Adventures in grocery shopping...

Grocery shopping has never ever been one of my favorite household tasks, but it is something I find myself doing far too often. I have tried to cut my trips down to once a week by cooking meals once a month, I have tried making a menu for a week and just shopping once a week, I have tried budgeting out just so much cash and then just spending that amount. But no matter what, I find myself wandering back to the store at least 2 times in week, many times more. Apart from moving to the country, or taking away my driving privileges, I don't exactly know how to fix this. I guess I could just use good ol' self-control, but that would take work! :)

At any rate, this morning I found myself back in the store with Leah in tow, and that is always an experience. She love to help bag the fruit and veggies, and now that she's counting everything, I often have her count four apples, or three oranges. That keeps her occupied for a little while. She loves the grocery store, and loves to experience all the colors and new things. And of course, I'm just trying to get through the place! When we finally get all the groceries in the cart, she announces her need for a bathroom, which has us running halfway across the store. That emergency taken care of, we can finally purchase our groceries. Leah loves to "help buy", so she has her little pink purse ready to go, with her .29 to purchase a yogurt. She helps load all the groceries on the belt, and since this store is a self-bagging store, she runs to the end to help bag as well. So...we have now restocked all our grocery bag supply, since Leah insisted on bagging one thing per bag. I caught up with her and started "helping", but this is something she loves to do, and takes great pride in. So there wasn't much I could do. :)

Overall, it's a fun time together...but harrowing at times. Adventures, indeed.

When to say when...

The other day we had the express pleasure of attending a birthday party for one of our neighbors who was turning 2 years old. This little girl is a fun friend in the neighborhood and I have enjoyed getting to know her grandparents with whom she and her mom live. However, when I received in the mail not only her invitation but also a card to let us know where she was registered, I was sickened. When is bringing pleasure to a child just a show of a sick kind of extravangance? When, in essence, should we say "when"?

This precious little girl had more presents than I have had in all my birthdays combined I believe...and not one of them did she really enjoy. They are just piled on top of everything else she already has, and simply become riff-raff. When we brought her little gift over she didn't even want to open it...she was on sensory overload by this point. This fun celebration was soured because of the fact that nobody is telling this child "when".

We have a birthday in our house coming up too...my little girl is very excited to turn 4, and is excited for her Curious George cake. There will be presents, yes, but I am more convicted than ever that the greatest gift I can give is a lesson in simplicity. To enjoy the things we have, and to enjoy them fully. Everything else is simply riff-raff.

My newest addiction....

I have been accused of being addicted to a few wonderful things that have actually been mostly beneficial in our house...Craigslist and Freecycle. However, my newest addiction has nothing to do with the computer, and instead brings me back to the television! :) TLC has a great show, Take Home Chef, and I seriously cannot get enough of it. I don't know what it is about it, but I would watch 3 a day if could. The premise is that this young chef picks up some woman in a store, most often a Whole Foods-type place, and offers to go home with her to cook her and her family/boyfriend/roommate etc. a fabulous meal. He plans the menu, buys the groceries, and takes over her kitchen in short order. Some of his creations have been interesting...he loves to cook with lamb and seafood, which are both a stretch for me. But... I have decided that should the day ever come where he finds me shopping at Whole Foods, I will embrace the opportunity and let him go crazy. Mike would love it, as he is a much more adventurous eater than I am. Maybe something seafood/mushroom related, since those are things you rarely see in my house. And I would try it willingly, as long as dessert resembled the chocolate mousse/creme brulee concoction he made on a show I watched last night.

See??? I'm opening myself up to new horizons...and I'm getting ready for the sushi that Mike wants to eat on his birthday next month. Look for a post on that in a few weeks...I'm sure I'll have something to say!

I love my church....

But....

