Mid-Week Family Day

Last week Daniel stayed home from work for a day to have a family day with us :) I had somewhat jokingly (but hoping he would say yes) asked that he stay home from work with us and he did :)

We went on a long family walk in the morning and for the last half mile Aurelia said she wanted to walk instead of ride in the stroller, so we let her down and played "following the leader" like the lost boys on Peter Pan. Then, with about a block to go, Aurelia tripped and fell pretty hard. She bloodied both her knees and her forehead (poor girl!). Daniel scooped her up and she wouldn't let him put her down until we were all the way home.

Daniel doctoring Aurelia

When we got home Daniel put her up on the kitchen counter and doctored up her bloody knee. I thought it was adorable so I had to get a picture :)

The rest of the day was spent playing together in the backyard, attempting to go to the paleontology museum nearby (they were closed. boo.), going for ice cream and building block towers. It was a really fantastic and much needed, mid-week family day :)

Little Currant Bush

I loved this little video of a snippet from Elder D. Todd Christofferson's talk.

I thought about this little clip while I was pruning an overgrown shrub on our neighbors property a few months ago. The man living there passed away unexpectedly in the fall but for years before his passing the huge property had been neglected. There was one particular bush that blooms really pretty pink/orange flowers in the spring, but it had become so overgrown that the winter snow weighed down and snapped a lot of the branches. The shrub was getting choked off and damaged by it's own over-growth. So I set to work and cut away at it. I pulled out obviously dead branches and cut the shrub back quite a bit. Now it's growing lots of new, healthy branches and is blooming a TON. I think after one more round of pruning next spring it'll be just about as beautiful as it can be.

From my experience with our neighboring property and the video clip I couldn't help but think of the journey Daniel and I have been on the last few years. Going through our infertility was SO painful. I've never had my heart broken so fully or so painfully as it was with our first miscarriage. The adoption path hasn't been an easy one to walk either. Through most of it we've kept moving forward, thanking God for the opportunity to grow and asking that he end our struggle soon. Sometimes God has plans for us that are different from what we think they should be.

There was so much pain with so little understanding, but now I can look at it so thankful for all the beauty that has come as a result. I'm able to look at the cuts that were made and see the new growth.  I can see our marriage is stronger, deeper and more resilient than it would have been had we not been given this challenge. Our experiences have provided us with the blessing of empathy. We've been given the opportunity to provide encouragement, insight and understanding to people behind us on the path through infertility and loss. 

I know those difficult times will continue to bless us. These were the trials God intended for our family. This is what we have needed to become the best version of ourselves and to help those who will be brought into our path. We have needed all of this to get us to where we are now, incredibly happy, blessed, and thankful. :)

“Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”

Parenting Style: Food

Recently it came to my attention that we don't talk a ton on here about how we parent. You can see a lot of our parenting style by reading through blog posts about our family but I don't think I've talked about it directly very often. Since one of the purposes of this blog is to help birth moms get to know us as they're looking for an adoptive family I'm going to try to put better effort into talking about how we handle various parenting situations. 

So, as they come up or I think of them I'll do a little post* :) The purpose of doing this is to let people know how we do things (or are trying to do things) not to debate or be criticized. So, if you think we're nuts keep it to yourself :) This might sound kind of boring but I think it's nice hearing how other people handle different situations and figuring out what we feel works best. 

So, for the first post about our parenting...

FOOD

How do we handle dinner time? Are we 'eat everything on your plate' people?
One rule we have for dinner is you have to eat one bite of everything that was made. If Aurelia wants to be done with dinner she can be done when she's tried everything. She doesn't need to eat it all, she just has to have one bite of everything.

The other rule is if you don't finish your dinner and get hungry later, your dinner is what you eat. Eat what you were given and if you're still hungry then you can have something else.

We like doing things this way because...

