Accomplishments – November 2017

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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We’re settled in to the early winter schedule now. Things will change up again in January. In the past week:

The twins went to math morning and Before School Sports.
We had two dentist appointments.
We had four swimming lessons.
I took the youngest to gym class and drop in gym.
The oldest went to a friend’s house.
The oldest had his first two winter baseball workouts.
On the middle school half day, the oldest went with the rec department to an Escape Room place. Never been before, but found it fun which is good because he has a birthday party there in another week.
I had the last middle school conference. I think the teachers are a bit worn out from conferences and looking forward to their completion.
I made reasonable progress on Christmas preparations.
We have many of the decorations up, but not all. I need a free evening so I don’t have too much “help” to finish them off. Even Darth Vader got in on the act.

Our first grader put some rules up for their room. Not sure of the inspiration, but the translation:
Rules
– No Fighting
– No Destroying
– Have Fun!
– No Throwing

I finished the freezer audit and will write about it this Thursday.
I continued making progress on the whole house clean.

So how did the November goals go?

Finish cleaning the house. This means everything – under/behind furniture, all surfaces, inside the furniture/cabinets themselves, unfinished areas, etc. My plan is to start at the top and work my way down. This is halfway done already. I expect to finish everything (except maybe the basement and garage). Almost there. I’m missing the master bedroom, office, basement, and garage. At this point the garage may wait until spring unless we have another round of really warm weather.
Inventory the freezers and plan to use up anything that’s been there for a while. This is largely in anticipation of holiday meat sales. Inventory the pantry for things that need to be used up / seasonal items / items that go on sale seasonally.
~~Get back on track with four blog posts per week.~~ I got a little off at the end of the month, but overall this was a success.
Order and send Christmas cards. Nope. Need to hurry up on this one.

So, that sets us up for December. My goals for this month are:

Order and send Christmas cards.
Find/buy/wrap all Christmas presents. Mail if needed.
Finish cleaning the master bedroom and garage. With the holiday break, the other spaces are just going to have to wait for 2018.
A big recipe clean-out. You know, all those magazine pages I’ve torn out or websites I’ve printed. Are we really going to try them? Also, going through my binder of tried recipes to weed out those we really don’t actually eat. I’m aiming to try one new recipe each week this winter and I’m on track (minus Thanksgiving week) so far.

November 2017 Grocery Review

04 Monday Dec 2017

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Grocery Spending

With Thanksgiving so early this year, we had a full week afterwards to finish off November.

I spent $92.94 at Star Market on Wednesday on pizza dough, pizza cheese, and oatmeal. Yes, I bought the entire case of pizza dough. And, yes, it went straight from the grocery freezer to my own.

On Thursday, I finished out the month of November by spending $98.77 at Stop & Shop.

Then, on Sunday I started December by spending $65.88 at Wegman’s. A couple notes about that trip. First, the loaf of bread was free with store coupon. It’s a new flavor. I’m not sure if we’ll like it, but at free I was willing to give it a try. Second, this is far more produce than I usually purchase at Wegman’s as I find their produce department hit or miss both for items and quality. I did find everything I was looking for. Hopefully it will all cook up nicely too. Finally, the gallon of orange juice is for the preschool holiday party this week.

That brought me to a respectable $257.59 for the week. Note, it overlaps November and December so it won’t all be included below.

November TOTAL: $1,323.59

Stop & Shop: $306.20
Wegman’s: $273.73
BJs: $376.10
Other: $367.56
- Local: $148.57
- Star Market: $169.72
- Trader Joe’s: $0
- Target: $49.27
- Other: $0

A high month. Two trips to BJ’s, two trips to Shaw’s plus a food intensive holiday will do that to you.

Meals keep moving along. Unfortunately with the winter schedule we’re back to more split dinners. But, fewer people are out late so there’s generally less busyness.

Monday:
Salmon “Wellington”, green beans

Tuesday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, broccoli
Late: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Macaroni & cheese, green beans

Thursday:
Early: Eggs
Late: Steak, hash browns, spinach salad

Friday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, broccoli
Late: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Grilled hot dogs & sausages, baked beans, chips, veggie plate

Sunday:
Tacos, corn, refried beans

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Thanksgiving 2017!

