Party hemmorhage healing fast

We actually didn't end up spending any more on the party.  Dave's brother, my mom and Dave's mom brought all the ice we needed and although I intended to fully reimburse them all for the expense, I forgot. 

We bought WAY too many drinks.  Seriously.  We bought five cases of beer and barely needed to even crack the SECOND one.  Fortunately, Dave's brother is marrying his beautiful bride, Lynne, in July, so he will be able to use it then.  And since I know you'll ask, we GAVE them the beer.  Dave's brother is seriously a contender in the World's Most Helpful Human contest, so I would give him a kidney or even a lung after all the help he's been to us over the years.  Lynne is one lucky woman (I always tease them both that I married the wrong brother!).

Since we'd emptied the fridge to make room for the food for the party, we did have to hit the grocery store on Sunday night to stock up on food.  I had a ten dollar off Safeway coupon, so this weeks food was only around $90.  I'm keeping it light, too.  With the move coming up, I see no need to stock up on anything.

Party Expenses so far

Here's where we are:

                                       

Beer   & Chick Beer	$ 292
Food	$ 338
Supplies	$ 204
Park reservations	$ 135
Soda, Water, Juice	$ 70
Chips, Crackers	$ 57
Pinata	$ 54
Appetizers	$ 41
Bubbles, play dough	$ 38
TOTAL	$ 1,229

I asked Dave to guess what he thought the total would be and he said, "$700?"  HA.  Double HA.

We still have to buy enough ice to cool the Pacific and the two cakes.

It better be fun!

Party Hemorrhage

I'm not sure I've mentioned it here yet, but we're throwing a big Going Away-slash-Genoa's First Birthday Party this weekend.  We initially reserved the park site months ago in anticipation of a birthday party and then optimistically decided to reserve extra space in case Dave ended up getting hired at one of the jobs for which he interviewed. 

Needless to say, it worked out and we ended up inviting pretty much everyone in our address book.  I guess PART of me knew it could end up being a really big party, but it never really sunk in that it would be a really. big. party. until last weekend when we sat down and started doing the hardcore planning.  We've received confirmation that at least 43 adults and 17 kids will be coming and there are another 20 adults and 14 more kids who haven't RSVP'd yet. 

We're expecting around 75 people.

Dude.

So we've been peeing green this week.  I'm already on my second Costco trip, my third trip to Party America and we've still got more shopping to do.  We've already dropped $200 on beer (and girl beer). Not to mention the sheer quantity of food we need to buy.  16 flank steaks, 8 packages of hot dogs, 4  giant flats of bottled water,  2 sheet cakes (one wasn't enough), etc.  I never even ventured a budget because this is basically our going-out-of-business sale and we don't want to skimp. 

It's going to be so much fun.

"For that much money, we should've just gotten him a hooker."

Because we're leaving California, we thought it would be (uh, I have to laugh when I type this, but we actually thought it would be) FUN to take a family outing to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (formerly Marine World) on Saturday.  In a nutshell, it ended up being a whole lot (TONS) of money for basically nothing but parental torture.

First off, we should've known better.  Really.  I actually read a bunch of horrible on line reviews and just thought those people were being cranky.  Little did I know at the end of the day, I'd want to register the domain name www.discoverykingdomsucks.com just so I could bitch about how awful the park was.  Secondly, bringing a baby who wants to walk everywhere to a place that is packed to the brim with cranky people is a BAD idea.  It really wasn't safe to let her out of the stroller since she's a wanderer and I was afraid she'd get stepped on.  Basically, everyone who was at that park on Saturday can now claim to have met the world's loudest screaming baby.

The worst part was the money.  After a couple of hours inside the park, Dave said it would've been more pleasurable to have just handed over his wallet and driven right home.  Here's the breakdown of the cost:

Bridge toll $4

Parking    $15 (I ALMOST HAD A FRICKING CONNIPTION)

Entrance $80 (and this was after MY entry was free with a coupon!)

Lunch $25 (this was two small, terrible plates of chicken strips with french fries and two diet cokes, for which Dave had to wait for almost thirty minutes in line.) (Oh, and you're not allowed to bring in your own food.  They actually check your bags.)

Slushee drink during the killer whale show $6

Attempt to purchase some Ben & Jerry's $0 (the service was SO SLOW that after I waited for over fifteen minutes for some high school stoner to scoop literally TWO ice cream cones, I left the line.)

