I hit the grocery store jackpot

One of the major grocery store chains in our area has closed all it's stores and left town.  This isn't just a small number of stores.  This chain, Dominick's, has been here in some form or another for 100 years.  Ownership has changed over the years, but the current owners - Safeway are finished with Chicagoland.

The timing for the closing was the end of 2013.  They tried to sell most of the stores, but there are so many that a good number were unsold when the closing deadline arrived.  Dominick's had to liquidate as much of it's supply as possible so in stages that started marking everything down.  It started with 50% off health and beauty, 50% grocery, then 50% meats and diary, and finally 75% off everything.  I scored some pretty good health and beauty deals and did okay with grocery discounts.  The grocery marked down was on the same day as Dave's hernia surgery so I didn't get in on it until the day after.  I'll tell you these stores were attacked and just left barren.  People filled their carts to overflowing and then had to wait hours in line to checkout.  It was pretty intense.  I had a friend who went over to the store right as they opened on the day all groceries were marked down to 50% and she sent me a message saying, "this is what I think the zombie apocalypse will be like."  Yikes!

Since I'm always looking for a good grocery deal, I was a little disappointed I didn't do better at the Dominick's sales.  BUT….I had a bit of luck.

I follow a lady who blogs all kinds of coupons and groceries deals and she gave a heads up in the middle of January that a few of the Dominick's stores that were bought by other companies and had remained open were going to start liquidating.  There were only 6 stores in all of Chicagoland and lucky me, there happened to be one in our town.  Not as many people knew about this one so I went over on the first day and scored!  There were other shoppers but it wasn't too busy.

Here is my grocery cart.  I don't think I've every filled a cart like this.  I bought all kinds of everything from drinks, to canned goods, to crackers, paper plates, toilet paper, apple sauce, frozen food, etc.  This definitely helped me get over my disappointment about missing the earlier sale.  I even scored later in the week when meat went 50% off.

Here's my haul from the butcher, what you see are beef roasts, porterhouse steaks, NY strip steaks, a couple of rib roasts, deli cheeses and turkey--all this for less than $70.  It was a pretty interesting experience, basically the customers stood by the butcher case while the butchers were in the back cutting and packaging meat.  Every 15 minutes they would bring out a cart of meat and people would just grab them and fill their carts.  As you can see I happened to be there during the "beef" phase.  You couldn't make a request for anything, you just had to wait and see what they would bring out.

Anyways, we are definitely set for a while.  My freezers are bursting full.  Did I mention that one of the Young Women in our ward works for Panera and they have allowed her to bring home the bread they would normally throw away at the end of each day.  Panera does not serve day-old bread so rather than watch it go to waste, she brings it home, wraps it up and shares it with the ward.  This past week, I brought home two full loaves of bread and a bunch of bread bowls.  Everything freezes and reheats so well, what a great blessing.

(I wonder why I am having such a hard time getting a diet going?…..)

Surviving the Polar Vortex

THE POLAR VORTEX!!  It's brutal.  This winter has been relentless.  We have record amounts of snow and record low temperatures, and when I say record low temperatures I'm talking 50 degrees below zero.

The Chicago area got hit with the polar vortex right as the kids were supposed to return to school after winter break.  The air temperatures were -15 and with wind chill it was -50.  Way too cold to go outside, I mean you could literally get frostbite within minutes.  We also got a little snow along with the cold temperatures which pretty much iced the roads.  School was cancelled for two days and we basically just hunkered down in our warm house.

The day before the actual polar vortex hit, was Sunday and we got so much snow that church was cancelled.  Paige helped Dave shovel, but it was hard work.  When I opened to door to check on them, Paige had been reduced to shoveling while sitting down.

This was day one of being frozen/snowed in.  By the next day we were frozen, even Dave's company advised it's employees to work from home.  I was so grateful for a working heater and pipes that didn't freeze.

So what did we do?  Well, we got to sleep in!  We watched tv, movies, and read some books.  I also had everyone work on a family project, tying fleece blankets.

We made blankets for each of the girls and a baby blanket for Debby.  These sure have been handy this winter considering how cold it's been.

We also ate lots of comfort food, including Thai Sukiyaki.  I even made my own sauce from scratch, it was yummy and I've found another use for my fondue pot.

It was so cold Ashley wanted to do an experiment that everyone was doing which was to throw boiling water outside and watch it freeze/vaporize in mid-air.  I told her she could do it.  So she boiled the water in a pan, opened the door and threw the water into the air and right back onto herself, earning a pretty good burn on her arm.  Honestly, I didn't even think about safety, I figured she was old enough to throw hot water out of a pan, but obviously not.  Anyway, she had a pretty good blister on her forearm for a few days, but she is okay now.

One of the things Paige did to keep busy was to make us all lots of rainbow loom bands.

Fortunately, before we went too crazy with cabin fever, it warmed up to -10 wind chills which was downright balmy and good enough to return to school.

Bundled up and ready to step outside and catch the school bus

I wish that I could say these few days were the end of our harsh winter, but honestly it was more like the beginning.  We have had several snow storms since then and many days of harsh, subzero temperatures.  Two more days of school were cancelled and the forecast is still pretty grim if you're hoping for spring.  Just this past week we got about 10 more inches of snow and the temperatures were -32 wind chills this morning and we aren't even canceling school anymore.  We just get calls warning us about poor road conditions and late running buses.

It's good times around here.  Everyone is officially done with winter.  Here is some of the commentary about winter this year:

"die winter, die"
"this is reverse hell"
"Chiberia"
"definitely buying a snowblower next year"
"time to hibernate"

Sledding

For the past few years we have had the mildest winters with hardly any snow.  Three Christmas' ago I bought the girls an awesome new sled and they have NEVER used it.  This year we were finally able to break the sled in.  We have had a good amount of snow already and it has also been pretty cold too.

Paige had been asking to go sledding during the whole winter break, but anytime we were free it was FREEZING outside.  Paige wanted to go on a day that it was 11 degrees outside, luckily, I was able to convince her to wait two days until it was 28 degrees.

Even then it was pretty cold, but being the awesome mom I am, I took Ashley, Paige and our neighbor/friend Samantha.  I will admit however, that I wasn't awesome enough to stand outside with them.  I sat in the warm car and watched them go up and down the hill.

I'm just grateful we have a hill to sled on; Illinois is pretty flat.  In fact, the sledding hill is right near our house and it's man-made.  A local church created the hill when they dug the foundation for their building, hence the huge cross in the picture.  On the top of the hill, they have instilled a fire pit so parents can keep warm and at the bottom of the hill are a bunch of hay bales to safely stop the sledders.  Maybe if there are some warmer days ahead, I'll get out of the car next time.

New Years Eve

Happy New Year!  This year, everyone in our family was healthy.  Hurray!  I swear the last few years we have had to cancel our plans because someone had the flu, a cold, or some kind of illness.

Our family went over to our friends' the Thompsons with a few other families to ring in the new year.  All the teens left about 9:30 to go to their own party, but the rest of us stayed at snacks, played board games and watched a little of Shaolin Soccer.  We love that movie!

We rang in the new year, hopped in the car and went over to pick up Ashley from her party.  We had another pretty significant snowstorm that night, but fortunately we all made it home safe and sound.

Here are our first pictures of 2014: