daily life

ok, let me start by saying, i have tried to find books on the daily life of women from the depression years to the 1950's (the years i am most interested in) and there are very few to none out there that i could locate. i tried to turn to my grandmother's diaries but the entries, though daily, did not tell much about her day to day life. so i am trying to be better about this for my kids and grandkids sakes. hopefully they will not find it terribly boring, cuz let me tell ya, living it certainly is not boring! ha!

today, my first waking thought was, i have to get up and get going, we HAVE to stick to this schedule printed up for the kids. well then the lady on my other shoulder said, while it is good to have a guideline, the benefit of staying home with the kids is that you DON'T have to be so strict on times. then the other voice said louder, but you know yourself, and how easy it is to just let it all go and say forget it for today until today is next month etc.... so i compromised with my voices (there's enough fighting with the kids in this house, i don't need to be fighting with myself!) i decided to put a limit on my sleeping in, no later than 9 and that is if i was up really late the night before. AND to be really strict on the items on the list but maybe not so much on the time.

So i got up, reluctantly. today is teaching tuesday. it also was whitebean chilli for supper and ricekrispy treats for snack day. sooo gracie learned how to grate cheese and chicken on the grater for the soup, and frankie learned how to make ricekrispy treats. i also taught them about how to measure things out, how some recipes need to be exact and others not so much. ***on a side note, i just have to put it in cuz i thought about it the whole time gracie was working. frankie's friend blake was over the other day and the cheese grater was out on the counter, he said "is that a real grater thingy!?" i said yes and he goes "that is soooo cool" and went on about it for a couple minutes more, i had to laugh and thought wow, what this generation doesn't know! lol anyway i go back to .....SQUIRREL! so back to the cooking lesson. they both did really good, and did not fight at all, in fact they were quite helpful to each other, which really set the mood for most of the day. so once that was going, we packed up the coolers into the van for the cold groceries we would be getting, (we go to 3 different stores each time to get the best food at the best prices) made up some water bottles and snacks as we are determined NOT to eat fast food any more and off we went. * btw i thought my cell was in my purse and it was actually in the car chris took to work, but it was actually really nice not having that distraction. i think the kids enjoyed it too!
we stopped at jo ann fabrics first to get supplies for thursday's craft project and next tuesdays sewing lesson. they both decided right away they would take turns sitting up front, which was a miracle and wonderful at the same time!
then off to aldi's. both kids were great all day fetching things for me and learning about what kind of things we get and why. we like aldi's for the cheapest prices but they don't ever have everything we need and i really don't care for most of their produce. while there, gracie and i noticed and elderly lady with a cane, getting ready to take her cart back to the coral, gracie offered take it back for her and return with the quarter, she agreed but told her to keep the quarter. then as she finished that, there was yet another elderly lady with a cane and she again offered to take the cart back and hand her the quarter and she too told her she could keep the quarter. we laughed and i told gracie she just earned the equivelant of a 30 minute card in less than 2 mins!
then we headed to walmart, where the non food prices are the best and some of our groceries. we have also been trying to do away with the ten million plastic grocery bags we come home with and been using our wonderful LARGE aldi's canvas bags. i love these cuz hey hold alot and they are very durable, highly recommend them, they are only $1.99 a bag too! it's easy with aldi cuz they don't bag, they just put all the groceries back in your cart and you go bag yourself. however at walmart and kroger i usually forget the bags in the car, so i decided to just go with the aldi way today and told the cashier, don't bag them just put them all back in the cart. i figured i might get stopped leaving with all that in my cart and no bags, them thinking i didn't check out, so i had receipt in hand, but all he said was, have a nice day! ha! at this point we were getting really hungry, we had only had waffles before we left, but we were determined not to grab something, so we marched on to kroger, got the produce and the last remaining things there. i got as much organic as possible, but they are limited on what produce they have there, i need to plan trips to the farmers' market better until my own garden comes in. i got our organic chicken nuggets and noticed they had hamburger patties and rolls of hamburger, both from pasture fed cows. i was really excited. i knew they would be a bit more, but i thought, i am "voting" to buy and support organic, however at the check out, that tiny roll of hamburger that was not even a POUND was $6.99!!! ok, we will become vegetarians before i will pay that much for hamburger. (i returned the meat for a refund before we left the store) we definetly need to look into getting the bulk meat from local farmers!
home we went, where thankfully chris was home from work and was able to help carry in groceries. we got to talking so gracie helped by starting to put groceries away. the soup was done and calling our names! i had a bowl and chris and i headed out to the yard, started working out there til frankie came out and reminded me about their daily in the word that started in a few minutes and i had not put it together for them yet. so i came in, did that and went ahead and planned out the next two weeks lessons. then we all ate some more soup and pretty much relaxed the rest of the day. i must say, it was a crazy busy day, but it was one of the most relaxful and enjoyable days i have spent with my kids in a long time! i hope this is a forcast for the rest of the summer.
btw, adding 2 T of vineger to chilli does NOT cut down on the gas!