• it encourages having new foods. Aurelia knows she just has to try one bite. 
• It discourages over-eating. She isn't forced to sit there and clear her plate even when she isn't terribly hungry.
• She knows she can't throw a fit and get down to just have something else later. She eats what she's hungry for and if she's hungry later she finishes what she was given.
• We feel like it encourages healthy eating habits. Eat small bits of everything and don't over-eat.

Example:

Aurelia didn't want to eat her pasta a few nights ago. She had a few bites (try everything) and wanted to be done. A little bit later she asked for peanut butter toast. We told her she would have to finish her pasta first (eat what you were given, then you can have something else). She threw a fit because she didn't want to eat the pasta and asked for other things. Just before bedtime she went ahead and ate the rest of her pasta and then we gave her some peanut butter toast.

Do we bribe with food?

Bribing with food can encourage the "food gives me an emotional reward" feeling. Again, something that can lead to issues later especially if you're bribing with junk food. That being said, we totally bribe with food :) But hear me out! We regularly bribe with blueberries, strawberries, apples, raisins, etc. Those are Aurelia's most common "treats".  This makes it so not only is she getting more of her healthy food but she's associating those healthy foods with the positive emotions from being praised and rewarded.

Example: 

A few days ago Aurelia was having a tough time with trying her green beans. We told her "eat three green beans and then you can have some blue berries". Worked like a charm.

Some other random food things we do: 

- We read ingredients on our bread and buy bread sweetened with honey rather than some of the other crazy things that get used in bread. This summer we're going to really try to make our own bread. We'll see how that goes.

- As a family we try to eat "real" food. We try to eat mostly things that are as close to the way they were when they were alive. When we go grocery shopping, most of our cart is fresh or frozen produce.
- This summer we're growing tomatoes. When we move into our more permanent home we want to have a big food garden :) Yum!

*Posts about how we parent will have the "Parenting" tag. You can click the Parenting link at the bottom of the post or in the "In Our Blog" list on the side of the blog to see all the posts directly related to the way we parent.

Planting Trees

I've got a bunch of blog posts just sitting in draft waiting for this or that to be published. I should probably get on that, but who wants to be sitting inside at a computer during the summer? :) This post I've had ready for a while but things kept changing. We decided on one thing then changed to another, we figured out one thing then found out it wouldn't work. Anyway, here it is.

We're planting trees! We've been doing a lot of research over the last two months and finally ordered trees. Because this is a rental property we had to think low maintenance. We wanted two trees planted along the street in front and then one big tree in the backyard. The things we wanted for all our trees were alkaline tolerance (we have very alkaline soil in this area), drought tolerance (for those rough years), no fruit dropping, and a generally low maintenance tree.

For the street trees I had been seeing these BEAUTIFUL trees blooming in our neighborhood so I did some searching, narrowed down by leaves and types of blooms, went to a nursery and finally figured out it was the Kwanzan Cherry tree. It makes pretty flowers but no fruit which is fabulous. THEN, after talking to our city forester for some advice we found out the city will pay for AND install the trees for us! How sweet is that? They put the work order in yesterday so hopefully they'll be in in the next few weeks :) (UPDATE: actually I found out they CANCELLED the order because we don't have a sprinkler system. Kind of a bummer but we'll go ahead and get that put in soon and then they'll carry on with installing the trees for us.)

Kwanzan Cherry tree, blossoms and leaves.

For the backyard we wanted a tree with high longevity (longer than 50 years), grow to at least 30 feet tall, preferably with fall color, resistant to pests, high tolerance of drought and alkalinity, and on and on. We wanted it to shade the house and the backyard. After lots of research and back and forth we decided on the Bigtooth Maple. The Bigtooth is native to our area which made us more comfortable with it. The lady who helped us at the nursery was so glad we did our research. She said she regularly has people who come in saying they want a certain tree simply because they like how it looks without realizing that tree does terribly here and will likely die quickly. She was excited to have a couple who knew what worked best in our area :) We actually bought our Maple on Memorial Day and it seems to be doing really well so far :)

Bigtooth Maple with fall color

I'm so excited to be getting trees! :) We're putting sod down in the fall too AND Daniel has just about finished building the new shed :) It's so nice to really be making progress on this property. After the shed is complete (2 weeks maybe) then we'll finish stripping the basement unit down and get to work down there. This summer the goals are a new sewer line to the street, all new plumbing, all new electrical and getting the basement all framed. Busy, busy summer :)

How We Save Money

Being smart with finances was something that was super important to both Daniel and I before we married. How you handle money is a hugely important part of marriage and thankfully, both of us recognized that before we married and made sure we were on the same page and had the same goals.

