New Blog Site

 So I have moved my blog to another platform as it was too difficult to try and link a new domain name to this blog so please go to my new blog site at My Simple Wyoming Life as that is where I will be posting going forward. I will be leaving this blog up for the foreseeable future. Thank you for reading these blogs on this site have a wonderful day.

Packing and getting ready to move

 Well we are currently still packing, my mother has loads of salt and pepper shaker sets that we had to make sure all were well wrapped as a lot of them are very old! We have everything sorted to get my Oriental short hair cat (Banshee) and my Chocolate Labrador (Jas) here and as of posting this they got their flight tickets! This coming Friday the pet transport we lined up will be picking them up and giving them final checks to make sure they are good to fly at the start of the next week and I am over joyed I will be having my old boy Jas and my albeit some times annoying Banshee who almost constantly follows and meows her head off (yes I have arguments with a cat and she sounds like she is saying no!) and thinks sleeping right in the middle of my back while I am asleep on my side is the best place to sleep!

We will be doing a prep shop before we leave California as there are stores we prefer some foods from for example my father prefers Aldi's  own brand canned stewed tomatoes. We will be stocking up on the dogs, cats and birds food (4 dogs, 3-4 cats and 1 green cheek conure in total going with us). We went ahead and got a sam's club membership and we will be doing a large shop at least once every three months. I will also be learning how to drive (legally of course) once we get to Wyoming and hopefully I will be able to find a job even if it's just part time or weekends! We have our truck rental all lined up and booked, we have a game plan in place of what goes first specially if we need to make 2 trips! I am also happy to see my husband as well for anyone wondering if I miss him and yes I do, I have not seen him or my pets for 3 months and 10 days! I only have to wait about 9-10 days to see my husband and our pets (with any luck!).

We have some tlc that must be done to the house once we get there but I am sure it's going to look really cute when we are done! I mean did I mention the place has 2 kitchens therefore I will get my own kitchen! I am really excited to get up there and get things lined up for in the next 6 months to a year we can get our (husbands and mine) house sold in the UK and get his visa for here in the USA. I really want to be in the USA as I feel kids will benefit from living here (better camping,hiking, etc and other experiences) we also will not have to buy school uniforms every year plus buying more uniforms if there is a growth spurt. Yes down side we have to buy health insurance and yes it literally costs an arm, leg and a kidney  at this point however with health insurance your doctor will listen or they won't keep making as much money off you! 

My goals for the next year is to get all of us into better shape and health and spend as much time in the good old outdoors with my kids, as well as find a job or at least volunteer locally, get us a garden patch set up for next spring/summer planting as there is no time to plant anything this year and I have no clue what I can plant for fall/winter crops outdoors or in a poly tunnel. I do plan on getting us local library cards and weaning my kids of what tv/tablet time they get and get them more into reading and board games/ card games, even just playing with their toys and having overall more structure to tv/tablet time. My biggest goal and challenge is to get my son to eat more than a handful of foods (he does need testing done to see if he is autistic and where he falls on the spectrum if he is).

My next blog post will most likely be sometime around the 3rd weekend/ 4th week of May as we do still have a lot of prep and packing and of course picking my husband and hopefully my pets up from the airport, getting the moving truck and packing it, driving up to Wyoming (we are driving 1,100 miles roughly so almost 16hrs) not including potty breaks for everyone and re-fueling. So fingers crossed everything from here on out goes to plan! Until some time in May be safe and have a wonderful day(s) and week(s)!

Fresh start in a rural Wyoming town.

 So it is official! My parents and myself found and bought (well they did the buying I just helped with the house hunting) a home in rural Wyoming in around 2 months! So a very long story cut a bit shorter we were looking at a place in Jan and unfortunately the bank that my parents were going to use for the mortgage would not take it on unless they put way more down to be fair they did this with a few other houses that met their standards too so! So they were dropped and we made a mad dash to find a house, so by the end of Feb start of March we found a house in this little rural town and my parents decided it looked good just by the photos and found a video up on youtube from the realtor and decided to make a offer of the full asking price with the agreement that they would fly in to see it and if it looked in good shape the full amount was theirs and wanted to do a quick sell and it was agreed to. Well a few days before my parents were to fly I had found it was removed from the market and well our realtor called to ask what was up and they said they sold it and there was no proof of the agreement and just very unprofessional and rude to our guy. But I found a place and made the joke that the basement looks like a dude with an axe would be waiting for you down there (poor lighting when the pictures were taken), my father saw it and liked it and they went to go ahead and view that place instead.

