One of the hardest things about having kids with food allergies/intolerance is that it is so hard to figure out if it is something my child ate or is this a virus. For example, last Friday, Zach was miserable, said he just did not feel good. He ended up sleeping a lot. We talked about what he had been eating at school and could not figure out what it could be.  Come to find out it was a virus that both Matt and I dealt with this week.

As our efforts to save money and reduce our expenses continue, I have been closely monitoring our daily energy use. My discovery is that the dryer and heat are the two biggest users.  The heat is simply one of the few things that I can’t do anything more about. We currently have the temperature set at 69 during the day and 67 at night. But recently with the temperatures remaining so low for multiple days, I have agreed to raise the temperature to 70 for part of the day. This is after making sure we all are in sweats and socks, but I am simply not able to stand being so cold. The dryer is the one thing that I usually manage to keep use steady and to a minimum. I don’t usually wash our sheets or allow anyone else to wash sheets unless they can be dried outside. We have developed a routine for washing one load of laundry a day and mostly using the dryer at night.  Unfortunately, again this was not the case this past weekend nor this week after we are sick. We ended up having 10 loads of clothes on Saturday and another 4 loads yesterday.  As I check the usage, we have been over 100 Kilowatts a day for 7 of the last 10 days and 12 of the last 15 days. Needless to say, I am not looking forward to the bill that I will receive soon for the past month.

Sunday will be our anticipated “Junk Food Sunday” The kids have all picked out their favorite snack.  The thing they are most excited for is that we are going to go to Food Lion on Saturday, and each will be allowed to pick out one favorite fruit or veggie in addition to their already chosen snack.

We have not been out to eat for 2 weeks due to the generosity of friends and a scheduled meal at church this Sunday. This will definitely help in the expense department.  The girls both have to contribute to the meal, but we have all the ingredients at home so that make things much easier.

We are actually on track with our grocery spending for the second month in a row. Matt made a small trip to Costco, but I am making sure to keep a good tab on what we are using.

We are starting to see some shortages in our grocery stores like Costco did not have any kielbasa but otherwise we really have everything we need to create good meals. I am currently using the grocery budget to replace items we use or special treat items.

Finally I am looking forward to a weekend with the weather on Saturday about 60.  That too is short lived as another cold front pushes us back to 40 on Sunday and Monday.