What Do YOU Spend on Gasoline?

Giving the current housing situation, I am always looking at loan articles and financial articles, in the everlasting pursuit of the “American Dream”.

I came across an interesting article today at the MagicLoans Secured Loans site. The article, entitled “Over half ’spend more than £30 a week on fuel‘”, discusses just how much people (in this case, the English) spend on petrol. So I was curious and did some figuring.

On a currency conversion site, I discovered that £30 = approximately $60 ($59.54). Rob then figured what we spend on gas per month, which is approximately $500! ($125 per week, or £62.98) – More than twice what the article was discussing!

No wonder we struggle so much financially, despite the decent salary my husband makes!

There really is no way out either. The only reason we are being charged so much for gas is because we’ll pay it. We have no choice not to. With suburban sprawl, how many of us really have the ability to walk to the grocery store or to our places of employment anymore? When we lived in St. Petersburg, Rob was able to ride his bicycle to work, saving us literally thousands of dollars over the duration of the lease. I mean think about it – we spend more than $6000 a year on gasoline now! A third of that is just for use in getting Rob back and forth to work (and doesn’t include the cost of tolls). And that estimate of $6000 per year accounts only for the cost of commute, the gas to my chiropractor appointments, and the gas to take children to play practice twice a week. It doesn’t include those trips to Target or Save-a-Lot, and it doesn’t include the cost of gas for recreational pursuits or reenacting.

We would really like to be able to purchase a home, but living in St. Petersburg, where we would NOT spend as much on gasoline, is not an option because real-estate there is nearly double what it is here in the ‘burbs.

Rob tried to remedy the no-money-for-food-because-gas-is-so-expensive problem by driving a motorcycle to and from work. It nearly cost him his life last December when a woman in an SUV cut him off on a busy highway.

So what are we to do?

How is the high price of gasoline affecting your family?

Protected: (Almost) Wordless Wednesday – Unidentified Sea Critter

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Free Homeschool Resources: Presidential Elections

Election time is quickly approaching. It will be here before you know it! Although I still don’t have any children who are old enough to vote yet, I desire to teach them as much as I can about the process. The work has been done for me. I want to thank the following individuals for offering free resources for teaching about the election:

• Cindy Downes of Oklahoma Homeschool – A Free 12-week Presidents & Elections Unit Study for Primary Grades!
• PBSKids.org -”Zoom Out the Vote!“
• The Teaching Home Newsletter – An Introduction to Government, United States Government, Our Responsibilities in Government, Presidential Election Internet-Based Unit Study – Part 1, Presidential Election Internet-Based Unit Study – Part 2
• CNN – America Votes
• Reach Every Child – Resources for Presidential Studies
• CNN Politics – Election 2008
• Project Vote Smart
• Ben’s Guide to Government for Kids – The Election Process (Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12), Electoral College (Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12)
• MarcGram – The Presidential Race

More White Chocolate

Strange title for a post, huh? No, this time the word “chocolate” is not referencing my sweet tooth, but rather my cell phone. I have one of those white chocolate cell phones. I’ve had it for about a year and have had nothing but problems with it…but last weekend it finally bit the dust completely. It totally freaked out — as in, when you pushed a button (any button), it started scrolling (very quickly) through all of the options, without stopping. You couldn’t stop it or make a call or anything. It became useful for nothing but a hockey puck (which serves little purpose in the state of Florida).

If you know me, then you are probably quite aware that I am not a “phone person”. I could really do without talking on the phone…BUT when a person is hauling eight children around town in a van with dry-rotted tires, a cell phone may just come in handy, therefore making the ability to dial out a necessity.

So Rob took my phone back to the Verizon store today — and was told the warranty expired FIVE DAYS AGO. AAAAGGGHHH!!!!

But here is where I MUST praise Verizon. With all of the complaining I have done about Verizon and its customer service (or lack thereof), they redeemed themselves in my eyes today. Although the warranty had expired, and they were therefore under no obligation to me regarding my phone, they did replace it.

Thank you, Verizon.

