December Already?

I cannot believe it is already December of 2008. I don't know where this year has gone. Mainly getting life organized again, I guess. My thirtieth year is drawing to a close, and I feel like it flew by. I didn't do ANYTHING I initially planned on doing for my thirtieth. I guess I'll have to celebrate my 30+1 the way I wanted to celebrate 30.

I have realized what I want in life... it's a pretty good place to be when you know what you want.

Keith just stopped by, surprising me with a knock at the door. Haha! In the UPS uniform. Awesome. There's something about that brown uniform. It made me laugh when he asked if I had any packages that needed delivering.

I'm about ready to make myself lunch. Dinner is already prepped and in the fridge till about 4pm. I feel so industrious today. I even prepped dinners for later in the week!
I went grocery shopping at both Redners and Aldi, found a couple Christmas goodies for the kids too!

Frank is getting them the DS units, so I'm in charge of finding CHEAP games en masse. I'm probably going to run up to GameStop later this week, maybe tomorrow... and see if I can find any that are on the "Santa" list.

Anyway, I'm off to start some baking. Making banana muffins, apple crisp, oatmeal cookies and some rolls for later. I figure by the time the kids get home I should have at least the cookies and dessert made. The bread should be rising... and be ready for rolls later.

I really missed being domestic. I can only hope that someday I can do this again full time... and not worry about making money to pay the bills. I read on the inside of one of my old cookbooks... and it said.. "An industrious wife is a man's best savings box". I shared it with my mom, and she laughed at the box reference (yeah, my MOM laughed... I get my gutter mind from her), but we agreed on how it is true. It takes time to prepare foods, plan menus, and grocery shop, do laundry. Being a housewife is a full time job in itself, being a mom is a full time job too! Add another full time job on top of that and every now and then you feel like you can't keep up. And it's true, somewhere some things suffer.

When I was working full time, we were all eating a lot of QUICK meals, whether I fed the kids chicken nuggets, or mac and cheese... Now, I get to make garlic chicken with broccoli, or beef and noodles with mashed potatoes, or sesame ginger chicken... Veggies with every meal... The time and energy to put love into the foods I make.

I spent $160 between the two stores today. $78 at Redners and $80 at ALDI. Of course, in the ALDI, there was about $30 of non-food purchases (a mini-guitar for the girls for Christmas, hat/glove set and a pair of cordoroys for Madelyn), so I spent $130 on food items.

Barring buying extra milk, that should feed all of us for the next 2 weeks. I stocked up the cabinets again and I have just about everything I need to make treats for the kids and dinners and plenty of room for leftovers.

Keith and Ron have been overjoyed that I've had extra leftovers over the past several weeks to feed them too! Ron packed up a bunch of Tupperwares for me to fill up for them. Haha!

Anyway, off to bake.

I need to find a Christmas tree... this week... I don't have a stand, so I can't get a real one. I should check Craigslist. Hm. Ok, off to do that first.