Picking Books...

This may surprise you, but Luke and I both dislike reading. My mom was always on the couch with a book, I was always in my room with music, movies, and video games. My parents never required me to read, and since I was a straight A student, I guess they assumed I read on occasion, but even most of the assigned books at school I merely glanced through, very few did I actually read. Even now, sometimes it's very hard for me to just sit down and read. I can glance through articles all day, or even read some fan fiction short stories online, but to pick out a book, and dedicate time out of my day for it, and actually enjoy it, is rare. I want that to change. Thankfully Lexi has no problem sitting down and reading. Lilly does OK with it, as long as it is something that is really interesting to her. Avery can read simple books, and enjoys being read to. Henna doesn't care. She has a short attention span, so it is hit or miss or her to sit down and look at a book and listen.

So the family goal is for myself, Lexi, Lilly, (and hopefully Luke) to pick a book, and to read at least 30 minutes each day. Avery will pick an early reader book that she can read to me and Henna sometime throughout the day. I will also pick out an easy reader/kid book that I will read to Henna. I am hoping that this one on one with her will have her become more familiar with the alphabet and the proper sounds they make. Her speech still needs a lot of improvement. Finally, we will pick a book to read aloud as a family. I did this with the book Wonder, reading a few chapters every night to the girls before bed, and it was a great experience.

I've spent the week trying to distract myself from losing Athena by re-organizing the library. We added more shelves, so I've separated books by reading level, and we now have a place for board games, Legos, coloring items, and other miscellaneous stuff. We haven't really left the house much this month because of Athena, but we start back with our activities in February. We haven't made it to the library to look at books, so for this first pick we will look through our own library for something to read.

Here are our picks.

Family Story: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Lucas: The Martian

Holly: Storm Cycle

Alexis: Weetamoo

Lillian: Rem World

Avery: Clifford's Loose Tooth

Henna: The Good, The Bad, And The Krabby

Yes, I am trying out Amazon's affiliate links. I know I don't get the traffic for it to really make a difference, but some of the books we have are older or obscure and having a link to show you the book helps.

Meal Planning Done Cheap - My first Simple, Cheap, Meal Post

Do you ever have one of those weeks (or a whole month) that everything just blows up? I imagine that statistically January is one of the months that this happens the most.

It's no secret that we've struggled over the past 12 years financially. We owned a money pit of a house, the housing market went to crap, and when we finally got into a position that we were ready to sell, the house sat on the market for a year before we took a loss and walked away. We lived in Tiny Barn at my dad's for 6 months while trying to scrape everything to make our finances look good enough to buy the place we have now. It was a great price, a great location to family, and everything we wanted, and it had already been sitting for quite awhile, and by some miracle it hadn't been sold to the many other people we found out later were interested in it. If this house hadn't been available, I have no doubt we would still be in Tiny Barn, working away at our budget to become credit card debt free and looking for a dream house. As it stands, we got the house, which is great, but I'll be honest the budget isn't pretty, and I've been struggling back and forth with the idea of going back to work part-time. Honestly the cons outweigh the pros, but maybe if I could land something seasonal, it would be such a short-term change that we could cope.

Anyways, the point of the post is that this January stunk for us. It is after Christmas, the propane needs refilled (that's at least $400), we had to put Athena down ($65), we had to get Loki fixed ($106) before we ended up with babies, the van needed new front brakes ($100+), and we had to pull wheel bearings off of V2 (our spare van that is practically the same as ours, and was given to us for free), because V1 (the van we use as our daily driver) needs new wheel bearings, but they are about $30ish a piece and need to be pressed in, which is about $45 a piece (or we can buy a press and do it ourselves, which considering we would be doing 4 wheel bearings (V1 & V2, it would be cheaper). All of that took a toll on the budget, and on top of that, Girl Scout cookie selling season started! Which means the girls want to buy cookies!

I've done a lot of Excel spreadsheets, poured over Pinterest for meals, compared prices on Amazon to our local grocery stores, and taken into account how picky our girls can be at eating sometimes. We aren't really the sit down and eat a full meal type of family. We are either home all day, or if we have activities, then we are on the go almost all day, so small snacks and all day grazing seem to fit our lifestyle better. My ideal goal was to find meals that would cost $5 or less and fill the 6 of us, with an overall goal of $20 a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snacks). Now, do I really want to spend $620 for 31 days, absolutely not, and that doesn't even include toiletries or the animals. I wanted to come up with at least a one week emergency meal plan. It may not be the healthiest, but we won't starve.

So with all of that out of the way, I think I've decided that every week I will post a quick, cheap meal, complete with the prices I have found. I admit, I am no cook, and I'm not the greatest at finding a bargain either, but it's at least a starting point.

So, for my first simple, cheap meal....

Grilled Cheese

$0.99 - 1 loaf of jumbo white store brand bread

$3.49 - 16-slice pack of Kraft American Cheese

Pantry Items Needed: Butter ($3.99 for 45 oz of Country Crock)

So for my family of six this meal is $4.48 plus the cost of butter, but we do end up with both cheese and bread left over!

*Warning affiliate link. This is the griddle I use. With this I can make 4 sandwiches at a time. Convenient since I have 4 girls! We've had this griddle for at least 5 years, and it's held up between moving, dishwasher abuse, and sometimes sitting in the sink for awhile. Although I think I want to look for something a bit bigger.