Rest

Hi everyone,

DH and I have just returned home from one of the best vacations we've ever had.

A few years ago, after DH was working entirely too hard for entirely too many hours, we decided to make it a priority to take a vacation every year. It didn't have to be fancy or extravagant, but we had to carve out a couple of days where our only priority was spending time together-no work, no household duties, nothing--just time together. So we have a little budget category for vacation that we save for.

This year, with the significant change in our income, it was tempting to eliminate that category from the budget all together. But knowing how much that time away refreshes us and draws us closer, we wanted to try to do it if at all possible. But we couldn't take the long-length, long distance trips we've taken the last couple of years.

It so happened that one of our groomsmen from our wedding, who now lives in Michigan, was going to be in San Diego. We wanted to get over to see them (San Diego is much closer and more doable than Michigan) so we decided to roll it in to one trip and do our vacation there. We had to do it on a very tight budget, but it ended up being one of our favorite trips we've taken. And it accomplished its purpose perfectly-we came home rested, closer together, and ready to go back to "real life" again with a renewed energy, direction, and united front.

We got creative so I thought I'd share our tips on how we tried to keep costs to a minimum:
*Picked a destination within driving distance. Gas prices are not at an all time low, but they're certainly more affordable than they've been in recent years. We spent about $100 in gas-much less than 2 round trip air tickets. We do have two free plane tickets, but we're saving those to visit friends later on where we can fly and stay for free.
*Planned our trip for weekdays-hotels are less expensive and attractions are less crowded, maximizing our bang for our buck
*Scoured the internet for days searching for the best rated budget hotel that was off the beaten path, and that offered a refrigerator in room. We found one that was clean, quiet, safe, and well reviewed that was less than 20 minutes from all the places we wanted to go--far enough that we didn't have to pay "convenience" pricing.
*I packed our mini (4 cup crock pot), steel cut oats (79 cents per pound), cinnamon, jam, juice, yogurt, flax seed, clif bars, cans of tunafish, bread, light mayo, relish, string cheese, carrots, fruit, nuts, bottled water, pop and gatorade, rice cakes, and goldfish crackers, along with a sponge, soap, a can opener, a measuring cup, a couple of tupperware containers, plastic bowls and silverware, a dish towel, napkins, ziploc bags and a big cooler. Though the hotel offered a free breakfast, it consisted of coffee and pastries (we called ahead to find out). That lasts about 10 seconds in terms of sustenance and energy, not to mention is full of empty calories. Every night before we went to bed we turned on our little crockpot full of oatmeal and in the morning we had a full, protein rich breakfast of steel cut oats with flax along with fruit and juice. We carried Clif bars with us all the time so we wouldn't need to buy snacks at expensive attraction and beachside shops. We made sandwiches and packed our lunch every morning and put it in the cooler in the car. We'd use the icemaker at the hotel to refill the cooler. All the other groceries stayed in the fridge in the room. We chose Tuna because it's also high protein, and it's very affordable. At the themepark we left it all in the cooler in the car and went out at lunch and ate out front and then reentered the park. We ate tunafish sandwiches on the drive, too-more nutritious than fast food stops, as well as faster since we didn't have to detour anywhere to get it. Though we had high protein meals, we also had some snacks available so if we wanted them, we had them. We didn't have to buy a single beverage, anywhere. That alone saved a ton.
*We scoured the internet for coupons on the attractions we wanted. In the end we decided on Sea World, and I was able to find a coupon code for $15 off admission each if we bought the tickets in advance and printed them at home.
*We did allow ourselves to go out for dinner each night, but we looked up restaurants in advance so we knew the menu and price range and could plan accordingly. We did not allow ourselves to go to restaurants that were any more expensive than something we would choose at home if we were living "normal" life.
*We chose one paid attraction (Sea World) and then filled the rest of the time with free attractions-walking around a beautiful historical hotel, watching Sea World fireworks another night from a neighboring parking lot, visiting the beach, playing card games, swimming in the hotel pool, etc, etc.

Overall, we had a wonderful, relaxing, refreshing time at a fraction of the cost of the vacations we've taken previously. Just because we couldn't go "all out" didn't mean we couldn't make some great memories. And hey, who else can say they travel with their crockpot?

The color in these looks funky-not sure why. These, and other pics, are also on my FB page and they look fine there. If you're my FB friend, look them up there!










Before our trip, our best friends were here from Chicago. It was bittersweet because they were here to clean out their house and move their stuff because their house here finally sold and they finally got a home in Chicago so they no longer need to live in limbo. This really cemented the move and removed the possibility of returning to live in at least the near future, which was tough for me and K, especially. I think the guys came to terms with it a long time ago. But in any case it gave us an excuse to have 2 weeks with them, which was great.

Visiting this great little homemade ice cream sandwiches shop--definitely not diet friendly, but very fun...


Lastly, our embryos arrived safely yesterday in Tucson, meaning we are forever done with the awful clinic here. It's a huge sigh of relief to know that neither me or my children are in their (incompetent) "care." We're still proceeding full speed ahead with plans for a November-ish transfer and this was the last detail to take care of. Now all we have to do is wait!

