The hub left for Alaska this morning. He will be gone for three weeks. During the next three weeks, my plan is to focus on our budget and goals.

Goal #1- tied to one of our biggest budget busters- is to eat out no more than one meal each week. My action steps are to create a meal plan each weekend for the upcoming week; and cook dinners and take lunches/snacks from home.

I am cooking some Hawaiian chicken in the slow cooker today and will make some rice to go with it. Enough for dinner today, lunch and dinner tomorrow. Any leftovers after that I will freeze for another time. I plan to make a lime chicken on Tuesday night, again enough for 2-3 meals.

I previously agreed to dinner and lunch out on Wednesday and Thursday respectively with friends. These will come out of my allowance.

Next weekend my daughters and I are going to Portland. I am very much looking forward to this time together and have funds in our vacation account to cover.

Outside of this, I plan to plug the holes in the budget and stick to the plan.

Today I am cooking, my laundry is on the line, the housework is getting done...all things that make life easier during the week.

Goal #2 is TRACK and stay within budget for all discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is the spending that comes out of the food and miscellaneous account. My action steps are to maintain a spreadsheet on this account just like I do with our monthly bills. If this is ineffective, then plan B is to use envelopes and cash for these line items.

A family friend, who is also a carpet installer, is coming over tomorrow to give us a bid on carpeting two rooms in the big house. Our budget is $500, installed- so I hope he can pull that off.. We are renting the big house to DD3 and two of her friends and are making inexpensive repairs for now. We will re-evaluate what to do long term next spring.

Update on Z:

Once again, a one month timeline has been set for Z to relocate to bio-gramma. All that is left is for Oregon to approve and then he will be flown to his new home by his case worker. However, we have had the timeline come and go so many times it is hard to know if this will be it.

He has spent 26 of his 31 months with us.