A reply to VB's posts on Saving Money in the Kitchen and Checking in

I have been on hiatus for a few months from blogging.  The Advent and Christmas seasons were extremely busy for me (November - December).  Between taking care of my son while my husband fulfilled all of his commitments with the churches he is Pastor of, my parents and brother visiting over Christmas, and daily life, I didn't make the time to blog.  And life around here isn't going to slow down anytime soon.

2015 is going to be a busy year with quite a bit of transition from what life has been like the past 3+ years for me here in small town Fairfield, Montana.  I am excited and nervous about it.  I will share my adventures in future posts.

VB recently posted about saving money in the kitchen and budgeting.  Jason and I use budget methods very similar to Virginia and her husband, so I don't have much to add on that score.  We won't put a new budget together until April, once we know what our quarterly taxes for 2015 will be.

We have a flat budget for food every month of $350.  This amount includes groceries and eating out.  Occasionally we will go over our monthly budget (like this month) and will subtract the amount we overspent from the next month.  So for the month of January we will end up over our food budget, therefore, the amount we go over in January will be subtracted from our February food budget.  That means we will have less money to spend on groceries and going out to eat in February.  It will be tight, but we've figured it out before.

We haven't quite figured out a budget for toilettries, household, health and misc. yet.  We buy a lot of our paper products in bulk when they are on sale.  This includes, ziplock baggies in different sizes for freezing and storing foods, toilet paper, paper towels, the list goes on and on.  We reuse ziplock baggies so we haven't had to buy those for a while.  And don't get me started on diapers.  For a long time, Target had great specials on their Up&Up diapers in the bigger size boxes.  Not so much anymore.  I can't wait for my son to be potty-trained, but that is a blog post for another time.  Needless to say, our budget is a work in progress.

 In January we ate out a lot because Jason and I were away at the beginning of the month for a wedding in Kalispell, Montana, which is in Northwestern Montana.  But this is not the norm.  We hardly ever go out to eat.  We make yummy, healthy meals at home.  I'd like to second VB, in that most of our non-fresh food we buy is a generic and we save a lot of money that way.  We've found that it tastes the same for the most part as brand name items.  Although, I'd suggest paying the extra money for the actual Special-K cereal instead of the store generic.  You can tell the difference in taste on that one.

I will end this post with that thought.  Don't worry, I promise to share my upcoming adventures in future posts.  For now, I say, "Keep on keeping on!"

Family Fun Summer Adventures...

(There are a lot of photos in this post, but not as many as I think there should be. :) )
Where did the summer go?!  Wasn't yesterday Memorial Day?!  Labor Day is coming up in a few weeks?!  WTF hommies!

We have had a lot of family summer adventures this year.  Here is the litany of traveling, adventures and daily living we have done since Memorial Day and some photos to go along with each adventure.

Over Memorial Day weekend we traveled to Rapid City, South Dakota to celebrate our nephew Grayson's high school graduation.  It was a packed weekend.

Between Memorial Day and our next traveling adventure, we had Vacation Bible School, which was a blast, but a very busy week.  The Monday after VBS finished, we got on a 6am 1-stop flight to Boston to spend the week in New Hampshire visiting my sister and her family.  We stayed with my parents in a one bedroom condo in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire.  We were there from June 23rd-June 30th.  We traveled around the White Mountain region and took side day trips to the beach in Maine and Boston.  It was an awesome trip!!  It was hard to come back to Fairfield after that.

After we returned from New Hampshire, etc... we had two days to do laundry and repack to go spend the 4th of July with Jason's family at Fresno Reservoir.  I went up a day later because I wasn't up for going on Thursday.  I drove up on my own on the 4th and we left on the 5th because Jason had to be back to preach in church on Sunday.

After the 4th of July, we actually had a couple of weeks where we just hung out at home and got back into our normal routine.  July 17th-20th was Fairfield's annual town celebration, Swim Days.  It was a busy weekend but we didn't do any traveling, just stayed in town and participated in some of the activities that weekend.

The following weekend, July 25th and 26th we traveled to Bozeman, MT for a wedding Jason officiated over.  Bozeman is about 3-3.5 hrs away from Fairfield.  After the wedding on Saturday we had to head back so Jason could preach on Sunday.  It was a very quick trip and the wedding was lovely.

We had one day to do laundry and clean the house before my parental units and brother arrived for the week.  They were here from July 28th - August 4th.  While they were here, we went fishing in the mountains on the Sun River and also at Pishkun Reservoir.  We also drove down to a place called The Gates of the Mountains and traveled up the Missouri River on a tour boat.  During that time we celebrated Preston's 2nd Birthday too.  A lot happened that week, a lot!  Lucky for you, blogger isn't allowing me to post any more photos, because I would have posted a lot more.  Anyway....

My family left us on the 4th of August and the next day we headed up to Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp from August 5th-8th.  It was so much fun.  Now, here I wish I could post more pictures because I have the cutest picture of Preston with his friends Hannah and Harper.  Boo blogger...BOO!!!

Now we are home for a while.  I am traveling to Minnesota by myself on the train at the end of the month for 6 days.  It is the only time I will be able to get there for the rest of the year, so Jason and I made it happen.  My mother-in-law is staying with us during the week while she does her radiation treatments in Great Falls and she goes home on the weekends.  I have a lot of cleaning to do before she gets back on Monday.

I guess I answered my initial question, Where did the summer go?!  It flew by while we were traveling, adventuring and living daily life.  It went away in the blink of an eye, brilliantly away.