Thanks for checking in. I pray you all are well!

Totally Off Topic: Amazon Prime

DH and I joined Amazon Prime a few years ago and we love it. You pay an annual membership fee and then all books, movies and music are shipped 2 day air for free, as well as a lot of items from their other departments. It's so nice to have things in 2 days, and to not have to be able to meet order minimums. The buy-in is a little high but we found it to be worth it because otherwise we were always adding a few dollars here or there to reach the minimums for free shipping. I buy books, movies, music, housewares, electronics, appliances and even groceries through amazon--the free shipping comes in especially handy with the heavy stuff. We've used it to buy snorkel flippers, my camera lens and and air mattress-all with free shipping. Free shipping makes Amazon's prices often better than the stores.

Right now they're offering a free trial of their Prime Membership. If nothing else, you could do some early Christmas shopping during the trial! Check it out here! The deadline is October 31 and the trial lasts a month. Perfect for the holiday season! If you sign up now or later, would you pretty please follow my link here to do it? We get a bonus if you sign up (even if you cancel after the trial) which helps us with OUR Christmas shopping =)

New Blog

I've been really busy this week. I've been at BFFs house every day helping them pack and get organized. So I haven't had much time to blog or even think about what I would write if I did blog.

But, I did start a new project, which has been a good way to take my mind off their departure. It gives me something to do when I wake up in the middle of the night or too early in the morning.

It's my New Blog. I love the hunt of a good deal, so I thought I'd start a blog to track everything and share what I learn with other people. I know there are lots of other blogs like this out there, but I hope this will have a different spin. We'll see!

Let me know what you think and if you think it's even worth continuing!

TTFN!

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to my Sweetie-Pie!

5 Years ago I married the love of my life and haven't looked back since. It's been amazing to spend all of this decade (we became a couple in 2000) loving him and being loved by him. Our life and our love is already whole and complete now. I can't wait to see how God in His infinite wisdom and grace expands that to be more whole and more complete. Happy Anniversary, my Love.



We're spending the day just hanging out. We're going to dinner tonight-a treat from our grandparents and my parents, and then on to dessert at the Melting Pot-yum!

It's funny...when we were getting engaged and thinking about family and working through premarital counseling, we said we wanted to wait 3 to 5 years before having children. That desire changed and timeline shortened once we were married but now here we are, exactly 5 years in, about to embark in to a whole new world. We are grateful that we have had this time of friendship, camaraderie, and adventure to build our relationship before the dynamic changed. A selfish part of me will miss having him all to myself! But man...how lucky our kids will be to have him for a dad!

Happy Anniversary too, to Joe and Diana, who quite "coincidentally" were married the same day and year as us, a few hours later and less than 100 miles away from us!

And Happy Birthday to Amanda! I hope you are celebrated today for all the things you are and rolls you fill, including but not limited to new mommy!

Hey at least you all had the courtesy to choose a date easy for me to remember ;) Love you, friends!

Like the new blog look? It's courtesy of Lena (save a few tweaks to shrink the header size) and her free blog templates. I have several blog buddies whose blogs I always thought were lovely. One day I found Lena's blog and found that all that lovely work was done by the same talented person! Thanks Lena, for sharing your talent with us!

I've also got a new picture. I cut, colored and highlighted my hair today. It's something I've always wanted to do but was never brave enough to do (yes, I am in fact a chicken about EVERYTHING). I did mild highlights twice back in college when the hair place I used to work for did them for free, and then I've used a drugstore box of color a time or 12, but I've never had anything like this done. I LOVE the base color. I'm not so wild about the highlights--these particular ones are a little Jennifer Aniston of 1995ish...but I like the rest of it. I really wanted to do it so I didn't look like I had a fried out mess on my head when we have our match meeting next week. My own natural color always turns a nasty shade of brassy at the ends so I feel much more well kept with it all under control. They probably won't care, but I feel much more presentable! I cut off the top of my head in this picture, but 8 gazzillion tries at a self portrait with no tripod or remote later, this is what I came up with.




That's all for now! Bed is calling, which it's allowed to do at 2:30 am!

More pictures!

More shameless indulging in ba.by pictures...

I got mom's a-ok to post these. I know several of my blog buddies are photographers and more are mommies so I'm posting these in the hopes of begging your constructive criticisms (as either photographers with technical know-how or mommies with mommy-insight) so I can do better next time. Anyone else is welcome to give feedback too. I'd appreciate it and hopefully BFF will too! We're going to try another day for some sleeping shots. But he was very alert and awake yesterday!

Ba.by pictures below....
















These are the same-I just couldn't decide if I liked color or black and white better

Cutest little feet

Ba.by pic.tures posted below....












I've resisted posting a picture of our godson out of respect for BFFs' privacy. Today I went over to take his one month old pictures! I figured I could post these since you can't see his face. They're two of my favorites from the day. Aren't they the cutest little feet you ever did see?

Baking Tally for the Day

Our house smells sooooo good.

