Not So SAHM

Lincoln and Buddhist Monks

I can combine anything can’t I. First it’s orange and chocolate. Now it’s Lincoln and Buddhism. Here’s the story.

Last week I decided to take the girls into the city to picnic at a monument. This is something I’ve dreamed about doing since I found out we were moving here. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to live so close to DC. It would be so much easier to hop into the city if we live close than if we have to drive/metro forever. There’d be no way I’d want to just pop over and have lunch at a monument. So, we live close to the city and therefore I want to just pop over and have lunch at a monument.

I packed our lunches and loaded the girls up. We were all ready to go. Reagan really wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial. Alright, to the Lincoln Memorial we shall go. Wanting to test out my driving and navigation skills I decided not to use the nav part of my nav unit. Jeeves, I call him. I had Jeeves on so I could see all of the streets around me, but I didn’t have him telling me where to go. This could be seen as a mistake.

The bridge I thought we were going to cross, we didn’t cross. No problem, the Key Bridge is up near Rosslyn, I’ll take that over. Except there’s no on ramp in the direction that I’m heading. I had to do a U-turn, drive back a mile and make almost a 360 degree circle to take the bridge into DC. By this time I decided that I needed Jeeves to tell me how to get to Lincoln.

He gets us there alright, but I’m determined to find the closest parking available to the monument. There’s not a metro stop that gets really close to the Lincoln Memorial so I thought I’d drive and test my luck (although I don’t believe in luck) with metered parking. Jeeves wants me to take a left when we get to the monument. Well, no one told the Garmin map updaters that that specific left is now blocked and guarded. I had to take a right. That right took me over a bridge back into Virginia. So I had to make my way back up to the Key Bridge. And I had to do the U-turn, the mile drive and almost 360 degree circle to get over the bridge into DC.

This time I decided that parking anywhere in the vicinity would be good enough for us. It was already past 1pm and we were hungry. Bring on the picnic! And I’m not one to drive around looking for a good parking spot all day anyway. I finally found a metered spot on a street a block or two away from Lincoln. It was a two-hour spot, which should be plenty of time for us to eat (even though my girls can be painfully slow eaters), tour the museum, stamp our National Parks passport books and head back to the truck. To my delight, and great fortune, this spot still had an hour and fifteen minutes left on the meter. Such a good thing since I started feeding quarters, and feeding quarters, and feeding quarters in it to get it up to two hours. I think it took me six quarters to advance the time to two hours. 45 minutes was $1.50. Choke. Whatever, it would be worth it. (Side note, I am very jealous of my quarters now. When I pay for things and use cash I NEVER pay with any quarters I might have. No, those are saved specifically for feeding into the hungry meter machines.) The walk to the Lincoln Memorial took ten minutes. This was pleasant only for the fact that Ashlyn was in a stroller and Reagan was excited that we were finally getting to see Lincoln.

It couldn’t have been a better day to dine al fresco near the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. We picked a spot on the lower steps, closer to the pool, and made ourselves comfortable. For Ashlyn and Reagan this meant barely eating as they were more interested in playing on the stairs. No bother, the beautiful sky and fresh air allayed any anal desires to have them sit still and just eat their lunch already.

As they were playing a Buddhist monk descended the stone steps and stopped to marvel at my youngest. She was cute and all with her little blond pigtails, but was stooping over, coddling her chin, and staring necessary? My first instinct was to kick him where it would hurt and shove him down the stairs, but then I realized that I could take him if he really started to get weird. At this point I could tell he was just fascinated with her blondness or something. He was saying things to me but I couldn’t understand a word he spoke.

He moved along, continuing down the steps, but then three other monks and what must have been their English interpreter came down. They too stopped to marvel at my youngest. Wow, I thought….and then I didn’t know what else to think. Then the interpreter asked if one of them could get his picture taken with her. The monk at first tried to stand next to Ashlyn, who doesn’t really like to stand still to get her picture taken. Add to that she doesn’t know what to make of men in red robes paying so much attention to her either. She was a little put off about needing to stand next to him, so he bent down to get on her level. Reagan, seeing all the fuss being made, jumped in as well. Now, Buddhist number one saw what was going on with Buddhist number two and after number two’s picture was taken he had to jump in and get his picture taken as well.

