Thanksgiving Week

Its been a really good week. Both Elizabeth and I were off work this week (actually, I managed to sneak a few minutes of work in a couple of days). In addition, each of the girls spent the week at their "other houses".

We were hoping for a visit with my sister this week, but one of the boys wasn't feeling too good, so they could not make the trip. Hopefully, they will be back into the swing of things soon and make it to Monkey Town for Christmas or early Christmas.

Being alone (that is what it feels like to have the girls away from the house) left Big E and I somewhat stupefied by how to pass the time. We played Tiger Woods Golf on the PlayStation, watched TV, I played Diablo on the computer, and we spent a little time with each other (get your mind out of the gutters).

For Thanksgiving, we had a great time at my mom and dads house. My mother cooked a buffet worth of excellent food. Thoroughly stuffed, we spent a few hours outside playing. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and managed to spend some time with their family and friends.

Little Elizabeth went to Atlanta on Friday to help the Operation Christmas Child stuff boxes, wrap and prepare them for shipping. She does this each year with the youth group at her church. Big E and I spent the day helping the economy, shopping. Thankfully, we were done by mid day and went home for a little RnR.

Roooooolllllll Tiiiiiidddddeeee!! That was the highlight of today. After six years, it is really nice to finally get a win. I'm not too sure about next week but today was awesome.

This month marks the anniversary of me starting this blog. In honor of the anniversary, I am asking anyone that regularly reads this to send me an anniversary post. I don't really have any boundaries for the posting as long as it fits within the scope of the blog. Please take a few minutes to send me a "guest" post. If you do decided to send me a "guest" blog post, send it to themtgylees@gmail.com

I haven't had a green tip of the post in a while, but we are trying to be a little greener at the house. We purchased a new set of washer and dryer this weekend. Big E is really excited about getting a set of front loaders that are energy star compliant. In addition, the new washer is supposed to use 65% less water. If you have an old washer as we do, stepping up to a new one could be much better from an energy and water use standpoint.

Bloody Monday and the Sheriffs department

Ohhhhh yeah baby, we haven't had some good drama in the blogsphere in a while, so sit back and prepare yourself for this one.

Monday was like any typical day around the house until the blood began to flow. Big E announced that it was "fix it yourself" dinner night, we watched the Big Bang Theory and all the girls started getting ready for volleyball night.

Around 7:30 as the girls were preparing to leave for volleyball, I heard a loud thud coming from the bathroom. Apparently, Brooke and Jessica were wrestling in the bathroom as they waited for Big E to finish her business (there is always room for a good poo joke). The loud thud was the sound of Brook falling into the bath tub and busting her head against the stone ledge around the window. This resulted in what was described as a large and deep gash in the back of her head.

At this point, I was still chilling in my lazy chair actually preparing a little work for the next day. I guess you could say that I didn't put two and two together when I heard the sound.

Now, follow this little fast paced timeline ....

1. Little Bit comes running out of the back saying that it was time to go.

2. A moment later, Brooke comes walking out of the bathroom followed by Jessica pressing a towel down on the back of Brooke's head with Brooke laughing about something.

3. A few seconds later, Big E came out of the bathroom, frantic, and said it was time to go.

4. I said what?

5. She said she had to take Brooke to the hospital, the cut is bad.

6. I sat up and said huh?

7. She said it was a deep cut and they needed to leave.

8. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, saw the blood and asked "Are you sure"?

I might have missed a hint or two along the way? But by this time, I knew that Brooke was hurt, bleeding a little and they were headed for the hospital.

I ran back to the bathroom again, and Jessica was already in there cleaning the tub. Wrong thought I know, but my first thought was why are you cleaning that up, I need pictures for the blog. Sorry, I missed that one but its not the only opportunity I missed.

I again questioned the deepness of the cut and the need to go to the doctor.

Side Note: This stems from a few traumatic moments in my childhood regarding cuts and the need to go to the doctor. Its funnier to hear my mom tell those stories, so ask her. Lets just say that I've had my head shaved for stitches, and lost a portion of two different fingers. According to my dad, I didn't need stitches for those moments either.

And now we return you back to Days Of Our Drama starring Brooke ..... I didn't take the trip figuring it was a Monday night and the emergency room would not be too busy. Jessica left for volleyball figuring it would be better than being at the emergency room, and Little E went to the hospital figuring their would be some fun people watching opportunities or maybe she was trying to be helpful?

By this time, its only 7:40!!! That is a lot to happen in a span of ten minutes.

