You know days like this one. Everyone is tired, maybe a little sick. Dad has been at work all day, Mom has been spring cleaning all day, kids have been entertaining themselves all day. Suddenly, everyone looks up and thinks “Hmm. I’m hungry.” and you realize it’s 6 o’clock. There’s nothing ready or even planned for dinner.

So, what’s the default? “Hey, let’s go get some burgers.”

Well, the last time we decided to do that, a meal from A&W for all seven of us was $66(!!!). That includes burgers, drinks, fries and extra onion rings. When we get it home and put it on a plate, it’s not really all that much. Sure, it’s a billion calories and a tonne of fat, but it’s not really that satisfying a meal.

Recently we’ve been taking those “Hey, let’s get fast food.” days and turning them around by going to the supermarket. Chicken fingers and fries, perogies and bacon, pizza pops. They’re all just as fast as burgers and far cheaper, and healthier too.

Today I went to Superstore and came back with this:

That’s:

• 16 beef burgers (healthy ones too!) — 1 meal worth (!)
• 24 All-Grain rolls (this kids love em) — 2 meals worth
• 1 mega bag of frozen crinkle cut fries — 4 meals worth
• 3 cans of concentrated Cranberry Cocktail (Jenn’s favorite) — 3 meals worth
• 24 cans of club soda (I drink it instead of pop) — 2 weeks worth
• 1 bottle of Lime Cordial concentrate (a dash in some club soda, yum!) — 1 weeks worth
• 1 bag of fresh cheese Tortellini (just add a basic cheese sauce or canned tomatoes) — 1 meal worth
• 1 jar Polskie Ogorkie pickles (like crack for us) — 2 meals worth
• 1 jar Yum-Yum sweet sliced pickles (for the burgers) — 2 weeks worth
• 4 packages flavoured rice crackers (low fat snacks for me) — 10 days worth
• 1 bag organic Pink Lady apples (our favorite) — 2 days worth
• 1 bag organic Gala apples (can’t buy them fast enough) — 2 days worth
• 1 double size box of Cheerios — 4 days worth

So, that’s dinner for tonight that ends up being far better and more satisfying than A&W, breakfast for the next 4 days, lunch for tomorrow (bunwiches!), dinner for tomorrow night (we love tortellinis!), snacks and drinks for the week for me, a box of Jenn’s favorite cookies, plus fruit for 3 days plus extras.

All for $72, pretty much the same price as eating out. And I didn’t even scrimp. We bought what we wanted, not what was cheapest. For essentially the same price as one unsatisfying meal at A&W.

If you really want to save money, this isn’t necessarily the way to do it. You can get a couple of boxes of No-Name Mac and Cheese for $1 and drink water. But if you’re already set on eating out, try getting far more bang for your buck, a far more enjoyable meal and a bunch of bonus extras by hitting Superstore instead of Burger King.

For Christmas, we made each other gifts, and my eldest son had the idea to build my youngest son a set of building blocks to make a castle for Playmobil-scale people. The boys love playing with their Playmobil knights and Roman warriors. The also have vikings, pirates and various other warriors that they mix in for some excitement. Imagine what a battle between the Playmobil French Knights and the Playmobil Romans would have been like, with Playmobil Egyptian chariot support and Playmobil pirate artillery… the mind boggles.

I sat down with Google Sketchup (which is an amazing, free 3d design program that is very easy to learn) and designed some blocks that could be made easily by gluing cubes and rectangles together. Using some figures as a reference, I made the blocks the correct scale to be used by Playmobil people. I used the tablesaw to cut up some old scrap oak (leftover church pew ends…) and then left Josh to sand and glue them together. Here are the results:

The gun ports are the right height for a Playmobil character to aim a gun or crossbow out of.

And the towers and crenellations are sized for standing armed Playmobil soldiers too. The little ledges for the soldiers to stand on were Josh’s brainchild. He really wanted to be able to have forces on the walls shooting overtop.

Including the doorway, there are only 7 kinds of blocks. The actual gates aren’t complete yet, but I’m not sure they’re needed. They boys have fun playing with it as is. You can see in this picture how the blocks are all made up of cubes and rectangles glued together.

Here’s the entire set of blocks:

Here’s the plan in Google Sketchup:

And here’s the Google Sketchup File for my Playmobil scale wooden castle blocks.

They can, of course, be assembled in any way that they want, and they have been used to make houses and two smaller opposing forts as well as the big castle.

I recently posted about how we are starting our search for community from scratch. I’ve been contemplating this for a while, and yes, it may sometimes seem like we are starting from zero.

But we’re not. Not really. We’ve got a wonderful community around us, and I really feel like I should be acknowledging that.

Yes, there were friends, and entire groups of friends that have pretty much flat-out rejected who we are now. But, more importantly, there are friends who have not.

Snowy and Ash are our closest friends. We got to know each other on the worship team at church. They come for dinner at our house every Thursday night without fail. We have talked about our decision, and we are both open about it. They still come. They still actively seek our company and support us and love us and treat us no differently.

Our family has been very supportive. For the most part, when they heard our announcement they didn’t even really react. There has been no change at all in our relationships. My brother and sister in law have been showing up at our door for coffee regularly, and we truly appreciate their presence. We are the ones who have been dropping the ball on that relationship, in spite of their active attempts.

The bible study group that we’ve been a part of for years has enthusiastically expressed their desire for us to stay. We have a potluck every second Saturday and spend the evening talking. Much of our time was spent in simple relationship-building and chatting, so the group has graciously decided to make every second meeting just relationship and chat with us attending, and they will meet every other time for bible study. They’re a great bunch of people so we’re excited to be able to maintain this group.

We’ve had a number of people call and express desire to get together and spend time with us (Hi, Chris! Hi Mel!) and Jenn and the kids have gone out to see Dorothy and the kids a couple of times already. Dorothy and Jenn spend time on the phone a couple of times a month still.

In our neighbourhood we are always surrounded by people who attend a previous church, and we haven’t been treated anything but warmly and as happily as ever. Our kids have a couple of adopted grandmas from that congregation that still keep them well-supplied with goodies.

As dark as it seems sometimes, we need to stand up and recognize the folks in our lives that are shining lights. Thank you. Thank you to those that I am positive that I missed in this. If I didn’t name you specifically, don’t be hurt, I’m just trying to get this finished before dinner and as you know, my brain is iffy at the best of times…

Life is good.

Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold.

And so goes yet another Winnipeg bookstore. Beatnik Village Books and Discs in Osbourne Village is closing.

Quote from the owner:

Selling books in Winnipeg is like selling leprosy on The Shopping Channel.