We have had a wonderful, quite relaxing summer. Yes, we have been all over the country, gone many weekends, and now are finally getting back into the swing of things, but it's been a wonderful summer. Now, as school gets back underway, so do church activities, and I'm starting to remember why summer was such a needed respite. Mike and I were talking last night about when we could meet his parents for dinner on Sunday afternoon, something that we try to do a few times a year. We had scheduled it for this Sunday, but scheduling conflicts arose, so now we're looking for another day. Well, already, before the summer has even ended, that is getting difficult, mostly because of church activities.

Part of it is our fault. We like to be involved, and going to a small church like ours means you have to be involved. And everything sounds good, until I start jumping in and can't quite doggy-paddle to Respite Island. I'm starting to feel that way already, as I look at our calendar and realize how busy we've made ourselves again.

Sunday School (I've decided to teach this year). Small groups (Mike is coordinator, and we host one at our home 2-3 times a month). Bible Study (Every Thursday). Choir (Sunday evenings, before small group at our home). Outreach committee (I've been tasked with setting up an ESL program, which once it is set up I will have to find/train volunteers, or do the tutoring myself!). Worship team (Wed. evenings, early Sunday mornings). Friday Night Live (our young adult group that I coordinate). Everything very well-intentioned, and meaningful, but put together in one lump sum, can be seen as quite a load.

I think it's because we love our church family that we want to be a part of making her ministry exciting, and we want to share our gifts in these ways. But is it a problem when Sundays, our "day of rest", becomes a day when you can't even fit in a dinner with family? Is that meaningful ministry, or an inability to say no? And what about my duties as homemaker, wife, mother, and employee? Do they get put on the back burner because of church? Is that what church should be? Busy?

Where would the early church be placing their priorities? They took care of each other. Isn't that what I'm doing when I get involved in church?

Questions, not easily answered. But regardless, here we go....

Lansky's Pizza...

Mike and I have been doing wonderfully on our new healthy eating initiative, and so far I've lost three pounds, which is good for a week in. Saturday night I had planned on grilling chicken and making a lovely salad, but after a day spent working in 100 degree heat, moving furniture around the house to make room for new furniture, vacuuming, cleaning, mowing, etc. etc., neither of us was really in the mood to make a nice meal. In fact, the only thing that really sounded good was our old pizza joint, Lansky's. Back when we lived 2 parking lots away from this fabulous Omaha institution, we would have Lansky's at least 2 times a month, many times more. Now we live 20 minutes away and we don't head there nearly as often. But Saturday night it just sounded perfect, and we both figured that we had burned enough calories that day to warrant a splurge on our favorite pizza. And I must say, every bite was fabulous. We had the Butcher's Special, which is basically meat, meat, and more meat. It was fantastic. There's something about a hot, productive Saturday that ends with excellent pizza.

And the grilled chicken salad was delicious for Sunday dinner!

Organically speaking...

As part of our renewed healthy eating initiative, I'm trying to get creative with what I eat. I think part of the problem with trying to lose weight is that sometimes one can get stuck in an eating rut and then one just gets sick of eating that way. And then...back come the old eating habits. So, I am making it my goal to not only eat healthy foods but also to eat a variety of them. I'm also trying very hard to not give in to eating things like diet bars and the like. I think they are good, and do help make it easy for a meal, but they are expensive, for one, and I feel a lot better putting more organic, natural things in my body. In fact, I'm becoming a bit of an organic junky lately, for better or for worse. I have been buying and eating a lot more fresh fruits and veggies and even loaded up a little at a farm stand near where I buy bread. I just really want to be conscious of what I feed myself and my family, and I think that buying and eating fresh is the way to go. Unfortunately, this way of eating can cost a lot of money as well. In fact, there was an article in our newspaper this morning talking about a woman on food stamps trying to feed her family of five for $500 a month. She said that on this budget buying fresh veggies and fruit sometimes is out, because the cost of these items has just gone up and up. So it's a difficult quandry, I'm afraid. As much as I'd like to do all my shopping at Whole Foods, it wouldn't be good on our budget I don't think. I have thought about doing one shopping trip there and getting all the things that I would normally buy at our regular store just to compare the final outcome. Mike says it would cheaper if I just wrote down all the prices instead and compared it that way! :)

So...any tips on how to eat "organically" yet still maintain a reasonable budget?