All of this was taking place on the steps right in front of the reflecting pool. Other people were coming and going. One family saw the exchange and the daughter ran down and tried to ask one of the monks, as they were walking away, if she could get her picture taken with them. They just kept on walking. After her parents caught up with her I heard the mom complaining to the dad that they didn’t even pay attention to the daughter. I butted in here and explained that they didn’t speak English, they weren’t being rude. At this point the dad goes, “that was the Dalai Lama.”

I suppressed my laughter and managed, “he probably would have a bigger entourage if he was the Dalai Lama.” At this the wife sides with me and the husband said, “well, they were very humble.” In what, ignoring your daughter’s request for a photo? I thought it was impressive though that the teen had enough guts to go up to who she thought was a big religious figure and ask for a photo with him. I then explained to them that it was the monks who had stopped to take a picture with us, not the other way around.

The rest of the day was less eventful. We looked through the Lincoln Memorial, got our National Parks passports stamped, walked through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, made it back to the truck with seven minutes to spare and made it home with the help of Jeeves.

Later that night, after I told Du about our adventures, he was reading daily news events on his computer and says, “oh look, the Dalai Lama is in town!”, playing me for a sucker. I know what the Dalai Lama looks like.

Who’s afraid of a challenge?

Apparently I am.

I’m placing the blame of my blogosphere absence squarely on the shoulders of one blogger. It should be myself, but who likes to blame themselves? Ronnica of Ignorant Historian wrote a post, several weeks ago now, on five words and what they meant to her. These five words were given to her by someone else. No picking of words allowed. She challenged her readers to do the same. Wow, I thought, this will be a great opportunity to get off my bloggy butt and write a good post.

Uh. Yeah. Ronnica kicked my butt. She emailed me my five words on, let’s see, 18 August, and they’ve been sitting in my inbox ever since. I saw the words and immediately began back pedaling. Mistaken was I thinking that she would just pick five words out of the air and I would be all flowers and rainbows and happy dancing fingers over the keys. Instead I sank into a deep, dark blogging depression. How would I live up to these words and do them justice at this time in my life? We’re trying to get the house settled. We eat dinner and then it’s somehow time to go to bed. No time for even short blog posts, much less thought provoking, detailed ones.

Days went by and nary a word was typed at Not So SAHM. I’m not sure I even have readers anymore. My bloggy depression seemed to be permanent. Would I have the stamina to get past this writing block/paranoia and blog about all of the cool and funny things that have been going on here? Not likely.

Then the holiday weekend came. And I took a two hour nap today. I’m going to tackle the five word post the best I can and hopefully that will jump start me back to blogging freedom again. So here goes. My five words are:

culture
politics
family
home
right

What are you doing to me Ronnica! I’m trying to become less political (bad for business around here with hubby’s job) and here we go with words laden with meaning and opinion and depth. We’ll see.

CULTURE I love culture. Culture is a means of expressing the lifestyle of a certain people group. I love all kinds of culture. I love plays and art exhibits and concerts and symphony performances. I can go to a highly cultural symphony one night and then a very cultural monster truck show the very next day. And feel at home at both. Symphonies and monster truck rallies are both just part of cultures I have grown up around. And I cherish all the cultural influences I have been fortunate to be exposed to.

However, and here is where I think Ronnica was thinking I would go, our culture in America, and indeed the world, has become so devoid of God that any and everything is encouraged to be accepted. And within Christian culture it is becoming acceptable to question truths and Truths that we have held as undeniable until now. This is sad to me. Secular humanism, the ideas and philosophies in this post modern world, is so accepted that it’s crept into even the most sacred of places. Most people, who claim to be Christians, when given a test to determine their world view, end up with varying amounts of secular humanism in their thought processes. And it’s everywhere: in our schools, our extracurricular activities, parenting philosophies, and even some pulpits. This part of culture I do not appreciate.

