Cold Temperatures, Cabin Fever

We have now lived through sub-zero temperatures. There have been two arctic cold fronts that have come through and produced temperatures lower than -10 degrees F. This latest one, which just ended last night, came with a northerly wind that produced wind chills of -40 degrees F. Along with the cold temperatures came some additional consequences that were not pleasant.

During the first cold snap, we experienced true cabin fever. Given that there isn't a mall or other similar indoor activity in the immediate vicinity, we are generally stuck at the house. The movie theater is small and only occasionally runs kids' movies. We can only play with legos for so long. My kids have watched WAY too much television during the past couple months. They run up and down the hallway almost every night. This particular weekend, I decided that we needed to get OUT, so I bundled everyone up and we went to the park. It was 1 degree above zero. We didn't stay out long. 

Also during that cold snap we managed to lose power. It went off right at dinnertime and came back on at 8:15 for 45 minutes. This was long enough to warm the house back up, thankfully. The power didn't return until about 4 am. The house cooled down to about 54 degrees that night. Not horrible, but still not good. But, we all have heavy comforters and warm pj's, so we survived.

This latest cold snap has not been much better. My DD has been miserable - she usually goes outside for recess, but they wouldn't allow them outside for the past two days since the wind chills were so dangerous. Hopefully they'll let them outside today since the temperature has returned to 20 degrees F. 

The house, however, was apparently not properly prepared for these cold temperatures: our pipes have frozen. We think it is actually the pipe leading from the street to the trailer. Fortunately, the person we rent the land from is in construction, so he is out there installing new pipes for us right now. We have been without running water for about 28 hours now. I am not happy.  I am trying to stay positive: we do have drinking water, and we have some water to flush the toilets. If we can't repair it soon I will be going down the street to see if the hotel has a room for tonight. 

I cannot imagine how the real pioneers did this 100 years ago! How did they build fires? There are no trees here. I am guessing they used dried buffalo or cow chips. (Yuck!) There must have been quite a number of deaths due to the freezing weather. And how did the Native Americans survive? I don't know if I would have been able to do it. 

I am having trouble surviving without a Target. 

--Katie

Weather and Shopping

Well, we experienced our first snowstorm. It actually only amounted to about 6 inches of snow, but the temperatures were COLD! We spent all day inside on Saturday except a brief excursion to play in the snow for a bit. I was a little surprised that my kiddos didn't want to get out there immediately after waking, but I think they had an inkling about how cold it was going to be. It snowed all day and finally let up at about 8pm.

We woke up on Sunday to find that the temperature had dropped to -10 degrees F. I was starting to get a little worried that we would run out of milk; I had originally planned to go shopping on Saturday, but the snowstorm thwarted that plan. So we went on Sunday instead...all the way to Minot (2 hours away). This is the closest city with a Target. It actually is what I would call a "normal-sized" city: they have both a Walmart and a Target, a small mall, two McDonalds...I even saw a Buffalo Wild Wings! This is most likely due to the fact that there is an Air Force base there and a stable and large population that can support those stores. (There is a big joke in the Air Force when Minot comes up as a possible option for a next assignment: "Why not Minot? Freezin's the reason!")

Shopping is interesting. There are two small grocery stores here in town, but some of the prices are pretty high to make up for the cost of transporting the groceries into town. In a pinch I can shop there. If there is a deal that coincides with coupons I might go get just those items. But since I am coming from an area with lots of stores to choose from and lots of great coupons, it is really hard to just pay full price.

As a result I have been planning out two weeks of meals and very strategically shopping for only those items we need to make the meals. I only have a little bit of storage. I have been trying to utilize my crockpot (stews and soups sound much better in 20 degrees than in 80 degrees) and getting a couple prepared meals (frozen lasagna, chicken nuggets and fries) just in case I don't feel like cooking much. Spaghetti, chicken and dumplings (in the crockpot), and Cowboy casserole are a couple of the meals this week. I have been relying on frozen vegetables for side dishes so that I don't have to worry about them going bad before I get to use them.

I also have not finished my Christmas shopping. I hadn't even had a chance to get started until recently since we had to get packed up and then spent Thanksgiving week traveling here (where there are very few stores). As a result, most of my shopping has been done online. I prefer to shop this way anyhow. Target was crazy this weekend and they didn't have the things I wanted! Online shopping lets me comparison shop at my own pace and without having to bundle up or wait in line for an hour. As horrible as this sounds, people are just too crabby and pushy this time of year and it is not fun.

There are some great ways to shop online and get cash back or save money. I get emails every day that offer free shipping or new discounts for the holidays. I also use Ebates.com; they give you cash back if you start with their website first. I should get some money back in January!

I am crossing my fingers that I can get it all done soon - we are coming up on the regular shipping deadlines for most online shopping, so I will be out of luck if I don't!

