2011 Goals

As a family, we focused on three 'pillars' of our life where we can set goals:

Relationships

Work/School

Health

It was really great what I saw my kids come up with. Here are my goals:

Relationships

1. Find joy in kids and their happiness
2. Focus on finding balance for myself so I can love others
3. Genuinely take an interest in others and get to know them

Work

1. Consistently call prospects
2. Follow up better with clients and leads
3. Practice learning scripts to increase comfort level with prospects, clients and leads

Health

1. Drink more water
2. Exercise multiple times a week
3. Plan menus and stick to them

I'm excited about the possibilities!

This Saved Our Lives

Do you remember the day when you were going crazy because you couldn't get all of your commitments done? And I don't mean all the ones outside of the home, but just commitments as a mom - like clean bathrooms, laundry, dinner on the table, kids lessons, etc. Was it today, yesterday or what you expect tomorrow to be where you see yourself on your knees cleaning up whatever it is on the floor, trying to get through mounds of dishes, make a healthy dinner, listen to one (or more) kids reading, helping them with homework, smile for your husband coming home, oh, and trying to keep a positive attitude for yourself. Yeah - I was there. And guess what? I wasn't succeeding - in absolutely no way, shape or form.

I had a previous manager that had 10 kids - 8 boys, 2 girls. And he gave me the secret......are you ready for it? The Parenting Breakthrough by Merillee Boyack.

Holy cow! This book is amazing and it literally saved our lives. By saving my sanity as a mom so that I could be there for my kids in a supportive, nurturing way instead of always being stressed - or just living in a complete mess.

Today:

• Our 12-year-old is now doing our laundry (we have a few pink whites, but it's a lesson taught/learned). This is our third rotation, so he knows how to clean bathrooms - inside and outside of the toilet and all, clean up kitty litter, wash dishes - clean the kitchen floor and all, and take out the garbage and recycle. He also knows how to make his bed and clean up his room (mostly).
• Our 10-year-old is now cleaning our bathrooms (inside and outside of the toilet and all) and taking out the garbage and recycle. After our third rotation, he also knows how to clean bathrooms, wash dishes - clean the kitchen floor and all, and wash our clothes. He doesn't do the kitty litter because he is allergic to the cats, so he is our entire house garbage taker-outer. He is also responsible for his bed and room.
• Our 9-year-old has also been in on the full rotations. He is learning the kitchen at the moment and has some 'training' to continue with, but he is trying and he does a good job. He also makes his bed and takes care of his room.
• Our 7-year-old is in charge of cleaning out the kitty litter and setting the table (of course not at the same time because that is disgusting). He already mastered organizing the shoes each day - what a simple thing, but it helped so much. He is pretty good at making his bed and picking everything up in his room as long as he has encouragement.
• Our 5-year-old now organizes the shoes and we are still working on getting her bed made and picking up her clothes/toys. We really have to work on motivation for her - she specifically likes to have someone doing it with her. I'm thinking about job-sharing partners (I saw it on Super Nanny once) to get her to complete her chores consistently.

Our last rotation, we had each of the kids 'train' their brothers on how to do the job. It was pretty great to watch them take pride in what they learned and teach it. We also noticed what the kids missed and probably what should be reviewed with them.

What I like about the approach in the book is that it is all about creating self-sufficient, independent adults. I hear awful stories about kids on missions or in college that have no idea how to cook or do their own laundry. I even heard a story about a woman whose mother came over and cleaned her house while her husband was at work. What!?! Flabbergasted!

The book gives specific breakdowns of what kids can do at what ages. Who thought a 3-year-old could make their own sandwiches? I didn't. But show them how and see them light up. It's pretty cool. It also goes over things that I didn't even think of teaching the kids because I was never taught them.

I'm excited to continue to watch my children grow and subsequently learning some of these things ourselves. :o)

The Wisdom of Food Storage

In my religion, food storage and self-reliance has been taught for years. It can be a daunting task to store food and water for you family for any length of time.....one-month, three-months, twelve-months.

But let's throw out the religious aspect - for giggles.

Having food storage provides peace of mind.

What kind of things are in food storage? Food for meal preparation, water storage, non-food items, and a few extra dollars, etc.

So, let's take a hypothetical situation that your tire on your all wheel drive van goes flat. Little do you know, that with an all wheel drive vehicle, you have to replace all four tires at the same time. No matter what!?! Seriously? I had no idea.

So, four new tires can be anywhere from $250 to $500+. If you don't have a good reserve, which we sometimes do and we sometimes don't, then where is that money going to come from. We don't have credit cards, so it can't go there (good decision on our part). Lucky for us, when these types of situation have come up, we can pull that amount from our food budget.

.....BUT only because we have food storage in the garage. Without that, we would have been up a creek.

