Lavender Blue Days

"Did you get me at the pet store?"

If only it were that easy.

Shawn

Lucy and Ruby have had nothing but junkfood at the inlaws today. Hundreds of varieties, it's like the wonka factory over here. It's the middle of the afternoon, and Lucy is making a move on a chocolate bunny. Not until you have some real food kid. She's too full for ravioli, wants to go straight to chocolate bunny, but we're making her eat 5 raviolis first.

One possibility is that she is not full and is manipulating to get right to the bunny. The other possibility, of course, is that she is completely full, and the treat impulse + her parents will doom her to 5 more raviolis, an entire chocolate rabbit and a trip to the upchucket bucket.


Vaguely related story- Ruby does not like hot dogs anymore. A past favorite is lost on a barfing experience. Now when offered a hot dog, Ruby says she doesn't like hot dogs and says "remember when I barfed and daddy took care of me and kept my head in the bucket?"

Daddy sure does. It was an all nighter, 9 barfer while I stayed up all night reading a movie script while my kid woke up every 20 minutes, just enough to stick her head in the bucket and fall back asleep in the daddy arms. I'm glad she remembers and I'm glad she appreciates, cause hot dog barf smells bad. I almost chain-chucked getting the chunks off the sheets. It's amazing what kind of cleanup type events you'll man-up to once you have kids.

Shawn

I used to love grocery shopping. We used to eat pretty healthy and I loved shopping for the best deals, and trying new recipes and all that. Well--that has definitely changed now that I have Lucy and Ruby. They both hate grocery shopping. They've got less than a half hour grocery trip time limit before they just explode--which is NOT enough time to go grocery shopping. This has kind of unraveled the whole eating experience for us. I don't have time to look for the cheapest prices, I've been buying more junk food, and I've been making the same meals every week. And since I dread grocery shopping so much we run out of food a lot, and we end up getting emergency fast food (Not healthy or even tasty). I can only see this getting worse when I have THREE kids who hate grocery shopping.

So--here's my plan.

1. We signed up for this fruit & vegetable co-op thing where we just get a box of fruits and veggies every week from a local farm. It's just whatever is being harvested that week. I am so excited! I don't have to shop the produce department or even decide what veggies to get, or wait in the check out lane. I just go pick up a box once a week, and that's it. I think it'll be fun to try new vegetables and new recipes. It seems like it might be a lot of food, so I might even be able to freeze some for the winter. It starts in June and I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

2. We're going to get a freezer to put in the basement and we're going to fill it up with meat. Like--a quarter of a cow and some chickens or something.

3. The non-perishable stuff it seems like we can get in bulk maybe. Like we can get a big bucket of rice and a case or two of mac & cheese, and a big tub of coffee. This part of my plan isn't completely in place yet--but I'm sure it can be done.

4. There's really not too much left at this point. Shawn could easily pick up milk, juice, eggs, bread and cheese once a week on his way home from work. Or even if I had to do it--that is definitely less than half an hour's worth of shopping.

So--what do you think? Am I forgetting anything? Any ideas on where to get cheap pantry items in bulk? I think it's really going to work out--especially if I can be creative with the vegetables. but I'll be saving so much time and stress by not grocery shopping, that I should have time to look for great recipes and try them out.

Loving the idea of not grocery shopping,
val =)

Hey everybody! I am pretty much finished painting and decorating our bedroom, so here it is! I still need to give the white trim a second coat of paint, find some curtains that I like, a few knick-knacks for the shelves above the TV, and maybe some pictures to go on the walls--but that could take forever, so I thought I would post some pictures now. We'll have to rearrange a little bit when the baby comes, but I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I wish I had taken some before pictures--but I'm always too excited to start a project and I forget to take pictures of the mess. So--instead of nice dressers, picture a combination of ugly green and gold ones and plastic ones. And instead of green walls with white trim, picture yellowish-white walls with dark, beat up trim. And instead of neatly organized baskets, picture tons and tons of clutter, with more clutter stacked on top. =)

Right now the girls' favorite toys are the plastic iguanas they got from the Burpee Museum gift shop. They're inseperable. I love it how these kids always pick something cool and hilarious for a favorite toy.

They love Mcdonald's toys as well. A lot of those Mcdonald toys I think "Wow, that's a terrible toy! It doesn't even make sense!" or "That's not fun!" Like a hunk of plastic shaped like an ipod that says American Idol on it and plays a funky 8 second tune every time you press its one button. I thought it was the worst toy ever. Ruby thinks it's the best toy ever. She does a crazy dance every time she presses the button.

I might just be really glad that they love plastic lizards and not Bratz dolls.

Shawn