POLITICS If you don’t know my position on politics then where have you been? I’m a strong Christian conservative with little patience for other viewpoints. I mean, you are just wrong. That is it. That’s not very loving and definitely doesn’t open up the table for much discussion though does it. Living in the DC area, I would die if I tried to defend my political viewpoint every time I turned around. I am learning much patience up here for the political world. Thankfully the only access I have to politics is CSPAN radio and whatever I find on the internet. We don’t have cable, I don’t read the newspapers and so I am not exposed to the daily ins and outs of all the political chicanery that goes on here nor am I exposed to the stupid viewpoints that many people have about that chicanery. It’s been a good buffer to introduce me to DC politics slowly. I do plan on visiting the floors of the House and Senate and the Supreme Court. Can you imagine me getting thrown out for yelling “that’s just stupid!”? Yeah, I can see it too. I still need to work on biting my tongue and loving you even when you are wrong.

FAMILY I believe nothing more sincerely (except for the salvation work of Jesus) than the fact that family is where it all begins and where it all ends. You can look at all of society’s problems and all of our cultures missteps and trace every single one of them back to poor family situations. Not even terrible family situations, just families who don’t care, or don’t take enough time for each other, or families who focus more on what’s outside the house walls than what’s inside. I think that we all need to be seeking a closer relationship with God and if we were all doing that then our families would be much stronger. And if our families were much stronger the kids coming out of those families wouldn’t be so messed up. And if those kids weren’t so messed up then they wouldn’t grow into messed up adults. And then there would be much less messed up adults to mess up our world. Obviously a good family situation at home isn’t going to solve all of the world’s problems, but man, it would be the best start to getting them solved! I believe we need to work on getting our families strong again. That’s where our effort needs to be! That is the real fix. Everything else we’re trying to “fix” right now is just being patched up with bandaids. Education, health care, the economy, abortion, and every other social issue is just being patched up with bandaids right now. Unless we focus on healing and strengthening our families none of these temporary fixes is going to work.

And what I am truly shocked about is how easily the government is destroying our families. It is a lot easier for the government to take control of our everyday lives if they can wrestle our children away from us, get them used to being handed everything by the government, being told what to think, and then letting them loose to have their own kids. Then we don’t even expect to have to parent well or have the right to parent as we see fit. The Nanny State is the death of the family. And our government is headed that way, and it was headed that way before our current president ever stepped foot in the White House.

On a side note, if we as a country ratify the UN Declaration of the Rights of a Child we have just signed away the ability of families to remain strong and grow stronger. This is a poorly veiled attempt at continuing the one-world government agenda that the UN has. Once we sign our names to that, the words in that convention supersede the liberties that we have within the constitution, either specific or implied. This is serious stuff and we’re trying to be made to feel ashamed since we are the only country other than Somalia that hasn’t signed it. You know what? I don’t care. It is fallacious logic to state that the United States has ill intent towards our kids since the only other country that hasn’t signed on is Somalia. Stupid and dishonest.

HOME See above.

Home is many places for me. Home is Pensacola, where I was born. Home is Georgia where I grew up. And for the last fourteen years home has been wherever my husband’s job sees fit to send us. Seven different places if I count correctly. Seven in fourteen years. That truly shows that home is not necessarily where your roots are. Home is where you are planted at the moment and it’s your job to grow while you are there. I love the fact that I have been able to call so many places home. In fact, when we do settle down I’m not sure that I’m going to like having to call just one place home. I may be a perpetual traveler, calling the road Home.

Home, for me, in the spiritual sense is a place that I have only hoped for so far. My ultimate home is a mansion that is being prepared for me in Heaven. I hope it has a wrap around porch. Do You take blueprints Jesus? Kidding, I wouldn’t even dare.

RIGHT Oh, Ronnica, this has so much meaning behind it. I’m right handed. I live on the right coast (as opposed to the left coast), I’m on the right of the political spectrum. I am right. Except for when I’m shown just how wrong I can be, especially sitting in the pew on Sundays. I have so much to learn and I’m being made right everyday through the work of the Holy Spirit.

********************************************************

And there you have it. I feel a big weight off my shoulders. Thank you so much Ronnica for providing me with this exercise. And no, the blame doesn’t sit on her shoulders at all. I will not, however, be extending the invitation out two the one or two readers I may have left. Talk about another intimidating road block. If you want to do this then pretend I sent you five words. Make them nice though.

Orange Chocolate Love

One of the greatest flavor combinations ever invented is that of orange and chocolate. I would like to thank the culinary genius who created this most excellent concoction from the bottom of my chocolate (and orange) loving heart. It really is the best combo for me as I’ve always loved chocolate and, get this, orange has always been my favorite flavor of candy. I know! Like it was meant to my my combination. I did not have the ultimate mélange of deliciousness, however, until I was an adult and discovered the chocolatiers in France.

