I Just Saved A Bundle by Switching My Car Insurance!

No, really, I did!  Last week I finally made a bunch of phone calls and scheduled a few appointments that I had been meaning to get to, but just never really made the time.  I am so glad I did!  One of the things on my list was calling to get a new car insurance quote.  We had been with Progressive, but were paying more than I thought was necessary for renters insurance.  So last Wednesday I finally called another company to get a quote.  The lady I spoke with was awesome, she was super nice and helpful.  I was on the phone for probably like a half an hour and she went over everything with me, explaining things, and answering all my questions.  I was able to switch my plan and we are saving over $50 a month.  I was very surprised we were able to save so much, I spent the day doing a happy dance.

I had written a post awhile ago talking about how I was thinking about paying for 6 months of my insurance with Progressive.  When I looked into it, we would have saved about $50 over the course of 6 months.  I decided not to, part of which is because I am a wimp and have a hard time spending any sort of large sum of money.  And now I am very glad I didn't.  It's funny how things work out sometimes.         

Pizza Casserole

Pizza casserole is quickly becoming a favorite of the boys'.  John grew up eating it, and now the boys really enjoy it too.  It's super easy and always a hit.

yum!

Layer the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish with potato puffs (or french fries, your preference).  Cook as directed on package.

While that is cooking, brown 1lb ground beef, adding your favorite seasonings.  I add frozen diced onion, garlic, and italian seasoning.  Once that is done cooking, I add one large jar spaghetti sauce directly onto meat.  Stir together, then spoon evenly over cooked potato puffs.

Recently I have been adding a thick layer of pepperoni on top, then cover with your favorite cheese.  I used a mozzarella-cheddar pizza blend.  Then pop into the oven until cheese is melted, approx. 10 minutes.  Let cool and enjoy!
 

Perfect Day

Yesterday was practically perfect.  After a long stressful week it was just what I needed.  If you haven't been living under a rock you have heard what happened in Boston.  I grew up in the Greater Boston area and it is home.  I spent the week feeling a horrible range of emotions and glued to CNN.  Yesterday was exactly what I needed. 

I dragged my butt out of bed early (well for a Saturday) and met two awesome ladies for breakfast (they were driving cross country).  I have known them since I was little from back home in my small town.  It has been way too many years since I have seen them.  I was a little nervous because it had been so long, but I really shouldn't have worried at all.  We spent the time laughing and catching up; the time went by way too fast.  I had sadly forgotten how awesome it is to spend time with friends who have known you since childhood.  It was just what I needed.

When I got home the boys were just waking up, and we spent the rest of the morning snuggling and watching cartoons.  The Red Sox are playing Kansas City this weekend; I was very happy to be able to watch the game.  I am not ashamed to say that I teared up a few times while watching.  Particularly when the whole stadium started singing "God Bless America" and "Sweet Caroline".  I have been feeling the distance a lot more acutely this week.  We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the 90's station on Sirius/XM, both enjoying and giggling at the music that we grew up on.

The only fail was our movie date night.  When I ran to the grocery store in the afternoon I picked up some soda, popcorn, and a little candy for our movie night.  But the boys went to bed later than I had planned, and while waiting for them to fall asleep I fell asleep on the couch.  *sigh* Hopefully we will make it work tonight.

Overall though I spent the day relaxed and feeling very happy.  Sadly these days don't come often enough.  Between stress at work, the stress of our limited budget, and the fact that I tend to overstress anyways, perfect days don't come around very often.  But I am so very thankful for the awesomeness that was yesterday.          

I am waaay too proud of my grocery shopping this week.

Because of our very limited budget I have had to force myself to totally redo how I do my grocery shopping.  It's been about a year now, and I get perhaps a little too much enjoyment out of stretching what we have on hand, making things from scratch, and seeing how low I can manage to keep our grocery budget.  I made a post awhile ago about how we try to reduce our grocery bill.

