Blue Apron

A couple of months ago, me and Cody decided to try out Blue Apron.

For those of you who don't know, Blue Apron is a company that designs dinner recipes and ships 3 meals a week straight to your doorstep!  You get a box with all the food needed to cook the food and it's really neat because they only send you enough food to make the meal one time (no leftovers, and no extra ingredients laying around to go bad!).

They also send you recipe cards that have all the ingredients listed out, and step by step instructions on how to cook the entire meal.  It's awesome for people who don't know how to cook, and also for people who do cook, but want to learn more techniques and how to cook with different foods.

Cody absolutely LOVES cooking, and he LOVES Blue Apron.  And I love that he loves it :)

Because we all know that Stephanie doesn't cook unless it involves Chef Mike .... aka the microwave.

So now we come to pricing ... ah, money, money, money.

How I love to discuss money.

So each box contains 3 meals, priced at about $10 per person, per meal.  The total comes to about $60 a week.  At first, this seemed really expensive to me, but Cody wanted to do it so much that I told him we would try it once a month and see how it goes.  I am a budgeter.  I have a spreadsheet on Google Docs and everything, and I budget out a year in advance.  I do not like to spend more money than we have to.  So I was skeptical at first, because surely we would spend less money by going to the grocery store and shopping like we normally do.

But then, the more I thought about it, I realized that we may actually save money because since we will have 3 meals delivered a week, we won't have to buy as much from the grocery store, and since Cody loves cooking so much, he actually wants to stay home and cook instead of going out to eat.

So I decided to give it a real chance, and so far I haven't been disappointed!  I've enjoyed everything we've cooked so far, and we have managed to keep the grocery bill and out to eat bill down.

The other good thing about it is that it is extremely easy to skip weeks, so if we go out of town one week, or we just have a lot going on and won't have time to cook, we can just tell them not to send us a box that week.

For me and Cody, I definitely think that it's worth it.

Monahans State Park & The Odessa Meteor Crater

My parents came to see us this weekend because it's a holiday weekend and they hadn't been out here to see us in a while!  They came in pretty late on Friday night.  Saturday we hung out around the apartment mostly, but my mom and I went shopping a little bit.  Us girls just gotta have some fun every now and then. 

Cody decided that he wanted to cook steaks for dinner on Saturday night so him and my dad went to the store and got stuff to cook steak, mashed potatoes, and grilled asparagus.  It was an excellent dinner.  We even opened up a bottle of sweet red wine from Grape Creek that I'd been saving to drink with my parents. 

The steaks were so pretty that I had to take some pictures of them before we chowed down.  Cody did an excellent job cooking them!

Today, I got up early and talked my mom into going on a walk with me around the neighborhood before church.  We walked about 4.5 miles!  It sure did feel good.

When we got back, somehow we talked Cody into cooking us lemon-blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  They were soooooo good!!  And sadly, I did not remember to take a picture of them...that would have been a good picture though!

After breakfast, we all piled into Cody's car and went to church!  The pastor of our church is currently in Dallas with his wife dealing with some health problems so we heard a message from one of the elders of the church.  He discussed the issue that he, and a lot of people struggle with of being judgmental of other people.  It was the perfect lesson for Cody to hear because I know that he struggles a lot with that topic.

These were the main points:

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God.  He even gives a list of people that fall into the category of wrongdoers - sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers.  But then he says a few words that are important for us to remember and understand.  Verse 11 says "And that is what some of you were.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

We as humans do not know everything there is to know about everything.  However, God does.  Acts chapter 9 talks about Saul before he was converted and before his name changed to Paul.  Saul was a terrible person.  He had threatened the disciples and tried to get permission from the synagogues to find people that followed Jesus so he could take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.  When he was on the road, however, God spoke to him, and instead of striking him down for his sins, he let him live.  Paul went on to be very important and he turned out to be a very strong christian.  Even though the people that knew Saul probably thought God should have struck him dead for all he had done, God had a plan for him, and he knew how important that he would turn out to be.  So who are we to judge people for things they've done when we don't know his plans for those people?

The next point was that Jesus showed mercy to sinners.  The example for this point was when the men brought the woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus and asked him to punish her by letting them stone her.  But he called out the group of people instead of her, and said to them that whoever amongst them was guilty of no sin should throw the first stone, and no one did!  They all left, and then Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more.  He showed her mercy instead of condemning her for what she had done.  We are supposed to study Jesus and imitate him and the things he did.  So we should be merciful to one another, for we are all guilty of sin.

I can't remember the rest of what he said, but it was all pretty good.  And like I said, those were the main points.

After church, we decided to go out to the Monahans Sandhills since it's not really that far away from Midland, and we hadn't been there yet.  Unfortunately, it was mega-hot this afternoon and we didn't end up staying out there for very long.  But we took a few pictures so it was alright.  The sand was so hot.  Climbing up the sand dune and then climbing back down again burned my legs and feet!  Sand got all up in my shoes.  That part wasn't so great.

Then on the way back to Midland, we took a detour to see the Odessa Meteor Crater.  The crater is underwhelming, but still sorta cool and something that everyone who lives out here should see at least once.

Monahans Sandhills State Park

The Odessa Meteor Crater

Mygrant Family Vacation, 2016 - Gulf Shores, AL

This year, Stephanie (my sister-in-law) decided that it was about time we went on a Mygrant family vacation.  She found us a cute little beach house in Gulf Shores, AL and last week we rented a van and road-tripped it to the beach!  

All in all, it was a good family vacation.  We logged lots of hours of beach time and somehow managed not to get too sun-burned!  I tried to wake up early each morning and walk along the shore when it was peaceful and calm without a bunch of people (on Thursday, I even ran 3 miles barefoot on the sand which was one of my only goals for the week!!).  I tried to work on my photography skills but I think a lot of my pictures just came out looking a little blurry.  I have since signed up for a photography class on craftsy.com so maybe next time I will be able to play around with it even more.

I also used my niece as the subject of many photos ... she is just so darn cute, it's hard not to take pictures of her.  

Friday morning when I woke up for my walk on the beach, I noticed thousands of sea shells that had been washed up to the shore during the night.  I didn't see this on any of the other mornings that we were there, so I'm not quite sure how they all washed up, but I was able to collect a lot of cool shells that I'm hoping to do some kind of DIY decoration with ... 

Later that morning we loaded up and headed out of town back towards home.  I really have no comment about the road trip home, except for that it was way to long.  But it was made better when Cody sat with Evynn and taught her all about Reveille, Ronald Reagan, Chimpanzees riding on Segues, and tennis to calm her down!

And I finished two books that I had been meaning to read for a while but had never gotten around to, so I guess that was good.

Saturday night was Cody's 10 year high school reunion, so we got to see a lot of our old friends which is always fun.  Joseph and Austin both made it into Sherman also, so on Sunday before everyone hit the road to go home, Cody's parents cooked everyone breakfast by the pool.  My parents (and Staci who just happened to be in town) even came over to chill with us before we left.

By the end of the week, I was definitely ready to get back to my regular eating/exercise routine because I indulged more than usual, and the only exercise I got all week was that Thursday morning run ... but isn't that the point of vacation?  

Oh, and because I am such a nerd, this morning I calculated the total amount of money me and Cody spent on this vacation.  Transportation, housing, food, and souvenirs came out to a grand total of $1,060.  (The budget that I had set was $800, but I forgot to factor in gas money and I think we spent a little bit more on food than I was expecting ...)  Not to bad, I guess.  

It was a great week.