Monday, January 30, 2012
A Medical Scare
Not for me, though, for our dog Oso. Yesterday as Brandon and I were cooking in the kitchen I hear a small yelp from the dog. I peeked into the living room to find Oso in a very unusual position on the floor. I ran over to find his body rigid and his paws curled unnaturally, almost like he had a charlie horse in his entire body. Our poor dog was having a seizure. It only lasted a minute or two but it scared the shit out of me and Brandon. I stayed home from work today so I could take him to the vet. They drew blood to run a few metabolic tests to rule out any disorders. However if everything comes back normal they told us they will not put him on epilepsy meds. They don't treat dogs that only have one or two seizures a year. I thought for sure they would give Oso some medications but I guess it's a fairly common thing for dogs. So while I hope the tests come back negative, I also know that if that happens then we'll be left wondering what caused our poor puppa to have a seizure.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
A Little Project for Fearlessly Frugal
I've been thinking about new projects to do for Fearlessly Frugal and this one has been nagging at me for about 6 months now. So this morning when I read this article asking people if they could live off $5 a day, I decided it's time to start my project.
I knew I could take on this challenge and live off $5 a day for a week. But after a week I'm sure that eating the same, cheap foods would wear on me. I don't think I could actually survive on food stamps without going nuts.
So here's my project: I want to find and/or create recipes that cost less than $5 to make. I mentioned this challenge to Brandon and he immediately found flaws in it. What if the recipe makes enough food for leftovers, would it still have to be $5? Is that $5 per person, $5 per recipe or $5 per meal? Needless to say he left me with a lot to think about.
So the details of this challenge would be as follows: The recipe must cost less than $5 per meal with a meal being enough food to feed two adults without needing any major side items. If you have a recipe that's less than $5 per meal WITH side items, even better. So a huge pot of chili that produces two meals could cost $10, if it produces 3 meals it could cost $15, etc. Seasonings don't count when factored into the cost because for me, seasonings last a LONG time in my house and the amount you use per meal adds up to mere pennies. Coupons cannot be factored into the cost of the recipe.
The point of the challenge for me and Brandon is to live off of these recipes for one full month. I haven't decided which month that will be yet, probably March or April. Right now I budget about $80 a week for groceries (including non-food items like laundry detergent and paper towels) but it seems that lately we've blown that budget out of the water with our dieting. I'm hoping that with this project I can find great new recipes to try as well as shave off about $40 a month from my budget.
Right now I'm in the gathering phase on my challenge and I want you all to contribute recipes that are less than $5 per meal. It's probably easiest to just email them to me at cvpis4me@yahoo.com. Please list the ingredients, the recipe, and how many meals you estimate it will make for one couple. I'll do the research and verify the cost before posting the recipes on here. In all fairness I won't use the commissary prices, I'll use my regular grocery store. I have a few recipes of my own but I have to price out the items first before I post them. If I happen to find coupons at the time of posting then I'll definitely link those as well.
Let the Fearlessly Frugal challenge begin!
I knew I could take on this challenge and live off $5 a day for a week. But after a week I'm sure that eating the same, cheap foods would wear on me. I don't think I could actually survive on food stamps without going nuts.
So here's my project: I want to find and/or create recipes that cost less than $5 to make. I mentioned this challenge to Brandon and he immediately found flaws in it. What if the recipe makes enough food for leftovers, would it still have to be $5? Is that $5 per person, $5 per recipe or $5 per meal? Needless to say he left me with a lot to think about.
So the details of this challenge would be as follows: The recipe must cost less than $5 per meal with a meal being enough food to feed two adults without needing any major side items. If you have a recipe that's less than $5 per meal WITH side items, even better. So a huge pot of chili that produces two meals could cost $10, if it produces 3 meals it could cost $15, etc. Seasonings don't count when factored into the cost because for me, seasonings last a LONG time in my house and the amount you use per meal adds up to mere pennies. Coupons cannot be factored into the cost of the recipe.
The point of the challenge for me and Brandon is to live off of these recipes for one full month. I haven't decided which month that will be yet, probably March or April. Right now I budget about $80 a week for groceries (including non-food items like laundry detergent and paper towels) but it seems that lately we've blown that budget out of the water with our dieting. I'm hoping that with this project I can find great new recipes to try as well as shave off about $40 a month from my budget.