--Katie

Update this week

Another week of getting settled in our new digs...

DD is getting used to the new school. She has a very small class; she actually started with about 16 in her class, but they lost two kids last week that moved away. That means there are only 14 kids in her class. This is a huge change from the 30 kids she had in her class before we moved.

The elementary school is also remodeling this year. They are actively working on a $8 million expansion to the existing school. They will have a new gym, a new cafeteria, and room for music classes and computer labs. They are constantly hiring new teachers because of the new students coming to the area.

We have planned an excursion: this weekend is a shopping weekend. That means we will most likely be driving two hours to go to a mall (we would like to visit with Santa) and to do our grocery shopping. There are small (3-4,000 square feet) grocery stores in town, but their prices are a little high. I was chatting with someone this week and she said she regularly drives to Bismarck (3 hours away) to do her shopping. This is going to take some getting used to.

I am trying my hardest to plan out lots of meals (there is no fallback...I can't make a last-minute decision to eat out) including some convenience meals. If I don't plan it out, we'll be eating canned, processed food all week! I don't mind. Planning is my thing. I have to plan these things so that if there is a big snowstorm, I have enough to carry us through a couple days if we can't leave the house.

They shut down the roads here when the weather gets bad. Travel advisories are issued and they should NOT be ignored. After living in a place where rain is the worst you have to worry about, I am reluctant to drive after dark here. There are TONS of large trucks on the roads here because there aren't any pipelines to carry the oil yet. I have been hearing about the recent increase in accidents because people try to pass a truck when they shouldn't.

The other thing I have been hearing is that last winter was apparently pretty mild. The forecasts this winter point to "normal," so I think we are in for a snowy first winter here. We'll just drink lots of hot chocolate and make lots of snowmen and spend the rest of our time in our little trailer and off the roads.

--Katie

New Surroundings

Things have been crazy. Our lives have been uprooted. We said goodbye to family and friends. And now we are here...in North Dakota (of all places).

Have you heard about this little oil boom they are having up here? Oil was first discovered here in 1953 and was named the Bakken Oil Field after the man who owned the land where it was discovered. This is a shale oil formation that could contain as much as 167 billion barrels of oil. They've had these oil booms before. The locals are still somewhat skeptical. This has happened and ended as quickly as it started.

But this time it happened during the financial crisis, providing North Dakota with the lowest unemployment rate in the country (about 3%) and a state budget surplus topping $1.6 BILLION with only 684,000 people living in the state (per U.S. Census estimates for 2011). All this during a time when a majority of the country was in dire straits. Many studies are pointing to a 30-40 year life-span for these production wells requiring 9,000 oil rig workers to maintain the rigs, transport the oil, and run the operations in McKenzie County where we are now.

This is still the Western Frontier. The nearest McDonald's is 45 minutes away (thankfully). Big box stores are 1 hour or more away. The nearest mall is one hour away. The base population for this town is 2,500 people. There are probably close to 6,000 people who live here now. Many of those extra people are men who come up to work on the oil drills and rigs and leave their families at home for many months. It is sad to think that some of these guys don't see their families for as many as six months at a time.

There is no housing. They live in RV's. Yes, RV's in -20 degrees. Some of them live in huge complexes of trailers or modular housing that the oil companies build. Rent is outrageous: as much as $1000 per month for just one room in a single-wide trailer.

We don't have a house yet. We are in a single-wide trailer. I consider us very lucky.

We have most of our stuff (what was left after garage sales) in storage up here until we can build ourselves a house. That's why we are here, not for the oil (at least not directly).

We are here to build a new community. We hope to double the size of this little town and give those 9,000 oil workers a place to live with their families. We may get a chance to build a new high school and civic center for the city.

They have so many people, but not enough resources. The woman who runs the day care turns moms and kids away every day. The grocery stores recently had a major crisis on their hands when Hostess went under...there aren't any other bread suppliers!

I thought I might try the the only pizza place in town tonight - they don't deliver right now because they had staff quit and it was going to be an hour and a half before we could get a pizza. The guy I talked to suggested that we put our order in sometime in the morning to make sure we could get our pizza when we wanted it that evening.

This is good. This is a "no-spending LIFE" not just a "no-spending month." It will take careful planning for meals so that I can make sure I have some easy-to-make and healthy meals on those nights when I would have called up the pizza delivery or taken the kids through the drive-through.

I still want to do the couponing and the "green" living, but it is going to be harder and more thoughtfully planned. I don't have a garage to store my stockpile. I can't have 30 cans of cream of mushroom soup; I don't have any extra room for storage. But I will need a couple extras just in case that big storm hits and we can't leave the house.  

This is our new adventure. Come along with us.

--Katie

Minor Lapses

So, I did end up spending some money, but it was mostly just due to timing. It is that time of year: picture day was this week. How can I not get my kids' school pictures done?! And DS turned 4 at the beginning of the month, so it was assumed that I would be getting his yearly pictures made. These things are acceptable, I think. You can't be perfect.

