Errand day- this week

Thursday right now are our errand day. Its the day that we rush through school and eat a quick lunch and then head out the door and go to town. Town is a small place 30 minutes away of about 8000 people but is much bigger than the community that I live in, about 1100 people if we are lucky. Town has all the convenience of a much bigger centre because it is the only place of any size for at least an hours drive. Town has several large groceries store, the walmart, the Zellers, the butcher and most important to us right now the pool. Thursday is swimming lesson day this session, so that makes it errand day too. I find it stressful at times, I usually go alone and the boys are always at one another, and then I have a time constrait which I always allow to put pressure on me. You know I am never late, never (now watch now that I said that I will be) but I alway think I am going to be. What is the big deal if I'm late the boys get changed quickly and get to class, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
Then its home with the groceries and other asorted accumulated items. We unpack, eat a quick sandwich, throw the swimming trunks and towels in the washer, throw the boys in the bathtub to was off the chlorine, put them to bed, put the groceries away and then looking in the fridge and say, "Why does it look so empty if I just spent all that money?". AND CRASH!!!!!! I am so glad Thursday only come once a week and dream of the day when I live close enough.....maybe even in a city.....where I can spread this kind of a day out over several.

Okay Okay I'm back

I know it has been a while since I posted much, life has been busy and well with only one computer and all four of us vieing for it I don't get it as often as I like.

Last Friday the boys got their hair cut. Since it was cold Wallace and John just got a nice trim, but Michael got a buzz. It sometimes erks me that he stubbornly refused to get it cut for our wedding and got married with 'hockey' hair. (Insert rolling eyes here.) Now he won't even let it get to be an inch long. Yes, I like it but why do all my wedding pictures have to be hidden now because he is embarrassed by it. I think the boys look cute, I snapped this one just before Michael went out to work on a very cold night.

Michael is really enjoying his new unit. It is an integrated unit, the mounties and two local police forces, and they are targeting drunk drivers. They have been quite successful so far, I am actually kind of surprised just how many people think that either it is okay to behave in this manner or that they just won't get caught.

Homeschooling is going well this week. I really had to get my act in gear. I suffer form the winter blues and always find January and sometimes February very difficult. I am determined to not let it continue, so this week we have been getting back on our routine, which means I have to take the lead and get out of bed in the morning, but it so nice and warm in there under the covers, it is not an easy task.

Wallace is enjoying his math, even if he doesn't know it. I can't believe what he is learning. I don't remember learning all this stuff in Grade 4. I am starting Kindergarten math with John. His attention span is so short though I have to move quickly or I lose him. He is loving the work books form Explode the Code series. The pictures are great, the activities fun and they are really helping with his fine motor skills which if he lacks in any area it is this one.

Well I am sure the water for the pasta is boiling so I better go get supper on the table. Spaghetti with meat sauce one of my childhood favourites. We just use whole wheat noodle and it is usually penne not spaghetti.

Our Weekend

Michael hasn't in the past had a lot of time off and certainly not a lot of weekends. This is the first 4 day weekend that we have had in a long time that didn't involve a holiday and didn't we pack as much into it as possible.
Friday was our family movie night and we watched A Far Off Place which was a good movie if not a little above John's head, he went to bed before it was over. He asked to be put to bed.
Saturday Night we went out with our friends Kelly and David for dinner and a movie. We went to Swiss Chalet, which we all loved. Then we went to see 27 Dresses. The movie is written up as a romantic comedy but I beg to differ, there were a few laughs but overall it was a serious story. Half way through the movie I leaned over to Kelly and asked if she thought this was a comedy, she agreed that she didn't think so. This of course means that we (the girls) have very little credibility next time we want to go to a movie, I'm sure the guys will want to choose.
Today after church we went to dinner at our friend's place we had homemade pizza and I made my Aunt Norma's Famous Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. John insisted yesterday that I colour the icing orange, because it had carrots in it. I'm glad I persuaded him not to go with the green, I thought that the colour might make our brains think mint and then when it wasn't we'd get a fatal error in the wiring. You know like when your expecting to take a sip of apple juice and it turns out to be milk. Milk is great but not when your brain is expecting apple juice.
Tomorrow night we are having our pastor and his family over for dinner, Beef stir fry and brown rice I think. I am looking forward to visiting with them they are relatively new and I would like to get to know them better.
I really don't think we can cram any more into the weekend, but it was fun!