Fast forward to now my parents now own that house that I made the axe wielder comment about lol. It does need a bit of TLC the previous owner it seems did not secure the place that well and it appears a dog used one of the carpeted rooms as a bathroom so needless to say my mother is pretty annoyed by that. There are a few other little bits that have been annoying to me just because my parents are old and can't get around well but I am not going to list those for various reasons, but I will say one of our new neighbours was kind enough to offer my parents help moving some bits in and I don't think they will ever know how much I appreciate that kind gesture they showed to my parents!

I have been thinking once we get somewhat settled in I would see about doing some local volunteering, they do have a community garden and I was thinking of volunteering there and I do like gardening. I am a little sad of the rules they have in regards to having chickens specially in seeing how they are roughly a hour or a little over from the two bigger towns/cities where one would have to do major shopping and the price of eggs is pretty high and it's only going to get worse as now the bird flu is back in the USA. I am hopeful that the town is going to be great and there will be some really good neighbours. I mean I can easily walk to the little public library and the school is the next road over, did I mention that the roads are like the dirty and gravel rural roads? It's so rural that each house is allotted a po box and when the house sells that po box goes with it!

My mother has been sending me videos of deer just walking though peoples yard and grazing with their babies and such which it's neat but my daughter is like me and wants to darn near make everything a pet! Speaking of pets my last post we had lost one of our new pups and uh that really sucked we got her cremated and we now have her remains here with us, but my mothers friend heard we lost our little Ethel and long story short we got a puppy from them her name is Rosie she is a black brindle cane corso and she is around 9 weeks now she is a sweet little pup my daughter wants her to sleep in bed with her currently but uh I don't think in the long run when she is pushing 90-110lbs  and about as long as my daughters bed that she would be so keen on the dog in bed with her. My parents have been really great by helping us pay to get our dog and cat from the UK over to here so with any luck they will be here next month as will my husband to see all of us give us a hand at moving, spending our daughter birthday with her and just exploring the new place in Wyoming and then go back to the UK to finish working on the house there to hopefully sell it in the coming months plus he does still have a job there and we still need to get stuff sorted for a visa for him but are not pulling the trigger until after we move and our place in the UK gets put on the market.

I am really happy to be back in the USA because there is more kosher food over here and going full kosher will be easier food wise. I will hopefully have a garden next year in Wyoming as it's pretty much gone at this point to start plus there are other things that need to be done before that. With that said I do have one question before I wrap this blog post up how many of you that are still reading are interested in salt and pepper shakers? some are vintage and some are really ugly a lot were made in Japan as well, just drop a comment below or if you know my instangram leave a comment on my most recent post about it. Who knows I might post a few pictures of some of these sets!

Heartache, Packing & Planning

 Well unfortunately it seems someone fed one of our new puppies (Ethel our blue girl) something toxic around last Friday and sadly even with throwing a few thousand to try and save her (thanks to my parents) there was nothing that could be done by the emergency vet whatever was given was so toxic it was basically a death sentence the moment she ate it.

We are now hyper vigilant with the other pup (Lucy) and do not let her out on her own now.  God forbid I need to use the rest room and I forget she is out there I get yelled at ( by my mother again hyper vigilant and while I get it I personally don't need her yelling at me every chance she gets).

While all that was going on my father & myself were trying to build a carport that was bought to store items that have been sorted out for our possible move to Wyoming, All that was done with high winds, a thunderstorm, and hail being thrown at us. Not to mention he is still mending from a botched infected knee surgery! I tell ya I see where I get my stubbornness from!