I sat down to finish my work figuring I would see them in an hour. Big E and I spoke around 9:30 and they had still not been seen by a doctor. Someone came out and wrapped Brooke's head to help with the bleeding, but apparently Monday is a busy night at the emergency room (based on Little E's people watching report, lots of people on Monday night are still trying to recover from the weekend).

Here is Brooke with her head wrapped up ...

Once the doctor finally got to see them, they ran the usual battery of tests to make sure that she had a brain (this required two CAT scans!!!), and that she didn't have a concussion, etc. Then after five stitches they sent them home. Arrival time 2:45 AM!!!!

Here is Brooke's head with stitches. They are kind of hard to see. The doctor was really nice and didn't shave her head (secretly we were hoping for a little loss of hair).

All was back to normal on Tuesday, when Big E reminded me that I had to take Little E down to the Sheriffs office for her CSI class. Little E wants to become a CSI photographer, so she is participating in a weekly class through the Sheriffs department on the topic.

Since the class is only an hour, I decided to sit in the hallway and wait for her. I don't know everything they discussed but on more than one occasion, I heard the lecturer state something about "this dead body" or notice the "decay", etc. I like horror and gore movies, but what are they watching? Can I participate? Should I participate and monitor this session? Afterwards, I asked her if she enjoyed her "dead people" class and she responded that next week they get to actually take pictures!!! What does that mean? Do I have to participate and act like a dead person? I am concerned about this class.

Anyway, I little bit of fun. Brooke is fine and Little E is a little warped but all is actually well in the Lee house.

Its like drunk typing without the alcohol ....

It'll all make sense later. Until then, here is a little update on the last few days.

Jessica took the ACT again and upped her score to a 22. We were hoping for a little better score but it is a better score than the first time. I can't really say too much about the score, as I didn't get close to that number years ago.

Speaking of Jessica, we recently changed her from a standard diabetes management process to the new Omnipod Insulin management system. This is some pretty cool technology (which is also code for expensive). The good news is that the new system is having some very positive effects on her daily life and general well being. Hopefully, this will equate to a year without emergency room trips (that is the break even point financially) and a lot more food freedom for her.

No real update on the other two girls. No news can be good news sometimes.

I took yesterday and today off work. I maxed out my paid time off (PTO) and figured I probably should try using it rather than losing it. Since I had a couple of "easy" days I decided to get a couple of Stephen things done.

The first and most important thing to do was to fix this computer. I've had no more than two gig of available hard drive space now for several months. So I finally broke down and bought a new external hard drive (500 GB!!!). With the new drive, I spent a large portion of day one moving data (music and pictures) to the new hard drive. With the new found free space on the main drive, I finally got around to updating Windows to service pack 3 and defragging the hard drive. It is amazing how much better a computer will run when it gets a little basic maintenance.

Second, I took the time to complete one of my favorite computer games; Heroes of Might and Magic V. I've been playing the game for nearly a year (expansion packs, etc). It was cool to finally see the end of the story.

Third, I took the animals to visit the vet. Yogi got is bi-annual shaving (Elizabeth is too scarred to shave him herself). The vet said he required a double dose of anaesthesia due to his weight problem. If you ask me the cat doesn't have a problem with weight, at twenty pounds, I'd say he has mastered it. The vet actually suggested that we put him on diabetic cat food or that we change him to canned cat food to avoid the carbohydrates, "it would be like putting him on the Aitkens diet".

Rusty is getting over a couple of infections. At this point he is only taking 5 or 6 pills a day.

My main man BooBoo didn't have to go to the vet though. Mainly because I am too scarred to take him. A. The vet would freak to learn how long its been since he has been to a vet and B. It would be a traumatic moment for BooBoo and I don't think he has too many lives left.

All in all a great first day off.

Today, I played a little Tiger Woods Golf 2007 on the Playstation. Then I went and ate lunch with Big E and some of the guys from work. Finally, I had a pre-op exam.

Now, before some of your minds start to wander too much, I have been thinking about having a little surgery done for a while but I didn't want to say anything until all of the bases were covered. On the 15th of January, I am going to have iLasik surgery. This is the newest of the eye surgery's to fix vision. This version of eye surgery has been approved by both the Air force and NASA for their pilots because it does not require a manual incision to be made by the doctor (where the majority of the errors occur with microkeratome eye surgery).

Since I qualify for this version of the surgery and since we are already accustomed to having the money going into a medical flex accounts (we've bought braces for the last two years), we decided it was the best time for me to get this done.

