New gadgets and new habits
Some new gadgets and habits have become a part of our lives recently and I decided to write about them:
My new headphones with no exposed wires but ones that require me to charge them if I want to be able to use them
Gadgets: Alyssa requested an Apple Watch for her birthday. Prior to her birthday, because I have an Apple Watch, she was interested in looking at mine and its features. I'd not updated my watch in a few months at least a year and really was using the watch almost exclusively as a time piece. Occasionally, I'd check my steps at the end of a day but other than that, I could have replaced my watch with a basic timepiece from Wal-Mart for $6.97 or so.
Donnie helped me update my watch and get it synced with my new iPhone. I feel like I have a new smart watch... I can get calls on it again and use all of its functionality.
Speaking of new phones, January was the first full month with our new iPhones. Donnie and I got new ones to replace our iPhone 6's. Our 6's had the worst batteries. Our cell phones were somewhat tantamount to having a rotary phone that was attached to the wall- we practically had to have our phones tethered to a charging cable that was plugged in at all times because we lost battery charge so quickly. Having new phones with decent batteries has changed our cell phone experience. We no longer have to stay in the vicinity of an electrical outlet to use our phones. It's like we have actual cell phones again.
I decided to try out wireless headphones rather than buy a dongal to use my old headphones (also my old headphones were at least eight years old and needed to be replaced) with my new phone. I didn't consider higher end wireless headphones like Air Pods, rather I bought a low cost pair from Amazon. I wasn't sure if I'd like them so didn't want to invest much money in them. After having them a few weeks, I have mixed feelings about them. The worst thing about them is that they need to be charged- which I knew of course before I bought them- but still it's a bit of a pain to remember one more thing that needs to be charged if I want to use it. My Kindle, my phone, my watch and now my headphones- all reliant on having electricity for continued use and me for remembering to keep these devices charged.
Alyssa loves the Apple Watch that she received for her birthday. Another gadget in the family- but she's of the gadget generation so I'm sure she'll fall into the rhythm of charging her watch and doing everything digitally that she'll need to do.
One of the biggest habits we've changed as a family is with regard to eating out. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but we'd gotten into the habit of eating out every Saturday evening. And about two times a month we'd eat out for dinner on Sunday evening, too. And occasionally, we'd eat Friday night dinner out. But, always Saturday night out.
We decided to sponsor another child through Compassion International after our church promoted sponsorship one weekend. While financially we didn't have to alter any spending habits in order to sponsor another child, I decided it was time to make some changes mainly for better stewardship of our money. Our pastor mentioned that forgoing eating pizza out twice a month would pay for a child's sponsorship (obviously approximately- depending on from where the pizza was ordered, what toppings were ordered, how many pizzas etc.). We very rarely order pizza so foregoing pizza twice a month would require no sacrifice. However, making dinner every Saturday evening and every Sunday evening did not sound super appealing to me but it did sound challenging and overall beneficial financially and health-wise.
So I/we (it was my idea but embraced by everyone in the family) decided to try to make meals for an entire weekend two weekends out of the month. Then, we'd eat out for either Saturday or Sunday's evening meal two weekends a month. I'm pleased to say that in January, we only ate ONE meal out the entire month! * ** We surpassed our goal.
Probably mostly because the novelty hasn't worn off of my plan, but I find myself not minding making more meals. The girls and Donnie help with weekend meal preparation and with meal planning. It's making eating out less and more at home much more easy. I've been inspired to try new dishes (mainly soups but also some sheet pan dinners) that we've all liked. I knew I had to try new recipes because I simply did not have enough in my repertoire if we were going to be eating dinner at home more. Alyssa's Christmas request for and acquisition of a cookbook for kids proved fortuitous; we've made several main dishes from the cookbook. The instructions in the cookbook are geared towards kids but anyone who appreciates detailed and easy to read instructions, i.e. me would benefit from the cookbook.
I'm not opposed to eating out and we will probably eat out more in the future when the novelty of making almost every meal we eat at home wears thin. However, in the meantime, I'll continue to scour the internet, Cooking Light magazines at doctor's offices and read children's cookbooks in attempts to get ideas and to get excited about trying new recipes to make our new habit of eating in more palatable (both literally and figuratively!!).
* We actually didn't even pay for this meal- Chik-fil- A Silver Status has its advantages!! We had enough points and both Donnie and I had a free entree as a reward so we ate at CFA for free.
** When I said we only ate out once a month in January, I was referring to eating out a dinner meal as a family. I treated myself to lunch out once during the month (Burger King drive- thru- you do what you gotta do when you're craving a Whopper Jr., it's around lunchtime, you're out running errands and you're hungry and you notice that the BK drive thru has no line whatsoever), Jacob and I had lunch out twice in January before he went back to college, and Alyssa and I had lunch out a couple of times. Donnie had at least one lunch meetings at a restaurant during the month, too. So, we've definitely not eliminated eating out but we have cut down significantly on eating out weekend dinner meals.
These were my old wired headphones. In several places, the wires were exposed. It was definitely time for a new pair of headphones.