Plus I have been trying to get things together to bring my dog and cat from the UK here (again thanks to my parents), my husband is coming out in May to see the kids and myself and maybe help us move if we get the place in Wyoming. Sadly he will have to go back and finish off our place there to sell it and re-home all of our chickens and our three rabbits and he still has a job there he needs to go to while we get visa and things sorted to get him over here.

I will say though it does look like we will be moving to Wyoming, my parents have been buying a few bits for my part of the house. Once it is confirmed we have the place I will let you know more about it! and roughly where it is in Wyoming! the town sounds great and it's small and there are not loads of kids in the local school so kids get the help from the teacher they need. I plan on volunteering if I can at a few places in the town as whatever time I don't need for taking care of my parents, children, pets, gardening, or fishing for food I think it would be a good idea to volunteer and help the community as it is on the small side.

I am very excited to move to this place and get my husband and my pets over here. We are hopeful because of my fathers issues and my mothers issues (which keep getting worse we  are currently waiting to find out if a recently found mass in her lungs is cancer or not). So a lot going on in a short time seriously same day we found out about my mother possibly having a cancer mass in her lung our pup Ethel was fed something toxic, to losing Ethel etc it is a lot.

Thanks for reading my all over the place quickly wrote blog post until next time when I hopefully having nicer news!

New Beginnings & Puppies

 Well I can now tell y'all the big news that's been talked about for quite a long while & IT'S OFFICIAL!  My kids and myself will be staying here in the USA and hopefully My husband will not be too far behind. With that said my husband cannot afford to pay bills and debts plus get our house finished off to sell it if he has to send money to me and the kids. So I will have to get government help til I can get a real job and again there is no shame in needing help when you really need it!

My parents & us are looking to move to Wyoming in the next 3-6 months and we are hopeful that my mother and I can fly out in March to look at a few houses and may be making an offer.  We have also bought puppies that will hopefully become the house guard dogs, they are either pure bred Cane Corso puppies or at least three quarters Cane Corso. Both are females one is a blue brindle and the other is solid blue, they are both cute however one is more aggressive and we will be working a lot with her I believe this is possibly down to the fact she was the largest pup in the litter and therefore got her way plus she will be the main guard dog. The smaller dog will be the kids dog. I'll update on a later post with pictures of the girls.

Not In Kansas Anymore.

 Well around Jan 10th I was asked if I would be willing to fly from the UK back to the USA ASAP. Why? You ask, well long story short back in Dec my father had knee replacement surgery that went well to start with but he quickly developed an infection that was missed for weeks by doctors and emergency room staff! Which led to him having to have emergency surgery to save his life due to infection. My father was worried sick by the doctor telling him that this will kill him and he wanted the grand kids and myself here in case he did die.

Now the good news is he is still alive however he has a picc line in and I am now his nurse for the foreseeable future he is not out of the woods yet he is on iv antibiotics and he hurts like hell which is understandable.

There have been a few possible ideas thrown around before I came to help my parents and those same ideas are being thrown about a little bit more. I will say tho there may be big changes coming very soon if things go the way everyone is hoping they will.

With that said though I will have to extend my stay here in the USA and I know we cannot fully afford food i.e conversion rate from £ to $ if my husband sends me money and my parents are on a limited income so I have had to make the decision to try and get help plus try and find a job so I can get off help. I don't make that decision lightly either so in the coming weeks/months I will be focusing on how I stretch a very limited budget for food and what if any help I have gotten. Getting government help when you need it is not shameful in fact I find it very humbling!

Old Habits Die Hard, A Fortnightly Shopping Trip & Some Too Good To Go Bags

 Well old habits die hard. By that I mean when I am sick and/or I hurt myself to the point where I can't walk or lift my husband will get fast food (takeaway) the last few days I have been sick and I have done something to my sciatic nerve causing me pain when pretty much just moving. Thankfully it has improved and we were able to do the shopping on Wednesday 3rd of Jan. Which leads to another old habit that I need to change which is going shopping every week! 