Not to mention it's Sunday night at 6PM and you just ran out of toilet paper. Hmmm, sure is nice that we have some in the basement and don't have to break the Sabbath to run to the store for that item. Or better yet, a child gets sick and you have medicine on hand. So many little examples where food storage really comes in handy.

Just putting a little thought out there.....

3-Month Menu Planning and Food Storage

The last few weeks, I've been dedicating my time to planning and organizing a three-month menu. So, where do you start? I have done this before and pretty much just did one month and multiplied the ingredients by three months. But that's not how we eat - the kids (and me) get too bored.

I found a website through a friend (thanks Teresa!): http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/06/29/babystep-3-three-month-food-supply-revised/ - halfway down the page, there is a spreadsheet. I started to populate the spreadsheet that they provided, but I wanted to change it slightly.

Note: I get overwhelmed by too many choices. What should I make for lunch, snacks, dinner? How many recipes should I keep readily available? What ingredients should I have on hand? etc. etc.

First step: I grouped the lunches, snacks and dinners by each day of the week so that I could narrow down my choices for each day. For now, this is how I have everything broken out:

Monday

• Lunch: calzones (or similar item such as Pizza Muffins)
• Snack: fruit or yogurt
• Dinner: chicken or fish

Tuesday

• Lunch: canned items or soup (ravioli, spaghettios, chicken noodles, beef stew, etc.)
• Snack: granola
• Dinner: noodles

Wednesday

• Lunch: meat (corn dogs, hot dogs jellyfish, chicken wings, etc.)
• Snack: frozen treat
• Dinner: soup or salad

Thursday

• Lunch: sandwiches
• Snack: chips & dip
• Dinner: beef or pork

Friday

• Lunch: wraps
• Snack: sweet treat
• Dinner: pizza

Saturday/Sunday

• Lunch: leftovers
• Snack: leftovers
• Dinner: casserole or big dinner (like roast)

Second step: I have about 110 recipes, including a couple breakfast recipes. It allows you to put in the recipe ingredients so that you can do a total for shopping. This is the most time consuming part, but it's nice to have them all in one place. I'm seriously thinking about getting rid of most of my cookbooks. (I also made individual recipe cards so that I don't have to flip through books, but that goes a little far and isn't required at all.)

Third step: By adding all these recipes, it allows me to have a variety of recipes per month without duplicating everything three times. I added an additional calculation that would let me duplicate a single recipe for the ones the kids like a lot (like lasagna).

Conclusion: Now I have a quick and easy way to figure out my grocery shopping list AND to know what I should have in my food storage. I'm pretty excited about this because I've had a hard time getting started (once again, overwhelmed with where to start and too many choices).

Here's a quick screen shot of what it looks like. I love it! (I'm not consistent, but love the results when I do it.)

Budget Crunch

So, we have now had our first real budget crunch since quitting work. After repairs, real estate fees and marketing, and additional costs for the kids, we have been at the end of our pay check. Which is awesome! A few reasons why this is awesome:

1. This is now the exception to the rule.....we used to live like this all the time - when both of us were working opposite schedules and our marriage was falling apart (we are still grateful none of our kids were seriously injured or died during this time).
2. We were prepared.....I knew there would be a time that I would be between commissions and we would be very tight on our budget. I was just hoping it would be a little further out. BUT we have plenty of food in our freezer and on our shelves in the garage. So, it's really easy to cut back on our food budget to stretch our dollars.
3. I've received some great advise.....like Morning Moo's powered milk is probably some of the best powered milk out there. I got this from a random woman who happened to be shopping bulk supplies at Macey's one day. She graciously answered a barrage of questions from me when I started to think about food storage. My kids happened to agree with her recommendation.
4. This offers an opportunity for reflection and resolve.....If anyone knows me, they know that I'm constantly doing little mini-corrections. The next few days will be great for me learn a) what's missing from my pantry, food storage; b) what I have that the kids will actually eat; c) what they love and I will need to make sure we have on hand. This is pretty cool.
5. My resolve to make real estate successful will increase.....there's nothing like telling your husband that we will be okay if I quit my job because I'll bring in commissions. And then not doing it. :) Granted, not everything is in my control, but I have really not pushed myself. Time to kick stuff off - which is great timing now that the kids are getting back into school.

There you have it, we've started on this adventure and three months into it, have already hit our first major s t r e t c h. The key is what to take away from it. Right now, it's faith that there is a greater plan out there for our family. And when we are through this - how to set ourselves up to not repeat it.

Life is full of lessons to be learned. And as my brother would say, "You can pick your trials or the trials will pick you." I kind of like being more in control of my life and choosing the areas that we will struggle in.

Planning a Menu

So, planning a menu has alluded me for so many years. I have tried to do this many times, but have not been very persistent. So why do it? THAT is what I'm learning now...

