What’s for dinner?
As grocery prices go up, I know Erich and I have looked for ways to make sure we plan to make our meals healthy, nutritious, and budget friendly.  We’ve learned that planning our menus accomplishes that. Having the menu prepped ahead of time all answers the age old question: “what’s for dinner?” I know though that meal planning can be tedious.  It takes a lot of thought to plan so that we aren’t eating the same things over and over each week. Plus, the same old stuff bores me and loses my interest to cook.  And as we our activities like homeschooling, tumbling, and art lessons start to take up more and more time, having a plan already made

10 Days With Carmina
Today was Carmina’s due date. We’re all so glad

A Mountain of Laundry, a Mountain of Debt
The castle is full of two things: dirty laundry and bad debt. What the queen needs is for the king to increase commerce, enforce the law, be a good husband, and a good father. What the king needs is for the queen to be professional, organized, and thorough. While each is focusing on their strengths (the queen knits while the king markets), the weaknesses (management and accountability) suffer. It is more than a Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus type of thing. It is more of a non-complementary strength-set kind of thing. Neither one of us wants to manage our kids, our household, our personal finances, or each other. We just want to be able to do whatever we

The Work at Home Nap with Kids
The Work Nap If you are fortunate enough to have a workplace that has an area for naps and your workload can wait, take advantage of that benefit – shoot for a 20-30 minute nap to take the edge off your exhaustion. A shorter nap will keep you in higher levels of sleep, which prevent you from waking up groggy. In order to accomplish this feat, set an alarm on your cell phone or ask a coworker to wake you. The Work at Home Nap If you work at home, being sleepy on the job is not as much of a problem, or is it? The real problem is keeping it from becoming a habit. And actually the habit is only a

Laundry Soap Dilemmas
If you are a mom, likely something you use daily is laundry detergent.  As a cloth diapering family of five, I find my washer and dryer are constantly going just to keep up with the demands of an ever growing Mt. Laundry.  In fact, I tend to start my day by getting laundry going and the dishwasher.  The soft whirl of both machines feels homey and comfortable. But for years I’ve struggled with the laundry soap dilemma.   When we first got married, I used Tide.  It was what my mom had used and I enjoyed the scent.  But I was always bothered by the big price tag that comes with Tide and so as money became tight, I switched over to Era.  I would buy a giant container of