Some of my best childhood memories revolve around the large city park that was behind our house.  We really didn’t need a backyard as we had several acres of play space to have fun in.  In the summer, we played wiffle ball and baseball.  All my friends would gather at the baseball diamond in the park and we would play two to three games in the afternoon.  In the fall, we would play Nerf football almost every day.  When winter hit, it was time to build snow forts and go sledding.  One winter, we took buckets of water and spilled them down a hill to create our very own slalom run.

Recently, my brother bought our family a Nintendo Wii as a gift.  It has brought a lot of enjoyment into our house and not only for our children.  The initial Wii package came with the Wii Sport software which includes bowling, tennis, boxing, golf, and baseball.  As a family we have greatly enjoyed playing the Wii together.  Bowling has proved to be a great way to spend time together as even our youngest daughter has excelled at it.  For me, Wii Sports Tennis has been a real blast.  I feel that the greatest benefit of the Wii is that it gets you on your feet and I’ve had a great time facing off with the Wii game opponents along with getting some exercise while I go at it.

Last night we had dirty rice and beans with sausage.  As a result of some belt-tightening measures in our household budget, we are finding ourselves eating more at home and less out on the town.  The rice and beans concoction was purchase at our local Aldi’s grocery and was also a part of cost conscious efforts because Aldi’s usually has a less expensive price when compared with our other name brand grocery chain.  The sausage was turkey sausage because we are trying not only to be conscious of our budget, but also our health and this turkey sausage has less calories and fat when compared with regular pork sausage.