Right now I'm in the gathering phase on my challenge and I want you all to contribute recipes that are less than $5 per meal. It's probably easiest to just email them to me at cvpis4me@yahoo.com. Please list the ingredients, the recipe, and how many meals you estimate it will make for one couple. I'll do the research and verify the cost before posting the recipes on here. In all fairness I won't use the commissary prices, I'll use my regular grocery store. I have a few recipes of my own but I have to price out the items first before I post them. If I happen to find coupons at the time of posting then I'll definitely link those as well.
Let the Fearlessly Frugal challenge begin!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
It's Decided
We're not taking a vacation at all. We had decided on Germany and Brandon even put in his leave request but in the end I couldn't see myself staying at my job for another two months just to pay for this vacation. It would have cost about $4,500 and that's just a lot of money right now, money I would rather spend on other things like increasing our match budget or putting toward retirement.
On a more positive note, Brandon and I planned a small weekend getaway the weekend before Valentine's Day at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire. I'm really looking forward to it because though we've been married for over 4 years, we have never ever celebrated Valentine's Day together. Since we're pretty sure we won't have another chance to do this for a looong time, why not now?
Well that's about all for now. I'm going to try a new pulled pork receipt today and settle in to watch the football games to see who makes it to the Super Bowl!
On a more positive note, Brandon and I planned a small weekend getaway the weekend before Valentine's Day at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire. I'm really looking forward to it because though we've been married for over 4 years, we have never ever celebrated Valentine's Day together. Since we're pretty sure we won't have another chance to do this for a looong time, why not now?
Well that's about all for now. I'm going to try a new pulled pork receipt today and settle in to watch the football games to see who makes it to the Super Bowl!
Monday, January 9, 2012
Getting to Me
Today is exactly two months since we went active. I know that's such an infinitely small amount of time in the grand scheme of things but this wait is really starting to get to me. There have been so many new babies being born on our adoption agency's forum yet the number of waiting families hasn't lessened. Is it a glitch or is the agency just adding new families that fast? No wonder the wait times increased!
Also, I've had at least 3 girls announce their pregnancies on FB in the last month. That doesn't include the ladies who are already pregnant. It's really depressing me. So much that our vacation planning doesn't have it's usual excitement. It makes me not want to take a vacation at all and just be a bum at home. But I know that if I'm feeling like this now, I'm REALLY going to need a vacation in March if we don't have a baby by then. But I'm soooo hung up on which vacation place to choose.
Cancun is "cheap and easy" because we already picked a hotel and we're not doing any activities so there's nothing to research. We picked a nice all-inclusive so we would go for the luxury, the food and the unlimited drinks. And of course the relaxing.
Germany is another adventure, which is really who we are at heart. It's more expensive because we would be staying longer. The problem is that we would be staying at an American military resort, the Edelweiss Lodge, in Garmisch. That's both good and bad. Good because it's a ski resort that has EVERYTHING: restaurants, a pool, fitness center, wonderful views and they organize day tours of various places near Garmisch. It's bad because it's American and it's military, two things we kind of like to steer clear of when on an international vacation. How can we truly experience a country if we're staying at an American resort? But none of the other hotels in the area offer the amenities we like at the Edelweiss and they're much more expensive. If we waited till Brandon got out of the military to visit Germany then we wouldn't be able to stay at the Edelweiss and thus the vacation would cost more.
So I'm torn between the vacations but too depressed to pick one because my mind is so focused on the adoption and all these pregnancy announcements. I think in the end we will pick the cheap and easy trip just hope that it can give us a few days of distraction.
Also, I've had at least 3 girls announce their pregnancies on FB in the last month. That doesn't include the ladies who are already pregnant. It's really depressing me. So much that our vacation planning doesn't have it's usual excitement. It makes me not want to take a vacation at all and just be a bum at home. But I know that if I'm feeling like this now, I'm REALLY going to need a vacation in March if we don't have a baby by then. But I'm soooo hung up on which vacation place to choose.
Cancun is "cheap and easy" because we already picked a hotel and we're not doing any activities so there's nothing to research. We picked a nice all-inclusive so we would go for the luxury, the food and the unlimited drinks. And of course the relaxing.
Germany is another adventure, which is really who we are at heart. It's more expensive because we would be staying longer. The problem is that we would be staying at an American military resort, the Edelweiss Lodge, in Garmisch. That's both good and bad. Good because it's a ski resort that has EVERYTHING: restaurants, a pool, fitness center, wonderful views and they organize day tours of various places near Garmisch. It's bad because it's American and it's military, two things we kind of like to steer clear of when on an international vacation. How can we truly experience a country if we're staying at an American resort? But none of the other hotels in the area offer the amenities we like at the Edelweiss and they're much more expensive. If we waited till Brandon got out of the military to visit Germany then we wouldn't be able to stay at the Edelweiss and thus the vacation would cost more.
