What I Spent, What We Ate | Plus a small aside about perfect happy lives

Before we get to groceries:

When I posted my bucket list update the other day, a regular and dear reader commented that she was having trouble avoiding the, “envy the blogger’s perfect happy family life” trap, and mentioned she was having a tough summer.

Guys, it bums me out so much that a blog like this isn’t a place where I can share all the not-so-happy-family-life too.

I would love to share more with you all, but man, most of the not-so-happy stuff in my life is comprised of things that are not solely my story to tell.

(Septic problems? Food poisoning? Totally will tell.   Relational stuff? Not so much.)

I just want to be respectful of the people in my life, especially my husband and kids.

 

I do have so much to be grateful for in my life, I really do.   A lot of my life IS happy (and I do think it’s smart to focus on the bright side).

But oof, this last year has been rough on a lot of fronts. Also the year or two before this year, actually.

I’ve learned a lot and cried a lot, I lost weight from stress, and had plenty of personal therapy appointments, but I’m happy to say in many ways, I am a lot better for the wear.

And I’m healthier and freer.

It might not be easy, but God is working in my life.

Still, not every situation in my life is hunky-dory, and it never will be this side of heaven.

Anyway.

I just want to re-throw out a reminder that what you see on the internet is only a partial story (which is as it should be!) and that all of us are dealing with pain and difficulty in some way or another.

It’s just the human condition in this broken world, and we are all in it together.

Our lives are a mash-up of beautiful and ugly and easy and difficult.   And any person you see on the internet, including me, is no exception.

To all of you that are struggling…so much love to you. You are not alone.   And I wish I could sit down and have tea with you and listen to your pain.   I hope you’ve got someone in your real life who can do that.

(Related: “Please write more about the bad stuff!”)

Hmm. I had words to say about this than I thought I did!

Moving on to food, if you’re still with me….

What I Spent

First up: the $25 Hungry Harvest box, of course. Which I did not photograph at all.

Oops.

On Monday, a friend went to Costco and I asked if she could pick up flank steaks for me, and she did! $22 there.

And then I made two trips to Aldi, one for $35.52.

And a second one for $70.70.

Which puts me at $153.22.

However…

I stopped at the produce stand. And they had a bunch of bruised peaches.   So I bought two boxes for a total of $23.

So now I’m over budget but WHATEVER. I have peaches!!!

I’ve been slicing and freezing most of them for future smoothie usage but we’re also eating plenty of them too.

Total for August week one: $176

What We Ate

Monday

I made a Thai beef green salad. And also a blueberry/peach salad because of the oodles of peaches that I bought.

Make hay while the sun shines…..or make fruit salad when the peaches are available.

Tuesday

This is the night I made the pesto grilled chicken pasta salad.

We ate a peach and blueberry fruit salad with that. Not surprising.

Wednesday

Mr. FG and I are gonna have to skip our usual weekend date night due to a schedule conflict, so I emailed him in the afternoon and was like, “Heeey! Want to go out with me?”

(Spoiler alert: he said yes. Lucky me. ;))

So we went and got pizza.

Joshua was out at a goodbye party for a co-worker, and Lisey had eaten earlier with a friend.   So Sonia and Zoe made a homemade cheese sauce for the leftover elbow macaroni for some DIY macaroni and cheese and that was their dinner.

Thursday

Mr. FG went out with our pastor for dinner, so I decided to make Apple Pfannekuchen, except with peaches.

(Why yes.   We do have a peach theme going on here.)

Mr. FG hates eggy stuff, so we just eat it when he’s not here.

Friday

I’m going out with a friend, so it’s gonna be a buy-pizza-instead-of-make-it night for the family.

_______________

Woo.   That was a very long Friday post.   10,000 points to you if you made it all the way to the end!