Cutting The Bills in Half

Okay, so a little update on my attempt to save more money:
I went grocery shopping today. Holy cow! 1 month of food for four people is A LOT!!! You should have seen the looks I got from people with my 10 gallons of milk! I managed to keep it under $500. (Remember we wee spending upwards of $800 a month in groceries). So I was pretty happy. I stocked up on a lot of canned goods that I normally keep on hand; tomato sauce, beans, etc, and also bought a few cleaning supplies. It was overwhelming chopping so much celery and onions and peppers and strawberries. I haven't even baked my bread yet! I spent 4 hours grocery shopping and 2 hours chopping and preparing. So I figure 6 hours of work (plus an hour for bread) and I "made" (saved) $300. I view my role as a wife and SAHM as a job, so everything I do needs to be in an effort to save or make money. i.e. Staying home with the kids saves us on paying for daycare( not to mention the benefit it has on the children). Keeping on a cleaning schedule saves me time and allows me to accomplish other things and spend time with the kids. You get the point. My biggest concern is this no pre-packaged food business. Yes I saved money, but what on earth am I going to send in Clint's and Morgan's lunches everyday? We shall see! I'll keep you posted on how it goes!


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Carving Pumpkins

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate carving pumpkins? I hate the smell, the mess, the guts, everything! My kids are lucky they have a dad who doesn't mind doing it with them :)

Jackson's (Clint's) pumpkin

Morgan's (Clint's other) pumpkin

SPOOKY!!

The kids really don't like the insides either.  They do not like sticking their hands in there and pulling the goo out.  It doesn't help that Clint likes to pull it out and fling it at them and laugh while they squirm and cry "ewwww get it offffff!!!"  But they sure had fun pretending to help.  Next year, maybe we'll pain them!

Monster Dash-October 27, 2012

We woke the kids up early on Saturday to watch Clint run the Monster Mash 10k.  Then, the kids ran a 1/4 mile race of their own.  They each got a finisher's medal.  We were so proud of them, they both ran the entire way without stopping!

Happy Halloween

Little miss rodeo princess won the costume contest at the trunk-or-treat at our friend's daycare!  She was so happy!

 Jackson was supposed to be a cowboy.  I ordered him a costume online, but it never shipped and I had to cancel the order.  So I put him in his skeleton pajamas and planned on painting his face.  At the last minute, he decided he wanted to wear this devil costume that his aunt Candace gave to him.  He took it off at the trunk-or-treat and ended being a skeleton anyway.

 This is the first year we've ever decorated our trunk for the trunk-or-treat.  I was happy with it :)

Playground

Morgan is getting so brave and good at climbing.














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16 Weeks

Today marks 16 weeks. They say the baby will hit a growth spurt now, but I swear it already did. I feel like my belly doubled in size since 14 weeks. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am feeling movement now. The baby is the size of an avocado (I really wanted to be holding one in the picture). I can't wait to see him/her in our next ultrasound!





Jackson still thinks he has a baby in his tummy. And Morgan says if its not a girl then she doesn't want it!
The other day Jackson told Morgan he had a baby brother in his tummy and she told him, "no you don't! You have to go to the hospital to get a baby in your tummy!" It was hilarious!

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Feeling Baby #3 Kick

I've probably felt baby move before, but today I felt it for sure!  Twice.  In my opinion, there is nothing more amazing that a mortal can experience than the life of a child inside the womb.  It is one of the few things I love about being pregnant.  When the baby gets big and we can see the movement, it kind of freaks me out :) But it is really neat, nonetheless.  We are getting very excited as this pregnancy progresses.  Especially since we have several friends, 2 sisters-in-law, and a cousin who are also pregnant and due within weeks of us.  So much fun!!!

Goals

Anyone who knows us knows how much we love Dave Ramsey.  We love being in control of our money and we love being debt free.  When we lived in Korea we read and implemented the Total Money Makeover into our finances and ever since then I have considered us a pretty frugal family.  Well, it has come to my attention that, although we don't go out a lot, we don't buy extravagant things, and we are debt free, we are far from "frugal".  The realization came shortly after Clint came home from deployment.  Our grocery bill doubled!  I mean doubled!  We are spending close to $800 a month on groceries for a family of 4.  We eat pretty healthy and don't eat out very often, so I can see where some of that money is being spent.  But I read this blog post and I decided that there is a lot more we could be doing to save on our groceries.

