I cannot believe I did not post a picture of my granddaughter in her Halloween costume. This is me with her. She pressed her little face against me spontaneously. It was so sweet. She is used to getting her picture taken since her mom is a photographer.

I have been sick for about 10 days now. This is the third day I have been out of bed for more than 1 hour. Now it appears that K&A, who are on their way home from Washington, are sick.

I had two checks that needed to be dealt with an DH and I drank the last of the OJ this morning. Tissues are getting low too.

So I made lists, checked them, printed out coupons and off I went.

Stopped at our bank. Deposited my disability check and cashed another check from a friend who owed me money for a little work.

Then onto pick up DH. He had just let an employee go off on a break, so I ran across the street to Walgreens, picking up a few items:


Then onto Costco for OJ and Honeycrisp apples (the best in my humble opinion, well worth the extra cost:


Oh and Nutella! My first time buying it. Winco was giving out samples the last time I was there and it was so yummy. I am not sure how I will use it, maybe just eat it by the spoonful?

We went ahead and picked up DH's request for Christmas, the cast iron dutch oven. Impulse purchased "cookware" for granddaughter. It was a huge mistake not teaching our daughters to cook. We will not make the same mistake with granddaughter!

Then onto Target for a bunch of good buys. My impulse purchase was the movie Matrix. DH's Christmas gift he will get to open. He loves that movie. My gift to myself was Susan Boyle's Christmas album.

My last stop was at Rite-Aid to pick up more pumpkin and some Fiber1 cereal. They were out of both. A truck is supposed to come in tonight, so I will check back tomorrow. Rite-Aid is very close to my home in my little rural Northern California town.... maybe I will call first.

Anyway since I am 99% sure that I am not going back to work, my goal is to squeeze every penny until it screams. I know I bought a lot of "prepared" food at Target, but with my fibromyalgia, I need some shortcuts. There will be days that I will be lucky to get any food on the table or leave it for DH and it will be okay once in a while.

I did come home from shopping and put a stew in the oven. We watched Chopped last night on Foodnetwork and one of the mystery ingredients was baby turnips. EEK we have turnips in our raised bed garden we planted on 09/06/10. They are probably perfect little baby turnips. We never did thin them because things got crazy and then my diagnosis..... anyway I went out and sure enough, cute little turnips:


So here is our dinner, in our new dutch oven:


My favorite stew. It has a bit of bacon, apple juice, tomato paste and some fresh herbs from our garden (with the cute little turnips), carrots, mushrooms and red potatoes. Oh and a few bouillion cubes since I have no canned beef broth.

On the fibro front, my core exercises, the mega doses of vitamins (have not been on the treadmill since I have been sick) and not picking up my granddaughter and laying around have resulted in a fairly pain-free week. My back is bothering me now though from the shopping and cooking.

I will get up and put the groceries away and clean up the kitchen. The kids will be home tonight.