Little Life Notes, Only a Smidge of Frugal Philosophy.

Well all, Yankee Bill was sick yesterday. As in violently ill at about 3 a.m. In the way of men everywhere, he hates to admit that he is sick He was all ready at 6:30 am to gut it out and head out to work, until that icky stomach virus took him down again while he was in the shower. Needless to say, he called in sick to work.

Since our home is fairly modest in size (following our frugal philosophy we bought a home well WITHIN our means, a 1200 sq ft raised ranch) and all of the living quarters are on one level (except the computer room/den) and Buddy was fully charged after his typical 11 hours of sleep~~well I decided that if Yankee Bill wanted to get any rest that Buddy and I better head out to see Princess’s morning assembly and then continue on into Norwich for some grocery and dollar store shopping.

Consequently at the time when I am normally able to sit and get some computer work done while Buddy is enthralled with Playhouse Disney upstairs I was hitting the road and unable to post. And by the afternoon I was unpacking groceries and my main squeeze was feeling alive enough to be downstairs on the computer at his favorite entertainment: Playing Hearts for free on POGO.com and watching TV. (I think it was Matlock!)

So that is why I was missing in action yesterday.

This morning he is feeling much better and decided to take the kiddos out to the local diner for breakfast. I declined in order to enjoy a hot cup of coffee while no-one whatsoever required anything at all from me! And of course to get my blog/Internet fix. (Yes, I am like a junkie!)

Writing about frugality, and actually having people READ about it from me makes me think twice about a lot of my decisions. I do have about 80 people who are repeat hits every day, so I have folks who come back and check out what I am doing, and I have an average of about 240 hits a day total, with somewhere around 300 page reads. Since I started this puppy a little over a year ago I’ve had a total of 67,000 hits. That’s a lot of people who have read my words on frugality. When I do something that seems “un” frugal, I really do stop and think about what my motivation is. You guys keep me straight! I can’t count how many drive through/take out dinners you have prevented me from buying!

(*Note-I get the info on the repeat hits from my statcounter.com account which I installed about a month ago. It is free, and doesn’t seem to have those annoying popup ads that my old bravenet account had. That is unless you all have been getting pop-ups and haven’t mentioned it)

So I really was thinking this morning why philosophically I don’t have a problem with Yankee Bill taking Princess and Buddy out for breakfast at the diner. After all, I could cook breakfast here for a fraction of the cost. Here are my reasons:

#1-We can well afford it. If we couldn’t, then we wouldn’t do it.

#2-As far a eating out goes, breakfast is one of the cheapest meals of the day.

#3-The diner is pretty darn cheap anyway.

#4-Daddy time is important for the kids. There were 5 of us kids growing up, and my Dad is a doctor (read VERY busy) so I don’t remember a lot of times where he did things with us alone. But those times where he DID do things just with one or two of us are really special memories.

#5-Kid time is important for the Dad! Sometimes we mom’s sort of take over when we go along, or have the kids at home, and I think that it is great for him to have that alone time with them too.

#6-It was extra nice and thoughtful for Yankee Bill to give me the opportunity to stay in bed for the extra time while they went out. How often does THAT happen for a mom with a 3 1/2 year old?

Overall, for the once every 2 or 3 months that it happens, I think that taking the kiddos out to breakfast is well worth it for our family!