Snow cone $6 (this was the best thing we got all day since we used it to torture Alex while he played in the water feature)

GRAND TOTAL for a day I'd like to forget: $136 (and after we figured out the total was when Dave said, "For that much money, we should've just gotten him a hooker.")  I guess the highlight of the day was that perhaps we hid our own personal horror well enough that Alex ended up having a great time.  He really did love the few kiddie rides he got to go on.

We didn't end up leaving the park until after six, which meant we had to stop for dinner on the way home (the park is over an hour from us).  We stopped at an Outback Steakhouse, which was honestly the highlight of the day for me and perhaps the best tasting, most hard-earned liquor Dave and I have ever had.  I can't even remember what I had for dinner, but that Taz Tini was a thing of beauty.  The service was also excellent.  I think we spent around $60 there, including beverages.  Again, that was the best money we spent all day.

This was just one less thing I'll ever have to worry about missing about California.

The receipt and a winner

So, the grand total was:

$31.48.  The winner is Karen, who guessed $31.42!  (E-mail me your address and I'll mail you your prize.)

I guess the point here was that groceries are expensive.  That stupid rattle was $10.24!  And even though that's not technically part of the grocery budget, per se, it all just manages to add up incredibly fast.  Especially when it comes to food for the kids, I refuse to reduce my standards just to save a buck.  They only eat all natural, additive-free food, preferably organic when possible and it's expensive. 

It also means I buy different food for every member of the family, as illustrated by our morning breakfast routine:

Alex eats plain Quaker oatmeal.  I like the packets with the (fake) brown sugar and then I also buy organic oatmeal for the baby.  I'm sure it would be cheaper if we all ate the same thing and I could buy it bulk, but that's just not what we do.   

I started this blog because I thought people would be interested to read about something that's almost as tabu as sex: MONEY. Given the reaction I often get here, I can see why it's a subject that no one wants to touch.  I'm going to keep posting about my spending because THAT's the point:  this woman's budget.  It's not right or wrong or by any means a recommendation about what YOU should do.  Like any blog, it's really just about me and I hope you continue to enjoy it.

A Contest

Yesterday I took a quick side trip to the grocery store on our way home from preschool.  Genoa is sprouting a giant molar (OF DOOM) and I couldn't find the vibrating teether I used to have for Alex and the only place I've ever seen it is Safeway, so there we went.  I picked up a few other things while I was there, of course.

This is what I bought (click the photos to bigificate them):

Pictured above is:
4 packages of Snapea Crisps (one of three foods Genoa is currently eating)
A box of organic oatmeal (the second of the three foods)
A package of organic American cheese (the third of the three foods)
A box of Hershey's new caramel filled chocolate sticks (which? YUM!)
A greeting card
And also this rattle (pictured separately because I had to wait for her to fall asleep to sneak it out of her grip):

How much do you think it cost me?  The person who most accurately guesses the total will get a prize (I don't know what yet, but it'll be something cool.  Promise.)  I'll post the receipt on Friday morning.

The life changing grocery shopping trip

On Friday, I went to Nob Hill to buy groceries for the mother's day dinner Dave wanted to make me and just to restock the cupboards.  I haven't been meal planning much lately because I haven't really been cooking.  I've just been throwing stuff together at the last minute.  This is pretty much my modus operandi.  I'm not a meal planner by nature and I'm probably never going to be one.  I'm never going to be thin either.

I ended up spending $170 on Friday.  In one trip to the grocery store.  To a grocery store that wasn't Whole Foods, either.  I was SHOCKED when the checker gave me the total.  But after breaking it down a bit, it made more sense.

My mother's day dinner preparations (filet mignon for me, London broil for Dave, baked potatoes, charcoal, etc) was $28.53.  Snacks for Alex's lunch were $16.15.  Liquor (Cocktails by Jenn were on sale for only $8.99!) was 19.98.  Three twelve packs of soda ran another $11.60.  I even bought Alex and I lunch at the deli for $5.98.  All that stuff totaled $70.64.  The rest of what I bought totaled another $100 and it was basic stuff like bread, tortillas, swiss cheese, strawberries, apples, pears, turkey, etc.  The basic groceries that get us through the week.

And all this basically leads me to a conclusion I've been thinking of for quite some time:

I don't want to worry about our grocery budget anymore. 

