Garage Time

I've been cleaning the garage today. I only have one word for it. UGH!

Who knew I had all these cabinets full of paints, chemicals, miscellaneous tools whose function I can only guess at, car parts, bits of rope, etc! I've been taking photos of some of the things I can identify and I'll be trying to sell them on Craig's list. I hope I can at least get some money for them!

This all started because we couldn't get into and out of the garage without tripping or slipping, and I'd had enough. I tried to put things into cabinets and realized I had no space in there because of all the junk. Well, I can't do it all today, but I got a good, sound start!

It makes me think about all the junk we unknowingly carry around with us in our lives. Every so often, it's good to sort through things and keep what's good, dump what's not, and lay the rest that we can't do anything about at the feet of our Savior. He'll even help us do it, if we are humble enough to ask.

Now, we have the missionaries coming for dinner in half an hour and I've no idea what we're going to eat. Guess I'd better hit the store!!

Nothing Quite Like It!

Johnny was out sick all last week with the flu. Poor little guy! He finished reading a "Molly Moon" book, which is at the upper end of his reading level. He's not "supposed to" read at that level, according to his AR score, but his teacher told him he could try since he has good reading comprehension and vocabulary. He finished it and took the AR test on Monday when he returned. He received a perfect score! He's already gotten 125% of the AR points he needs for this quarter. Now he's on to the next book of Molly Moon. And when he asked if he could check out a particular book from the library for AR, his teacher told him with his AR score, he could read ANY book he wanted. He was so pleased, his grin stretched from ear to ear! He's reading at almost a sixth grade reading level, and even reads above that from time to time. Not too shabby for a boy in 3rd grade. He's already been accepted to Manchester GATE next year, and we can hardly wait. Mrs. Lazarus is one of the best teachers at Gibson, and I'm glad he has her this year!

Menu Planning, Budgeting

Today I examined my budget for where I could find an extra $60/month for my daughter to take Piano lessons. I actually have three children who would like to take them, but I can only do one right now. I decided that we're going to have to figure out how to trim money from our food budget. I don't want to interrupt the current flow of money because the budget is tight and it's working for me. I'm slowly accumulating savings, paying off a little debt I acquired while things were rough for a few years, and keeping a close eye on all my expenses. I've already cut my food budget in half since four years ago, and I'm going to try to cut it by another 25%. What's not used for piano lessons will go to build up my emergency food storage.

People are always shocked when I tell them how much I cut. I'm ashamed to admit that most of the time, I spent more than I needed to. I didn't care where I bought food as long as it was convenient, and FoodMax was a lot of things, but convenient wasn't one of them. I also wasted a lot of food...we had spoilage like crazy. Now I'm vigilant...I know what's in the fridge and I try to use it before it spoils. I plan my menus to carefully use what I purchase. I try to buy the highest quality, least expensive foods that I can. I would prefer to buy all organic, but it's not in the budget, so I grow as many foods as I can. We even have 9 chickens in our backyard so we can have eggs without hormones and antibiotics.

So now I'm wondering...how am I going to cut it down even more? I already make pretty much everything from scratch, but I'm determined that there must be a way to do it and still maintain high quality, low cost food. I'm querying my friends to find out how to make our money stretch even further and improve our diet to boot. This is going to be fun!