And please try to pronounce chocolatier with a French accent. Go ahead. In your head. Say it. “sho-clah-teeay”. Très bon. At least that’s how I pronounce it. It’s one of the words I always have to say with a French accent. It’s like me trying to say the fashion label: BCBG. Everyone I know, even Heidi Klum pronounces it using American pronunciation (bee cee bee gee). However, BCBG is a French slang term basically meaning “preppy”, and therefore I am forever pronouncing it the French way and have to force myself to Americanize it. Not so with chocolatier.

Anyway, Du and I were visiting France for the first time and entered into this chocolatier in order to experience authentic confectionery delight. What did I walk away with? The little orange sticks dipped in chocolate. I was in chocolate heaven. And whenever we would visit France we would have to get some version, either candied orange peel or an orange jelly type stuff, but dipped in wonderful French chocolate.

Being back in the states I have found substitutes. Russell Stover makes wonderful chocolate dipped orange sticks. And there’s the orange slice shaped chocolate that I will devour if given the chance.

Still more, there are the orange flavored chocolate cookies from Pepperidge Farm. I am sure I have tasted these before, but I don’t make a habit of buying the Pepperidge Farm cookies, because let’s face it, they’re expensive and I’m cheap frugal.

This is where is where improvisation comes in. It’s also when I kick myself for not thinking of this sooner. I have created my own orange chocolate cookie. I cannot take all the credit though. Props to Reagan and Nilla Wafers as well. She saw a box of the Keebler variety and on the back it had a recipe for strawberry cookies. Take two wafers slather strawberry cream cheese between them and dip them in white or regular chocolate. Remembering my goal of teaching her how to cook, and overcoming my habit of saying no to requests of making extra things in the kitchen (especially with “help”), I relented and we made the strawberry cookies.

Y’all the cookies are good that way, but they weren’t completely doing it for me. After eating several though I realized that if I were to smack some orange marmalade in the middle and dip them in chocolate I’d have perfection on my hands. So I did:

and perfection was made. CHEAP perfection I might ad. And they are so simple. The hardest part is melting the chocolate and if you have a microwave that’s not even hard. Sorry there are only six cookies in the picture. I ate many of them while working this post. There will be more made though. And this would be an amazing fondue dipper. Oh yes. You’re welcome.

Picking battles

Today I had to lose a battle even though I was fully capable of winning it. I know though that I’m prepared to win the war if need be.

Homeschool laws are different in each state. I guess I should be happy about this because it puts power in the state’s hands, not the federal government’s. The difficult part is that I don’t really get to choose the state in which we live. My husband’s job does that. The homeschooling laws in our state basically state that I have to notify the local school superintendent of my intent to homeschool. I also have to fall under one of several categories and then have to provide a description of the curriculum I plan on using.

Nowhere in the statute does it state that I have to provide my child’s date of birth, last school attended, neighborhood school, or if my child is eligible for special education resources. After complying with the law by submitting a Notice Of Intent letter, a copy of my college diploma, and a description of our planned curriculum (which was as simple as telling them what subjects I am going to teach), I then received an email from someone in the school system asking me to fill out the school system’s own NOI. It asked for all of that information that I am not legally required to provide.

This presented a big problem for me. I don’t want to rock the boat and be contentious because then they know my name and could potentially make my homeschooling experience a living Hell. They couldn’t do anything legally, but they sure could pester me. HOWEVER, I know that I am in the right and I don’t want to give an inch, especially when it comes to the subject of homeschooling. I am very defensive about homeschooling because of the negative press it receives and the weird ideas people have about it and homeschoolers in general.

So, I was torn about whether to comply with the extra required information, just ignore it and wait and see if they would come back for more, or immediately go on the defensive letting them know I was in compliance, talk to my legal council. After calling the Home School Legal Defense Association (which you should join if you’re a homeschooler, btw) I decided to just ignore the email. If they were really serious about getting information from me then they would contact me again.