So to change that I allotted a total of £240 ($304) for the month for food shopping & made a plan to only go shopping once a fortnight (every 2 weeks). I did buy 1kg (2.2lbs) of dried coriander (cilantro) as I do use quite a bit of it and it would cost a lot more money for me to buy fresh and freeze it (I am going to try growing it this year!) every single month! So after buying my bulk bag of herb we had £225 ($285) left.  Now as I said above we did go shopping on Wednesday I did allot £150 ($190) for this shop to get most of everything possible in one go. However there was none of the cheapest "streaky" bacon (I am sorry that is normal bacon to my American self), there was none of the cheaper essential orange juice and well I did forget energy drinks. In my defense though Aldi was quite bare by the time I got there like large areas of missing product and I was more annoyed the essential orange juice was gone. I did have a few wins though! 

Like I found that Tesco's 900g (1.9lb) block of cheese is normally £4.88 ($6.20) vs Aldi at £4.99 ($6.34) so a 11p (14 cents) saving on a single block of cheese, I did find later that Aldi had their own cheap 900g block of cheese on sale for the same price as Tesco's normal price! so I saved 22p (28 cents) on two blocks of cheese. I also found that Tesco's still had their own brand of kids yogurt in a 12 pack for only 73p (93 cents)! As it seems Aldi has stopped doing their own kids yogurt in a 12 pack and I can only buy a 6 pack at 79p ($1.00)! To be fair Aldi's 12 pack of kids yogurts were 85p ($1.08) so still more expensive than Tesco's! However with the fact that I can only currently buy 6 pack at Aldi vs 12 pack at Tesco's, that means I need to by 20x 6 packs of yogurt at Aldi vs only 10x 12 packs at Tesco a month, that also means I am spending £15.80 ($20.07) at Aldi vs £7.30 ($9.26) at Tesco's that is a £8.50 ($10.80) savings a month!

In total out of the £150 ($190) I took to do the food shop, I had £42 ($53) left over which is pretty good considering I had to buy 1 pack of bacon for Thursdays luncheon as I was craving bacon gravy and American biscuits (I have to say American biscuits as here in the UK biscuits are cookies where as American biscuits are more like a savoury scone!). I also ended up buying the orange juice that was more pricey and only bought 6 of those as that was the price of 8 of the cheapest essential orange juice!

I know I will need to time visits to Tesco's when we need to buy Banshee's cat food or when we are in the area of one of the two Tesco's I like to shop at when we do have food shopping money available that is.

So if I would have bought everything at Aldi  (and if they had everything in stock and if I needed fruit) I would have spent roughly £144 ($183 ish) vs the Aldi and Tesco shop (again that is if they had everything and I needed fruit) would been a total of around £127 so a £17 ($21.60) difference not bad I don't think. I will be repeating this shop but with fruit in around a fortnight (2 weeks) at the soonest but more than like in about a month when I need more cat food for our girl Banshee.

I will say I hated shopping in Tesco's though as not only did I have the husband with me but we had both kids (7 girl & 3 boy). So a lot of the husband only half listening to me, our daughter wanting everything & our son decided it was nap time half way through. Thankfully Aldi was better as both the kids had a nap on the ride back toward the store so I was in there by myself and was able to pretty much run through there and I got lucky on a checkout till as well. I think I pretty much have all I need meat wise for the month, my pantry is stocked to the brim and then some, I just need to adjust our dinner's as we did have takeaway a few times in the last 2 weeks (yea I know loss of money spent on rubbish food I know I know) and that is really down to me getting sick I believe I ended up getting covid and when I had covid once before in like 2022 roughly it caused my bones to like ache and it just really sucked!

We also got a few too good to go bags via the too good to go app on Friday & Saturday. We originally purchased four bags from our local Aldi for Friday but they cancelled all of them because they wanted to change the pick up time and I only managed to get one bag as I was notified 15+ minutes after the original four bags were cancelled. I don't think I will attempt to get any more bags from my local Aldi as they really should already have a set time for bag collections that works well for them plus it is slightly off putting to take so long to collect and while I get some places don't have much to save they should not have put a 6 pack of apples that were practically mush in the collection that is my personal opinion. However the two 6 pack of bread rolls and ham, corned beef slices, a pack of 2 peri peri chicken slices (little puff pastry pocket things) and a pack of 2 cheese & bean slices will be used. So because of the cancelling of bags to change the collection time, the wait time to collect and the lack of ease in collecting plus the bad food thrown in I think will stick to my local Morrison's daily too good to go bags as they are the absolute best I get so much with them and the people are just really nice there and never had a bad bag from there!