I'm done freaking out about it. Groceries are expensive, but eating is obviously important to us.  So I'm really going to do my best to work around it and focus on overall spending instead.  I'm guessing we're just going to keep on spending around $1000 a month for groceries.  Hopefully it will be less in Washington because everything there is cheaper, but I'm really not going to stress about it any more.  Instead of other fancy things we might be able to afford by spending less on groceries, I'm just going to enjoy the fact that we don't really need to worry about it.

We basically end up spending what we spend whether I stress about it or not, so why stress about it anymore?

Wednesday, May 9 - $95.02

I had the best day yesterday with the kids.  I sat around all morning killing time and then decided at the last minute to take them to a movie.  It was the first movie I've attempted by myself with both kids in tow and no helper.  I only thought of the idea, in fact, because Genoa had skipped her morning nap and I was sure she'd sleep right through the movie.  Which she did.

First we grabbed lunch at Togo's ($11.09) and before you get on my case about how I could've made us sandwiches, I didn't want to.  I wanted a #2 with extra mayo, so I got one.  Then we headed to the movie theater and paid, get this, $17.50 for our two matinee tickets.  Mine was $9.00 and Alex's CHILD price was a whole FIFTY CENTS cheaper!  You just gotta love the bay area.  PLEASE tell me movies aren't that expensive wherever you are!

We saw Meet the Robinson's, at a showing which turned out to be in 3D, which also turned out to be awesome.  Alex loved the glasses and the movie.  It was a little too old for him (he's really too young to understand themes like adoption and birth parents), but he liked it fine enough to sit still through the entire thing.  On our way out, we stopped to chase each other around the fountain in front of the parking lot.  It was a beautiful spring day and I snapped a few photos with my cell phone.

Then we went to the bank to make a deposit and to Rite Aid to buy shampoo, mother's day cards and a carton of rainbow sherbet ($23.76).  Dave must've gotten gas because there's also a charge for $42.67 that hasn't cleared yet. 

I realize this wasn't the cheapest entertainment I could've thought of for a day out with the kids, but I don't regret it at all. 

Tuesday, May 8th - ZERO dollars

I didn't spend any money today.  We went to the library after school and then spent the afternoon taking a much-needed two-hour nap.  I don't think my children have both slept so long at the same time in, I don't know, ever?  (Can I get an AMEN?)

I think yesterday's post came across differently than I meant it to.  I'm a stress-eater.  It's something I do to keep myself busy while I think about all the stuff I SHOULD be doing instead.  I eat when I'm not hungry.  I over-eat when I am hungry.  I snack all day long.  I know I'm not the only one who does this.  I figure for a woman who used to weigh 300 pounds and has lost 125, gaining four or five of them back at a time of intense stress is really no big deal.  I plan to work them back off when the dust clears. 

The more interesting thing is the idea of me being a stress-spender, which, aside from our food purchases, I'm really not.  I like to buy things, like anybody, but I'm not a person who runs to the store after a bad day (again, unless it's to buy cookies).  I'm a list maker.  I shop out of need and want, not to fill some deep hole of despair.  It might be hard to tell from this blog and my constant complaining about our budget, but I'm really a happy-go-lucky person.  I'm incredibly blessed and I have the decency to recognize it. 

As for the financial stuff, can I please reiterate for the umpteenth time that we have no credit card debt?  We are doing really well and the reason I'm writing this blog is because I want to do BETTER.  I want to save more.  Our financial ship is still very much afloat and sailing in the right direction.

Self-medicating with food

I'm totally off the wagon food and budget-wise.  I can't seem to stop eating.  Fortunately, I've only gained about 4 pounds and for that I thank the good doctors who performed my gastric bypass surgery.  Without it, I'd most certainly be up at least ten pounds . I'm a stress eater, what can I say.

Unfortunately, stress eating could very well be a competitive sport in our marriage, so we've been doing a lot of excess grocery shopping.  Of course I haven't added it up, so I'm not sure how excessive our excess has been, but it certainly can't be good.

A friend and I took the kids to IKEA for lunch today.  I also bought two martini glasses (to replace the two that recently broke), a box of Anna's ginger cookies, a bag of elk shaped organic pasta, a cinnamon roll and a soft serve ice cream cone.  Total spending $21.57.

Our microwave is broken and I'm too hot to cook, so I'm off to order us a pizza for dinner.