This brings me to today. I received another email, this time from the person that got the short straw at school and is now stuck dealing with the weird homeschool families. Now, I don’t know if that’s exactly the way it went down, but I’m guessing she doesn’t fully enjoy being the homeschool liaison or else she would have chosen her words a little bit differently. She wrote,

We have received your application for your daughter and need her birth date to process the application. Please email me this information at your earliest convenience. Thank you,

and signed her name. Hold on, what!? There is no application for homeschooling and nothing has to be processed. I checked the law. I am fully capable of homeschooling my child. I am telling you that is what is going to happen. I’m not waiting for you to process any application, implying that something might be rejected. This is what makes me think she doesn’t care much about fully understanding the law. Or she doesn’t care enough about being the liaison to word things correctly. I guess I should cut her some slack.

So, around and around again I went today. Do I just email her the birth date? Do I ignore again? Do I slap a copy of the statute in an email and let her know I’m in full compliance already? The last option was what I was leaning towards all day. And I got the idea to ask her why they even needed my daughter’s birth date? Just out of curiosity, of course.* I had to decide if this was a battle I was going to pick to fight. If I emailed the birth date the whole “situation” might just blow over and maybe they wouldn’t remember my name and my address throughout the school year. If I ignored again there could be the possibility that they would see that as defiance and remember my name and address throughout the school year. And if I got all sassy on them just for a birth date they very well could remember my name and address.

I chose to lose this battle in hopes of getting them off my back. I had to swallow my pride. I had to give up the idea of putting them in their place about the homeschooling law, even if they are just gathering extra information to get more money for their school district, or some other seemingly innocent idea. But I am ready. If for some reason they feel the need to ask for anything else I will get aggressive and let them know I have legal council who has advised me not to provide any more information. Back off.

Still, I may give Miss Short Straw a call to let her know the school website’s page on homeschooling has information and requirements on there coming from an old statute, and that what they have on there currently doesn’t fall within the Virginia state law. In a totally nice and non-confrontational way of course. Because I still have that desire to win…

*The reason they want the birth date could be as simple as wanting to know if the child truly falls within the age limits of compulsory attendance. It could also be a way to determine if that child is on the track they have deemed appropriate for education. This is where battles are usually fought with school systems and homeschoolers. The school system thinks your child should be learning a, b and c in the second grade, but you, as the child’s caregiver who intimately knows the brain of this child and the one who ultimately has control over your child thinks he should be learning c, a little bit of b and x. Who is right? (And don’t even get started with me here. If you think the government should be in control of a child’s education please just lose this battle, like I had to above, and do not respond. Thankyouverymuch)

Hi, I’m Vicki, and I’m a…

couponer.

I spent around $35 at Harris Teeter today and got a boatload of stuff. My receipt said my coupon savings were around $80. I almost choked when I read that. Not sure if that’s totally right, I haven’t personally done the math but still, $35 for all this:

At Walgreens the other day I spent $25 and saved $55.

I recently started “couponing”, if that’s even how you spell it. My pastor’s wife, and friend, in Montgomery held a seminar one night to tell us how she consistently saves as much as she spends at Publix and how her year-to-date savings at CVS was closing in on $1000. This was early April. You all know how cheap frugal I am. If there’s a way for me to stock my pantry and save even more for our travel budget then I’m all over it. This is what I’ve learned. Please know, none of this is original with me. I am no where near as good as some ladies who can manage 90% savings at Publix all the time.

Couponing can be as easy and laid back or as detailed and plotted out as you want. For me, right now, it’s kind of a game or a challenge. Nurturing my anal tendencies and my innate desire to play with things and organize them (I must be a tactile learner…), clipping and organizing coupons is a somewhat fun task. It can take a while, but anyway. Here is what I do.

I bought a binder, I think it’s 1″, it may be 1.5″ and baseball card holders.

I’ve categorized the coupons into a ton of different categories (once again, not my idea). They are: breads, canned/boxed goods, cereals, cleaning products, condiments/seasoning, cooking helpers, desserts/baking, drinks, drugs, frozen foods, meat, other food, other household, paper goods, pets, refrigerated, restaurants, snacks, store specific (coupons that are only good at a certain store), and toiletries. AND I’ve broken down toiletries into oral care, feminine products, shaving, deodorant, tools/accessories, eye care, nails, fragrance, body, makeup, face care (like eye creams, etc), hair care. I should do the same for cleaning products. Most coupons seem to be for either HBA or cleaning products.

