I want a Pantry Makeover!

Erin over at $5 Dinners is promoting a $250 pantry makeover in the form of a $250 gift card to the grocery store of your choice! This is an extra entry, and what follows is yet another, so enter if you want (though I want to win, so personally I discourage too much competition.

Anyway, since I don't care if people think I am messy, plus this is in a closet so it seems ok to show...here is our pantry! Sorry its sideways, I can't be bothered to figure out how to turn it. I used to know how, but then I lost my brain to pregnancy. This time next year I can probably figure things like this out again.



Let me explain. Our pantry is literally the only place we store dry food (aside from the plastic storage containers that we have things like flour etc in). As you can see though we do have back up food for the containers in the pantry though. If you look closely behind the tater and onion bin (empty BTW, onions are pretty gross this pregnancy) you can see non food items that are just in there. I also forgot that {nearly} all the pasta as well as canned tomatoes and pasta sauce are in giant plastic storage bins in the computer room.

The multitudes of bags at the bottom are holding things like cereal and random canned foods. Because obviously i didn't have room for them on the bottom shelf or any of the other shelves that are holding canned food. Some are hard to put away because I have like 2 cans of that food item.The other bags are bags of grocery bags. (Don't ask why i keep so many.)

You know, its funny that I want a pantry makeover, when really a couple of hours or moving and organizing will make over my pantry quite soundly. But hey, with an extra $250 I can totally complete our '3 month food storage' as well as pick up lots of easy foods for when we add another kiddo in a few more months. Even if I don't win, I will probably try to do this in the next few months. Just cause it needs done.

Oh well, lets hope I can get it done for only the cost of my labor instead of labor and money.

New Travel Plans!

Well, Daniel called AirTran just a few moments ago. We are leaving on the first flight Tuesday morning which means Daniel can go to school and work Monday, which means more benefit time can be saved for when the baby comes, since he has to accrue benefit time next year which is retarded...

Interlude by Daniel:
Actually, they sold the company that I work for last year and they are finally going to make us follow the benefit program of the new company starting next year. It's sort of ironic that when the change over was happening they claimed that the benefits were "substantially similar", but what really has happened is insurance has doubled in price... and next year I will get less benefit time by 5 days. :-| Oh well, at least I'm paid pretty well and am in next to no risk of losing my employ. Hoorah?!?

Return to Becca...

We are also flying back on Saturday instead of Friday, and we got a non-stop flight back. For no additional cost! I am so excited to leave florida at 10am and get into Kansas City at noon (well local time). Either way, yay no busy holiday airport for the layover back!

The confirmation email is hilarious. The total for our airfare is $12 more than the price of one of the non stop return ticket. LOVE it! So the best thing to do, book really really early and if they change flight times on you get a better flight!

The only small concern. Our layover on the way down is about 40 minutes. Lets hope the plane doesn't get in late or that it takes a really long time to get off the first plane and onto the second. If we are lucky we will get onto the same plane or one really close. Most likely we will get on a larger plane from Atlanta to Orlando though.

Changes in Flight Times, holiday travel stress

I am slightly miffed. Why?

Well, we bought tickets for our Thanksgiving trip to Florida to visit Daniel's family in July. We found a great deal, got an itinerary that we liked (you with the shortest layovers), and even paid extra to choose our seats.

Then today I get an email from the Airline. The first email I have had that wasn't about their great ticket prices or joining thier rewards club. It was titled "SECOND NOTIFICATION: Airtran Airways Schedule Change." Huh, maybe they emailed me last night and then again at 9am today. So I look and they say they are changing our flight times and to click the link to accept.

I clicked the link.

The schedule changes were horrible (for having a toddler along and a 32 week pregnant woman). They want us to leave later in the day the Monday before Thanksgiving. That's not so bad, except that we would get into Orlando at 6:15. It would be 7pm by the time we got our bags, we wouldn't have eaten dinner, AND we would still have an hour or so drive from Orlando to Daniel's grandparent's home. That means at 8pm, Alice's bedtime (in thoery) we would be driving or just getting in at Edgewater.

Now, if that were the only thing I might have accepted it. But no. Our return flight was moved to 15 minutes later and our retun layover was more than doubles to over 4 hours. I refuse to be in a huge airport like Atlanta with a toddler for 4 hours. Let alone add in that I will be way pregnant at that point. There is something that will give me high blood pressure.

Now unfortunately, the tickets are reserved in Daniel's name, so I probably can't even call them and change things.

Fortunately, thier policy is that if they are changing our flight times we can change to the day before or after with no added fee. Daniel is hoping for either a red eye out of Kansas City or Tuesday morning (so he can go to his night class Monday night). I told him, if we are getting in later, I want to leave later. Lets hope for Tuesday to Saturday instead of Monday to Friday. I mean sure its wishful thinking, but hello you don't mess with people that have 'infant in lap' and one of them is pregnant.

