One person's week ends, the next one begins

Caroline headed off the the grocery store this morning with her last $31 (maybe $32, I think she has some change), vowing to "spend it all!" Besides the brats and hot dogs for dinner, she was picking up chips and ice cream, so I think all the vital food groups were covered.

At this point, she seems thoroughly disgusted by the project, or perhaps just disgusted by the complaints she has heard throughout the week. When asked what she might do differently next time, she said, "I'll spend $50 on snack food right away, then they won't have anything to complain about." Good luck with that, I'm sure there will be complaining!

I think that Caroline's week was fairly successful from a food and financial perspective, but her attitude was definitely affected by the people around her. Besides the stress she placed on herself to not run out of money, she allowed the comments of others to really irritate her. Anyone grow up with an older brother? Can you guess what Tim did when faced with her reactions to his teasing? Yup. That's what he did. This, in turn, led me to practice many moments of deep breathing, as my own goal for personal growth this summer is to not over-react to my teens. Besides the meltdown on Tuesday, there were several other times when I was ready to throw in the towel on the whole project!

Linnea is ready to go for her week, and plans to be the most successful of the bunch so far. The dining room table is covered with lists and charts, coupons and plans. It sounds like she will spend the bulk of her money on Monday, and then bake like crazy every day. I hope it cools off a bit, as we don't have air-conditioning and she has hours of oven time planned for each day!

While she looks pretty even-keeled about the project at the moment, she has already her own moment of crisis. After Caroline came home from the store with her chips and ice cream, Linnea came to me in a panic:

Linnea: "Mom, Mom, Mom! She used my deals!"
Mom: "Whaaat?"
Linnea: "Caroline used my deals!!"
Mom: "What are you talking about?"
Linnea: "The deals! From the paper! I was going to get the ice cream deal and the 3/$6 chips, and SHE BOUGHT THEM TODAY!"
Mom: "Um, can't you still get them tomorrow?"
Linnea (stopped in her tracks): "Really? We can have six bags of chips in the house?"
Mom: "Well, I don't think we'll have six bags of chips for very long . . ."

We won't, one bag didn't make it through lunch.