Well, not all beige. Some nights – like tonight – we’re doing pizza. My favourite recipe for pizza is this Ultimate Vegan Pizza recipe by The Buddhist Chef. Even if you don’t make the cheez (which you should try as it is delicious) it is an amazing recipe for the crust alone. If you oil a square baking sheet before spreading out the crust, it’s even crispier! We’re having it with salad – so again, not beige – but it’s a Caesar salad so the green is just for show.

It’s strange to think about now but we are setting up our plans for summer vacation. Typically we go somewhere in the winter but of course no one is going anywhere this year. As much as we love travel, it’s been nice to not have to have another rushed vacation with the kids. Mr. Tucker also really enjoyed his week at home doing nothing but a few house chores during the week at Christmas. So because of that, he is going to take two weeks off during the summer: one week for the cottage week with two other families, and one week to stay home, relax, and get a few odd jobs around the house.

While these plans chose us this year, it is also nice to be able to save money by not going anywhere this year. Mr. Tucker and I have some fairly intense financial goals over the next three years and so we have actually nixed international travel for the foreseeable future (unless one of us gets an astronomical windfall or raise).

If I am perfectly honest, we’ve also seen a lot with the kids: we’ve been to Disney World twice, Universal Studios once, and we’ve seen most of the Caribbean and many countries in Central America – including a cruise through the Panama Canal. They’ve been on boat cruise in NYC on New Year’s Eve watching the fireworks behind the Statue of Liberty, and stayed in Venice Beach & walked around Hollywood. It’s enough for kids who are only 10 & 12! Besides, the Bean is in jr. high now and taking time off in winter is just not as do-able as it was when they were in primary school.

At the end of our three years of tight budgeting and saving, we can make decisions then. But until we reach the end of those 30 months, it’s going to be very lean: we will have enough to live a really good life but not a little wiggle room for anything outside that. Right now we are leveraging the fact that we can’t go out in the pandemic to kickstart our new habit to reach our goals. Nothing makes staying home easier than an emergency stay-at-home order.

So our rowdy weekend plans include homemade pizza and a movie on the big screen (the projector in our basement rec room). In fact, this pretty much looks like our rowdy weekend plans for the next 3 years – and I am ok with that. Besides, this idiot has 136 more books to read before the end of the year!