I will update after we have have anything definate. I mean, I would accept seat upgrades for a crappier itinerary. We shall see, no?

Sickness Diagnosed

Heartburn.

Must buy stock in Tums Smoothies.

Apparently it can lead to coughing which in my case leads to cookie tossage. It also explains the added fatigue. Lucky me!

Sadly I have lost the bottle of Tums. Or rather Alice has. She thinks they are candy and will carry the bottle everywhere. Oh well, heartburn is way better than sickness. At least no one can catch it from me.

Lazy Day, sick day

Last night I spent some time in the bathroom because I wasn't feeling so good. I assumed it was because I ate a hamburger and cheese burrito right before bed. I also had a bit of a dry cough, but hopes it was dust in my room or something like that.

This morning everyone got up around the time Daniel left for work. Alice refuses to sleep if he is downstairs or leaving. He put her in bed with me and she acted like she would leave, then she realized he wasn't getting in bed and started crying and climbing down the stairs.

We ate some cereal, watched some Elmo, and I hid the 3 cans of pop she had been carting around all day yesterday.

Then I figured why not do some yoga. Get it done early. Maybe it would bore Alice enough she would want to go back to sleep.

Well, I started coughing about 1 minute into the warm up. Then I felt the serenity of the pose. All over the floor.

Alice said "Uh-oh" I told her not to touch it and ran upstairs for wash cloths to clean it up. I came back, wiped up the mess. Alice helped with her own wash cloth (after I had it clean of course) and I fetched one of the cans of pop. What? Its ginger ale. That calms the stomach.

Alice chose a movie, and we are going to try and do very little today. Watch Shrek, drink ginger ale, maybe nap. I hope for that third option. The first 2 are guaranteed.

At least I did some cleaning up last night while Daniel was in night school. First day of his human relations course! He didn't learn anything except that his teacher is a freak. She has 7 Yorkies, 4 guinea pigs and 4 hamsters and is on the faculty of 7 universities in the Kansas City metro. I bet she has no family or life. You know aside from her 15 'children.'

Rain, rain, go away

I actually like rain. Except when its been raining for 5 hours and a look at the radar map shows no sign of hope. In fact, over half of the state is getting heavy rain and from the way its moving those cloudy hours will most likely be raining hours.

Over the weekend i picked a whole pile of cherry tomatoes. I didn't know how many there actually were, so I went out Saturday morning and started. I just put them in my pockets and continued around the shrubbery that is the tomato plants. I cam back in and had a good quart or so of cherry tomatoes. Pockets of my sweats totally stuffed. I already had a couple of cups worth in the fridge (to avoid gnats! the bane of Daniel's existence, second only to ants).

Speakign of the garden, at some point this fall we need to add about 5 bags of compost/manure. The soil level has been getting lower and lower, so it needs raised before next year. I also need to get my butt around to cutting the cherry tomatoes in half and salting them so I can dehydrate them. I didn't feel like it Saturday, and I can already see more tha need picking. If it ever stops raining enough to go outside.

There is a giant puddle in fron of the house, and a few in the back.

I am reminded that we need to fork over the cash to get a reel mower. You know, the push kind that aren't powered. The kind that is safe to use with a toddler playing in the backyard because the won't throw tiny rocks or sticks. We also should probably seed the yard again. But, its rainy so no more thinking about grass seed.

Sleeping Alone

We are trying this again, and it was rather successful. Last night I had Daniel move our bed into what was "Alice's room." It wasn't actually her room since it just housed baby junk and things she outgrown. This weekend we will hopefully get a crib moved into her room though. You know, with the idea that she will share a room with the baby. Maybe.

I have also been sorting the baby clothes looking for anything that was gender neutral/boys to keep inside, and put everything else in the garage attic. Its funny how many clothes we had for ALice that were size Newborn or 0-3 months. We have a big clear plastic container that is STUFFED with them. As the sizes grow the amount of clothing we have in each decreases. Thats probably partly because we had a lot of 6-9 month stuff that was green or yellow and some of the 12 month stuff is probably still mixed in with her clothes.

All I gotta say, is wow do babies have lots of junk. Special furniture, clothes that aren't made to fit for longer than 3 months, plus all the accessories: diapers, blankets, burp cloths, bibs, etc. I should be glad that we have all the diapering covered. We might not even need to add more if we can get Alice potty trained pretty quickly.

Oh, I forgot the topic of my post. Alice slept in her bed until Daniel was too noisy in the hallway before he went to work at 6:30. I had him put her in bed with me. She was really cold. Looks like she will be needing those footie pajamas if she sleeps alone. Thats fine with me, we have several pairs. All with frogs and dinosaurs. Perfect.