Friday Morning

Good morning everyone, I know you've been checking and I have been a bit AWOL. It has been a very busy week. We got a lot accomplished in school which is always a good feeling. I have discovered that John is an unwilling partner in learning the morning after Olympians (our kids programme at church). He thought he'd like to "do school" but he couldn't concentrate for more than a moment which is fine he is only 4. Wallace is beginning to really enjoy history, we are study Canadian History. It is a sequential history and he seems eager to find out what comes next. This week we learned about the settling of Halifax and the expulsion of the Acadians.

The boys love their swimming lessons, Wallace is in level 4 and is learning a lot, it is his first time with a male teacher. I think it is more the personality of this guy than the fact that he is a boy that Wallace loves, he is a very enthusiastic teacher. John wants to be in Wallace's class and I told him that if he put his face in the water that maybe he would be allowed in Wallace's class, knowing full well that this wouldn't be happening. Wouldn't I have had some explaining to do if for the first time in history John jumped in the pool and got his head wet. This didn't happen he came out of the pool with the top of his head still dry.

I have my housework to do today, Micheal is off so I am going to ask if he will take the boys to the library and to the little local grocery store, these are the only errands we have today. I want to discipline myself and do the housework until it is done. We'll see how that goes.
I'll update later.

Menu Planning Monday

Well this my first time participating in Menu Planing Monday so here goes.

Monday: Alfredo Pasta with Scallops and tossed salad
Tuesday: Frozen Pizza and veggie sticks (Olympians Club)
Wednesday: California Rolls and coleslaw
Thursday: Sloppy Joe's with mix veggies
Friday: Roast Beef, baked spaghetti squash, mashed potatoes, gravy
Saturday: Homemade Pizza, garlic bread and salad
Sunday: Ham, scallop potatoes, and brussel sprouts

This is likely to changes but always good to have it written down so we have a starting point.

California Rolls 101

Today I made my first attempt at California Rolls. On Monday I went to my friend Lynn's place and she taught me. I was going to take pictures then but got so involved with learning that I totally forgot. So here is my pictures from this afternoon, thanks to my lovely husband for being the photographer, I think they turned out pretty well for our first attempt at food journalism.

These are all the component needed for California Rolls. I used Nori, sticky rice, imitation crab meat, mayo, cucumber and avocado. I also used the all important bamboo rolling mat. Frugally stored and used in a zip lock baggie for ease of cleaning.
The ingredients prepped and read for assembly. The 'crab' meat had been shredded in the food processor, the avocado and cucumber julienned and the sticky rice cooked to the packages directions.

Here I lay the sheet of Nori on the bamboo mat.

Here we spread the sticky rice evenly over the Nori. You need to leave a small margin of the Nori showing, aids in neat rolling later.

Here is the 'crab' meat and the julienned cucumber and avocado neatly piled at one end of the sticky rice. Once again we need to leave a margin at each end.

Here I am starting the roll, lifting the back of the bamboo mat and tucking the ingredients in.
Making the first roll. Placing even and firm pressure across the roll.

This is what it looks like after the first turn.
The complete roll.

With a wet serrated knife slice the roll in half and then in half again and finally in half again.

Lay them nicely on a plate and serve with soy sauce. YUMMY!

Frugal Fridays

Biblical Womanhood's Frugal Friday this week is about 5 things that you can do to save $100 in a years. Here are my 5:

1. Accept hand-me-downs from dear friends whose little boy is just a little bigger than mine.

2. Recycle yarn- unravel beautiful yarn from really ugly or out of style sweater and transform it into something beautiful. This alone has saved me $100.

3. Packing Michael's lunch ($5-8 dollars/day 5-6days/week) this can really add up.

4. Shopping from sales fliers and loss leaders menu planning accordingly.

5. Borrowing our movies from the library for free instead of renting them for our Friday night movie nights. We also have popcorn popped on the stove top instead of microwave.

Well, I think I saved $100 dollars this year.

John's latest pictures

Here are some of John's latest pics, caught him before he deleted them. We need to teach him to take some time when he takes his pictures.