The ads last week weren't very good at all, so for these next two weeks (well one week left now) I planned on trying to use what we have on hand as best as possible, while still providing good meals for my family.  Because my work schedule is kind of all over the place we will have a few "leftover" nights.  I'll make a big meal with plenty of leftovers so that we can all have lunch or an easy dinner on the nights I work late.  Anyways, I am extremely happy with how the shopping has gone for the next couple of weeks.

Prep time: approx. 1 hour
Shop time: 2-ish hours
Stores: 3
Total: at budget and under $100
Yay me!

Our biggest dinner staple is chicken breast.  It's inexpensive and I have found many different recipes for chicken.  One of the many reason's why I love Sam's club is because they always have fresh, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.88/lb.  This shopping trip I made a stop at Sam's club for a few things, WalMart where I bought the bulk of my groceries (while not my favorite store, you just can't beat their prices), and one of our local grocery stores.  I hadn't planned on hitting the local grocery store, but my in-laws stopped by just before I was headed out and gave me a flier for a weekend Celebrate Nebraska sale.  They were having a big sale on items made right here in Nebraska.  While right now I am really focused on saving as much as possible, I do prefer to buy local when I can.  Our favorite BBQ place was at one of the locations, but not the one I went to unfortunately.  I was able to get milk, bread, and ham from the deli, all for a fantastic price, all produced right here in Nebraska.                

So ya, I am way too overly proud of myself for efficiently using what we already had on hand, and staying right on budget for our grocery shopping, and still making yummy meals.  Yay me!    

Throwback Thursday: Owynn's First Haircut

Owynn had his first haircut (and Oliver's second) in May of 2012, at 16 months old.  He did very well, and barely cried.  I think I had a harder time with it than he did. 

I don't know what I think about this

Before

You can't really tell here, but he had some adorable curls

My handsome little man

I.Am.Done.

After

all photos are property of doubleotwins.com

Please join me as I start a blog hop??? I guess....ok I don't really know.  Please just link up, leave a comment, and bear with me as I try and figure this whole thing out.  =)

Twin Confusion

Since the boys were tiny babies we have kind of color coded them.  I know some parents of multiples swear by color coding and really go all out.  It started when they were infants and the bottles we bought came in blue, green, and purple.  The boys came home from the NICU on two feedings a day of Neocate which provides extra nutrition for preemies.  At 2 months old our doctor said Oliver no longer needed it, but Owynn still did.  We decided to keep the 2 formula feedings a day for Oliver because 1-Owynn still was on it 2-we were all used to the 2 formula bottle schedule (I nursed the boys for their other feedings) and 3-I had no idea how long I would be able to nurse twins and we wanted a possible switch to only formula to go smoothly.  Oliver's new formula came in a blue container, so we decided that should be his color and Owynn had green.  It helped a lot when they drank out of bottles because we always knew whose bottle was whose.  The colors stuck and now if the boys get something similar but not identical we try to get one in green and one in blue.  Like the Easter bunny brought the boys Mickey Mouse hats, but where EB got them from they only had the hats in blue and red.  So Oliver got blue and Owynn ended up with red.  We still color code with their sippy cup lids.  The boys don't really care whose cup they drink out of, but it helps us keep track.

Anyways, Sunday we were in a hurry to get everyone ready and out the door to John's parents' house.  I grabbed the first couple of shirts I saw in the basket of clean laundry and they happened to be blue and green.  But the blue shirt was in Owynn's size and the green in Oliver's.  I didn't think much of it, because really we don't find the color coding absolutely necessary, it's more for our convenience at knowing whose things are whose.  But I was totally messed up all day.  Having their colors reversed totally threw me.  I kept mixing the two of them up all day and it really frustrated me.  Apparently I rely on this way more than I thought (even though like 85% of the time it's only for their sippy cups).  That or we've just been doing it for so long that I'm really used to it.  Either was I wasn't very happy with myself for repeatedly mistaking one kid for the other.           

