Planning

This planning is going pretty well.

Meal Planning: On Saturday I picked up the items I needed for this weeks menu. I still need to refine my plan so that I use all the veggies I buy. This weeks menu had items like curry coconut chicken, cumin chicken, burritos, snappy cajun shrimp, (one of Fergie's recipes) and pork chops.

On Sunday I was pondering the sparkling white grape juice I purchased a few weeks ago. I asked Mr A what would go well with it and he suggested shrimp. I didn't want
to do the bell peppers and I had a taste for coconut so I found a recipe for coconut curry shrimp with apples. It was very tasty and happened to require stuff I had purchased for my other meals. Stuff like cilantro, which I usually only use once and have to figure out what else to do with it and end up throwing a bunch away. Mr A mixes it with avocado and it makes an amazing dip.

When I am done refining my meal plans, I will have the shopping list prepared by week and make use of all ingredients. I am pleased with my mission to domesticate myself.

Getaway planning
I was looking at the post I did on goals. One of them was a weekend getaway to wine country. I didn't even connect that I had written it down and did it. My cousin offered us use of her time share a couple of years ago. At Christmas Mr A asked her and she made the arrangement the next day. She lives in Oakland and makes regular trips to the valley to relax. I guess she purchased a huge chunk of time because she let us use an extended weekend free of charge and she spent a few days there before we went.

That was a really great weekend. TR got to spend time with her granny and Mr A and I got to taste lots of wine, eat and enjoy.

My other goal was a get away to Vegas. Mr A and I originally thought we were going for a wedding during Valentine weekend but that turned out to be just a couples trip. I guess its just me, but if a man I wasn't married to tried to take me to Vegas I'd be expecting a proposal and a wedding. Once we learned it was not a wedding we decided to stay home.

This weekend Mr A's cousin called and told us to be in Vegas in February. Mr A told him if it was a family event we could make it. His cousin informed him he was getting married. So our Vegas trip has landed in our lap.

Moving

I've been keeping my eye open for places to move. Things have gotten a lot cheaper since we moved here in 2006. One of our neighbors moved and her 1bd/1bth is being rented at $1200. Another neighbor that moved into the adjacent one bedroom/1bth a month or so after us is paying @$1500. The neighbors (actually me) are writing a letter requesting a deduction.

We adore and enjoy our neighborhood, I love our unit which is a large split wing but we decided to rent so we wouldn't be stuck when prices fell and so we could move cities easily. Now that prices have fallen we have to make some choices.

We really don't want to move. We had decided to keep the apt. if we bought in Oakland. I don't want to pack all the stuff we accumulated. Mr A doesn't want to move all the stuff we've accumulated. We moved in with just the bedroom set and some dishes and now we acquired so much that I've been getting rid of stuff.

Both of us do our best to give everything away when we move. I like starting over but we've acquired some stuff that we like.

Now that we have TR I have an entirely new set of requirements for where we live. Random stuff like the positioning of windows and the distance the kids room will be from us.

It turned out warm today, I think TR and I might hit a baby class tomorrow if its still nice. I'm looking forward to summer so we can teach her to swim. She loves the adult bath tub, so I'm sure she will have a blast in the pool.