Educating the Wheelers

This post is a big “shout out” (as the kids used to say) to everyone who only buys boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Because of your preferences, my local grocery store has frequent sales of leg quarters for 59 cents a pound. Fifty-nine cents! For some perspective, tomatoes were 3.29/lb that same day. (Admittedly, it is still the dark night of winter up here. But still…)

A couple of nights ago, I took one of those ~5lb packages and baked it up, then stripped the chicken off and put the bones in some baggies. So what can you do with less than 3 dollars worth of meat?

That night, we had Hillbilly Housewife’s Chicken Fajitas. The next day, we had both Tightwad Gazette’s “Tuna Cheddar Chowder” made with chicken instead and a stuffing and gravy bake. I still had quite a bit of chicken leftover, but decided to make a ground chicken sandwich spread with it. There was even enough to send some home for my folks. (It made a nice breakfast this morning.)

So. Less than 3 dollars worth of meat, 5 meals.

And I haven’t even made stock with the bones yet!

So. What do you do with a 4 year old, anyway? With a 20 month old ball-of-energy boy along for the ride?

Well, she’s already a fairly proficient reader, and has been since she was 2. That’s the only good gene I brought to this marriage — early and enthusiastic reading. Even Owen is starting to recognize letters and words and wants me to read to him all the time.

Audrey enjoys workbooks, so that makes things easy. I’ve picked some up here and there for crazy cheap — you can almost always find them at thrift stores or in clearance bins. Every time she finishes a page, she likes it when we put a sticker on top, or write “100!” or draw a star on it. She’s loving her Singapore Earlybird Math — she’ll do a good 10 pages before she wants to move on to something else.

For “fun,” she loves the time4learning website. True to form, she cleared through all of the science lessons first, and then redid them. And redid them. And redid them. Then some more. But now she’s starting to explore the language arts lessons, too. She considers this her treat, not school. (Though I understand some people use it as a complete curriculum.)

I am, however, completely deficient in the arts and crafts department. So my mom got us the Winter Promise “I’m Ready to Learn” program which really focuses on the hands-on. We’re not doing it at all on the schedule, but picking and choosing what works best for us. And Audrey has her own ideas of what she wants to do with the art supplies. Humorously, her ideas are low-key enough for me to do with her. The other day, she said she wanted to cut out felt pieces to paste smiley faces on paper plates. Woohoo — I can do that! And so can Owen — he loved that one. Heck, we’ve even done it again.

And Owen? Give him a Thomas the Train coloring book and a bucket of crayons, and you don’t need to worry about him for a good 15 minutes. That’s about 4 years in toddler time, so I’m grateful.

So a little bit of workbooks (mostly math and “language arts”), a little online learning, a little hands-on arts and crafts. Then there are the read-alouds, which I’ll have to hit in another post. We usually work in about 15 minute segments, scattered throughout the day, but centered in the morning, after chores. And, when I’m lucky, they work independently at the kitchen table for a bit while I get my chores done. Works out nicely.

I was going to go to Walmart or Target today, but I think I’m going to push that off. Those two were my biggest budget-busters last month. (Well, second biggest. The 550 dollar dental bill was the killing blow, really.) Sometimes it feels impossible to leave one of those stores with less than 100 dollars (or worse) worth of stuff, even if the only items on my list were “Generic Infant Tylenol” and “diapers.”

Willpower is not my specialty, to paraphrase Wallace.

That’s my current strategy with the grocery store, as well. Hold it off as long as humanly possible. It does help that it’s winter and most of the fruit is pretty hardy and will last a long time. It’s also giving me an excuse to rotate my freezer stock. Audrey is a particular fan of frozen long green beans — she always asks for “Bamboo Salad” (her name for it!):

1 bag frozen Aldi’s green beans or equivalent
A small little bit of balsamic dressing, store bought or homemade
4oz or less crumbled feta
a handful of walnuts

Empty bag of green beans in a colander and run under cool water for a little while to defrost a little. They’re very skinny, so it won’t take long. Put in a bowl with other ingredients. Serve to delighted child.

Heck, she doesn’t even eat the feta and walnuts — that’s just in for mom. I got some of those “spray” bottles of dressing really cheap a while ago, so I just use about 6-7 sprays of that and it seems to be plenty. With that and a restrained amount of cheese and walnuts, the salad manages to be decently healthy.

Oh, yeah, I’m behind the times. This post should have been written a few months ago. Better late than never!

We took the kids to the local YMCA this year for their annual Halloween party, and at first it looked like they were the only kids there with home-made costumes. (I eventually saw a few others.)

I would pat myself on the back for this, were it not for the fact that I searched high and low for the costumes they asked for … and could not find them sold in any store, online or brick and mortar, or ebay or anywhere!

They asked for … Underdog!

Now, being a Disney produced movie, I can only assume that there was some seriously messed up rights issues with the cartoon … because, come on. Disney movie? No promotional tie-ins? No toys? No Halloween costumes? Nothing? But it’s the kids’ favorite movie, and by golly, they wanted to be Underdogs for Halloween.

Owen has a cape, as well, but was not okay with it being tied around his neck. I ended up safety-pinning it to the back of his sweatshirt.

And finally, an Underdog “action shot” from Audrey:

It looks like it’s been about a year since I posted, which means pretty much no one should be reading this post. Heh.

After the birth of our second child, I was able to post for a little while when pretty much all he did was sleep all day, but once he moved out of that stage, blogging was one of the first things to fall by the wayside. Then our more labor-intensive frugal ways. Then the housework. Et cetera. But now our littlest guy is quite a bit more independent, and lo and behold, I’m starting to get our lives back on track again. The house is getting cleaner, the meals are getting better, the spending is tightening up. And now here I am writing a blog post again!

