Back to Normal

It's been a wonderful couple of weeks.  I've loved having DH home with us.  I wish we could find a pot of gold in our backyard so we could be home as a family all the time.  

We're back to our usual routine today.  DH has returned to work (well, he returned Friday for part of the day), BB's napping, I'm wondering how long BB's nap will last and if I should try to accomplish anything else during his nap, or if he'll only wake up once I begin a new task.  It took him quite a while to fall asleep this morning.  I've already had enough time to minimally clean myself up for the day, pump, and chopped veggies for the chicken stew I'm making for BB.

I found out last night that a friend who had a baby four days before BB was born is 12 weeks pregnant again.  I'm jealous.  Happy for her, but the jealousy is overriding that.  

Looking forward to supper tonight.  Over the holidays DH made Arroz Con Pollo and froze both of them, since we had lots of leftovers to eat on the night we were supposed to have the ACP.  So we still have a second one in the freezer for another time.  I just remembered that we still have a turkey pot pie from earlier in December in the freezer too.  Sweet.  

I saw an article in the January Chatelaine today about ways to save money.  A lot of the tips listed I had heard before, but a new-to-me idea was to skip buying groceries a week each month.  This seems like a pretty decent idea, but you miss out on getting fresh fruits & veggies by doing this.  We did something similar the week before Christmas.  We decided to make all of our meals from things in our freezer and items we had on hand.  We seem to accumulate food when it's on sale, or make things ahead (like the turkey pot pie) to have on hand for when we might need a quick meal, but then it all gets lost in the abyss of our pantry or freezer.  We did buy some groceries, because we still needed a few fresh items, but we spent significantly less that week which was nice since Christmas isn't exactly easy on the wallet, no matter how hard we may try.  

Speaking of Christmas costing too much, we did a fantastic job of cutting back this year.  And by "we", I actually mean "I".  My brother and his girlfriend did a great job too.  You could tell they put thought into our gifts and didn't go overboard at all.  Right now, I'm feeling very motivated to try to make some gifts for Christmas next year.  There are lots of great things I can knit to give to people, and I have a considerable stash of yarn here, so if I can find the right patterns to work with my stash, I should be all set.  I'm hoping that I don't lose my motivation between now and next Christmas, and that I will have the guts to give my handmade items as gifts.  I had a hard time giving the Booga Bags to my friends this year because I was so worried they wouldn't like them.  It's bad enough having someone not like the gift you've given then, but it's even worse when it's something you've laboured over!

Last night DH and I cracked open a brand new game of Skip-Bo.  We must have bought it during our Skip-Bo obsession several years ago, but never opened it, just kept playing the old tattered game.  We ended up playing three games (he won 2:1) and now I want to play again!  Perhaps the crib board is going to be packed away for a while?

This has been pretty random.  :)