Holiday Recovery + E-Mealz

I love the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season so much; I honestly do. But I must admit that when early January rolls around every year I find myself a little relieved.  Every single day has felt like a holiday/vacation for the past two weeks. There have been days on end where I’m not sure of the date or the day of the week and I might wake up in the morning and change out of my pajamas into another set of pajamas. (Perhaps this is just one of the effects of a 24-hour sugar/carb coma.)  Work has even been quiet and less stressful. However, I have had my share of Christmas candy, turkey and deviled eggs and I’m tired of being lazy. Now life can finally get back to normal and move forward.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get all of the Christmas decorations taken down today, but I did get started. 

Today began with the following conversation:

Brent (holding a lottery ticket that he bought yesterday): Oh, wow!  I won two dollars!!  Woo hoo!!

Me: How much did the ticket cost?

Brent: Five dollars.

Me: So, actually……….

 

E-Mealz

In keeping with the Financial Peace Babystep #2 Resolution (which Brent obviously temporarily forgot about when he bought the lottery ticket – ha!), we subscribed to e-mealz, a program that creates a weekly dinner plan and grocery list based on regional sales at the grocery store.  We subscribed to the Wal-Mart meal plan for 2. They have several other plans to account for family size, preferred grocery store, and dietary preferences.  They have low-fat and Weight Watchers Points System plan, but just looking at those plans made me hungry and a little depressed. (On one of them, one of the side dishes was grapes. Come on.)

Anyway, today we remembered why we hate Wal-Mart and vow never to shop there: the produce is terrible and it is very crowded.  Booo!  But you can’t beat the prices, so we are going to stick with it a little longer and see if it makes a difference in the weekly grocery bill.

Other highlights of the day included:

For the past several weeks, I have been absolutely craving tomatoes.  Not actual whole tomatoes, because I hate them.  I’m craving salsa, marinara sauce, pizza sauce, etc.  I just cannot get enough.  So, we stopped at Mr.G’s today, which is a fast food-ish Italian place in Northport.  I had never been before today. It was so good!

One happy guy!

And can you even believe these are already out???  Not that we’re complaining!  The Cadbury eggs were inhaled before I had time to take a picture!

And apparently I’m getting Weight Watchers again this year.  How timely that it came in the mail right after I had indulged in pizza and Easter candy! I swear I do not remember subscribing, but it keeps on coming.  An anonymous benefactor?

That Time Again

It’s that time of the year again….time to start setting goals (I prefer goals vs. resolutions) for the new year. And this year it is not just a new YEAR, but a new DECADE.  Seems like a really, really fresh start.  In 2010, Brent and I will also say goodbye to our 20’s!  Unbelievable!  So I think this is a good time to reflect on where we have been and where life (individually and collectively) is going. 

This year I am going to set a few personal goals, but for the first time, Brent and I are going to set family resolutions.  More than likely, these family resolutions will be about finances, continuing the Financial Peace plan we started last year.  We have made progress this year, but not as much as we could have.

My problem with goals/resolutions is that I set too many and have too many things going at once, get discouraged, impatient, or overwhelmed, and drop them all. I need to focus on ONE primary thing this year, and set a detailed plan for accomplishing it.