won't touch his dinner and seems to survive all day on a few ounces of apple juice and a chicken nugget. All of my children eat as much as I do - if not more. Well, I guess I can't say all my children. Number 4 hasn't entered the world of solid foods yet. But his day is coming soon, and it's only going to make grocery shopping within our budget that much harder. And because we are committed to eating healthy - it's a challenge. It seems like the price of food and clothes just escalates every month. Add to that diapers and pullups and all of those accouterments... it certainly adds up.

So I'm just going to make one simple goal in the area of my financial responsibility for this next year. I'm going to attempt to stay within our budget. I'm always running to MacGyver bemoaning the fact that the world has just gotten to expensive for our budget to work anymore. But enough is enough. I'm going to make it work.

I'll let you know how it goes.