Life has changed quite a bit for us. We are living up in Minnesota now, about 8 blocks from my parents. That has been a life-saver for my sanity, and the kids LOVE seeing them nearly every day. Of any decision we’ve ever made for our kids, putting us in a situation where their grandparents are part of their everyday lives is one of the very best. Many of my very favorite memories of childhood memories are with my own grandparents, especially spending summers up on their farm.

On the other hand, it is 8 gazillion degrees below zero right now. And snowing!

(On the third hand, I love snow. But I digress.)

One major downside is the cost of living difference. In order to buy a comparable home, we spent 100k more. This really says more about how insanely cheap the Austin housing market is, but the Twin Cities aren’t exactly a bargain, either. And then we got a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30. This works out to about a thousand dollars more a month than we were spending in Texas. So the more “free-wheeling” year that we just had took a little bit of a toll. We don’t have any debt (save the new mortgage), but our reserves have gone down more than I am comfortable with.

Time to get back on the wagon and be more disciplined.

So, here I am.

In addition to talking finances again, I’ll also be covering more day to day life and the beginning of our homeschooling. Just this weekend, Audrey declared that she’s a big girl now, and old enough to do school every day. So, okay! Now we do a little school every day. I’ll have to post more on that later, because this one is starting to get dangerously long. A year’s worth of pent up things to say!

We hemorrhaged money for about 6 months there. Getting ready for the move, the move, recovering from the move, buying the house, moving into the house, settling into the house.

Honestly, I’ve only started regularly cooking meals again in the last couple of weeks. Today, I made my first batch of homemade yogurt since Texas. That has to be some sort of milestone!

Getting used to winter again after 15 years is hard to do, frugally. Since our ability to go play outside is limited, opportunities to leave the house and get out an about are usually tied to shopping or otherwise spending money. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a homebody, so it doesn’t make me go totally insane to not leave the house hardly at all during the week, but my mom is cautioning me to not do that … and she survived 20 years of motherhood with my brother and I, so I shoudl give her words some weight.

Audrey loves the indoor playland at the local mall … but it’s at the mall. What are the chances you wouldn’t spend at least a little bit of money at the mall, especially since the playland is right next to the food court?

On the upside, our house has multiple “loops” throughout it, where we can run around in circles through the living room, hall, kitchen, dining area, or in a loop down in the basement [with the added benefit of a smooth floor for tricycles, etc]. So the kids are able to burn off energy even when it’s cold and snowy outside. And I don’t have to spend 30 minutes getting the kids ready to go outside, just to have them say they’re too cold after we’ve been outside for only 20 minutes.

ADDED: And another thing! [Always another thing … ] My husband usually isn’t home by 7! So how am I supposed to go to a “parents only” meeting 20 minutes away at 7? Tell the dog to be gentle while putting them to bed? Okay, I admit, now I’m just venting … *sigh*

Okay, I guess I just don’t get it. Why is it that every MOPS-style [Mothers of Preschoolers] organization that I come into contact with thinks that 7-9 pm is the best time to have a required meeting?

I have an 8 month old and a 3 year old. Do you know what I’m doing between 7-9pm? Feeding them. Nursing them. Getting them ready for bed. Rocking them. Putting them down for bed. Let’s see … we start this process around 7, and it’s finished around 9.

Is it just us? If you have one of more kids under the age of 5, what are you doing between 7 and 9 pm?

Note: if the answer is supposed to be, “Oh, it’s only once a month, your husband is supposed to put them to bed while you’re at the meeting,” I guess we’ll have to figure out that whole male lactation thing that we read about on the Interweb …

*sigh*

I’m just a little frustrated.

When the house you bought that cost 20% less than the Other House allows you to get a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30 year mortgage, but the monthly PITI [Principal, Interest, Tax, Insurance] payment is the same.

Thanks to everyone who has peeked in on us lately or dropped us a line to make sure we’re still breathing. We are!

Life has been amazingly hectic lately, and I haven’t been able to keep up with email, let alone blog. As it is, I am typing this one-handed while I rock a fussy Owen…

We did end up buying a house, after a lot of hustle, fuss and grief. We found one we liked that dropped their asking price by 50k before we made an offer, which made life easier, since we didn’t have to try to come in and explain why their house was 50k overpriced. [Which is what killed our previous deals. I should note that neither of those houses have yet sold … ] We only had to get them to come down just a little bit farther.

But, we’re happy, we like the house. Moving in and settling has been very slow going. We closed mid-November, had to do some flooring work, didn’t move in until the day after Christmas. To this day, we still have boxes and furniture in the garage, only one bedroom set up.

I’ve only cooked a couple of meals in the kitchen, so you know we’ve been burning through money while we settle. Last night, I managed to make Whole Wheat pasta [on sale for a buck a box] with Cream Cheese Basil Sauce from Hillbilly Housewife and a 3-bean salad from my new favorite cookbook, Hopkins’ Healthy Home Cooking .

I was beginning to wonder why I’ve never gotten anything from Amazon Associates. I mean, I’m not exactly their highest traffic associate, but I did actually fairly recently get enough referrals for them to send me a gift certificate.

[Note: they won’t send out a GC until you have at least 10 dollars of referral fees, so you know we’re not talking big bucks here. But, hey! 10 dollars is 10 dollars I didn’t have before! Two books for the kids! Or maybe apply it towards House Season 1 dvd set for me … ]

So I go wade through the site to find out that they sent me one a few weeks ago … aha. Gmail spam filter, you lil’ devil! Sure enough, there it was sitting in my spam bucket. Thankfully I found it before 30 days was up and it shuffled off this mortal coil into the ether.

Anywhoo, moral of the story: Gmail marks the Amazon associates gift certificates as spam! Keep your eyes peeled.