Groceries

Bret or I go to the grocery store once a week except on rare occasions. We typically spent an average of $125 per week on groceries. This does not include diapers as I usually order them online once a month or so.

To help cut some of the costs of groceries I make a weekly menu and try to base my menu around what might be on sale at the grocery store in the weekly adds out of the paper. I cut coupons and work pretty hard to stick to the menu. This helps because we don't buy a lot of extra food that we don't end up using or that may spoil and go to waste.

That said by the end of the grocery week we are running on empty supply wise. The kids are getting to an age where they start to understand how the system works. The bad news is that they want to have input. I am asked regularly to put something on the grocery list (fruit snacks, etc) and requests for dinner (Emily wants brauts or steak at least once a week).

Bret was post call yesterday after working the weekend so I ran to the grocery store before picking Emily up from school while the boys all napped. When they got up from their nap and Emily home from school it hit me how quickly we go through some things and how happy they were to have food in the house again. Believe me when I tell you that although it would be my husband's dream we are never out of food. We have a deep freezer and pantry that are still pretty full (despite my goal).

Things we go through very quickly in our house are fruit (bananas, strawberries, grapes, apples, you name it), yogurt (trix yogurt cups, go-gurts, etc), goldfish crackers, juice boxes, string cheese, and cereal. Yes they are all snack foods but when you have a 6 year old and 3 year old everything is a snack. My reasoning is that at least it is all fairly healthy snacks. Yes the yogurt we buy has sugar in it and so do the juice boxes but still in my opinion not that bad.

During the summer months we live on fruit in our house. Our fridge is always filled with every kind of fruit in season. During the winter it gets tougher because the price goes up and the quality goes down. We tend to stick to grapes, apples, and bananas. Between Palmer and Logan we go through the biggest bundle of bananas I can find in only a few days.

We need to work on adding more vegetables to our snacking. They all like cooked vegetables as sides for dinner and really great salad eaters. None of them care very much for fresh vegetables. Emily will eat cucumbers well and Palmer likes carrots. That is about it.

Bret and I laugh about it now when we see the kids get excited over groceries. We know that with three kids and two of them good sized boys we will literally be eaten out of house and home for a long time to come.