Shrek The Third...

This afternoon was a steamy one outside, so we thought the best place to spend a little time was the movie theater. We had been promising Leah all summer long that we would take her to see Shrek the Third and it finally came to the cheap theater last weekend. So today, at $2 a ticket, it was a pretty inexpensive way to keep cool. As expected, the cheap theater was packed. We bought Leah a kid's popcorn and into the theater we went.

Leah enjoyed the movie simply because it was Shrek, and she has watched Shrek 2 no less than 50 times. Mike and I also enjoyed the movie...probably not as much as the first two, but there were still some good laughs and fun times. The magic that is Shrek seems to appropriately come to an end in this movie, and that's probably good. I remember I took a large group of 4 year olds to the first movie when I was living in Atlanta, so seeing the 3rd movie with my husband and daughter was a much better experience.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a hot summer afternon. Two thumbs up from me for that fact alone.

Today, a recipe...

I just put one of my favorite, easy, use things that you might have in your pantry recipes in the oven. Well, I didn't put the recipe in, but I put the result of using the recipe in! I started with a whole chicken. We like to buy these, since Mike likes dark meat, I like white meat, and Leah likes legs, so this keeps us all happy. After thawing it out, prepare 1/4 c. butter, 2 cloves garlic, some fresh parsely, and thyme. Take this butter spread and spread it between the skin and the meat, and then season with salt and pepper. I bake it at 400 degrees with a loose tinfoil cover for 1 hour, and then another 30-40 minutes uncovered. The result is amazing. I will probably serve it tonight with fresh tomatoes from our garden, and either potatoes or rice. The best thing about it is that I don't have to cook tomorrow night since there will be plenty for leftovers! Yum!

Not a diet...

Last night we decided to eat terribly one last time before our healthy eating initiative began today. I refuse to call it a diet, because I hate being on a diet. Plus, this initiative is more about feeding my family well, and I don't need to put my 3 year old daughter on a diet. So, we splurged and went to CiCi's pizza...it's difficult to find a better place to kick off the initiative than a pizza buffet where you can also have cinnamon rolls for dessert. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, and went home stuffed. We went grocery shopping after supper and I even passed up buying Baby Ruth ice cream (I love ice cream, and Baby Ruth is my favorite candy bar) because I knew I couldn't finish it all last night. So, the intiative began this morning with a healthy bowl of bran cereal and blueberries. I think we are having BLT's for supper....bacon, you say? No, we are not doing Atkins, but because this is not a diet, we are trying to eat balanced meals, and bacon in small amounts is fine. So I'm looking forward to my first BLT of the season!

Bed and Breakfast...

This weekend my husband and I had the pleasure of celebrating our anniversary at Anniversary Mansion, a bed and breakfast in Lincoln, NE. We have never stayed at a B & B so we weren't quite sure what to expect, but the website description sounded wonderful, so we thought it would be worth a try.

Well, it was better than we could have imagined. The suite was fanastic, the home was beautiful, the sheets were luxurious, the chocolates were delicious, the fresh flowers were beautiful, the whirlpool was therapeutic....I could go on and on. We enjoyed every part of our stay. The breakfast in the morning was out of this world, and we really felt like royalty being served a candlelight breakfast on fine English china. Every part of our weekend was very special because of the wonderful hospitality we found at Anniversary Mansion.

Hot day...

Today my applause goes to sun tea. I've heard from a lot of people that making a jar of sun tea is difficult, but I grew up having it almost daily and have continued the tradition in my home. There is nothing better in the summertime than bringing in the jar of tea and pouring it over a glass full of ice. Refreshing and delicious. And today, at 95+ degrees, is a perfect day to enjoy a glass.

Which I think I will go do right now...

Flushed Away...