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Yes, the big item of the week was that we hosted a total of 14 people. Everything went smoothly. We spatchcocked two small turkeys vs cooking one big bird. That really cuts down on oven time, and when you’re eating at lunch means not getting up ridiculously early.

The second big item was I had my TSA Pre-Check interview, and got approved within the same week! I wasn’t doubting getting approved, but I had heard that one had to apply for this months before one’s travel date. Apparently that is no longer the case. I filled in the form online, had the interview, and got approved all within the month of November.

Less significantly:

Three boys had swimming lessons.
Two went to math morning.
I went to a meeting to discuss the future of Halloween celebrations at school.
I fitted the kids for gloves and boots (last items on the winter clothing checklist). Gloves we’re all set. Boots we need one pair. All in all a pretty efficient year.
A bag of “lost” items was returned to us from school, about a month after it disappeared. Nothing very valuable, but nice to have it back. I also tracked down another child’s lost gloves in the school lost and found. At the moment, nothing is lost.
We put up the tree, candles, and exterior Christmas decorations. Still a few more things to do inside.

Apologies for the late post. And, the lack of pictures. I noticed a bunch of blogs I follow were off schedule-wise this week also. Seems to be part of the season!

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 47, 2017

27 Monday Nov 2017

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Grocery Spending

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, or weekend.

As you can imagine, Thanksgiving week is usually a big grocery week what with extra eaters and fancier menus. This was true again, though not too over the top especially since one of my stops was BJs after Thanksgiving.

On Monday, I failed to photograph the Russet potatoes and five packages of sliced/shredded cheese I got for $12.49 at Stop & Shop.

On Tuesday, I spent $141.57 at the farm stand, mostly on the perishables for Thanksgiving. We hosted a total of 14 people. Having done this before, we have decided two smaller turkeys (12.3 lbs each this time) is a better option than a single larger bird. The picture on the right are items we will use for Thanksgiving. The picture on the left are things I bought while I was there for other meals.

That trip finished my Thanksgiving shopping. But, since I wasn’t convinced we would make it through Thanksgiving without more milk, I spent $134.84 at Wegman’s on Wednesday. Shopping Wednesday morning was not as crazy as I feared it might be. $33.48 of this was for a cheese plate we did eat on Thanksgiving.

Finally, we ended up at BJ’s on Saturday which saved me a trip for this upcoming week, spending an additional $144.32.

This brought my weekly total to $433.22. For this coming week, I’ll need to get pizza dough and milk at some point. But, otherwise the above should cover it.

Meals went reasonably well this week. Not too many double dinners, nor a major letdown after the big feast.

Monday:
Tacos

Tuesday:
Early: Take out pizza
Late: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Veal Parmesan, spinach salad

Thursday (Thanksgiving):
Turkey (x2), mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, cranberry sauce, sausage stuffing, traditional stuffing, cranberry-brie bites, key lime pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, brownies

Friday:
Chili, corn bread

Saturday:
Turkey soup

Sunday:
Homemade pizza

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Parent / Teacher Conferences 2017 are (Almost) Done!

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

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Yes, I had both the preschool and middle school conferences last week. One of the middle school teachers wasn’t available at the regular conference times so I’m meeting with him in two weeks, but that’s only a 10 minute conference. Getting the bulk down is good enough.

So what else happened?

It was first grade math night. For this one, specifically, they look for older siblings (grades 4+) to volunteer so the older three boys went also. They ran some of the stations for the first graders. All seemed to do a good job with their tasks and the evening went smoothly.
We went to four swimming lessons, one gym class, one open swim session, and one open gym session.
I went to a school meeting regarding teen sleep vs school start times – info only, no decisions at this point.
The twins went to math morning.
The process of setting up baseball teams for next year got underway.
I planned the Thanksgiving menu and did most of the non-perishable shopping.
I’ve continued to make progress on the top-down house cleaning project. This week I unpacked and put away three of the remaining boxes from the move. That helped me finish off one room.

That will be it for this week. I’m taking Thursday and Friday as holidays so I’ll post again next Monday.

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 46, 2017

20 Monday Nov 2017

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My goal was to get all of my advance Thanksgiving shopping done last week so I could avoid the grocery store this coming week. (The turkey is at the farm stand.) I won’t be able to avoid it entirely as we’ll be out of milk, but I got most of it done. And, even with that spending was fairly light.

