If I can do it, so can you

Anyone that knows me well knows that I am a bit of a planner. I often get teased that I have a list for everything. BTW - I LOVE EXCEL. I don't know how people were ever organized before computers.

Anyways, one thing that I have been putting off doing because I felt I did not have the money or space for is doing my food storage. For anyone that is not familiar with this...one of the ways that the church I go to encourages it's members to be prepared for different trials that may arise in life (in addition to having financial savings) is to have a supply of food stored in your home. My excuses of living in an apartment with no room and living on student loans have finally become excuses of the past. We have had our home for going on 2 years now and thankfully we are gainfully employed. I decided a few months ago that now is the time. Honestly, it is the economy that helped me come to this decision. Prices for basic food staples have been on the rise and I don't want to pay more than I have to for anything. So I researched through all of the papers and resources on the Internet that I had to decide how much of what items we were going to store for the two of us and then went to work. I have been able to dry pack about 750 lbs of food in roughly 8 hrs. According to my calculations a year's supply of food for both of us is about 1170 lbs and it will only cost me ~$660. Not that I am ready to try it out for a year to see if it will last, but that would be a nice food budget ($55/month for 2 people).

So here is my proof...laid out step by step to show just how easy it really is.

Start with some bulk food items.

Pour them into a container so they can easily be repackaged into a Mylar bag for long term storage.

Have your bags ready to add an oxygen pack to. This will suck out the oxygen so they will stay nutritious over the years they are stored.

Borrow the sealer available from church.

Label the items.

Find an easy way to store them.

And I am sure Alex is thrilled...now we have another home improvement project to do.

Add some shelves to the utility room to store the food :)

August Family Visit

We don't get to go out of town often with Alex in his MBA program, but we had this weekend off so we headed down to Vicotria to see Alex's family. We had a great time. When we got there one of our nephews was at Alex's parent's house and wanted to go bowling so we bowled with the 2 older boys and had a blast. I must say I think that was my worst game ever!!! I don't think it helped that for about 2 or 3 frames I was on my cell phone :) Is there anything we won't do with a cell phone these days? In the 9th frame it looked like my nephew (who is 11) was going to beat me, but I put down the phone for the 10th frame and pulled off the win. Our other nephew, who is 5, was in the lane next to us with bumpers and believe it or not threw a strike one frame and the ball never touched the bumpers. We were all impressed.

The baby of the Esquivel family is now pushing 2 and runs non stop. He sure loves his grandpa. I think I heard him say "Hi Po-po" about a hundred times Friday night:)

Saturday, much to my delight, my Mom, Sister-in-law, and her 2 kids came down to Vicotria, so I was able to spend a few hours with all of my nephews and my niece this weekend. They came and picked up our old table that we used in college for my brothers who are sharing an apartment this year down in College Station. It is still hard to believe that they are both in college now and that my baby sister, who was 5 when I went off to college, is now a Sophomore in HS. That makes me feel a little old.

The first post of many?

So I guess it is official...we finally have a blog. I feel so behind the times on this one...I must be getting old. I don't face book, my space, linked, tagged or any of that so I guess it is time to put up a window into our life on the web for all of our friends to keep up with us, because apparently e-mail just doesn't cut it anymore.

I wasn't planning on posting anything yet, but my friend Jill already linked my blog from her blog so I better get things together.

I would like to add a disclaimer here: I don't really pay attention while I type so I am sure you will find many typos...but you are my friends so you will have to forgive me :)