A fun not back to school week

We had a blast two weeks ago. Public schoolers here in town went back to school. So, we visited all the places that are too busy during summer over run with public schoolers. :)
I am going to share how we did all of these fun things on a budget.

On Monday we went to Chuck E Cheese with some other homeschooling friends. If you go to the website Chuck E Cheese, you can sign up for some great coupons. Also if you "like" them on FB there are some good deals.
I give the older kids their tokens and tell them when it's gone it's gone. The younger ones come back to me occasionally and I give them a few tokens at a time. This keeps the older kids from "using" them for their tokens.

On Tuesday we visited our local museum but I did not put my memory card back in my camera so I missed out on pictures.

On Wednesday we hit the beach with our homeschool group. We had to pay about $6 to get into the park. We packed our own lunch and the kids had a blast playing with friends.

On Thursday I had to take my mom to the Dr and we were gone all day so no fun times there. :(

On Friday we used our Kids Bowl Free coupons and went bowling. We then hit Ci-Ci's pizza for lunch. Their buffet is like $3.99 for kids and $4.99 for adults. Oh and bowling we paid $13 for shoe rental for the kids.

We enjoy finding fun, cheap or free stuff to do as a family. In all we spent about $100 for the whole week. It was the ultimate stay-cation!

HELLO?

I do actually have plans for this blog. I really, really do.
I have birthdays.
Shopping at the Farmer's Market.
Baby stuff.
All sorts of stuff planned out.
If you read my other blog you see how sporadic posting is there. Once I actually get this thing rolling I think it will meet my great expectations of it. LOL
With baby brain weighing heavily on me I can't think of much else then the basic day to day stuff. :)

All Recipes

Click on the picture above to go to this website.

I'm sure all of you have heard of this awesome website.

Why do I think it's a must for all Large Families?

1. You can cook from your pantry.
Type in the ingredients you have on hand.
Type in any ingredients you don't have or want in the recipe.
Hit enter and find a recipe for tonight's meal.

2. You can change the amount per serving.
This is so useful when you have a large family. How many times have I tried to triple a recipe only to mess it up because what I thought she be 2 cups was only 1 3/4 c or something like that? It can be discouraging.

3. Lots of reviews.
The reviews themselves make this an awesome website. Real cooks have tried these recipes. Sometimes with great success. Sometimes with horrible results. Often they will add a suggestion for how to make it better.

There are other recipe sites out there and I do use them. All Recipes is hands down my first go to site though. It has helped feed our family many times.

Coming soon..

More reviews, I promise. Things have been crazy around here lately.
We are surpirsed to find that we are welcoming baby number 6 to the large family household in June of this year.
In other news, I am going to get with the children and we will be coming up with ideas for things to review for large families.

The Warehouse Stores

We have three Warehouse Clubs around us. We have had membership at all three Warehouse clubs. The one we are currently with is our favorite. Though we do have to drive a distance to get there.

We shop at the club about once every month or every other month. Our bill ranges from around $300-$400 dollars. But that's because we usually buy about a month to two months worth of meat. I do supplement our meat with sale meat from the grocery store, but mostly we eat out of the freezer supply. While it might not be the cheapest option it is the most convenient at this time. I have to admit as a mom of five young children sometimes convenient trumps cheap. I'm just sayin'. :)

The first Warehouse Club we were ever members of was Sam's. It's a part of Walmart. Very, very basic. The prices were great and it was only about 10 minutes from our house. They had a good variety of stuff that we liked. The things we did not like was the dirtiness of the store, the rude sales associates, the crowded check out lines, the rude customers (someone was always jumping in front of us in line), the neighborhood the store was in and (when we were members) they would not let you use your debit card to check out. If you were not paying cash you had to either use a Walmart credit card or a credit card. We never carried cash around so once we ended up putting it on our Visa credit card. Not happy.

Membership for Sam's club starts at $40 for the year.