Wordless Wednesday: Late nights

This was another tough night when the boys did not want to go to sleep.  I took these at almost midnight that night.  Which is better than they are doing today.  It's 12:30am and they are still fighting sleep.  The poor kiddos though, I think they may be coming down with yet another cold and don't feel very good.  

Owynn is asleep right up against the door, I couldn't even open it.  I had to stick my camera in and around the door to snap this.

Oliver, how sweet is this? He fell asleep reading his book.

Wordless Wednesday brought to you in part by:

 all photos are property of doubleotwins.com

Learning To Walk

I recently re-found a video we got of Oliver as he was learning to walk, just after he turned 1.  I can't get over how much they have changed!  We don't have a cute video of Owynn learning how to walk unfortunately.  He would practice walking in his room when he didn't think we were watching.  He actually started walking on our trip to NY last Easter.  One morning while we there I was changing his diaper and he just took off.  Owynn pulled himself up on the couch, turned, and slowly started toddling toward me.  He stopped just out of arms reach, gave me his mischievous smile, turned, then took off in the other direction!  And that was it, he decided he was ready to walk and hasn't stopped since.  We do have this video of Oliver though.  He took his first steps at their first birthday party.

Homemade BBQ Chicken

Last week I made some homemade BBQ Chicken and salad for dinner.  For the salad I just threw together some romaine lettuce, bacon bits, red onion, croutons, and a shredded white cheese blend.  I topped it with the special house dressing from Olive Garden which we found at Sam's Club (score!).  The Olive Garden salad at home has been a big hit.  Lately we have been giving the boys a small salad of their own and they actually ask for more!

I made my BBQ Chicken in the crock-pot and it was super easy.  I know for some this may be pretty self-explanatory, but I would have loved something like this when I first got married.  Our first year of marriage we ate a lot of potato puffs and chicken breasts cooked on the foreman (George Foreman Grill) because that was pretty much all I could cook.  Over the years I've been pretty much learning as I go, and calling my parents for recipes and help a lot.

Crock-pot BBQ Chicken:

Ingredients:
-2-3 lbs chicken
-1 Cup Water
-BBQ Sauce, enough to cover chicken


Place chicken in the crock pot, add water.  Cook on high about 4 hours or low for about 6 hours or until chicken is done at 165 degrees.  Half way through remove most of water and add BBQ sauce until it covers the chicken well.  Cook until chicken is done, then enjoy!


When I made this I didn't decide to make it until about 2:30pm that day.  I grabbed some drumsticks I had in the freezer that I had gotten on sale super cheap.  I put a liner in my crock pot, although not necessary, I love them, they make clean up such a breeze!  I tossed my chicken in frozen, added 1 cup water, and set the crock pot to high.  It only took about 4 hours to cook.  Although still wicked yummy, it could have benefited a bit from cooking on low for longer.  After 2 hours I took out as much of the liquid in the crock pot as I could leaving only a little left in there and added my favorite BBQ sauce.  I tried this once with some cheap sauce I found on sale and it wasn't very good, so make sure you use a sauce that you know you really like.  Our favorite is Sticky Stuff made by Fatboy's, it's even made right here in Nebraska!  I let it cook another 2 hours, and it was pretty much perfect.  I pulled the chicken out, removed the bones, and then using two forks I shredded the chicken.  After it was all shredded I put it back in the crock pot and mixed it in the with sauce well.  I kept the crock pot on warm and we had our shredded bbq chicken on sandwiches with salad and bbq beans.  It was a hit with everyone.     

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Easter

Owynn

Oliver, eating the ears off all his Peeps

Owynn, he put his hat on himself

Oliver, his mouth is full of Peeps

Peep massacre

Owynn found chocolate!

Oliver and Owynn

Owynn

Oliver

Owynn and Oliver

Oliver

Owynn

Owynn

Oliver and Owynn.  I love Oliver's face here, he looks just like John.

Wordless Wednesday brought to you in part by:

all photos are property of doubleotwins.com