Homemaker HACK!

Having a family of six, trips to a restaurant can get very expensive  VERY quick! I do my very best to be as frugal as possible, but a treat every once in awhile is needed.  My girls are L-O-V-E-R-S of ice cream.  It's almost an addiction! So anyway, I bet you can guess where they often want to frequent!

 YEP! D-Q. So anyway I cannot afford to get everyone a blizzard these days.  6 small blizzards is like $28!  Nope.  Not in this frugal house.  I quickly had to come up with a way to save money on our trips........and then I started thinking about NERDS blizzards.......you know.......when we were kids?
Tell me you had these!! If not........YOU are in luck!

Not many people know that Dairy Queen sells quarts of ice cream.  BUY ONE! They are like $3.14 with tax. It's important to ask for a fresh quart, this way you get the soft serve.  A box of theater candy is $1.06 at the dollar store.  I'm sure any candy would do, but the fact I can make my Nerd blizzard and  reminisce the past makes it so much better.

So anyway take that fresh quart of vanilla ice cream and scoop it into a mixing bowl.  Pour 1/2 to 3/4 box of your candy into the bowl as well.  If you have a hand blender I would use it, but have also just used a spoon and my muscle.  Works just as well, just a little more effort needed! HA! 

Doesn't it look fabulous?  My girls have grown to love the NERD blizzard as much as I do/did and ask for it all the time.  For the price of $4.20 I have enough for all of us (or sometimes just myself) to have a delicious treat.  AND they enjoy to help make it too! 

Courage to be patient.

Courage to be patient.

One day, while shopping with a couple of my girls we were patiently waiting in line at Justice.  Justice is a store my girls adore.  It’s a lot to take in at my age, but the girls just love all the treasures they find.  We really enjoy picking out the cutest outfits, trying them on, and I of course love how excited they get about all their new things.  On this particular day of shopping it seemed to be very busy.  We were the second in line and there was a third behind us.  The mother behind us was in what seemed to be a hurry.  A lot of UGHHHHH, tapping of the toes and griping about it to her daughter.  After about a minute of waiting her turn, she went and found a worker at the front of the store (doing her job putting clothes on the rack) to come and ring her up.  This woman could not wait

ONE. MORE. SECOND.  

I was very disgusted by her behavior.

Sure, my girls were getting ancy and wanting to check out…….... 

SO. WAS. I.  But you know why I didn’t go and get someone else to ring me up……or tap my foot, or make a big deal about it to my daughters?

I want them to learn patience. 

We weren’t waiting in an overly long line, and we were next.  We can manage.  Right?  Sometimes the behavior and attitude we have towards things can directly affect how our children will learn to react too. 

After our experience in Justice I began to pay more attention to my reactions to having to wait.  Am I huffing and puffing while waiting too long at DQ?  Am I complaining about the wait at the doctor’s office? That’s a tough one to stop! Do you know……I even complain because my internet didn’t work fast enough! 

Once, I realized how quickly I expected everything to happen, I realized my children would expect these same things.  I don’t want my kids to huff and puff when they have to wait in line.  I don’t want them to complain when the drive thru line is too long.  I want them to learn to be understanding.  I want them to learn to wait politely. 

Isn’t learning patience important anymore?  It seems like everyone around us is in a hurry to get somewhere, buy something, or change the world. We are in a world of do it NOW, do it BETTER, do it FASTER, do it STRONGER.  Maybe if we considered how our actions were going to affect our kids and those around us we would take a moment to slow it down and enjoy the moment.