
Children’s clothes all packed and ready to go
We survived the whirlwind weekend that included us running a table at our local homeschool used book sale (we sold almost all our stuff and made over $120 to use to buy next year’s homeschool curriculum!), two special missionary services at our church, Jesse’s sister’s graduation, time with Jesse’s other sister and her family who were in from out of town for the graduation and a Josh Groban concert (my husband shocked me big time by surprising me with tickets to this!).
Sunday afternoon, we started packing for our family road trip. Our first stop was to be Joplin, Missouri. Then, Sunday evening, we heard the heart-breaking news of the devastating tornado there. I spent much of this morning researching out ways our family could personally help and specific ways you all could help by donating extra stockpile items. I’ll have a post up tomorrow with more details on that.
In the mean time, thank you for your patience with me today as I was focusing most of my time and energy on Joplin and figuring out Plan B for our road trip. We decided to still go ahead with our planned family road trip, but we headed to Oklahoma City today instead.

Silas getting ready for a dip in the hotel pool tonight
I didn’t get a video done for the 31 Weeks to a Better Grocery Budget series today. I’d hoped to do it from the hotel room tonight, but it just didn’t happen as we were having too much fun playing in the pool and just enjoying life away from all the usual distractions of life.
I am planning a number of road trip-themed posts over the next few days along with the usual blogging fare, provided I have time and internet connection while we’re traveling. We’ll see. If they don’t get done this week, I’ll be sure and post them next week.
For starters, here’s our menu for the road trip:
Breakfasts
Continental breakfast at the hotel (we always try to stay somewhere that serves breakfast as this saves a nice chunk of money — especially when we get a great deal on the hotel in the first place!)
Lunches
Ham sandwiches, chips, juice
Peanut butter & Jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, bananas
Tuna sandwiches, chips, veggies
Egg salad sandwiches, veggies, fruit
Peanut butter & Jelly sandwiches, carrot sticks, apples
Snack-y lunch (cheese & crackers, pretzels, carrots, apples, etc.)
Cereal, fruit
Snacks
Apples
Carrot sticks
Pretzels
Crackers and peanut butter
Cheese and crackers
Chips
Granola bars
Dinners
We’re planning to eat dinner out every night as this is something we budget for on vacations. We keep it pretty economical, though, and usually spend around $25 to $35 maximum for dinners for the five of us. We did Cracker Barrel tonight and will likely do Chick-fil-A tomorrow night.