The tally for the day:

5 mini loaves of Banana-Walnut Bread
5 mini loaves of Strawberry-Blueberry Bread
5 mini loaves of Strawberry-Pineapple-Walnut Bread
1 regular sized loaf of Strawberry-Pineapple-Walnut Bread
1 Berry Chocolate Pie (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries! Yum!)

Still to come:
Blueberry Muffins
Strawberry Bread
Grape Muffins (recipe Hattip for these last two-Kristin)

I'd never had (or even heard of!) berry breads (not to be confused with their step-cousin, the fruit cake) but they're just so light and refreshing for summer and are a beautiful compliment to their spicier, perfect-for-fall counterparts like banana, zucchini and pumpkin breads. Plus, I found some low fat substitutions for all of them (fresh fruit instead of sugary canned, all natural applesauce instead of oil, wheat flour instead of white, and an all natural sugar substitute) so they're not even terribly diet-offensive.

Everything except the pie, blueberry muffins (my favorite!) and one loaf of bread is for the church, which is good, because we'd probably gobble it all up if we could!

Anyone want to come over for some coffee and goodies?

Totally Off Topic: Homemaking Tip!

Oh! I forgot to share this tip that I've recently discovered.

A few years ago, our hand-me-down washing machine finally died and we purchased a new one. It worked fine for a while but then in the last couple of years we started getting what looked like oil stains on our clothes. We tried stain removers and various detergents to no avail. DH works on cars so we thought that maybe stuff was washing out of his clothes and redepositing on to other clothes. I started washing his work clothes in their own loads. That didn't fix the problem so we thought maybe residuals were getting stuck in nooks and crannies in the machine itself and coming out later. In the last several months, we've been getting both the oil spots and now, brown spots on our clothes. I'm pretty vigilant about cleaning out the washer and running loads of just vinegar but nothing seemed to be helping. We were close to thinking our washing machine had turned out to be a dud and were bumming out about having to consider purchasing yet another one.

I couldn't bring myself to part with all the otherwise excellent condition ruined clothes so I just put them in a pile in a hope that I could save them somehow if we ever had extra money to haul it all to the dry cleaners or if we found some miracle stain remover. Some of them were very nice and/or our favorite items so we were very disappointed to lose them, some after just one or two wears.

I did some googling to find out the possible causes and remedies to the problem. Much to my surprise, the "oil" spots are a frequent complaint about Downey Fabric Softener. In all our experimenting, we never changed fabric softeners because there are so very few scents that DH can tolerate so we found one that didn't bother him and we stuck with it. We didn't even choose it for the brand as we did the fragrance. So as we tried various detergents and stain removers, the one constant thing turned out to be the trouble maker all along.

I pulled out our fabric softener cup to wash it and get all residual softener out. Suddenly, the entire column of that cup came out (it had never come out before, though we'd tried) and we were grossed out to find that under the cup in the agitator, was a 1 or 2" thick build up old, caked up fabric softener that had turned--guess what? the same nasty shade of brown that had recently begun ruining our clothes!

We scraped and scraped and scrubbed and ran several loads of vinegar and eventually got it all out!

Further googling suggested that I use "Dawn" dish soap on the stains because it contains a powerful degreaser. So I found the least colored bottle I could (in this case a pale yellow one from their "Simple Pleasures" line) and rubbed it directly on the stains and let them set just a couple minutes. ALL of the stains came out in one or two loads (repeating adding the Dawn to the stain before the second load). In one particular case, the stain was 3 years old. It had happened on a blouse I really like after I got to wear it just 1 time. I had held on to it all this time, so disappointed that I just got to wear it once. I had tried many times to get it out so that stain was well set. 2 washes later, the stain is completely gone! So we now have a new wardrobe all over again with many many recovered items of clothing! Plus the Dawn did not discolor the clothes or leave spots lighter than the rest of the garments in place of the stains at all.

Now that I had my freshly saved clothes, I had to find a replacement for Downey. More googling brought back consistent results of the suggestion to use a 1/4 cup of vinegar in the wash, placing it in the fabric softener cup. I've always used vinegar to clean my washing machine, dishwasher and microwave but never thought about using it for my clothes. I've now tried it 10 or 12 times and have been so pleased. Vinegar gets the detergent out of clothes so much more effectively, they come out soft and refreshed and it's much less expensive (a gallon of vinegar is about $2) and better for the environment (no chemicals!). Plus, since I only use 1/4 cup, the clothes don't smell like vinegar. A couple times I've had the clothes come out a little static-y but I think that is fixed by dryer sheets.

I've switched for life! Our clothes, our budget and the environment are much happier! Thought I'd pass along the tip!

Gotta get back to work. A load of laundry is running, I've started the accounting and unpacking and shortly here I'll need to go do the grocery shopping as we ate down everything in the fridge before we left. Tomorrow I'm officially back open for business too so I have a long couple days of catch-up in front of me!

If you're just checking in, the post below this explains my absence! :)

Off Topic

Allow me an off topic indulgence for a minute. Earlier this week, Brett Favre, my second favorite player on my very favorite Football team, retired.

Thanks, Brett. We already miss you!