#1 - it helps you when at 4:30PM, you say "what should I fix for dinner" before you have to head out the door at 6:30 to some activity

#2 - it gives you an idea of what are the ingredients you should put in food storage

#3 - it gives you the opportunity to tell your kids, when they say they don't like dinner, "you chose dinner on X day and your sibling chose for today" eat this and then you'll get what you want :)

#4 - it sure helps to make a grocery list - especially for those odd ingredients

#5 - it allows kids to have ownership in what is chosen each day - we have even had our kids help us cook the meal they've chosen (we need to get back to doing that again)

Overall....definitely a keeper concept that we are using in our family!

Budgeting by what Timeframe?

Dave Ramsey's budget is based on a month. Which is great, except that it's hard to plan all the expenses because of the varied number of days in a month - in my mind that didn't make sense. So, I adjusted it to every two weeks so that I would know how we can plan our paycheck.

Right now, our mortgage take up just about 40% of our paycheck. So with tithing, we have to budget half of what we bring in across utilities, car, groceries, gas, family activities, etc. We can't wait until we are at a place that our mortgage does not take up so much of our income, but that will be a couple years in the making (either by paying it down or making more money).

This process has been excited for me. We have gone through quite a bit of discovery in determining where our money was going and where our weaknesses are. It's fun to see how we can unexpectedly find areas of improvement - like cooking from scratch or finding coupons. I have several sisters-in-law that have shown me how many activities your family can still experience even on a tight budget.

When listening to Dave Ramsey's CD's, he mentions putting together a quickie budget to start and then a more detailed budget (found here: http://www.daveramsey.com/tools/budget-forms/). But it is key to working with your spouse so that everyone is in agreement. I LOVE that last note - I believe that it is imperative that couples are reaching towards the same goals. If they aren't reaching towards the same goal, then their paths might diverge. Leon and I have seen this work in our lives over the past few years and it has been very powerful.

Short on Funds

So, I spent several hundreds of dollars on real estate this past week so that I could be ready to list some houses (yay!). Needless to say, it cut into our savings and has left us a little short of where we want to be. So, the penny pinching is in full effect.

Cooking from scratch has already positively impacted our grocery budget. Also, cooking a little extra and storing for later has been wonderful. It has allowed me to be able to provide more for our family on less. I have also been picking up a little extra here and there to ramp up our food storage.

I planned the menu for this week - which I have found out that normally, I can spread the food across two weeks if I'm cooking a little extra each day. Not to mention what I already have in the freezer that we can pull from. Because of what we have in food storage and our cupboards, we only had to spend $85 (of our budgeted $350) to get what we needed. Now we will have to keep $40 or so dollars for milk, cereal and bread for the second week of the grocery plan.

BUT I overlooked one thing - we were having the whole family over for Michael's Priesthood ordination. Yeah, so I had to figure out what to cook. Well, it turned out that I had everything already in the cupboards for teriyaki chicken and rice. We were at such peace as we realized that we were already taken care of even though we hadn't planned, just because we were taking baby steps to fill our food storage, and I was willing to learn to cook and dedicate the time to it.

I'm looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish as we continue to plan our lives and follow that plan. God expects great things from us and is laying the groundwork for us to accomplish them.

Cooking from Scratch

In Book Club a few months ago, we read a book titled 'In Defense of Food'. This book talks about the trends of the American diet and how we have 'engineered' ourselves into poor nutrition and consequently poor health. One of the things it said was "If you grandma wouldn't recognize it as a food, don't buy it." Goodbye Twinkies! (This book is a must read!)

After reading this book, and also studying the Body-for-Life program and diet, my husband and I have been changing our eating habits for the last year. But I didn't have time to cook like I could/should. Now that I'm home.....I suddenly have more time to plan, shop, and cook. And I discovered that I actually CAN cook! Who knew?!?

A couple things.....I have four boys who like to eat. So they eat a lot and they enjoy just about everything. And I don't love to cook. So, cooking a lot when it will be eaten in an hour and then cleaned up, isn't very fulfilling. But I discovered a book "Fabulous Freezer Meals" at Costco. The author was there handing out recipes and I didn't think twice about it. Until we were about to leave and I read the card. She mentioned that she hated the marathon cooking days to freeze dinners and so she decided on a different approach. She decided to cook 'more' for each meal and freeze the extra. I know it's a simple concept, but I had never put it into place. (She also has bulk recipes for quick grabbing sauces and meats to combine with her other recipes.)

This has been such fun for me. More than the fun of cooking for my family, I am filling up my freezer with homemade goodness and purchasing more core items for my food storage (because I actually know how to cook with them more). Knowing that I have healthy choices readily available for my family is more fulfilling to me than the actual act of cooking. Now it's a win-win situation for me.

And, guess what we've discovered? #1 - we are more full when we eat meals that are cooked from scratch, and #2 - our bodies do NOT like fast food anymore. Even the kids complain about stomach aches if we grab a taco or hamburger.

Definitely a 'keeper' concept for our family!