Our next club was BJ's. We liked BJs for the gas most of all. We were members when the gas prices were soaring sky high. Roy worked right down the street from the club so he could swing in on his way home from work and fill up at a good price. We liked the variety of food at BJs though the prices were a little higher than Sam's. We really liked that they had some organics. The store was pretty clean. The neighborhood was nicer. The Sales Associates at least respectable. No one ever cut into line line in front of us at BJs so I guess the customers were nicer. :)

After Roy lost his job BJ's was a trek. It took about 30m to get there. The lines were always long. I did not like their selection of produce. Some produce I do like to buy in bulk. We can eat the heck out of some fruit around here. And I use onions and garlic in EVERYTHING. Also to make potatoes for this crew it takes almost 10 pounds. BJs produce never seemed to last the week. So when Roy was not working over there any longer we let our membership expire. Just not worth the drive to us.

Membership at BJs starts at $45 for the year.

We finally landed at Costco. Our first venture was on a Saturday. Never venture to the only Costco in town on a Saturday. Never. Never. Did I say never? It was so crowded. BUT the store did not feel that crowded. And the check out lines? Well, let me say that we both agree that the check out lines at Costco are worth the price of admission. No less than two people are there to help. One to load the stuff on the belt and to load your cart back up, and one to check you out. It's amazing. There are almost no lines at Costco. I love their produce. I picked up a huge box of sweet potatoes last month and we are still munching on them. Their fruit was fresh and juicy. I love buying a case of plums. LOL They have a great selection of meat (although not the cheapest it's nice to have choices). A good selection of organics is nice. The store is clean. The staff is friendly and helpful. And hey lets face it lunch for my crew can be a hot dog and soda for $1.50 it can't be beat.

It is pretty far away from our house. About a 30-45m drive. But the quality makes it worth it. It's near a big shopping center we like to shop at sometimes so we try to combine the trip. The prices are a little bit more than the other two places, but once again quality trumps.

The price for membership starts at around $50 as far as I can tell from their website.

All in all we don't really need to shop at the Warehouse Club. I like buying in bulk because it keeps me at home more. We don't really save a lot of money by doing so, but it saves me time.

I have noticed though since we started at Costco that just having meat and some other staples on hand in bulk has saved us from ordering out as much. I try to cook up a load of meat when we get home so I can quickly defrost and throw together a meal.

We are happy with Costco and despite the drive we will probably stay there for awhile.

I hope this was helpful. All three clubs have their pros and cons.

If you shop Warehouse what's your favorite one and why?

Our Mission

Roy and I have been talking about setting up this blog for awhile now. As a family of seven sometimes it's a bit harder for us to do the things that families with two or three children do. Such as get a hotel room for a reasonable price. The cute little meals in the grocery store that say Family Size always make us laugh.

This is our family and here we will all share our opinions on restaurants, hotels, stores, food, books anything and everything that affects a large family. We are hoping to help other families and have some fun ourselves along the way.

Roy: the husband, the father, the leader. He will give us the dad's perspective on our blog. Always helpful. :)

Julie: the wife, the mother, the homemaker. Without makeup and keeping it real. The perspective of the woman. Always needed. :)

Karly: The twelve year old who is sure she is thirty. Sharing her opinion on everything... frequently. :)

Kelsie: the nine year old. The quiet introverted one. She will give us the girly, girl opinion on anything that crosses her path.

Tamara: She's eight and as crafty they come. Don't let that smile fool you she is crafty and does not miss a thing. She will definitely let us know when something is not up to standard.

Adrian: The six year old boy. He will be more than happy to add his male input. Though not very wordy he is sharp.

Jonathan: Last but never least, this three year old has an opinion on everything. I'm sure his insight will be invaluable to those of you who have preschoolers running around.

So, I hope you enjoy our new family blog. If you have any suggestions for us to review please let us know.

Our first review will be on Warehouse clubs. Look for it sometime this week.