For the record - spending so far

Money spent on foods and beverages by all members of my family since January 1, 2011:

Tea - $2
Juice boxes - $3 (trying to boost fluid intake for three sick kids, but I ended up drinking it all because the raspberry-orange-vegetable blend was not a hit with the under-7 crowd)
Groceries - $72.29
Burger King - $5.06

So, now that I know exactly what food we have in the house, I was ready to go shopping! We went to the grocery store tonight at 5:45pm with a much shorter list than usual considering I was shopping for a whole week.  It was so fun to watch G and B carefully deciding which variety of fruit to purchase and to see them carefully pick and count out individual pieces.  G would then toss her bag of fruit over her shoulder and saunter over to the shopping cart to give me her treasures.    I let S walk with the big kids, rather than have to sit in the cart the whole time. S and B held hands and were so well-behaved, B solemnly trying to be a good example for his little brother and S knowing intuitively that if he started running he was heading back into that cart in a heartbeat.    The fact that the list was so short and we were finished so soon made the trip much more pleasant for everyone. It was a great shopping trip. Incidentally, I don't know if it was the time or the snow or the date, but the store was empty. That also made the trip much better!

Tonight I made a yogurt dressing for my salad. To plain yogourt, I added lemon juice, salt, pepper, oregano, and crushed garlic. It was so yummy that I decided to make up another batch of the dressing and toss it with freshly cooked gnocchi. I ate some of it pretty much right away and it was delicious. Rich got home an hour later and had some and by then it was AMAZING.  It reminds me of a delicious turkish dish that my friend makes. mmmm.

Oh, I almost forgot... this morning the kids and I made Oatmeal Bread. It is the best recipe for bread I have ever found. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loves this and asks me for the recipe. It is from MWL of course, and it is worth the purchase price of the cookbook for this alone!  S helped measure and pour all of the ingredients whereas B and G had fun punching down the risen dough and shaping the loaves. It is an easy bread to make and it tastes and smells so good. Thanks to the oatmeal it was a sweet nutty taste to it and is very filling, though not in an unpleasantly heavy way.  We had the bread with our lunch of tomato soup(!!), and at supper time the kids had more bread with their salad (they don't like gnocchi) and then again for a bedtime snack. It's the kind of bread that would be completely sufficient if that were all you were to eat for one day. 

I really just had a simple and sweet day with the kids.  We spent so much time together cooking, cleaning, reading, playing, shopping. I feel very blessed today for my sweet little munchkins and for the opportunity I have to spend so much time with them.  I'm a lucky mama.