My Great Grocery Blunder & The Kids Revolt

Up until yesterday I had been doing well with my grocery budget. Then my kids revolted.

Here's how it all went down:

Bob left yesterday for Ohio for a business/pleasure trip. I started this week with him 1700 miles away with my "ability to be a sane mama and person' tank on minus zero because he has been working so much that I haven't had time to fill my tank, so I knew that in order to still have four living children by the end of the day I would need to try and find some way to recharge. I knew that I was only going to be able to fill the tank up so far as I was lugging all of the kids with me (and normally I need to be able to venture out on my own for a couple of hours on a regular basis), but when you are below empty any amount of recharging time is welcomed regardless of its quality.

We decided to head up to Cloudcroft. We had been there once before in the winter and it was beautiful. I had heard that the weather was much cooler up there because the elevation is so high and the thought of hiking through a pine forest seemed like just the thing I needed. (We were going to go to a town called Ruidoso which is at an even higher elevation than Cloudcroft but decided against it as we wanted to experience that town for the first time with Bob with us.)

I had packed some snacks for us to eat along the way as well as some leftovers. I stopped at a health food store called Natural Grocers because I wanted to pick up an apple for each of us (went ended up buying a few extra things as well which broke about 3 of my shopping rules: thou shall shop alone, thou shall shop with cash, and thou shall shop on a full stomach). The kids were pissing and moaning over the snacks I brought, which included things like celery with peanut butter, carrot and plain celery sticks, almonds, walnuts, salsa & chips, and our apples. I stood firm and told them that this was the way we were eating right now and that they could either be grumpy about it or they could eat what I brought and be happy. (Hunger took over and they ate and were quiet, but not happy. Which I could care less about because quiet = happy for me in my desperately needed recharged psyche.)

We got up to the spot where we chose to hike and I immediately felt a sense of calm. I know that I sound like a crazy person when I talk about the way I feel at peace in a forest, but it is true. The cool air (it was about 70ish degrees up there) was amazing and the kids and I were actually chilly in the shorts and tank tops we wore. There were flowers everywhere and of course, my beloved trees. Why I have waited approximately 6 months to come back to this heaven on earth that is relatively close to my home (about 90 minutes) is beyond me.

I caught Lily in the midst of sitting down, not pooping. 

I would describe each flower to Sarah and then she would use her hands to see it. 

This part of an old railway that was built in 1899. It was used until 1947, and then collapsed in 1960. It was pretty cool to see. 

We were only there for about an hour and a half because the kids started to complain that they wanted to go out to dinner to which I promptly shut them down and told them that it was not in our budget this month. (Normally, we would have eaten out.) Which then prompted questions such as: Why was I trying to starve them? How long was I going to do this food budget for? Why couldn't they have junk food? What point was I trying to make in living on such a limited food budget? And on and on it went...which did wonders for that below empty emotional tank that I was trying to partially refill.

Another reason we were only there for such a short time was that it was exhausting hiking with my beautiful blind daughter. There is so much that goes into taking care of a child that is abled differently. There are so many little pieces that go into our every day lives that most people don't even think would be a problem. As much as I try very hard to not let all of those little details exhaust me the fact of the matter is that they do. It doesn't help when she starts to complain about how much she wants to be done and blah, blah, blah. I am not trying to sound like a harsh parent, but the fact of the matter is that I am not going to ever exclude Sarah in what we are doing, and just about everything that we do is harder for her because she is blind. I get it. Truly, I do. Hiking here is hard. The trails aren't paved and nice and smooth. They are rocky and bumpy and go up and down sometimes steeply. But, again, when mama's trying to sharpen the saw and all four kids are complaining about food and then about how hard hiking is I knew it was time to cut the trip short or I would be coming home with just the dogs.

By this time in our journey nature is no longer having its soothing effects on me. Instead I am trying to come up with what I am going to feed these heathen children of mine because I haven't had a chance to grocery shop for the week yet. In a weak moment, I gave in and told the kids that I would take them to the store to buy whatever junk they wanted to eat for dinner. (I said some other things too, but those will remain out of this blog as they may or may not be appropriate for all viewing audiences.)

And so that is what we did. I dropped off the dogs. Hauled 3 of the 4 kids with me to Walmart and let them pick out what they wanted to eat. This is what our receipt showed:

Walmart Tater Puffs
Tortilla Chips
Great Value Potato Chips
Ketchup
Packaged Salad (the completely not nutritious iceberg lettuce kind)
Cheese Sauce (for the tortilla chips. Why they even call it cheese is beyond me.)
Knorr's Teryaki Noodles x2
Knorr's Spanish Rice
Red Barron Pizza x2 (the smaller individual round pizza kind)
Glue Stick (not to eat. Although if I had been smarter I would have used it to glue their mouths shut last night. Yes, it was a classic night.)

Do you know what the total was for all of this junk?! $26.52!!!! That is almost 2 days of my food budget spent on 1 meal. And the worst part about it is that I let everyone cook all of their stuff and then more than 1/2 of it wasn't eaten and was thrown out this morning. (Because the maid did not show up last night to clean up after dinner. Damn her! And my thoughtful children were too tired to clean up after themselves because their mean mother had dragged them on a hike earlier in the day.) Talk about waste.

So, instead of having a $120 budget to grocery ship with this morning I had an $85.00 budget to shop with. (I spent around $8.50 in the morning on our groceries to take with us to Cloudcroft.) I really screwed myself by caving in to those dear lovely children of mine. (Insert sarcasm here.)

Lesson learned.

My grocery budget is too skinny to allow for indulgences such as that, and as with everything in life, I learned it the hard way. Next month (because I am committed to try this plan for several months. The kids are going to love that news -bwahahahaha) I will not allow for that to happen.

Tomorrow I will share with you how today's weekly shopping went, how much I spent, and what I learned this week with my self imposed food stamp budget.