Thursday, July 20, 2017

Affording Such A Large Family: Vacation Edition

When you have a large family, vacations can be crazy ridiculous. We don't always go on vacation as our family has grown but when it was just my biokids and me, we'd travel multiple times per year. We are actually working toward a cross country trip for next year. In the mean time, here are a few of our vacation trips and "how we afford" them.

Staycations: Family time is the whole point of vacations for us. Luckily, we live very close to a tourist town and in a decent sized city in a good location for make day trips or overnight trips. We are close to Nashville, Asheville, Atlanta. We are in a good location. We like to sleep at home to save money on food and lodging. We will go to semi-local water park, amusement parks, museums, concerts or attractions. We will sometimes have themed days: back yard olympics, Mountain pay, lake day, lazy day. These vacations are fun.

Travel: We do travel with them too. My biokids have been to Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. But how do we afford it? Below are a few of my tips.

1. Plan In Advance: We plan everything from destination to plan activities and dining. This way we know how much to plan to spend.

2. Go in the off season. During non peak times, there are many discounts available.

3. I bring my crockpot! We may eat one or two meals out and the rest of the time we eat in our room.

4. Look online for coupons.

5. Stop at the visitor center and get coupons and discounted tickets.

6. Haggle. You can argue the prices of lodging at the time of booking and it's great. I have been known to get beachfront pent houses for $1000 a week.

7. Check out goosgle for free activities and events going on at your destination.

8. Get a gas app. Lower priced gas makes a difference.

9. Coin bucket pays our way. We pay cash for everything. All change and $1 bills go in the bucket.

10. If flying, take as little luggage as possible by packing several kids together.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Affording Such A Large Family: Baby Edition

So recently in a budgeting accountability group I asked how much money we should put away before having our "ours" baby. There was a unanimous decision that babies are only as expensive as you make them. From my experience this is true. As I have said before, we believe that babies are a gift from God and that He will bless us for having them and He will provide for them. Here are a few things that are helpful to know when having a baby:

1. A crib is not a necessity. We bed share with our babies. No, I am not up for debating this issue.

2. Buy a good car seat. Car seat safety is everything! I prefer to buy new, just because you never know if they have been in a wreck.

3. Breastfeeding is free. I know that not everyone can breast feed, but local mom groups are great to donate milk as well as WIC will help supply formula.

4. Babywearing is a lifesaver. I don't buy strollers. They just get in the way. I can throw a baby on my back and do chores or go for stroll and have hands free for the other kids. I have never needed a swing either, however, we have always been gifted one.

5. Even if you don't have a shower, people will gift you items. Being a parent is like a fraternity. We are all in this together and know the struggles. You will get hand-me-down everything from half packs of diapers to I only used on scoop out of this formula or she doesn't like the peaches and we have 20.

6. Cloth diapers are cheaper.

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Affording Such A Large Family Fun Edition

Feeding ducks at the duck pond.
I actually got them in order by age too!
That NEVER happens.
What do we do for fun? You name it! No, we don't have a lot of money but we are super creative. I love researching and finding free events in our area. Facebook has made this much easier.
We attend a bunch of free activities. Barnes and Nobel does story and craft times on Saturdays. Lowes and Home Depot offers building workshops. The gyms sometimes do family swim and movie night. There is always some kind of free festival going on downtown.
We go into nature. We live near the lake so we love to go swimming. We will go hiking and do a picnic. We feed the ducks (PSA: Bread is bad for them). We go on bike rides. Shaving cream fights out side. Side walk chalk. Bubbles. Races. Trampoline. We have even done backyard Olympics. Camping. Bon fires.
Family Movie Night. We have Netflix movie night with popcorn or we will go to the drive-in ($30) when they are having a double or triple feature. We look for Redbox codes. Our will just pull out an old favorite or a movie from our extensive collection. We buy movies by the box at yard sales. Unfortunately, we get a lot of scratched movies due to little hands.
Family cooking night. We will do ice cream sundae bars. We will do build your own taco bars or make your own pizza.
Game Night. We will do this as a family or with friends. We have even found an organization that will allow you to do a game (video, board or card) as a marathon fundraiser. You get donations just like you would if you were running a 5K and that money goes to our local children's hospital. We taught the kids chess, which is actually apart of their third grade curriculum, and they have excelled and kick our hind ends.
We are even go on vacations. We are currently planning a trip across country. We will travel the upper US to the west coast to visit family. Go down through California to Disneyland. Come home via the lower half of the US and visit the Grand Canyon, The Alamo and New Orleans and end with a weekend at the beach. We are saving for this trip and couponing. We will be tent camping at KOAs across the country to save on lodging. We will cook our own food, except at Disney, well because DISNEY (everyone needs a Dole Whip in their life). We are actually looking at taking a train from east to west and then renting a car to drive back (but I feel like we will miss out on stuff that way)!
In February, I took the three younger guys to the beach. Though it was to visit a dying family member, so not really a vacation or happy time, but we still made some great memories.

Check out more from this series:
Affording so many kids: school edition



Monday, July 3, 2017

Chicken and Dumplings


This is a favorite at our house! Plus it makes so much that I can feed us all for at least two meals or have left overs to send Brad for lunch for the week!

Ingredients:
2 boxes chicken broth or about 5 cups bone broth
4 chicken bullion cubes
Garlic
Salt
Pepper
Thyme
Rosemary
Basil
Chicken breasts
2 cans of carrots
8 cans biscuit dough

Instructions:
Season broth to taste. Boil chicken in broth. You can cube it before or after. I do after because I don't like to handle raw meat. Tear biscuits and roll into little quarter sized balls. I put them in a separate bowl until all are ripped. Add to broth. Cook on medium for about 25 minutes. Add carrots and cook another 5 minutes.