Attendance contest

I haven't exactly made a secret of the fact that December was a lean month for us. With unexpected medical bills and the new-ish car payment and the quarterly bills, we didn't have much left for groceries.

We ate more beans than usual, gave up meat and ate most of our summer canning stock.

Plus we made the most of some of those holiday party leftovers...

And as the retail season gets busier, Target offers employees food in the break room and we always have peanut butter and jelly available. So that helped.

Speaking of Target, to get back to the point of this post, every year we have an attendance contest that extends between Black Friday and January. It's a nice little motivator to keep working during a hectic time.

First, you make a snowflake and write your name on it. It goes on the wall. If you call out sick, show up late (more than 5 minutes later than your scheduled shift-- I love that they give you some wiggle room), or screw up one of your punched at the time clocks, your snowflake comes down.

At the end of the contest, all of the remaining names come off the wall and they get entered into a drawing for a $250 gift card.

I won. This was my third year in the contest and I won!!!

Now, while Target is far from a Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, or farmers' market, they sell food. And in this economy, when you're a family that isn't making ends meet, and you're underemployed and looking for a job... The choices often come between paying the doctor, keeping the house warm, or buying food, well it's hard.

I mention this only because I know other families face the same choices.

So while in an ideal world, I'd love to get meat and dairy from the farm, organic vegetables and spent lots of money at Wegmans, the reality is that I can't.

That means we will get our produce and non-perishable goods from Aldi and Target.

We will continue to run mostly a dairy-free household for the ear infection prone child. Any dairy products we buy I would prefer to come from the farm (transitioning from commercial half-and-half to farm fresh raw milk for coffee, as one example).

So here's to the New Year!