A lot of my friends say they spend around $400 a month on groceries for the same family size as mine, but after reading the Blissful and Domestic blog, I've decided that my friends have no clue how much they are spending (save every single little receipt and add it all up friends, you're spending more!).  If this woman is homemaking everything, shops only once a month, and buys nothing in a box except crackers, and still spends $400 a month, there's no way that anyone who buys bread, cereal, granola bars, snacks, chips, etc, is spending that same amount.

So, just like the Total Money Makeover, I am doing to implement a plan in baby steps.  I'm going to work on one baby step each month until I've completed all of them and have cut our grocery bill back down to $400 a month.

First of all, here are the things Blissful and Domestic suggests:
1.  Bake all bread, rolls, buns, muffins, tortillas, granola bars, etc.
2.  Prepare a menu plan for an entire month.  Write it down, inventory your pantry, fridge, and freezer.  Then make your shopping list.
3.  Shop alone!  No kids allowed!
4.  Find store ads, coupons, etc.  Only clip what you need.  Don't clip a coupon cause it's a good deal if you don't really need the items.
5.  Don't buy and prepackaged snacks.  Crackers only!  No fruit snacks, granola bars, chips, etc.  Your kids can eat fruits and veggies for snacks.  This way they'll be hungry at meal times!
6.  Buy a month's worth of fruit and veggies and freeze the stuff that will go bad before you can eat it.  (She has a great blog post about what can and can't be frozen and what to eat first).
7. Freeze butter, milk, yogurt, cream and shredded cheese, lunch meat, bread, muffins, etc.
8.  Keep a list on the fridge.  When something runs out, write it down so it's already on your shopping list for the next month.

I am already menu planning and shopping for 2 weeks at a time.  I am also already freezing milk, cheese and bread.  I will just add to my list of freezer items next month.  So my first goal is to bake EVERYTHING.  I know how to make bread, but it seems like we go through it so fast it's hard to keep up.

NOVEMBER GOAL(s)
Bake 10 loaves of bread and freeze them!
Bake lots of rolls and freeze.
Learn to make tortillas, muffins, and granola.
Freeze butter, yogurt, lunch meat, and anything else you can think of on top of milk, breads, and cheese.
Freeze meal-sized portions of things like tortillas.

JANUARY GOAL(s) (Skipping December since we will be out of town for half the month).
No prepackaged snacks.
Learn to make snacks for kids at home (granola bars, fruit roll ups, etc).
Cut up fruit and veggies for snacks and serve yogurt/crackers.
Find healthy alternatives for Clint's and Morgan's lunches.

FEBRUARY
Meal plan for entire month and only go shopping once.
Chop and freeze fruits and veggies!
SHOP ALONE :)

Some of these things will be done sooner/later than I plan (I might only get through baking bread in November).  But I have a list of what I want to accomplish and I'm confident that I can do it.  One day of work will be worth a month of preparedness right?

I also want to start building my food storage.  But that's another mountain I'll have to climb another day LOL.

Morgan Is Learning To Read

Morgan just read her first words!
Zoo
Gas
Tax

I'm so proud!


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Baby Webb #3

Since I'm a little over 14 weeks along, I guess it's time to tell the story of this pregnancy!  Clint came home from deployment in May of this year.  We talked about the future and decided August was the time to start trying to have another baby.  We took a trip to Utah in July and while we were there I  realized something was "not right" with my body and hadn't been for 2 months.  I took several pregnancy tests, all came up negative.  So two days after we got home I went to see a doctor and she confirmed that it was a pregnancy and that I was 11 weeks along already.  So when I was about 16 weeks I had my first ultrasound.  This is what they saw:

A 9-week-old fetus, instead of a 16-week-old fetus!  So they changed my due date to 7 weeks later than the original one and this baby should be making its debut around April 8, 2012.  I hate when mother nature plays tricks on me!  So here I am, in my 15the week, starting to poke out a little (looks more like a muffin top from eating too many donuts), and finally in my 2nd trimester.  I have suffered from afternoon sickness, headaches, and complete exhaustion from the beginning.  But I am feeling a little better now.  I am on day 3 of no headaches!  Yay!!  I lost about 8 pounds the first few weeks, but now I am up to my original weight again.  We find out on November 19th what the sex of the baby is.

Morgan's First Field Trip

Today I accompanied Morgan's preK class to the Pumpkin Patch for their first field trip! It was a lot of fun.




We went on a hay ride.




Painted pumpkins, played "Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Scarecrow", read Autumn stories, jumped in a bouncy house,








And had pictures taken (Morgan is all the way to the left).




It was a crazy day and I have a new found respect and admiration for teachers :) I love being able to spend time with and in Morgan's class.
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Halloween Jammies Oct. 2012

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