I always love hearing what other people do to save money so I thought I would share some of the things we do. We mostly do a lot of little things that add up. When you're saving for adoption and essentially rebuilding a house from the inside, every little bit helps.

The #1 most important idea is understanding the difference between needs and wants. Needs are very basic. We need shelter, but it doesn't need to be a fantastic or expensive shelter. We need food, but we don't need a lot of food or food that doesn't offer much nutritionally. One of the things we address most frequently when shopping or looking to buy something is "do we really need this?"

We apply needs vs. wants to food. When grocery shopping we ask, "is this something we all like? Can it be used in several different meals? Does it have a lot to offer nutritionally?" Usually our shopping fits all of those questions with the exception of the "I'm on my period and I want to eat junk food" shopping detours. This keeps us from getting random things that are both expensive and don't offer much.

We shop with a grocery list. This is one of the most frequent money saving recommendations. Go in with a list, stick to the list and don't spend extra, unnecessary money.

We meal plan (sort of). I should say we try to meal plan. For some reason I really don't like meal planning but I know it's good so I keep trying to do it. Once it's done it's fantastic but actually sitting down to write it out irritates me for some reason. Anyway, I look at the list of things I can make (I keep a private blog as my own personal cookbook) and then try to come up with a two week plan of things that kind of tie together so I can use everything I buy. If there is something I want to make that uses celery then I'll plan two other meals that call for celery so none of it goes to waste.

We only go out to eat once or twice a month. It weirds me out when I see money saving helps with suggestions like "only go out to eat 4 times a week"........what?? FOUR times a WEEK??? I was talking to a single friend the other day and she reminded me that's really not that weird for a single person. I'll give her that.

Our once a month plan started shortly after we got married and I discovered my love for Cafe Rio (yum!). If I could, I would eat Cafe Rio for dinner pretty much everyday. So Daniel came up with a compromise to eat at Cafe Rio (we've now switched to Costa Vida) on the first Monday of every month. That way we know it's coming up and don't make a spur of the moment run. 

Outside of Costa Vida Monday we'll usually go out to eat as a family once a month. We've been trying to go to new places and it's been fun discovering new little local places.

We're growing some of our own food. This week we bought three tomato plants; an Early Girl, a Big Boy (both big tomatoes) and a Sweet Million (cherry tomatoes).

We eat meat infrequently. We've always got frozen salmon on hand but other than that we buy a little bit of fresh chicken probably once a month or maybe every other month. We only buy red meat once a year when we have steak for thanksgiving, or if good ground beef is on ever on super sale. All of that of course excludes the once a month sweet pork salad from Costa Vida...yum, is it Costa Vida Monday yet or what??

We do ad matching. A lot of grocery stores do ad matching now so we check through the ads that come in the mail, find the great prices and add the prices to our grocery list. When something is on sale we meal plan for meals that use that item.

Daniel and Aurelia doing Saturday morning ad matching.

Okay, that was a lot about food...I think that's because food has the most opportunity to trim when you're already spending little. Anyway, moving on...

I don't have a smartphone. Why would I need a smart phone? Most people don't need a smart phone. Data plans and the phones themselves are more expensive than a basic call and text phone. We've seriously considered even dropping Daniel's smart phone but have found that for right now it's beneficial for keeping in contact with his work clients. If it weren't for his job though we would drop his as well.

