Sisters

I'll make a confession...I was very relieved we ended up having two girls. Should I at some point in life somehow end up with a boy ('cause we think we're done having kids, but life has a way of jumping out and yelling "surprise!!!!!" when you least expect it), I would take a couple of weeks to digest the news and come around to being happy about it. What I really wanted though, were girls. Sisters that could giggle and laugh and gossip and share life lessons together. In striving for a simpler life, we decided back when I was pregnant that the girls can share a room. If they ask to be separated at some point, we'll discuss that, but we have no intention of bringing it up. Then I got a great deal on a double bed and decided they could just share the same bed. It was a bit of selfish idea---I know when I was a pre-teen, I would have loved to have had a sister right there to make me feel a little safer when I woke up in the night and it was dark and I was scared. Sierra has been very excited about this idea and we've been waiting for Sedona to get big enough. Lately, Sedona's been having nightmares (I assume, she wakes up screaming, won't calm down, all that fun stuff), so we decided to make the switch. It is super cute to see your 4 year old and 18 month old snuggled up together. Even after they "went their separate ways", we were left with this:



Sedona slept much better last night, and in the morning, Sierra got them cereal and they played instead of getting us. I think this is going to be a very very good thing.

The weather is NUTS. It is currently 77 degrees. In January. It is so very tempting to move forward with spring gardening tasks, but last March it was snowing, so who knows what's in store.

Three local grocery stores had great sales this week. So, I totally blew the budget. Well, not really. We budget $150/month for groceries. If we go over one month, we spend less the next. We've been known to not shop for 5 or 6 weeks straight to balance everything out because if nothing else, I'm all about staying on budget. So, with three stores having items we use at "stock up prices", I just had to take advantage. The final tally:

Honey Nut Chex (3 boxes at 50 cents each) $1.50
Pineapple (3 small cans at 50 cents each) $1.50
Pasta (7 pounds at $1 each) $7
Cornstarch $0.50
Tomato Soup (3 cans at 50 cents each) $1.50
Diced tomatoes (6 cans at 50 cents each) $3
Powerade (10 bottles at 50 cents each) $5
Brown Sugar $1.19
Canned Veggies (6 cans at 3/$1) $2
Apple juice (2 gallons at $3/gallon) $6
2L soda (4 at 50 cents each) $2
Cornmeal, 5# $1.76
Pretzels, 15 oz (3 bags at $1 each) $3
Bananas (6.75 pounds at 44 cents a pound) $2.97
White chocolate chips (4 bags at 25 cents each) $1
Bacon $2.50
Yogurt (2 qts at $1.79 each) $3.58
Pasta Sauce (2 cans at 89 cents each) $1.78
Tomato Sauce, 8 oz (7 cans at 7/$1) $1
Wheat Thins (5 boxes at $1.89 each) $9.45
Cream Cheese (5 packs at 99 cents each) $4.95
Goldfish Crackers (10 packs at 99 cents each) $9.90
Ghiradelli brownie mix (2 boxes at $1.49 each) $2.98
Rotel (8 cans at 37 cents each) $2.96
12 pack coca cola (3 at $2.33 each) $7

Tax (8.25% on convenience items): 0.75
Total: 100 items (ha! didn't plan that!) for $86.77

I admit, there are plenty of convenience items and a few treats here. I'm frugal, not crazy. Surely every mom has those days where they just need to throw a bag of goldfish at the kids so they can have two minutes to go to the bathroom uninterrupted. The only item I overpaid for was the cream cheese. $1 is usually as cheap as it gets around here, until I got to the next store and saw it was on (unadvertised) sale for 80 cents...grrr.