This morning Leah and I went with friends to see Flushed Away in the theater. AMC movie theater have a summer movie camp where they offer a free movie each Wed. morning in the summer, and this morning the movie was Flushed Away. It was Leah's theater movie, so I was hoping it would capture her attention for the duration. She loved it! Combine the movie with their special kid pack snack (small popcorn, drink, and candy for $3...not bad theater prices) it was an inexpensive morning out. I'm going to go tomorrow morning to pick up tickets for next week, as I've found out it's best to get these in advance.

Flushed Away was not a movie I'd heard a whole lot about, but I found it to be very entertaining. There were even things that made me laugh...not quite up to Shrek-standard, but still a fun movie. I thought Kate Winslet did a remarkable job voicing the sewer rat "Rita". I remember seeing her interviewed about this movie and she said she was glad that she had a movie she could bring her kids to. On a slightly deeper level, I thought the movie portrayed nicely the need that we have for relationships, and the benefit of befriending someone not exactly like us.

All in all...a good, inexpensive way to stay cool on a hot July morning.

Bohemian Highway...

Mike and I enjoy trying different wines, but we try to keep the cost of the wines we purchase down. Lately I've been stuck on Barefoot wines, which are very good and reasonably priced (usually between 5 and 6 dollars). A few weeks ago we took wine to a family reunion and I decided to bring a bottle of Bohemian Highway California Merlot. It was a little bit more money (about $8) but I thought for a reunion it was worth it. :) It was a hit...both to our tastes and other people there who enjoy wine as well. Last week I noticed that a local grocery store had Bohemian Highway on sale for $4.77 a bottle, so I went and picked a few up. The last few nights I drank their Chardonnay, and while I'm not always a big fan of whites, I really did enjoy this wine. It's always fun to try new things, but it's also nice to know that there is something to be a guaranteed hit as well.

Cheers!

United 93...

I finished watching this movie this weekend. Mike also tuned into the last part of it, and we both were struck by how well the movie was made. Sometimes movies like this can get almost campy, but this one was dignified and almost seemed like we were watching a documentary. Because it was so well-made, it was almost harder to watch I think.

On a much lighter note, we are also keeping up with Entourage. I think this season is one of my favorites. I love what they are doing with the relationship between Ari and Lloyd, and Eric and Billy Walsh. It definitely keeps us laughing, and we keep tuning in.

The Devil Wears Prada...

Mike and I had a chance last night to finally sit down and watch a movie together...a rare treat. So in between our babysitting duties we managed to watch The Devil Wears Prada starring Meryl Streep (fantastic as always) and Anne Hathaway (also very good). Mike's comment was that at first he thought it was going to be just another chick-flick type movie, but he was pleasantly surprised when there was some actual depth thrown in. I enjoyed it as well. The thing I kept thinking about was that there are people who are actually like Miranda, Streep's character. And there are people who will give their lives to be at her service. It's not the life for me, certainly. I was really glad that the movie showed not only the "glamour" of this lifestyle, but also the sadness that goes along with forsaking all else in the name of a career. I think those of us who watch from the outside can find freedom in knowing that our lives can be so rich when they are not encumbered by a false sense of what is real.

All in all, a good movie...perfect for a Friday night at home.

Starting a new thing...

It's time to head in a new direction blog-wise. I am still keeping my xanga account, but will now be using blogger for other things, such as books I'm reading, things I'm watching, thoughts I'm thinking. Tonight we're sitting at home, watching a friend's baby, and enjoying watching Leah be the "big girl". I started watching the movie United 93 today, something I recorded off of HBO several months ago. Mike was saying tonight that he still doesn't feel like he's ready to watch it. I made it half way through and had to stop, although I think I will finish it this weekend. It's amazing how after nearly 6 years the emotions are still quite raw and very real. The movie is very good, which is probably why it's so difficult to watch. But, on a weekend where we have nothing planned, it's something that I can watch in bits throughout the day.

Check out my blog on xanga....

xanga.com/nebraska_thegoodlife