Speaking of Morrison's daily I managed to snag two bags from there for Saturday night. We got so much in those two bags! we got 2x each of: wild rocket,their best oranges, pepperoni pizza's, 6 packs pitta's, tuna and sweetcorn baguettes,breaded chicken tenders, chicken & bacon pasta's, 2 bags easy peelers *most of these had sadly gone bad*. We got 2 different types of doughnuts, a chicken and something baguette, a large croissant & we got four twin packs of boiled eggs. Below is a photo of my Morrison's "haul" quite a bit and we ate very well over the weekend with lots of choices!

So we spent a total of £9.90 for all three of the grocery bags. 

We also got two bags from one of our nearby Gregg's on Friday, those were not cancelled like the aldi bags and we got two bags full of sandwiches, doughnuts and cookies well worth the £6.30($8.02) paid for both bags! We also bought two bags from the same Greggs for that Saturday and again both bags were full of sandwiches, doughnuts and cookies! so we spent a total of £12.90 ($16.42) for all four bags over the two days. So below is a photo of what we got with the two Greggs bags from Saturday I think there was slightly more in the ones the day before but that is most likely because these bags really did not have much that I like to eat.

We also found a local small business offering a few too good to go bags for Saturday. They do food stuff like doughnuts, waffles, ice cream etc so pretty much a dessert bag so we thought hey why not try them it's a local small business so we originally bought one bag but by the time the collection time rolled around they still had a few available so we went ahead and bought another bag. This small business is only open like 3 days a week because they are in a small building split into market stalls so they don't have much of a choice unless they move but I assume that rent is so cheap that the 3 days they are open a week they more than make enough. So we spent a total of £10 ($12.72) & we got loads of sugar doughnuts! The equivalent of two large waffles and two slush drinks. The doughnuts were delicious! I will be going to their stall and buying more of their doughnuts as they are so darn good every once in a while that is.

Now I did put the Aldi & Morrison's too good to go bags under our food shopping budget and spent only £9.90. The other four bags went under the takeaway budget as that made more sense to me and those were a total of £22.90 ($29.14). I do think I will try and utilize the too good to go app more often & this will probably be more at the weekend than the week day as I don't drive so I would need my husband plus it would also need to be around the times when we know we will be out near the places anyway as to save on fuel or if we have not gone out at all and we are getting a few bags that off set the fuel cost if you will. We did get a good amount of food out of the takeaway bags from the Greggs and the small local business, next time if I remember I'll take a photo of what we got from each place I only thought about that when we got the Greggs on Saturday evening as well as the Morrison's food bags. The food bags were great and that was because of Morrison's food bags.

I am just starting my budgeting for this year and yes I have gone off budget due to being sick but we are in a good place money wise. In fact we have paid off a few of our short term debts which is one of the main reasons I started to do this budgeting!

Sunday, the day I plan to publish this blog post. I will be making at least two loaves of bread, organizing my kitchen after it's on going remodel, a good tidy up of the living room including putting some pretty thin blankets I got years ago at a new age market stall in Loughborough UK *I still think of the wonderful husband and wife that ran the stall and I hope they and their family is doing well I miss seeing them!*, tidy up of our dinning room, organizing our freezers, as well as tidy up our room & the kids room. Thinking about it I need to go through their toys and throw out broken ones and see what soft toys if anything need fixing or washing. Oh and at least 3 loads of laundry glad I have my wood burning stove as I will be using it to dry our laundry, and of course get my daughter PE kit and swim kit together and put into their bags and ready to go for the week.

Thank you dear reader for reading my post I am sure you are thinking my writing is everywhere and your right it is and it's something I am still trying to improve on, but thank you all the same for reading my randomness! I hope you have a wonderful week and nothing but good things come to you and yours!