On Tuesday, I went to the farm stand to order the turkeys. While there I spent $6.90 on two pears and a pint of strawberries. It’s not strawberry season by any means, but the younger children with me wanted them.

Thursday was my pre-Thanksgiving trip to Wegman’s. It turned out to be a pretty even division between everyday stuff and Thanksgiving-specific items. It came to $58.65.

I spent $74.16 at Stop & Shop on Saturday. Unfortunately we were in need of grape juice, Cracklin Oat Bran, and chicken nuggets, none of which were on sale. Apparently, I failed to take a picture, but on sale were shredded cheese, puff pastry, and granola bars. That brought the total for the week to an entirely acceptable $139.71.

Meals are still in a busy slog, but we’re getting better.

Monday:
Chicken pot pie, green beans

Tuesday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, broccoli
Late: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Early: Leftover chicken pot pie, green beans
Late: Homemade macaroni & cheese

Thursday:
Meatball subs, deviled eggs, carrot sticks, chips

Friday:
Early: Eggs
Late: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, spinach salad
Late: Homemade pizza

Sunday:
Stovetop lemon chicken, brown rice, spinach salad

Hershey Park, 2017

17 Friday Nov 2017

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Hershey, Hershey Park, Pennsylvania

We visited Hershey’s Chocolate World the last time we were in Pennsylvania. This time we skipped the Chocolate part and stuck to the amusement park. Our logic is that we’d done a few days at Sesame Place, which is really more appropriate for the younger ones. So we headed out to Hershey Park to satisfy the thrill ride appetite of the older ones.

Overall this proved to be a good decision. We kept exclusively to the dry rides, so I won’t review the water park. But, there were enough rides for the little ones and the oldest, specifically, was very excited by the big roller coasters.

We think we will go again sometime, maybe even stay at a Hershey Park hotel to get another day in the park and gain some of the benefits for hotel guests. That being said, there were some issues.

It is very hilly, especially the entry area. This can be a real beast with a stroller. The entry is so steep that even going down can be tricky to manage.
There are six different ride heights, more than I’ve seen anywhere else. With the kids spread across four of them it was trickier than usual to keep track of who could go on each ride.
Along these same lines, the little kid rides are almost exclusively mechanical carnival rides so I would recommend your youngest being a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar (48-54 inches) before you go. This seemed to be the sweet spot where the most rides were available. Therefore one could choose between the calmer kiddie rides and the bigger thrill rides, depending on your child.
Our tickets came with meal vouchers. It was annoyingly difficult to determine where these could be used. Plus, once you did figure that out, it was almost impossible to find the establishment you were looking for.
To follow up on that, the paper map is useless. Nothing is properly marked, it’s by region at best. In many cases we couldn’t figure out where the thing was even though we were in the correct region. In other cases we could see a ride, but couldn’t find the entrance even with the map. Somebody really needs to go over that again.

With all that in mind, we did have a good day. Our strategy was to head all the way to the farthest point in and work our way back stopping at rides we liked along the way. Doing this we did get almost everything we were interested in done before nightfall. We did end up eating dinner in the park, which hadn’t been part of our original plan. We also did manage to sneak into the place we found to eat dinner just before it closed. I’m not sure why it closed so much earlier than the park itself.

Some of the rides had very long lines (1 hr +) on a summer day that was nice, but no so hot that you felt you needed to go in the water park. They do offer FastTrack passes, but they are only available for a limited number of rides. We did not get that option and I’m not sure how helpful it would have been, both because I’m not sure one matched the rides we went on and because I’m not sure one matched the height categories of our family.

Some of our favorite rides were:

Bigger Kids: Laff Trakk, Lightening Racer, Comet, Great Bear, The Howler

Smaller Kids: Tiny Tracks, Fun Slide, Red Baron, Traffic Jam, Dry Gulch Railroad

In summary, we enjoyed Hershey Park. It offered ride options for all ages and was reasonably accessible. It was also a good day trip distance from Philadelphia where we based most of our activities. That being said, it seems like a place you need to go to a few times before you feel comfortable with the lay of the land, which is a bit unfortunate.

There’s Been No Schedule Let Up.

16 Thursday Nov 2017

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Better late than never!