Today, I had the pre-op exam to make sure that there wasn't anything obvious to prevent me from going forward. I needed to get it done now because I need to make the medical flex account decision (that is use it or lose it money) before next week. Part of the process today was to dilate my eyes to complete all of the measurements (to be done again in January right before the surgery). Now, two hours later, I still can not see worth a crap and the only thing I can relate it to is being typsy.

If you've ever had enough to drink that your vision was impaired, that is how I am seeing right now and I haven't even had a drop to drink.

I'll return soon with more information, until then get outside and collect those falling leaves to add to your compost pile.

The dutch oven effect ...

While it is completely within the realm of possibility that Big Elizabeth would cover our heads with the covers and pass gas, this post is not about that little ditty. It is about my beautiful brides recent kick for cooking in her new Rachel Ray dutch oven.

A few weeks ago, Big E came home with this new and not so cheap little item to "try" a new recipe. If you know our cooking skill level then you know that I was scared. In our five years of marriage, we have never thrown out a meal cooked by one of us for a quick pizze order, but we have eaten a few things that the dog refused to eat.

I don't know the official name of this little recipe but I know that it includes chicken, sausage, sausage, bread, chicken broth, celery, onions, and many other things that combine to create a wonderful, exciting and most delicious dinner, lunch the next day and a couple of additional meals to boot. Most importantly, the kids ate it.

So, we tried a second recipe to see if the first one was simply a fluke, and despite some ingredient challenges we had another good meal. This one consisted of chicken, parsnip, carrots, several other items I don't remember and white French Burgundy cooking wine (or Burgundy cooking wine since we were challenged finding the right stuff).

I don't like leftovers but this is one left over that gets better with time. Sort of like chilli!!!! Yuuuummmmm.

This thing was so good that it inspired me to try the cook all day and eat for a week theory. If you haven't tried this theory, there are several websites devoted to it. Anyway, I got up Saturday morning and put together a list of six or seven awesome sounding recipes including the previous mentioned two.

I arrived home with forty dollars of fresh vegetables and a new appreciation for the knowledge of vegetables of the lady at Fresh Market. In addition, I had another sixty dollars of goodies from Publix. I added this to a pile of BOGO (remember this one? Buy one get one free) chicken and sausage that I picked up last weekend at Winn Dixie.

NOTE: Winn Dixie still hasn't responded to my email. No surprise there.

We started cooking around 9:30 AM. Maybe I should say that Elizabeth started cooking. We had friends coming over for the Alabama game so I was really just in the way of the cooking with such a tight time frame. I really underestimated the time frame for cooking such a large portion of food, but we pulled it off. Basically, I cleaned while she cooked. Occasionally, we took a break to rest and see key plays from the various games leading up to the main event OR simply a cool refreshing drink. Around 2:30 our company arrived as we were putting the final touches on the final pot. With the exception of the Chicken, Corn, and Black bean stoup everything tasted great. I will take full credit for the screwed up stoup (a palm full of cumin and corriander is way too much).

We allowed everyone to sample the goodies before allowing it to cool off and find its way into the freezer. I am so proud of my awesome wife. We will actually be able to eat off our labor for the next couple of weeks (mind you we will only have to reheat one dish every three or four days).

So to conclude, here comes the winter weight. It looks like I will have to be a little more diligent with walking and running come February if I am going to run that 5K again.

Halloween Pumpkins

For Halloween, we decided to all carve pumpkins this year. I thought I would do a quick post of some of the cool pumpkins that we carved. So its post Halloween before I finally create the post.

This first set of photos is a quick look at the steps to carve a pumpkin. Now, it is important to remember that we are not professional pumpkin carvers, so if you are looking for money winning creations go somewhere else.

Step One: Cut the top of the pumpkin and remove the gooey insides. Of course, I had to do this for all of my girls.

Step Two: Draw your design on the pumpkin.

Step Three: Carve the pumpkin. Sounds simple huh? Actually step three took me nearly two hours on this pumpkin. Before you carve, you need to outline your design with a toothpick. This will ease the saw blade through and help reduce the number of goofy cuts. For fun you can also try shading your design by removing layers of skin around the design to create shadow effects, etc.

Once you have completed the carving, coat all cuts with vaseline to prevent the loss of moisture from the cuts to help extend the life of the pumpkin. Here is the end result of my pumpkin.

Here are the other four pumpkins from the girls....

The coolest pumpkin of the year was by Jessica. It is a vampire biting is lady victim.

Little E went with a neat little flying bat for the season.

My lovely bride was a little more ambitious with her witch.

And last but definitely not least is the child friendly smiley face from Brooke. I really like the way the nose turned out with the shadow effect she carved.


