Success!

So... because you are dying to know how our meal-planning and budgeting is going, let me give you an update. Since I bought Quicken, it's been doing my budgeting for me (well, categorizing items and then compiling it so I can see what we are spending). It downloaded from our bank website December's info, so I can compare last month's spending to this month. Can I just say how amazed I am at how much money we have saved??? We cut our overall food (including eating out and groceries) budget in HALF! Wow. It makes me realize how much convenience really costs.

Tonight I went grocery shopping after Wyatt went to bed and I stuck to my list for our meals and such for this week. It really makes shopping so much more rewarding to know that what I'm buying is going to get eaten! I'm not a big coupon cutter, but I'm fairly happy with my cereal deal I got tonight. General Mills cereals were on sale at Hyvee, I had a Hyvee coupon and two General Mills coupons, so I ended up with three boxes for $5.53. Not too shabby. Now, I know there are some ridiculous coupon blogs out there where the store basically pays them to buy food - I will never have the patience for that. I'm happy with my semi-cheap cereal purchase. :)

I'm hoping we don't get too much of a blizzard these next few days, but I'm happy to have my cupboards and fridge stocked. :) Hope you are all staying warm and safe!

Cookie time

Today we have stayed in all day. My last post was about how Wyatt and I were sick - well, on Friday Aaron came down with a nasty stomach bug and even today he's still been recovering. Wyatt seems just fine - extraordinarily playful even. I'm still not sleeping well at night and totally stuffed up and hoarse. Yuck. So... we stayed home to keep our germs quarantined. Naturally, by dinnertime Wyatt had exhausted playing with just about every toy, so we made cookies. How can I say no when he says "Mommy cook?" Too cute. So we made oatmeal cookies per Daddy's request.

Wyatt "helping." He's great at smashing cookie dough. :)

Making cookies just went by too fast, so we made Play-doh cookies.

He tried to sample some Play-doh, but he didn't eat much. The homemade version has so much salt in it, I'm sure it tasted gross!

Yay for cookies! :)

*Yes, he wore his jammies all day. No, I don't think there's anything wrong with that - it's environmentally friendly. :)

*Please don't judge my hair - it was in a ponytail earlier in the day... I napped when Wyatt did. I'm sick and pregnant. :)

Mommy's boy

Wyatt has been all about Mommy the past few days. I think it's mostly because we are both sick - we went to the doctor this morning, and he has an ear infection and I have a sinus infection and lots of junk in my lungs! Yuck. Aaron didn't go to the doctor, but he's got a sore throat too... We're not the healthiest house right now. I'm hoping the antibiotics will kick in by this weekend!

So... Wyatt and I vegged out on the couch tonight, eating a brownie and watching Elmo. Life is rough. :)

My cute little 18 month-old

I just think these are some seriously cute jammies, and Wyatt is even cuter! He just had his bath tonight, and now he is brushing his teeth before bed.

"Elmo?" We hear this word at least a hundred times a night!

"Fine, I'll just play for awhile. Please don't make me go to bed yet!"

Meatloaf

Tonight I made meatloaf, and I was very happy with how it turned out. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com, but I made a few tweaks of my own.

Yummy meatloaf

2 lb. ground beef (I used 85/15)

2 eggs

1-2 T. Worcestershire sauce (I eyeballed it)

~1 cup of crushed saltine crackers

1/2 c. milk

2 T. dried onion flakes

1-2 t. garlic powder

a few pinches of salt and pepper

I shaped it into a loaf in a 9x9 pan (I couldn't find my bread loaf pan, and I think I will do it this way again!) and baked it at 350 for just over an hour. I did turn the temp up to 400 for the last twenty minutes because I put in the tater tots and garlic bread.

Aaron liked it and I liked it. Wyatt turned his nose up at both the meatloaf and tater tots. What kid doesn't like tater tots??? :) Crazy kid.

I'm taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I'm actually pretty excited about it. :)

Life lately

I'm afraid I haven't been very good at keeping the blog up lately. As pretty much all of you who read my blog know, my grandma passed away last Tuesday. So, our week revolved around that, and yesterday we had the memorial service for her. It was a very nice service, and I think she would have been happy with how she was represented. We will miss her!

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year, but Aaron and I are going to try to cook more at home and go out a little less. We've never been good at planning out meals, so that makes grocery shopping a guessing game. So... we are trying to plan out our week so we only buy what we need. This week is our first experiment! :) Tonight Aaron made Bubble Pizza - very tasty. :) On the menu for the week:

Monday - Pork chops

Tuesday - Pizza

Wednesday - Meatloaf

Thursday - Chicken helper

Friday - go out!

Wyatt's first haircut

Wyatt has had a mullet long enough. Daddy took it upon himself to cut it off. :)

The finished product. Pretty good, eh? :)

"Mom, quit taking my picture. I'm trying to play!"

Poor kiddo has my thin hair - hopefully it will grow in fuller as he gets older.

Aaron thinks I'm a nutjob for saving a lock of his hair. I can't help it - I'm a sentimental when it comes to Wyatt! :) I'll probably save the first tooth he loses too.