The second one is a self portrait while laying on the floor in the hall way.

Just a quick note

To say I am not feeling very well been fighting a fever and a cough the last few days, I even had to stay in last night and not go to Olympians which I teach. Hope to be back soon, I am so far behind on housework and Mt. Washmore.

John's Pictures

I was going to up load some of John's pictures but alas I went to his camera and he had deleted all the good ones and replaced them with pictures of the floor, couch and feet and every conceivable angle and distances.....trust me not very exciting. I'll try again later.

An Unexpected visitor

There is nothing like an unexpected visitor. We have had two this week and they are the most unfavourable kind. I guess some details would be in order. It has been pretty cold here, -10C or colder (not sure what that is in degrees F). Earlier this week I went down to the basement to get something for dinner prep and noticed the most unusual hole in the bag of noodles. I called Michael into the kitchen and show him, he confirmed my thoughts- bite marks. Oh no!! We have a critter, that is just too creepy. We went downstairs and looked around, first we sorted through all the food and threw out all the cartons that had been compromised and put the rest into resealable plastic tubs. Now it was time to find out where the critter or critters got in. We have a very well sealed, dry basement so this took a little off guard. There were only 2 entrances that we could think of, the dryer vent and the air exchanger vents. After close inspection it was discovered it was the air exchanger, Michael went out to check the outside vents sure enough the grate had fallen off. So now we know how they got in but where and what were they. Living in the country and with the drop in temperature we suspected that it was likely field mice looking for warmth and food. Michael went and picked up some traps and a grate for the vent. When he came back we set the traps, with peanut butter, and tuck taped the hole in the vent tubing.
With that part of the problem solved Michael thought we had better look for a nest- oh yuk!!! the thought still gives me the creeps. The basement has been needing a good cleaning, we now have instant motivation.

update:
Well, two field mice and a whopping decluttering marathon the basement is about 1/2 way done. We've already taken a load to Value Village ( a Canadian chain of thrift stores). We have a load ready to go to the dump, another load ready to go to VV, a load of clothes that I will give to Red Cross and recycling coming out the wazoo ( is that a word). Here we recycle everything, anything paper, plastic, metal, glass and even tetra paks so that can really amount to a lot of stuff. I wished I'd taken before and after pictures, it is a very freeing feeling to get rid of all that stuff that I won't use again, especially the stuff that someone else might be able to use.

Our Budget

I've joined the "Financial Shape in 2008 Challenge" over at Crystal's blog Money Saving Mom . Michael and I have been thinking a lot about then next step. Last year we paid off all debt, except the mortgage, what a freeing feeling that is. We also made a couple of serious upgrades to the house, paying cash for them. Our next challenge is to save our Emergency Fund. We also want to budget for a couple of larger items this year one being my sister's wedding and the other a move (we can always hope!!!) neither of these things are hugely expensive but we want to have the extra so that we can have fun while doing them not thinking about what everything costs as we go.

The first thing Crystal wanted us to share was our budget and while I don't think Michael would want me to share details we do live by one and are living slightly below our means. I personally like knowing where all the money went. We are fortunate because he is on salary with paid overtime, so we can base our budget on the salary and save anything comes in for overtime. Last year he worked a lot of overtime because they were short staffed. He has just recently taken a transfer to a new unit, and we aren't sure about the amount of overtime if there will be any, so sticking to the budget is all the more important this year.

One tip that has worked really well for us is to take bills, like property tax, that only come in once or twice a year and divide it up into 12 or 6 equal payments and each month put that amount away in an account so when it come time to pay them all we have to do is to transfer the money to our chequing (the Canadian spelling for that word) account and write the cheque. The amount of stress it saves is incredible. Maybe everybody knows this already but it made a real difference for us.

Everyone loves a man in uniform......

......Until they have to do his ironing. I've been putting off doing Michael's ironing since before Christmas. It has finally made it to the top of my TO DO list for today. I resolve that I will not let my ironing get out of hand. Anyone want to come and help. The wool pant are my most favourite thing in the whole world....can you hear the sarcasm in my voice.

Matthew's Begets song

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I wonder how long it would take Wallace and John to learn this song, they both seen to be very good at memorization.

ht: Amy