Peachy French Toast

We tried this recipe (courtesy of the Chuckwagon Diner website) over the weekend at our Civil War re-enactment; cooked in a Dutch oven over hot coals in the wee hours of the morning. It was delicious!

Peachy French Toast

• 1 Dozen Eggs
• 2 Cups Milk
• 1/2 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tbsp. Cinnamon
• 1 Loaf French or Italian Bread, Sliced
• 1/2 Lb. Butter or Margarine
• 1 Lb. Brown Sugar
• 3 – 16 Oz. Can of Peaches (drained and quartered)

Directions:
Heat a large Dutch Oven by covering it with coals for 15 minutes. Beat the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Let the bread slices soak in the egg mixture. Remove preheated Oven from coals and melt butter in the bottom. Add brown sugar and mix well with butter until carmelized. Pour the drained peaches over the carmelized sugar. Place the egg/bread mixture on top of the peaches, cover with lid and return the Dutch Oven to the coals. Bake 45 minutes at about 350°F (medium hot coals). Cooking time is shorter if the temperature is hotter, but watch the edges that they don’t burn. For the first 10 minutes, use coals only on the bottom. Then add coals to the top and continue baking until done. With the caramel topping, you probably won’t even need syrup. Serves 8.

Homemade Play Dough Fun

While visiting Heather’s blog, I came across a recipe for Chocolate & Peanut Butter Play Dough, and I couldn’t resist giving it a shot. I mean, we have made plenty of homemade play dough over the years, but CHOCOLATE and PEANUT BUTTER?! My two FAVORITE food groups!

So we dug in (literally).

It’s super easy to make. Simply mix together these ingredients:

• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• about 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons dutch cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons powdered milk

Look at little Rey’s face. I think he had MUCH more fun eating it than playing with it.
A boy after my own heart!

My 4-year-old has that cheesy grin down pat, doesn’t she?

Little organizational tip thrown in here. Have you ever been to Sam’s Club and seen those big plastic “barrels” that pretzel rods are sold in? Recycled, they make great storage tubs for such things as play-doh utensils, as shown above.

Free Pages from NotebookingPages.com This Week!

HomeSchoolEStore.com graciously offers a different free product every week for download, but I LOVE it when that free product is something from notebookingpages.com.

This week’s free product is just that! Just in time for President’s Day, you can now get a FREE download (no purchase necessary) of United States of America Notebooking Pages, complete with maps!

If you aren’t already familiar with notebookingpages.com, I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed. These are a favorite homeschool resource in our home, especially the nature study pages!

Also available this week from notebookingpages.com and the HomeSchoolEStore are the Valentine Notebooking Pages.

In addition to offering these absolutely FREE, with no purchase necessary, HomeSchoolEStore is also currently giving away a Bible Study from Grapevine Studies – The New Testament Timeline Booklet, Teacher’s Edition, free with any purchase. Offer is available until March 1st (use coupon code 6c89de at checkout).

Wildlife: In Our Backyard

I’ve posted before about nature trails and our excursions to various state parks and beaches to explore the wildlife, but, living in central Florida, you need not go far to experience wildlife up close and personal.

Remember this raccoon? She may have been our most unusual visitor to date, but she has PLENTY of mischievous cousins (let’s just say we have learned — the hard way — not to put trash out the night before pick-up). Actually, what prompted this post was spying some of those cousins last night. We put our dog Maisy in her kennel for the night and forgot to put her food bowl away. I was in my room when I heard a crunching sound (my sliding glass door was open). I peered out to see two big raccoons (one without a tail )and a possum all eating out of Maisy’s bowl together – no more than 12 feet away from my door. I tried to get a picture, but it was dark so this was the best I could do.

Who knew possums and raccoons hung out together? I guess the rules change when food is involved. You learn something new every day.

And while we generally only see these guys at night, there are exceptions to every rule. Here’s one:

One day in January Audrey was walking home from the bus stop after school. As she approached the corner to our cul-de-sac, she saw this.

A little bitty raccoon!