So I'm torn between the vacations but too depressed to pick one because my mind is so focused on the adoption and all these pregnancy announcements. I think in the end we will pick the cheap and easy trip just hope that it can give us a few days of distraction.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Long Time No See
This isn't going to be one of those posts where I reminisce about 2011 or share my hopes for 2012. You all know what those are anyway. Instead this post will be another random mish-mash of things that have occurred over the past few weeks.
After spending time with family in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia for a week I've gained back almost all the weight I lost in the past 5 weeks. It was a huge bummer but I can't say I'm surprised. It's my own damn fault. Tomorrow it's back on the saddle with the gym and dieting and this time I'm getting serious. I'm going to try an all-natural diet and see how that goes. This means very little processed foods, especially those that are high in sodium. Just because a can of soup or a Lean Cuisine meal is low in WW points doesn't mean it's low in sodium and WW doesn't account for that. I really need to cut back on my sodium intake. Most of the processed foods I eat will be things that are harder to avoid like cereal or maybe a Fiber One bar as a snack. I'm going to start eating more fish and tuna and cutting out almost all red meat. Brandon is on board with this diet so hopefully he can lose a little pudge too. He's gained about 30 pounds over the course of our marriage.
We're starting to waver on our choice to go to sunny Mexico for our first real vacation. Instead we're becoming more and more interested in another adventure...Europe. It would only be Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I don't want to go traipsing about the continent visiting as many countries as I can without truly experiencing any of them. That's just not how we travel. We started thinking about this vacation change because Brandon has been talking so much about moving there when we retire and I'm getting very curious about what the region is like. We planned on taking a trip there in about 7 or 8 years when our child is old enough to enjoy long trips but that seems so far away. There are pros and cons to choosing this trip over Mexico and one of the major cons is the extra cost. But the reason the cost would be more is because we would stay longer, not because things are more expensive there. If we chose to go during the exact time we had planned our Cancun vacation then the cost would actually be a bit lower than the Cancun trip. Everything is still up in the air and we won't make a choice on our trip for another month so we have plenty of time to figure things out. In the meantime though, Brandon has started teaching me a little German. Es ist nicht deine katse!! Yes, I came up with that sentence all on my own :)
Sometimes I find the adoption wait is getting to me a little and other times I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of life without kids. It varies from day to day but as the weeks go by I do find myself getting more and more impatient. When is our child going to get here? That's the million dollar question. So to pass the time we've decided to get back into puzzling. I used to love putting together jigsaw puzzles and I was damn good at it. I'd do puzzles and get them framed and give them away as gifts or hang them as artwork in my house. I have a few Van Gogh puzzles and a Thomas Kinkade right now. The largest puzzle I did was 2,000 pieces and was of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. I gave it to my grandparents. Our next puzzle project is two-fold. I liked one puzzle and Brandon liked another so I bought both. The first puzzle is a 2,000 piece of Hallstatter, Austria, one of the place we'd like to visit when we go to Europe. The second puzzle was my choice, a 4,000 piece of Neuschwanstein Castle, another must-see in Germany. I couldn't resist a good challenge. I just hope it fits on my kitchen table or I'll be stuck doing it on the nursery room floor. I've never had to do a puzzle on the floor before.
So with all this travel talk I must admit that I'm considering a career change to a travel agent. With my organization skills and love for foreign places I think I would be very good at it. Remember my Ireland itinerary? Who wouldn't want me to plan a vacation like that for them! The only problem is that I have no paid experience or any certifications. I'm looking into the certification process and the business itself (I'm not too keen on working for commission only. I don't enjoy pushing sales on hotels I can't personally recommend) So it's not a for-sure thing just yet but so many people have recommended that I become one that it's hard to ignore, especially if the natural talent is there. Brandon said at the very least I could get certified and do it as a hobby for family and friends. Maybe charge a small fee to cover the costs of memberships and software programs and that's it. It sounds like a career I could really enjoy and it's definitely worth checking into but that's all I'm doing right now. I'm not going to quit my day job till I get all the info.
I'd also like to announce that I will no longer be adding anymore blogs to my Parenting section. It's getting just a little too big. Also, I'll only be picking a small number of blogs to move from the Infertility section to the Pregnancy section. I don't want to offend anyone by not following once someone gets pregnant but so many of the infertility blogs I follow get pregnant successfully that I can't be having a huge Pregnancy blog list. The majority of my blogs will be infertility and adoption, as I'd like it to be, and very few Pregnancy and Parenting blogs. I'll also try to keep the Parenting a healthy mix of biological parenting and adopted parenting. I hope everyone understands.
