Recently Newark Mayor Cory Booker made national news by accepting a challenge to live for a week off of “food stamps.” According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC.org) the average food assistance (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP) in this country is $4 per person per day. This led to an interesting discussion with Susanna on our drive home from New York on Saturday.

Could we, as a family, survive off of $4/day per person? It would be a challenge. We have Will and Ben living with us (on average) 3.5 days a week. That would bring our weekly grocery budget to $84. That is significantly less than we spend per week on food, and we don’t often purchase meat.

What good do these SNAP Challenges do? They certainly don’t make it easier for those on food assistance to get by. It does seem that it is easy to forget how well off we are compared to some. I know we have had many discussions around the dinner table about being thankful for what we have. Yet it is easy to only focus on those who have more than us. I often hear the boys talk about how lucky some of their friends are to have more toys or more electronics than they do.

Maybe a week long food challenge like this would help us all appreciate what we have. It won’t change how easy or hard it is to survive when you have to rely on assistance to get your basic needs (food and shelter). Maybe it will give us more empathy for the less fortunate. Maybe if enough of us found more empathy, we would find a way to do more to help the less fortunate.

We made it home last night by 8pm – making it one of our most reasonable ends to a day trip to the city. We ate dinner at IKEA in New Haven and still made it home in time for the boys to read before bedtime.  I didn’t get too many pictures on the trip, but here are a couple more.

Today we took a trip to the city. Will and Ben had been begging to go so they could do Christmas shopping for each other. Today was the only day we could go as a family before Christmas.
It is the first of December and the city was already packed with shoppers. Thankfully, we were done in time to catch the 3:30 train back to New Haven. Overall both boys did well – only a little frustration leaving the toy store only buying gifts for each other, and nothing for themselves.

The weather this week has been nearly perfect. It has been (maybe) a little cool in the mornings, but the days have been wonderful. We took the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather and did a hike behind the house on Thanksgiving morning. My dad was visiting for the week, so we got to enjoy the woods with him.

We took a little detour from the normal loop that we hike, and took a closer look at some of the abandoned hospital buildings that are adjacent to the trails we hike.

We enjoyed a turkey dinner (thanks to the Sawyer Farm for the turkey – it was wonderful), and Susanna even ate a few bites of the Thanksgiving turkey. Will was quick to point out that the turkey is the only thing on our table that was on the tables at the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621, but we enjoyed our meal nonetheless.

We had a good, cold, soccer morning on Saturday. Both boys had games, but this week Ben’s game was early, so we had to be at the soccer field by 9am. Which meant no lounging around in the morning as we had done the previous two Saturdays when Will’s game was the first one at 10:30.

It was also cold. The house thermometer said 24 degrees (-4°C) when I woke up. We had a good hard frost on the ground – no more peppers from the garden (which another post topic  – however not a post that I will plan on writing unless really bored).

Ben’s game was great. He played goalie the first quarter, letting in only only one goal. By the second half his team was tied 1-1 and he had moved to playing forward where he scored the winning goal (they won 2-1).   Will played a good game as well.  He rotated between positions, and was able to get two shots on goal while playing forward.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. The boys had a half of a day at school, so I took the afternoon off of work. We had the piano tuned, which made Susanna very happy. Ben even got back on the piano and practiced for the first time in six months. It took the tuner a couple of hours, and the piano isn’t perfect. But it is much better.

And after much work, I switched out the flat tire on the boat trailer, and then with everyone’s help, we pushed the trailer out of the garage.

Today the boys have soccer games this morning, and this afternoon may be nice enough to get some chores done. Maybe even light off a fire in the fire pit.

It has been a very busy two weeks. Susanna has been working most evenings (or so it seems) as well as going to school full time during the day. I have been working on “drunken cutting boards” as a project with a group from work, which leaves the workshop in need of a cleaning (and I’m pretty sure the tools in need of sharpening).

I’m still working on power to the garage.  Hopefully that will be finished this weekend – getting power out – not the wiring completely.