Audrey promptly called me on my cell phone (I was at the playground with the homeschoolers) to tell me, so I told her to hurry and take some pictures. She did. I headed home with the others so I could see the cute masked fella, but as we approached the corner, he retreated into the tree.

Little note to Rob here, I NEED you to replace my Lumix camera, the one with the awesome zoom — because my Canon wasn’t able to capture the otters frolicking in the pond behind our house. Bummer! I’d love to have captured them on film…uh…digital media (do they even still make film?)

The Canon was able to catch these guys in our backyard though. Lounging on the bank. Little note to Rey here, stay away from the banks of the pond!

There is so much cool wildlife in Florida, such as our friend Oscar at the beach, and our resident sandhill cranes, not to mention the myriad “critters” that the children have seen while visiting the beach. But dangerous wildlife lurks around every corner as well. It’s crucial to always be cautious and aware, and to have a healthy respect for those with which we share the environment.

For example, the gators pictured above. They are just small ones, but the “Mama” (about 10′ in length) was removed from that same pond by wildlife officials just months before we moved in here. And the neighbors directly across the street found a pygmy rattlesnakes in their bushes, just days after the neighbors two doors down found one in their pool area. Little note to self here, perhaps planting a bunch of flowers in the landscape bed would be a bad idea. Flowers = reptile hiding places.

I have not personally had a close encounter with a coral snake (not a live one anyway), but I came within inches of these guys, literally:

This cottonmouth was sunbathing next to the path of the nature trail. (The picture is fuzzy because it was taken with my cell phone). Thankfully, he never showed any aggression (by opening his mouth to expose the “cotton” inside). After we were a safe distance away, I shot a couple of photos, then we watched him until he tired of soaking up the rays and headed back into the woods.

And this critter, below, really freaked me out a little. A GINORMOUS eastern diamondback rattlesnake. He was at least 6 feet long, and is seen just after crossing the dirt path that both reenactors and spectators used at the Brooksville Raid (Civil War Reenactment) in January. This happened just after the “battle”, so I can’t help but think that the cannon and gun fire scared him out of hiding.

Is that amazing camouflage or what? Can you find the snake in that picture?
If you can’t, here is a cut-out from the above picture, zoomed way in.

Another photo, with his head raised.

Same photo, cropped and zoomed.

Again, thankfully, he showed no signs of aggression. We stood back and let him cross the path and slither away. (Shortly thereafter, Lefty informed me, of the log that you can see in the photo, “That’s the log that I always play on!”) I would have felt much better not knowing THAT.

Did I ever blog about the experiences we’ve had with both red widow and brown widow spiders? I can’t remember.

Just as the lyrics in that song from the 70s go, “I don’t like spiders and snakes.” Okay, the ring-necked snake is kind of cute, but I wasn’t fond of finding one in my swimming pool and having to fish him out.

Other reptiles are cool though. The gators are fun to watch — from a DISTANCE. And I LOVE turtles. The same day that we saw that water moccasin on the neighborhood nature trail, we found this guy on the way home. A Chicken Turtle! We carried him home, admired him, and photographed him for about 20 minutes before setting him free in our pond.

All of the above photos are of animals that we have come across just in the months of January and February so far, but my son happened upon something really cool on Friday, that we did not get a photo of (and I missed altogether). While in the yard at about dusk, looking for his little brother’s lost shoe, Gator was startled to see a “HUGE cat” running into the woods. He later identified the cat as a Florida cougar — a rare species to catch a glimpse of.

 

 

Protected: The Neighborhood Art Show

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One of These Things is Not Like the Others

A Lesson in Camouflage!

Which of these items is NOT a Webkinz?

Protected: Happy Birthday to My February Babies!

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Protected: Our Weekend – The Battle of Townsend’s Plantation: Campfire Cooking

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Protected: Our Weekend – The Battle of Townsend’s Plantation: The Birthday Party

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Protected: Our Weekend – The Battle of Townsend’s Plantation: Children at Camp

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A Message for Boo

Happy 7th Birthday!

Protected: Just a Quick Update on Things

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