So that's my past two weeks in a nutshell. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and hopefully everyone had some time off from work as well.
After spending time with family in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia for a week I've gained back almost all the weight I lost in the past 5 weeks. It was a huge bummer but I can't say I'm surprised. It's my own damn fault. Tomorrow it's back on the saddle with the gym and dieting and this time I'm getting serious. I'm going to try an all-natural diet and see how that goes. This means very little processed foods, especially those that are high in sodium. Just because a can of soup or a Lean Cuisine meal is low in WW points doesn't mean it's low in sodium and WW doesn't account for that. I really need to cut back on my sodium intake. Most of the processed foods I eat will be things that are harder to avoid like cereal or maybe a Fiber One bar as a snack. I'm going to start eating more fish and tuna and cutting out almost all red meat. Brandon is on board with this diet so hopefully he can lose a little pudge too. He's gained about 30 pounds over the course of our marriage.
We're starting to waver on our choice to go to sunny Mexico for our first real vacation. Instead we're becoming more and more interested in another adventure...Europe. It would only be Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I don't want to go traipsing about the continent visiting as many countries as I can without truly experiencing any of them. That's just not how we travel. We started thinking about this vacation change because Brandon has been talking so much about moving there when we retire and I'm getting very curious about what the region is like. We planned on taking a trip there in about 7 or 8 years when our child is old enough to enjoy long trips but that seems so far away. There are pros and cons to choosing this trip over Mexico and one of the major cons is the extra cost. But the reason the cost would be more is because we would stay longer, not because things are more expensive there. If we chose to go during the exact time we had planned our Cancun vacation then the cost would actually be a bit lower than the Cancun trip. Everything is still up in the air and we won't make a choice on our trip for another month so we have plenty of time to figure things out. In the meantime though, Brandon has started teaching me a little German. Es ist nicht deine katse!! Yes, I came up with that sentence all on my own :)
Sometimes I find the adoption wait is getting to me a little and other times I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of life without kids. It varies from day to day but as the weeks go by I do find myself getting more and more impatient. When is our child going to get here? That's the million dollar question. So to pass the time we've decided to get back into puzzling. I used to love putting together jigsaw puzzles and I was damn good at it. I'd do puzzles and get them framed and give them away as gifts or hang them as artwork in my house. I have a few Van Gogh puzzles and a Thomas Kinkade right now. The largest puzzle I did was 2,000 pieces and was of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. I gave it to my grandparents. Our next puzzle project is two-fold. I liked one puzzle and Brandon liked another so I bought both. The first puzzle is a 2,000 piece of Hallstatter, Austria, one of the place we'd like to visit when we go to Europe. The second puzzle was my choice, a 4,000 piece of Neuschwanstein Castle, another must-see in Germany. I couldn't resist a good challenge. I just hope it fits on my kitchen table or I'll be stuck doing it on the nursery room floor. I've never had to do a puzzle on the floor before.
So with all this travel talk I must admit that I'm considering a career change to a travel agent. With my organization skills and love for foreign places I think I would be very good at it. Remember my Ireland itinerary? Who wouldn't want me to plan a vacation like that for them! The only problem is that I have no paid experience or any certifications. I'm looking into the certification process and the business itself (I'm not too keen on working for commission only. I don't enjoy pushing sales on hotels I can't personally recommend) So it's not a for-sure thing just yet but so many people have recommended that I become one that it's hard to ignore, especially if the natural talent is there. Brandon said at the very least I could get certified and do it as a hobby for family and friends. Maybe charge a small fee to cover the costs of memberships and software programs and that's it. It sounds like a career I could really enjoy and it's definitely worth checking into but that's all I'm doing right now. I'm not going to quit my day job till I get all the info.
I'd also like to announce that I will no longer be adding anymore blogs to my Parenting section. It's getting just a little too big. Also, I'll only be picking a small number of blogs to move from the Infertility section to the Pregnancy section. I don't want to offend anyone by not following once someone gets pregnant but so many of the infertility blogs I follow get pregnant successfully that I can't be having a huge Pregnancy blog list. The majority of my blogs will be infertility and adoption, as I'd like it to be, and very few Pregnancy and Parenting blogs. I'll also try to keep the Parenting a healthy mix of biological parenting and adopted parenting. I hope everyone understands.
So that's my past two weeks in a nutshell. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and hopefully everyone had some time off from work as well.
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