We have also been out to eat 3 times. It was mostly out of necessity one of the times. We were invited to a birthday party and had to drive quite a ways to get there; eating on the road was just part of the schedule. I probably *could* have packed a dinner for us, but we had been soooo good, so we looked at it as a reward. (BTW, no presents were purchased...got them out of my recently replenished stash.)

The other two times were more frivolous, but that's ok too.  Since we have yet to spend even $100 total on going out, and it is already September 21 (only 9 days to go!), I am ok with it. I also was reimbursed for some items that I had bought last month, so I call that "found" money. (Yes I am justifying it.)

I am ok with it. Again, no one is perfect. I still managed to keep all other spending to a minimum or even zero.

The meals have been going ok. I am starting to realize that crockpot cooking can actually save your dinner. There was once this week that I forgot to defrost some meat - so I threw it into the crockpot with a cream of mushroom soup and turned it on high...NO PROBLEM! Easy and pretty tasty too. Throw it over some rice, cook up some carrots, serve with a salad and...voila!

I am starting to get low on some staples, so I may need to visit the store this week for a couple odds and ends (milk, fresh berries, apples). I also have spent too much time on pinterest and found a couple great recipes that I already have the ingredients for, so I may mix up my plan a little bit too. We really only have one more week to get through, and it isn't very busy at this point! No temptations to go through the drive throughs during a moment of stress. Almost there...

I may have to plan for a nice dinner out at the end of this. But I won't go anywhere without coupons.
--Katie

Crockpot Catastrophe!

Well, I had decided that today would be a crockpot day. I had a crockpot freezer meal (my scalloped potatoes with broccoli and ham) which was ready to go...all fully assembled and ready to dump into the crockpot before we walked out the door. I had some time before the kids descended on the kitchen to spend 10 minutes choosing what they wanted for breakfast (!) so I pulled it out and started to put it in the crockpot. And that is where the fun began.

My round crockpot will not fit my oblong frozen crockpot meal! Since I already had destroyed the plastic ziploc bag it was in, I needed to find a way to defrost the meal enough so I could break it into pieces to get it in the crockpot. (I was kicking myself because I could have placed the frozen bag into the sink with some warm water, but there was no way at this point.)

First I tried putting it into a ceramic dish and letting it sit in some warm water, but even my biggest dish didn't really fit the frozen block of potatoes, cheese, and broccoli. Then I decided that the only way it was going to get in there is if I heated the whole thing in my largest pan and busted it up as it warmed up.

So there I was, at 7:45 (kids STILL hadn't picked out their breakfast) over the stove trying to get the stupid crockpot freezer meal broken up into small enough pieces so I could get the thing into the crockpot!

Lesson learned: know the size AND shape of your crockpot so that you don't have this same situation. I turned what should have been an easy meal into the biggest hassle ever. I have a feeling that if I had one of those nicer oblong-shaped crockpots this wouldn't have been an issue. But I will have to wait for October to buy one of those. ;-)

--Katie

**update: NEVER making this one again. At least not including the broccoli in the crockpot. Unfortunately, the smell of the broccoli is making the whole dish seem completely disgusting! Also, the potatoes aren't such a lovely color because they oxidized. So after all that, this one is going down the drain. :-(

Update on the September Plan

Thought I would update you on how our spending plan is going!

This last weekend I was out of town, which meant DH was home with the kids. DH doesn't typically cook. I knew this was going to be an issue. So I suggested to relatives that if they wanted to get DS a birthday present that a gift card to a restaurant would be a big hit. And it was. DS paid with his "credit card" for one meal at McDonald's this weekend. He was very proud to hand the card to the man behind the counter.

And DH actually prepared some macaroni and cheese (from a box) for the kids. Sounds like they may have gone out for a donut treat on Sunday morning, but I kind of already knew that was going to happen. ;-)

This week should be good. Lots of comfort food is on the menu. We had mexican chicken in the crockpot yesterday. Apparently the kids were not jazzed about it (MIL supervised dinner due to an existing appointment I had). However, I thought it was GREAT! Tender chicken with black beans, corn, and salsa over brown rice with cheese and sour cream on top. Yummy!

Tonight I think we will go for a convenience food. We have an activity that runs until 6:30, so we will be eating late. This would also be a good day to do a crockpot meal, but I just couldn't get it together this morning. I have meatball sandwiches and frozen lasagna on the list this week and both of those are super easy to prepare (even easy enough for DH!). I will let him decide.

I continue to be assaulted by marketing techniques and it is going to be harder and harder to stand my ground as we get towards the end of the month. I know I can do it and I will make it to the end of the month without spending. (At least I keep telling myself this.) You can do it too. There are only 19 days left.

--Katie