Well, if I am going to be honest with you all, we weren’t too successful. This is a real challenge, a bit more than I thought. It takes time and foresight, and I underestimated just how much time and foresight. For instance, I usually go to the grocery store in a hurry. This is a bad idea because checking labels takes time. I am sure that I will eventually have all our staple items figured out and squared away, but I am spending a lot of time checking labels.

And I didn’t end up being as diligent as I thought I might. I bought tortilla chips even though I don’t where they were made. But none of the chips have that information—NONE. I checked a lot of them too, and not just tortilla chips. I told myself that it would be insane to manufacture chips in another country because they break so easily. That is probably not true at all but it helped ease my mind.

On the other hand, I have passed on gum (Made in Canada), tuna (who the hell knows), salami (no idea-wait, I’ve bought salami since I first started writing this), and ground beef (USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand). And instead of buying real maple syrup (our preference) because it is made in Canada, I bought some crappy high fructose corn syrup from the states. But was that a good idea? I chose a less healthy product because it was made in America—when is it wise to make an exception?

Of course, we did make some exceptions. We dropped a pretty penny on BoBo the Big Red Volvo, but we all knew that was coming. Most of the parts where brand new, but Stephen did make three trips to the junkyard for used items—we did what we could!



And coffee. Twice, I bought coffee from who the hell knows where, but I had a logical reason: If I didn’t buy one pound of coffee at Fred Meyer, then Stephen and I would have bought coffee each morning until I found coffee grown in the states—which is completely ridiculous! I know, we could have given up coffee and made tea each morning, but that is also completely ridiculous. So I reasoned that it made more sense (for us) to spend about $14 on coffee grown from who the hell knows where rather than spend  at least eight times that much on cups from the local coffee house in about three weeks time.

Hopefully we won’t have to invest anymore in the Volvo…oils changes to be determined for both cars. But I don’t know about coffee. Apparently, Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee but it is hella expensive to order. Like hella expensive. We could try growing our own coffee but even if we were successful we wouldn’t have a crop for two to three years. So I don’t know what we will do about coffee. I am not ordering three pounds from Hawaii for $100. I am just not. Maybe we could make an exception for coffee like Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Or maybe we should give up coffee for a whole year! Yeah, right.

We had a few other missteps. I bought $7.02 worth of gas at Chevron because I didn’t think the Volvo was going to make all the way to the Stinker Station. For Christmas I bought Stephen a pair of jeans that didn’t fit. When we finally exchanged them, we paid a difference of $11.11 for a better fit. The jeans were made in Mexico. Stephen also bought $30 worth of gas at Chevron while running an errand in a neighboring city. He couldn’t find a Stinker Station and was also worried about running out of gas.

Other than those five purchases (Volvo parts excluded), we did pretty well. Not a 100% but I am going to give us a B- for our efforts. And we are not giving up, so maybe February will be more successful. Cross your fingers!

But wait! We did have some successes—let’s not forget those. We did exceptionally well in the gift giving department. As a baby shower gift we bought this beautiful birdie mobile at a fun little shop owned by a friend of a friend. Bricolage will most likely become our go to spot for unique gifts.



And most exciting of all—we bought two birthday bikes for the price of one on Craigslist! The only way we were going to be able to give the boys bikes was to buy used, so we started the hunt early. We found one bike that had been ridden just twice but had a flat tire. We scored that bike for $25 and picked it up less than two miles from our house. It looks totally new. Minutes after Stephen arrived home with the first bike we rechecked Craigslist and found the exact same bike (different color) new, in the box for $50! Can you believe our luck? The second bike arrived yesterday with Grandma (we widened our search to the town of our parents), and both bikes are safely hidden at the Double D Ranch. Now the second bike is apparently brand new, but our money went to Bill and his daughter, not a box store—so we’re gonna call it good. Happy Birthday babies!