I subscribe to the Sunday paper and clip every coupon. I read somewhere, and she ended up showing an example, that sometimes you need to buy one thing in order to get another thing free. Well you might not want or need thing 1, but to get thing 2 you’ve got to buy it. It’d be nice to get thing 1 for cheap or free (and then donate it or sell it like she does on Craigslist) in order to get what you really want, thing 2. Lisa, my pastor’s wife, even goes into CVS sometimes on Sunday night and asks if she can have a couple of extra inserts from the leftover papers. It costs the store nothing to give the inserts to you. I have not tried that. Yet.

So, I clip every coupon and put them into piles as I clip. Once all the clipping is done I then put the coupons into the binder. WHILE I’m doing this I am also checking the expiration dates of the coupons already in there. If my shopping day is on a Monday then I’ll pull all the coupons that will expire up to the Sunday before that. I put the coupons that are near expiration into a clear zip-locky pencil case type thing.

that’s it, the orange thing

After all the coupons are inserted into their proper categories I then start to peruse the blogs and ads. Here is where the money saving happens. And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs out there that will help you out. I’ll list the ones I follow below. The goal is to combine what is on sale at the store with coupons you have. Most ladies try to create a stockpile of necessities of the house: meat, ketchup, tomato sauce, pasta, toilet paper, etc. If a price is insanely cheap, on meat for instance, try to stock up so you don’t have to pay for that meat when it’s at it’s regular, high price. If something is on sale and you have a coupon for it think about getting it for that week. It may be a yogurt that you don’t normally buy, or chips that you’ve never tried.

Blogs: There are awesome women out there who will list everything that is in the sales papers and the coupons that go with them. YES!! You don’t even have to do that much work! This is especially helpful when you’re just starting out (like me). They will tell you the item on sale and then all of the coupons (known to them) that are active right now for that product. The best thing about this is that they are really telling you what the best deals are. Right now I mostly only stick to the items that are mentioned in those blog posts. It’s just easier. I’m slowly starting to branch out and do the ad scanning myself. To do the ad scanning you need to know what is the going rate for products when not on sale. That way you’ll know if it’s a good deal. THEN you search your coupons (which should be neatly organized in those categories) to make the deals even better.

Something else everyone will tell you is that you cannot be brand specific if you’re seriously couponing. If your favorite brand of ketchup never goes on sale then how are you going to save money? However, I am also finding that to seriously coupon it’s very hard to pay attention to the health content of the sales items. There are women out there who eat organic and still coupon (and there are organic coupons to be found). Obviously their savings isn’t going to be as great. You’ve got to decide for your family what is the most important and what your budgetary and health goals actually are.

Whew, still with me? There are several stores that will automatically double coupons everyday. These blogs usually tell you which ones double and up to how much and how many coupons you can use in a transaction and what the rules are for BOGO. Keep this in mind when doing your mental math to see if the deals are really good (or read the blogs, they usually do the math for you as well telling you how much the final price will be after sale and coupons). I just shopped at Harris Teeter today where they normally double coupons up to and including .99. This week, however, they are doubling up to and including $1.98. That means if you have a coupon that gives you $1.50 off, this week it will give you $3.00 off. See how the savings can add up?! SIDE NOTE: check your coupons to make sure they don’t say something mean like “do not double”. These coupons will not double when the cashier rings them up. I had that horror of horrors happen to me my first time trying t do doubles at Harris Teeter. Lesson learned.

So, after I’ve read the blogs and looked through the sale papers I’ve pulled all the coupons I want to use this week. I have also been putting them into store envelopes and writing separate store grocery lists. I have an envelope for each store and in it go the list and coupons for that week. SIDE NOTE: on the shopping list I will put an asterisk if I have a coupon to use for that item. (See picture above and you can see my envelopes)

Did you know, that if you have a store specific coupon you can still use a manufacturer’s coupon as well? That’s called stacking. If Safeway put a coupon in their ad for Lays chips and you also happen to have a coupon that you clipped from one of the coupon books (or pulled it off the shelf in the store, etc) you can use both of them on the same bag of chips. Normally only one store coupon and one manufacturer’s coupon can be used per item. As far as I know.

