Finally, I feel like I can breathe.

The last month has been such a whirlwind in our lives, but a wonderful one.  When I look back at the last few weeks, I wonder how we survived, but we did, thank God, and we’re all settling in.  We couldn’t have done it without the help of our family.  We hired some amazing movers as well to help.  If you are in need of a moving company, I highly recommend Two Men and a Truck.  They were A M A Z I N G.  The best money we ever spent.

We officially moved into our new house on the 26th.  It’s been a little over a week, but now it’s beginnging to feel like we’ve been there MUCH longer than that.  I drive by Tyne Lane every day and wonder how our cute first house is doing.  I’m sure the new owners are loving it, but part of me does miss it just a little.

We also had an awful decision to make about a week before our move.  Our dog, Zeus, was 9 years old (that’s senior for a Doberman) and his health had been declining pretty quickly over the last few weeks.  We knew the time was coming, as horrible of a decision as it was, we made the choice to put him to sleep and let him cross the Rainbow Bridge.  It was a very sad day for our family, but we knew in the long run, it was the right decision. 

We’re now getting settled into our new home.  I have been taking a few pics here and there, but it’s been such a mess with boxes and unpacking, that I’ve been holding out on taking too many until it’s all prettied up.   So, when it’s all nice and pretty for B’s party this weekend, I’ll be sure to take some new ones.

Speaking of The Princess, can you believe she’s turning ONE on Sunday?  I know I sure can’t!!  We took her one year photos on Sunday and did a cake smash.  Stay tuned for those, but here’s one of my faves of her laughing at her brother.  And I LOVE my new natural light studio in the house!!  I can’t wait to use it over the coming years!!

While I’m on the subject of photography…I’m having an amazingly fun contest over at the Ten Tiny Toes Blog.  Definitely go and check it out and I’d love to have you join in the fun!

I just couldn’t take it anymore.  Tony tries REALLY hard, he does, to have something ready for dinner when I get home from work.  The problem is, it’s just usually something that he likes and of course Ty doesn’t like it either!  So, I decided it was time for a what I was calling a “Dinnertime Intervention”.  I’d heard great things about planning your meals and it’s honestly something I’d been wanting to try for some time.

So, we’ve been giving it a go for the last 4 weeks or so and it’s been AWESOME!  We’ve been using e-Mealz.com to aid in our effort.  Every week they give you a list of 7 meals that you can choose from to plan within your week.  Sometimes we use a few and then fill in our own around them, but they are an awesome starting point and they provide you a nice little grocery list as well that makes putting your grocery list together so easy.

The thing that has surprised me the most though is how much money this is all saving us!  We’ve been going to the grocery story about every 2 weeks and our bill is what it was usually was for ONE week!  Between this and the GroceryGame.com, we’re saving SO much more money now on our meals.

To manage all of the meals, I’ve been using one of my FAVORITE “life” tools, the Google Calendar.  I use these anyway to keep track of our family activities, my business activities and now have one for our Meal Planning.  The best part is, once we decide that we want to keep one of the meals for sure on our list, I set them to recur every 6 weeks.  So, you only need to plan out about 6 weeks of meals and then just tweak them as you feel necessary, but the bulk of the work is done!  I also have each recipe embedded in the calendar for that day so that we can quickly reference it, print it or email the day of or day before.  For things that need to be taken out of the freezer the night before, I have it set to email me a reminder the night before so I don’t forget.

So far, it’s working awesome!  The eternal question of “What’s for Dinner” is no longer.  Sure, we still have the occasional drive thru meal, but they are MUCH fewer and far between and it’s not only helping our pocketbooks, but our sanity as well.

Give e-Mealz a try today!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  We are so lucky to have such awesome family and friends to spend the holiday with.  It was fun having another “first holiday” for Bailey too, we’re running out of them all too quickly.  This year we spent with my Dad and step-mom and my sister hosted at her new, first house!  She did a fabulous job and the food was all so yummy!

We attempted to get a couple of family photos with my tripod set up and I managed to quickly teach my dad how to use my camera, he did great!  Now, these are not the smiley, perfect family portrait that I had hoped for, but oh well, you take what you can get, right?  They make me smile and really show our family’s personality

It was an exciting day for B, we managed to get a bow to stay in her hair!  Woooo!

The monkeys with our lovely hostess