Chad and I have been very blessed to have healthy children, good jobs, supportive families and wonderful friends. We tell our kids all the time how lucky we are, but when you have never had to do without, you wonder if they really understand. So, when Chad came home last week and told us about the food stamp challenge I decided this was the perfect “teaching moment.” I have to say I feel like our family is pretty thrifty to begin with. We get our movies from the library, I am a regular coupon clipper and we only dine out for birthdays or special occasions.

I do all the grocery shopping for our family. And I have to say, I really enjoy grocery shopping. It is one hour a week where I am free of kids and husband. I love to walk up and down the aisles looking at everything. I have to confess I am a huge impulse shopper. On my last shopping trip, I bought a huge bag of lemonheads – even though I have sworn off candy. But it was on clearance for $1.75. Only a fool would pass up that!
This could be why Chad felt it was best for him to do our grocery shopping for the week. I sent him off with a list of very specific items and a stack of coupons. He did ok. He bought almost everything on the list. His one failure would be that he failed to use one of the coupons for my soup. I thought about going all “Kate Gosselin” on him, but in the end I decided to just let it slide.