There are various other tidbits about which coupons to hand over first, etc. That will come as you read the blogs smarter than me on this subject. Now, from personal experience, I can tell you that it will be intimidating at first. I feel weird handing over twenty coupons to the cashier, like today (but it apparently saved me $80. I think I’ll get over it). I also feel very weird making multiple purchases at CVS or Walgreens because I want to use the Extra Care Bucks from one purchase on the very next purchase. Ladies, if you haven’t tried this though you must. If you buy something for $3 and they give you $3 in ECBs back, they are in essence giving you $3 to use on your next purchase. So!…you go and buy some things that add up to $3 and get them for free! And if they have ECBs tied to them then you get more money back from that purchase. It can go on and on. Once you learn how to roll the ECBs from purchase to purchase making multiple transactions at one time doesn’t become so sweat inducing. I’m still in the sweat inducing phase though, especially since it never fails that a long line forms behind me as soon as I say, “I’m going to make multiple purchases if that’s ok.” If the line gets too long then stop your purchases and go get in the back of the line.

Oh, I almost forgot. Today is the first day that I actually took my coupon binder into the store with me. That was awkward as well, although I read about ladies who do this all the time, and you really can find great deals that weren’t published in the sales papers. As you’re walking down the aisles you’ll start to recognize items that you have coupons for. If you can quickly access your coupons and see if matching them up would be a great deal then you just saved some money!

Ok, I think I’ve muddied the waters enough. Here are the blogs that I follow to get great coupon information and great steals all around. These are in no particular order (actually I just realized Google Reader put them in alphabetical order for me)

OH, and do all this with two kids.

they’re freezing cold in this picture

I would LOVE to be able to shop without them, and actually I recommend it because then you can truly pay attention to what’s a good deal, etc. But, you do whatcha gotta do. Let me know if you have any questions. Could you even make sense of all this?

Back to School (advice)

It’s almost back to school time! We are homeschoolers and are pretty free as to when we are able to begin the school year. I normally like to begin in early August. This gives us plenty of time to take as many days (weeks…) off as we need to and still finish at a decent time in the spring/summer. This year, however, we moved again and have needed August to get settled.

As a homeschooler the biggest part of going back to school really isn’t sending your kids back to school. It’s getting yourself ready. I remember the first year I taught Reagan. Back then I was much more anal and I planned and organized and planned some more and created a bulletin board and fretted and lost sleep. She was so young that it didn’t really matter if she learned anything that year or not. Still, I wanted the beginning of school to go well. I won’t get into how horrible I was as a teacher forcing a three and a half year old to complete worksheets when all she wanted to do was color and play with play dough. Wow.

Since then I have relaxed a little (with worrying) and don’t fret as much as before. Reagan is now at the age where she actually needs to be learning and comprehending things. By the grace of God this happens. And I can honestly say it is not me. What would I say now to someone who is just getting started on the homeschool path?

My best advice, what I have to continually tell myself, is to take it one day at a time. One bad day is not going to blow the whole school year (thankfully!). There will be really good days where everything clicked, everyone paid attention, and everything was understood. Then there will be really bad days where nothing clicked, attention spans were next to nothing, and Mommy yelled a little too much. Ahem. Most of the days will range somewhere in between. The great thing is you get to start over and try again the next day.

Which leads to another great piece of advice: stay flexible. One of the great things about homeschooling is the ability to teach what you want, when you want, where you want, how you want, using whatever you want. And what works one week might not work the next. Use that built in flexibility to try new options. It keeps school fresh as well.

The first couple of days are always a little awkward to me. Fumbling around with notebooks and computer programs and sometimes papers flying everywhere, the first day of homeschool isn’t a study in grace or composure. It’s so nice to get those first few days under the belt; then the days begin to groove, or at least you don’t feel so awkward switching from one subject to the next.

I’m looking forward to getting this year started. We live in the Colonial/Revolutionary beltway it seems. We studied those periods last year, but are going to redo them since we’re living in the middle of it all now. I think I’m more excited than Reagan to be able to visit key places and stand where our Forefathers stood. Not to mention we’ll be learning how to sew and cook this year along with doing lots of experiments and reading and writing. I think it’s going to be a great year. Now I just have to make it past those first couple of days.

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