With soccer ending earlier this month, I had thought that our schedule would really free up. This is largely true of the weekends. But, there’s been no letup on the week days. It’s as if the schools knew everyone was at soccer and filled in all the evenings as soon as it was done.

This week (first without soccer practices):

Monday – no public schools for professional day, preschool was in session; no evening activity

Tuesday – three options for meetings to attend: 1st grade math night (chose this one) or a cyber security talk at the middle school

Wednesday – sleep talk regarding school start times

Thursday – no preschool for parent/teacher conferences; no evening activity

Friday – no middle school for parent/teacher conferences; no evening activity (I am glad I got my conferences schedules for this day vs the later December choices.)

Next week:

Monday – Little League baseball draft

Tuesday – what to do about Halloween meeting at the elementary school

IMG_7247 - Copy

Wednesday – half day for everyone

Thursday – Thanksgiving

Friday – day after Thanksgiving holiday.

Then it will feel like December, but we really will have one more week of November. But, winter baseball starts one evening per week.

With all that, all the kids will be in school for a full school day only 14 times this month. The final day of November will be their fourth actual full week of school this year!

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Soccer is Done!

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

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Yes, soccer season has come to an end, and not a moment too soon. Actually, the last day of 1st grade soccer was cancelled because temperatures dropped here from roughly 70 to roughly 40 seemingly overnight. Temperature at gametime last Saturday was forecast for 22° so they (wisely) cancelled K-2 soccer for that morning. I shouldn’t complain though because we had a wonderfully warm and dry fall season.

The 4th and 6th grade soccer games did happen Saturday afternoon at roughly 35°.
Both Monday soccer practices happened in the rain. Thursday practice was fine. Friday practice was cancelled because it was so cold.
Math morning happened.
Two boys went on a school field trip.
Four boys went to swimming lessons.
We went to one birthday party.
The public schools had a four day weekend for Veteran’s Day. Preschool was in session on Monday.
The older boys enjoyed seeing Thor: Ragnarok in the theater.
We watched Back to the Future at home on a cold, rainy Monday.
I organized the pantry. Since I wrote that post, we’ve eaten 2 packages of plain oatmeal, the popcorn, and the open package of dates. I figured prompt progress would be the most effective.
I changed all of the filters in the house.

I purchased a new glass to replace one the got broken. Thankfully the store still carries the same pattern from many years ago.

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 45, 2017

13 Monday Nov 2017

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I stayed under $200 again this week – $189.49 – with one two moderate and one small shopping runs.

On Monday, I spent $82.48 at Wegman’s. This was primarily for milk (16 gallons for a total of $32.85). Otherwise this was a stocking up run. Apparently I forgot to take a picture of the other items. But, they were: 18 pks of Mott’s cinnamon and original applesauce, one box of Wegman’s strawberry bars, salt, Montreal Chicken spice, and tortilla chips.

On Wednesday, I needed a shallot. So, I made my monthly run to Shaw’s where I got a dozen pizza dough balls, a dozen pizza cheese packages, three boxes of oatmeal, and the shallot for $76.78.

Then we determined we were going to have meatball subs for dinner Saturday night (this ended up not happening) so I went to Wegman’s again. I spent $30.23 on sub rolls, blueberry bars (which had been out of stock earlier in the week), flour, green beans (to go with chicken pot pie which also ended up getting pushed back), and clementines (because they’re really good once the wooden boxes appear, but not so much the rest of the year).

Unfortunately, this was my third attempt at buying diced pears. They’re still out. Ironically, a survey arrived from Wegman’s that afternoon asking specifically if there were chronic shortages of items I bought. So, I was able to mention the pears and blueberry bars.

This was the last week of soccer so dinners are still pretty quick. Plus we had some unexpected things come up that moved things around. I’d like to say this coming week will be better, but it won’t.

Monday:
Early: Eggs
Late: Homemade pizza

Tuesday:
Tacos

Wednesday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, spinach salad
Late: Homemade pizza

Thursday:
Early: Pancakes
Late: Steak, hash browns, spinach salad

Friday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, spinach salad
Late: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Early: Macaroni & cheese, brocolli
Late: Out, impromptu soccer end of season dinner

Sunday:
Early: Chicken nuggets, green beans
Late: Out, dinner after a movie