I decided to try out wireless headphones rather than buy a dongal to use my old headphones (also my old headphones were at least eight years old and needed to be replaced) with my new phone. I didn't consider higher end wireless headphones like Air Pods, rather I bought a low cost pair from Amazon. I wasn't sure if I'd like them so didn't want to invest much money in them. After having them a few weeks, I have mixed feelings about them. The worst thing about them is that they need to be charged- which I knew of course before I bought them- but still it's a bit of a pain to remember one more thing that needs to be charged if I want to use it. My Kindle, my phone, my watch and now my headphones- all reliant on having electricity for continued use and me for remembering to keep these devices charged.
Alyssa loves the Apple Watch that she received for her birthday. Another gadget in the family- but she's of the gadget generation so I'm sure she'll fall into the rhythm of charging her watch and doing everything digitally that she'll need to do.
One of the biggest habits we've changed as a family is with regard to eating out. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but we'd gotten into the habit of eating out every Saturday evening. And about two times a month we'd eat out for dinner on Sunday evening, too. And occasionally, we'd eat Friday night dinner out. But, always Saturday night out.
We decided to sponsor another child through Compassion International after our church promoted sponsorship one weekend. While financially we didn't have to alter any spending habits in order to sponsor another child, I decided it was time to make some changes mainly for better stewardship of our money. Our pastor mentioned that forgoing eating pizza out twice a month would pay for a child's sponsorship (obviously approximately- depending on from where the pizza was ordered, what toppings were ordered, how many pizzas etc.). We very rarely order pizza so foregoing pizza twice a month would require no sacrifice. However, making dinner every Saturday evening and every Sunday evening did not sound super appealing to me but it did sound challenging and overall beneficial financially and health-wise.
So I/we (it was my idea but embraced by everyone in the family) decided to try to make meals for an entire weekend two weekends out of the month. Then, we'd eat out for either Saturday or Sunday's evening meal two weekends a month. I'm pleased to say that in January, we only ate ONE meal out the entire month! * ** We surpassed our goal.
Probably mostly because the novelty hasn't worn off of my plan, but I find myself not minding making more meals. The girls and Donnie help with weekend meal preparation and with meal planning. It's making eating out less and more at home much more easy. I've been inspired to try new dishes (mainly soups but also some sheet pan dinners) that we've all liked. I knew I had to try new recipes because I simply did not have enough in my repertoire if we were going to be eating dinner at home more. Alyssa's Christmas request for and acquisition of a cookbook for kids proved fortuitous; we've made several main dishes from the cookbook. The instructions in the cookbook are geared towards kids but anyone who appreciates detailed and easy to read instructions, i.e. me would benefit from the cookbook.
I'm not opposed to eating out and we will probably eat out more in the future when the novelty of making almost every meal we eat at home wears thin. However, in the meantime, I'll continue to scour the internet, Cooking Light magazines at doctor's offices and read children's cookbooks in attempts to get ideas and to get excited about trying new recipes to make our new habit of eating in more palatable (both literally and figuratively!!).
* We actually didn't even pay for this meal- Chik-fil- A Silver Status has its advantages!! We had enough points and both Donnie and I had a free entree as a reward so we ate at CFA for free.
** When I said we only ate out once a month in January, I was referring to eating out a dinner meal as a family. I treated myself to lunch out once during the month (Burger King drive- thru- you do what you gotta do when you're craving a Whopper Jr., it's around lunchtime, you're out running errands and you're hungry and you notice that the BK drive thru has no line whatsoever), Jacob and I had lunch out twice in January before he went back to college, and Alyssa and I had lunch out a couple of times. Donnie had at least one lunch meetings at a restaurant during the month, too. So, we've definitely not eliminated eating out but we have cut down significantly on eating out weekend dinner meals.
These were my old wired headphones. In several places, the wires were exposed. It was definitely time for a new pair of headphones.
My new headphones with no exposed wires but ones that require me to charge them if I want to be able to use them
With the new functionality of my Apple Watch comes new "insight" from the watch. Yes, without breathing, thinking would become difficult as would creativity. Do I need my timepiece to share this information with me? I guess the watch is referring to breathing exercises or something like that.
The Apple Watch has an app with three fitness rings which are fitness goals. One ring refers to how long you stand up in a day, one ring is for how long you've exercised that day and one ring is for how many calories you've burned that day. As you move, exercise and stand up more during the day, these rings fill in until the target for each ring is attained. This feature or app is not one that I chose- it came with the watch. Anyway, one day I heard a ping from my watch and saw the following message displayed:
So, my watch was shaming/ trying to motivate me to move more, apparently. Did I update the software on my watch for this???😝
Back to basics- this is from Alyssa's cookbook for kids- so helpful. The BBQ chicken was really good. I'd not made homemade BBQ sauce before.
We are eating more veggies by eating less out and more at home
Although we may be eating soup in July because some of the new soup recipes we've tried have been easy to prepare, really tasty and pretty healthy (if I could stop adding so much cheese to mine!)...
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