We use freecycle.org. If you haven't heard of freecycle you're missing out. If you have something you want gone you just post it as an "offer" and someone local says they'll take it. If you need something you put out a request and pick it up. Over the years we've received baby clothes for Aurelia, a ton of newspaper (Daniel's work prank), a years worth of Real Simple magazines, flower bulbs, and loads of other things. We've also given away a lot through freecycle.

If it's not an immediate need we'll first check/request from freecycle, then check classifieds, then shop around (Amazon, Ebay, websites for local stores, etc.) and wait until we find a stellar price. That's the process we follow for pretty much everything. Even if it's a long shot we'll try requesting on freecycle. No luck? Move on to the local classifieds or craigslist. Still no luck? Shop around online for a really great price, find the best price and if we still really want it then we'll get it.

We don't buy paper towels. Paper towels are a convenience (and an expensive one at that), not a necessity.

We use cloth diapers and wipes. No way would we do this one if we had to pay to do laundry, thankfully we've got our own. We use disposable diapers at night and only use disposable wipes when we're on the go.

When something is on sale we stock up and then use normally. If there is something on really great sale, butter for example, then we'll buy a bunch and freeze it. The second part is important though, we don't start using it all willy nilly just because there is a lot of it.

We buy a backup. We have a backup on hand of pretty much everything we buy regularly. If we were completely out of laundry detergent I would buy two, one to use and the next to have after. This means if you all of a sudden run out of something you don't have to run to the store and buy something that might be at a higher price. You start using the backup, watch for a sale and then buy the next backup. Does that make sense? I feel like I just said backup over and over again (backup, backup, backup...).

We buy children's books at the thrift store. We do this regularly and have quite the collection. Board books brand new are like $15. That's a ton of money. We go to the thrift store and find 'like new' books for $.25 to $1 at the most. That means we usually come home with 5-10 books for under $5. (Daniel says to add that getting books for $.25 means it isn't any kind of tragedy if they get torn up or colored in.)

We buy children's clothes at the thrift store. The trick here is to go to a thrift store in a nice area with a mostly family population. Don't bother looking for kids clothes in a college town. I had such a good haul from the thrift store last week that I almost did a blog post only about that. In fact...maybe I still will. Anyway, kids grow out of clothes so quickly and dirty them up so easily that it's painful to buy all clothes brand new. We do buy brand new clothes occasionally but a majority of Aurelia's clothes come from freecycle and the thrift store (including the cute little outfit she wore for her second birthday).

We don't buy milk. Yep, we don't buy milk. Okay, ocassionally we buy milk when a recipe calls for it. But where do you get your calcium? In loads of other things. It started with the switch to organic milk. Organic milk is SO expensive so we started being more conservative with our milk use. We realized we were using milk almost entirely to eat cereal in the morning and any other time we wanted a quick "meal" or snack. Sugary cereal isn't that great for you. So, first we stopped buying cereal and instead eat oatmeal and/or fruit for breakfast (not that instant nonsense, the tube shaped container kind). Now, we only buy milk when we need it for meals planned ahead.

We drive smart. When we drive we accelerate slowly, don't speed and try to avoid stop and go driving as much as possible.

We combine trips. When we need to go somewhere we try to do everything in one go. This cuts down on the times we go out in our car. That means if we need to go somewhere that isn't urgent then we'll wait until we have other errands to run in the area. This is where buying a backup comes in handy too because we very rarely have to make a special trip to go buy something.  

We walk. If we aren't in a hurry and something is close then we'll walk.

We use the GasBuddy app. When we're getting low on gas, we'll check gas buddy to see where the cheapest gas station is near us. 

We bought a house. Okay, so this one might not be immediately applicable for a lot of people. We saved up during our first few years of marriage, did our research and bought our duplex as a short-sale with 20% down. That meant our mortgage was less than we were paying in rent and 20% down means we don't have to pay PMI. Our house is also a duplex which means once we finish renovations, the rent from one unit will more than cover our mortgage payment.

I love hearing other ideas, so if you've got them, share them!