I hope you enjoyed this cool little series of pictures. I hope that one day we get better about using the eight or ten cameras that we collectively own so I can do this type of post more often.

Grocery Shopping

In our household, Elizabeth and I generally share the grocery shopping and the cooking responsibility. In the past, we had a tendency to eat out more than in. However, we started really changing that habit about six or eight months ago. It is really easy to become accustomed to eating "take-aways" every night but eventually there are two big reasons for why this is bad:

1. Financially - This one is easy to understand.
2. Health - Round is a shape just not the shape that either of us desired.

I recently added a couple of other blogs to the list of regularly read blogs. The Jane4girls blog and Wylie Mom blog have become two of my favorite blogs to read. Each of these ladies (I don't know them but I do admire their frugality) are providing for their families (at least food wise) on very limited budgets. For example, the author of Jane4girls blog budgeted a mere $800 dollars to feed her family of four this year and she still has over $200 dollars left to spend this year.

Now, I will never be as organized and willing to save to the extent of those ladies but I can learn from them. With that being said, today was my first day to get out and really try to put coupons to work. Now, I am not going to be going all gung-ho and driving from store to store buying only what is on sale but I am going to review the advertisements, the items needed, the coupon stash and make an informed decision about what store is best for the list in hand. In addition, I am willing to sign up for a store's "bonus card" or whatever.

For todays shopping experience, Winn-Dixie was the lucky winner of our hard earned dollars. The list was approximately 50% meat (we are proud carnivores), a couple of other food items and 50% non-food items (toiletries, cat items, etc). I got all of the meat BOGO (buy one get one free) and managed to use another $21.75 in coupons. The total savings between BOGO and coupons was just short of $64 dollars on a $148 dollar bill. NOT TOO BAD for my first try.

BUT ..........

I was NOT allowed to use my Internet coupons!!! I was told that too many people were saving too much money! Isn't that the whole purpose of coupons? I told the cashier and bag boy that they could take all of the food items where my coupons were being rejected and return them. Imagine the look on the poor people behind me!!!!

The more I thought about the situation, the madder I became, so here is the email that I sent to Winn-Dixie ...

I was told that I could not use Internet coupons at the Sturbridge store today. The reasoning, as I was told by Jyazmin, is that too many people were using Internet coupons and saving "too much money".

I live a bicycle ride from Winn-Dixie, Brunos, and Publix. I wonder if the other two chains are doing the same thing? I prefer to shop at a single store (and truthfully Winn-Dixie's BOGO free specials often determine the store I shop) but I cant justify shopping anywhere that would discriminate against those of us trying to be frugal with our family budget particularly with the current economic state.

I can't really believe that this is the official Winn-Dixie stand on Internet coupons. I've checked your website and did not see anything to indicate that this is the official stance (though I could have overlooked it). Is this the official stance of Winn-Dixie? If it is the official stance of Winn-Dixie, why do you provide download and print coupons on your website?

I look forward and appreciate hearing back from you.

Stephen Lee

Mom, notice that I was a good little boy in the email. Of course, Winn-Dixie probably gets a hundred plus emails complaining everyday, so my expectations for a response are minimal. If that happens, then I will go directly to the store to request an answer. I'll update everyone on this situation soon.

I think the grand total of coupons rejected was $1.65 with a total sales loss of around $10.00 (all were frozen vegetables). They didn't even complain about the free ($7.00 dollar value) cat litter coupon that was mailed to me but looked like an Internet coupon.

Funny enough, it could have been a $0.10 coupon and I would have been equally angered. Either you accept coupons or you don't!!! They let me use multiple coupons for some items (the receipt even acknowledges it).

Well, while we wait for an official Winn-Dixie response, send me your tricks and tips for saving money. Last weekend, I spent a couple of hours surfing to various websites (Proctor and Gamble, Betty Crocker, etc) and signing up for their emails, newsletters, etc. I did this while drinking beer and watching football so I didn't really lose any of my "valuable" time doing it, but I did manage to get myself some really nice recipes and coupons out of it.

Its really simple to take this approach, simply look in the pantry and go to the websites of the companies you see. WARNING: Setup a special email before you go signing up for every one's emails and newsletters. I use my Gmail (from Google) for these types of sign up offers. It is amazing the crap (oh, I mean special offers and discounts) that you will receive once you sign up for this stuff.

As a quick update, the recipe that I referenced in the previous blog was truly awesome AND it was even better as a left over. I dont usually like left overs but that stuff was better on day two and three. If you have a weak stomach though, avoid it.